It's over, Dan

The embarassment for CBS just gets worse and worse, as the Washington Post says the expert who allegedly authenticated the Bush National Guard memos for 60 Minutes did nothing of the kind:

The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.

"There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are "copies" that are "far removed" from the originals.

Matley's comments came amid growing evidence challenging the authenticity of the documents aired Wednesday on CBS's "60 Minutes." The program was part of an investigation asserting that Bush benefited from political favoritism in getting out of commitments to the Texas Air National Guard. On last night's "CBS Evening News," Rather said again that the network "believes the documents are authentic."

A detailed comparison by The Washington Post of memos obtained by CBS News with authenticated documents on Bush's National Guard service reveals dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques.

Remember a few months ago, when an infamous (and now banned) troll in my comments section kept insisting that there was nothing antisemitic about the phrase "F**k Jews"? CBS seems to be acting in the exact same manner.

This mess should (but almost certainly won't) shut up critics who insist Fox News is "biased" and "partisan" unlike the other networks. Like, um, CBS. Meanwhile, courtesy of Slate's Timothy Noah, here's the emerging Democratic spin on the controversy:

Which brings us to a larger point. The documents were entirely consistent with everything that's already been established about President Bush's National Guard service. We know strings were pulled on his behalf to get in. We know that, for whatever reason, he wouldn't take a required physical. We know that Bush agitated for a transfer to Alabama, and that for a period of six months there exists no evidence that he ever showed up. None of this makes Bush a bad person—except insofar as he feels free to question, or permits others on his campaign to question, the manhood and patriotism of his opponent, John Kerry. 60 Minutes may have inadvertently framed the president, but in doing so it framed an already guilty man.

Several writers have compared this mess to the "Hitler Diaries" hoax of 1983, when Stern and the London Times were taken in by an obvious forgery. (Robert Harris's book on the sebject, Selling Hitler, is a must-read.) I have visions of Tim Noah writing, "okay, so we were hoaxed, but the 'Hitler Diaries' are entirely consistent with everything we know about Hitler's personal life."

Posted by damian at September 14, 2004 04:13 PM