See B.S. may as well just cancel their whole news division.

CBS and Dan Rather continue to stonewall, so we have to get information on Memogate from others:

Reports Fuel Doubts on CBS Bush Story

Reports Fuel Doubts on Documents Used in CBS News Story on Bush's National Guard Service

The Associated Press


NEW YORK Sept. 15, 2004 — Two experts hired by CBS News to examine records of President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard told ABC on Tuesday that they could not vouch for the documents' veracity.
Meanwhile, a former secretary in the guard said she believed the documents CBS used were fake, although they accurately reflected the thoughts of one of Bush's commanders.

As questions continued about Dan Rather's report on "60 Minutes" last week, CBS News on Tuesday said it did not rely on assessments made by the two examiners quoted in the ABC report, and found it notable the secretary affirmed the content of the documents.

"We continue to believe in this story," said Betsy West, CBS News' senior vice president.

CBS said its story about Bush's guard service relied on much more than documents. But the controversy has raised credibility questions for the network news division and it's not certain if those questions will be definitively answered.

CBS says the documents from one of Bush's commanders, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, indicated Bush didn't follow orders to take a physical and that Killian was being pressured to sugarcoat his performance ratings. Bush's father was a Texas congressman at the time.

Questions were immediately raised about the documents' legitimacy, with some believing they were produced by a computer not available at the time.

Emily Will, a documents examiner from North Carolina hired by CBS, said she told the network before the report aired that she questioned handwriting in the documents she was shown and whether it could have been produced by a typewriter.
Her main concern was that she was not provided a known sample of the signature to use for comparison.

"Although I never told them, and I still would say the documents were definitely not authentic, I had some problems with the documents," Will told The Associated Press late Tuesday.

Will said she e-mailed a CBS producer and urged her the night before the broadcast not to play up that a professional document examiner had authenticated the papers.

"I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Will told ABC News.

Another expert hired by CBS, Linda James of Plano, Texas, told ABC that "I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it understood that I did."

James told AP late Tuesday she raised similar concerns about signature samples.

"I really pressed that because I knew that other document examiners looking at the same documents would have a real problem authenticating these," she said.

CBS News said that Will and James played only a "peripheral role" in assessing the documents, and had seen only one of the four used in the report. Ultimately they deferred to another expert who has seen all four documents, Marcel Matley, and who continues to back up CBS' account.

West said Will did not contact the network the night before the report aired.

"I am not aware of any substantive objections raised," she said. "She did not urge us to hold the story."

James told CBS News that she needed to know more about the documents before rendering any judgments, West said. CBS contacted five document experts before the report aired and two since, and continues to report the story, the network said.

Killian's former secretary, 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox, also questioned the documents in an interview with The Dallas Morning News.

"These are not real," Knox said in a story posted Tuesday on the newspaper's Web site. "They're not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him."

Knox told the newspaper she did not recall typing the memos, but that they echoed Killian's views on Bush. She said he retained memos for a personal "cover his back" file he kept in a locked drawer of his desk, but she was not sure what happened to them when he died in 1984.

When contacted Tuesday at her Houston home, Knox's son, Pat Carr, told The Associated Press his mother did not wish to elaborate on her comments to the newspaper.

CBS News spokeswoman Sandra Genelius said CBS did not believe Knox was a documents expert and that the network believes the documents are genuine.

"It is notable that she confirms the content of the documents, which was the primary focus of our story in the first place," Genelius said.

First lady Laura Bush was the first in the GOP campaign to say the latest documents were probably forged.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said said the first lady was speaking for herself and that Bush felt no need to further address questions about his National Guard service. The White House has not come to any conclusions about the documents and is not investigating them, he said.

CBS, look on the bright side -- axing your entire news division would free up lots of morning time, and half and hour each weeknight, for more Survivor, Big Brother, and CSI spinoffs.

Question to Dan Rather: Was one of your sources Jayson Blair?