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| Thu, 09-09-2004 - 12:10am |
"It's been a long time ago, but he said basically would I help young George Bush get in the Air National Guard," says Barnes, who then contacted his longtime friend Gen. James Rose, the head of Texas' Air National Guard.
"I was a young ambitious politician doing what I thought was acceptable," says Barnes. "It was important to make friends. And I recommended a lot of people for the National Guard during the Vietnam era - as speaker of the house and as lt. governor."
George W. Bush was among those he recommended for the National Guard. Was this a case of preferential treatment?
"I would describe it as preferential treatment. There were hundreds of names on the list of people wanting to get into the Air National Guard or the Army National Guard," says Barnes. "I think that would have been a preference to anybody that didn't want to go to Vietnam or didn’t want to leave. We had a lot of young men that left and went to Canada in the '60s and fled this country. But those that could get in the Reserves, or those that could get in the National Guard - chances are they would not have to go to Vietnam."
But 60 Minutes has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file. Among them, a never-before-seen memorandum from May 1972, where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about "how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November."
Lt. Bush tells his commander "he is working on a campaign in Alabama…. and may not have time to take his physical." Killian adds that he thinks Lt. Bush has gone over his head, and is "talking to someone upstairs."
Col. Killian died in 1984. 60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic.
In a memo from Aug. 18, 1973, Col. Killian says Col. Buck Staudt, the man in charge of the Texas Air National Guard, is putting on pressure to "sugar coat" the evaluation of Lt. Bush. Staudt, a longtime supporter of the Bush family, would not do an interview for this broadcast.
The memo continues, with Killian saying, "I’m having trouble running interference and doing my job."
"He was trying to deal with a volatile political situation, in dealing with the son of an ambassador and former congressman," says Strong. "He was trying to deal with at least one superior officer, Gen. Staudt, who was closely connected to the Houston political establishment. And I just see an impossible situation. I feel very, very sorry, because he was between a rock and a hard place."
One of the Killian memos is an official order to George W. Bush to report for a physical. The president never carried out the order.
On Aug. 1, 1972, Lt. Bush was suspended from flying status, due to "failure to accomplish his annual medical examination." That document was released years ago. But another document has not been seen until now. It’s a memo that Col. Jerry Killian put in his own file that same day. It says "on this date, I ordered that 1st Lt. Bush be suspended not just for failing to take a physical….but for failing to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards."

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I watch very little television.
Sorry, I can't help you there.
>>People have a choice and the internet for news, from all sources. Sure, some of them are not reputable, but why would you assume CBS is?<<
CBS news, with 70+ years of journalistic experience, holds more credibility for me than partisan internet sites I've never heard of before today.
It really is that simple.
I'm repeating myself here.
I've given my viewpoint as plainly as I can.
The authenticity of newly unearthed memos stating that George W. Bush failed to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War was questioned Thursday by the son of the late officer who reportedly wrote the memos.
"I am upset because I think it is a mixture of truth and fiction here," said Gary Killian, son of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.
Another officer who served with Killian and a document expert also said Thursday the documents appear to be forgeries.
Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father and retired as a captain in 1991, said one of the memos, signed by his father, appeared legitimate. But he doubted his father would have written another, unsigned memo that said there was pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's performance review.
"It just wouldn't happen," he said. "The only thing that can happen when you keep secret files like that are bad things. ... No officer in his right mind would write a memo like that."
News reports have said the memos, first obtained by CBS's "60 Minutes," were found in Jerry Killian's personal records. Gary Killian said his father wasn't in the habit of bringing his work home with him, and that the documents didn't come from the family.
The personnel chief in Killian's unit at the time also said he believes the documents are fake.
"They looked to me like forgeries," Rufus Martin said. "I don't think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years."
CBS stood by its reporting. "As is standard practice at CBS News, the documents in the '60 Minutes' report were thoroughly examined and their authenticity vouched for by independent experts," CBS News said in a statement. "As importantly, '60 Minutes' also interviewed close associates of Colonel Jerry Killian. They confirm that the documents reflect his opinions and actions at the time."
Independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word software, which wasn't available when the documents were supposedly written in 1972 and 1973.
Lines, a document expert and fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, pointed to a superscript a smaller, raised "th" in "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" as evidence indicating forgery.
Microsoft Word automatically inserts superscripts in the same style as the two on the memos obtained by CBS, she said.
"I'm virtually certain these were computer-generated," Lines said after reviewing copies of the documents at her office in Paradise Valley, Ariz. She produced a nearly identical document using her computer's Microsoft Word software.
