roving

now that dust has more than settled, let's revisit the cbs "memogate."

on 9/15/04 salon.com posted excerpts from the dallas morning news' interview of marian carr knox, 86-year-old former secretary of the late jerry killian, george w bush's commanding officer in the texas air national guard, including this:

"...She said that although she did not recall typing the memos reported by CBS News, they accurately reflect the viewpoints of Col.Killian and documents that would have been in the personal file. Also, she said she didn't know whether the CBS documents corresponded memo for memo with that file. 'The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones,' she said. 'I probably typed the information and somebody picked up the information some way or another.'"

assuming her memory is correct, the forgeries could only have been done by someone with access to original documents or copies or summaries of them.

but why would such a person type copies instead of photocopying?

is the explanation innocent: to replace damaged documents? [charitably suggested by salon.com]

or more sinister: to insert intentional "errors" whose detection would discredit someone seeking to damage g w bush? [did i hear someone cry "cynic!"?]

recall that it has been reported the papers were sent to cbs by bill burkett, a former guardsman who had claimed he saw files from bush's guard record in a trash can some years ago. burkett said a woman phoned him, said she had something for him, extracted a promise he would copy the papers and destroy them to prevent traces of her dna being found, and set up a meeting at a diner for which she never showed, but a man did, put a packet on burkett's table, and vanished when burkett looked down.

rather mysterious, no?

which reminds me, am i suggesting the above was meant to destroy dan rather?

not necessarily. the intended victim might've been burkett, whom the bush campaign regarded as a kerry supporter out to assassinate bush's character. making him look like a forger would help bush.

dan rather, mary mapes, and the others at cbs may've been no more than collateral damage—or icing on the cake, depending on your pov. after all, if cbs had spotted the forgery, their story might've attacked burkett, who most likely gets hurt either way.

can't say we'll know anything for sure till the mastermind writes a memoir. meanwhile here's the text of a 9/14/04 e-mail from someone called deep ear:

"following up on 'bush's brain', during ww2 brit intelligence developed disinformation techniques called 'double cross' and 'triple loop' which layered relatively easy to disprove false info on top of harder to infer false info in a sophisticated manner intended to fool the enemy into believing the lowest layer was true.

"john le carré's 'the spy who came in from the cold' was based on such a scenario.

"the 'killian memos' have so many apparent anachronisms and odd usages that it was inevitable they'd eventually get questioned. i can't help suspecting those oddities were intentionally inserted.

"in case the implications of that aren't as obvious to some as to others, let me spell it out: if a certain 'boy genius' aka 'turd blossom' wanted to make something look like an opposition attempt to smear his boss, an easy to spot forgery might serve very well indeed."