The White House distributed the four memos after obtaining them from CBS News. The White House did not question their accuracy.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040909_1950.html
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Authenticity of Bush memos questioned
Typographical, formatting questions emerge
By Michael Dobbs and Mike Allen
Updated: 12:35 a.m. ET Sept. 10, 2004
Documents unearthed by CBS News that raise doubts about whether President Bush fulfilled his obligations to the Texas Air National Guard include several features suggesting that they were generated by a computer or word processor rather than a Vietnam War-era typewriter, experts said yesterday.
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Experts consulted by a range of news organizations pointed typographical and formatting questions about four documents as they considered the possibility that they were forged. The widow of the National Guard officer whose signature is on the bottom of the documents also disputed their authenticity.
The documents, which were aired Wednesday night on "60 Minutes II," bear dates from 1972 and 1973 and include an order for Bush to report for his annual physical exam and a discussion of how he could get out of "coming to drill."
• Democrats step up attack on Bush Guard record
The dispute over the documents' authenticity came as Democrats stepped up their criticism of Bush's service with the National Guard between 1968 and 1974. The Democratic National Committee sought to fuel the controversy yesterday by holding a news conference at which Sen. Tom Harkin (Iowa) pointed to the documents as a fresh indictment of Bush's credibility.
CBS News released a statement yesterday standing by its reporting, saying that each of the documents "was thoroughly vetted by independent experts and we are convinced of their authenticity." The statement added that CBS reporters had verified the documents by talking to unidentified individuals who saw them "at the time they were written."
CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards declined to respond to questions raised by experts who examined copies of the papers at the request of The Washington Post, or to provide the names of the experts CBS consulted. Experts interviewed by The Post pointed to a series of telltale signs suggesting that the documents were generated by a computer or word processor rather than the typewriters in widespread use by Bush's National Guard unit.
A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the documents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said that a CBS reporter read the documents to Hodges over the phone, and that Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."
'Trump card'
"These documents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people," the CBS News official said. "Journalistically, we've gone several extra miles."
The official said the network regarded Hodges's comments as "the trump card" on the question of authenticity, as he is a Republican who acknowledged that he did not want to hurt Bush. Hodges, who declined to grant an on-camera interview to CBS, did not respond to messages left on his home answering machine in Texas.
In a telephone interview from her Texas home, Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, described the records as "a farce," saying she was with her husband until the day he died in 1984 and he did not "keep files." She said her husband considered Bush "an excellent pilot."
"I don't think there were any documents. He was not a paper person," she said, adding that she was "livid" at CBS. A CBS reporter contacted her briefly before Wednesday night's broadcasts, she said, but did not ask her to authenticate the records.
If demonstrated to be authentic, the documents would contradict several longstanding claims by the White House about an episode in Bush's National Guard service in 1972, when he abruptly gave up flying and moved from Texas to Alabama to take part in a political campaign. The CBS documents purport to show that Killian, who was Bush's squadron commander, was unhappy with Bush for his performance toward meeting his National Guard commitments and resisted pressure from his superiors to "sugarcoat" the record.
After their initial airing on the "CBS Evening News" and "60 Minutes II" programs Wednesday night, the documents were picked up by other news organizations, including The Post. A front-page story in The Post yesterday noted that CBS declined to provide details about the source of the documents, the authenticity of which could not be independently confirmed.
On Wednesday evening, the White House e-mailed reporters copies of the documents, as supplied by CBS, as well as the transcript of a CBS interview with White House communications director Dan Bartlett rebutting allegations that Bush had shirked his military duties. While Bartlett described the emergence of the documents as "dirty politics," he did not dispute their authenticity.
After doubts about the documents began circulating on the Internet yesterday morning, The Post contacted several independent experts who said they appeared to have been generated by a word processor. An examination of the documents by The Post shows that they are formatted differently from other Texas Air National Guard documents whose authenticity is not questioned.
Proportional spacing
William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. Documents generated by the kind of typewriters that were widely used in 1972 space letters evenly across the page, so that an "i" uses as much space as an "m." In the CBS documents, by contrast, each letter uses a different amount of space.
While IBM had introduced an electric typewriter that used proportional spacing by the early 1970s, it was not widely used in government. In addition, Flynn said, the CBS documents appear to use proportional spacing both across and down the page, a relatively recent innovation. Other anomalies in the documents include the use of the superscripted letters "th" in phrases such as "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron," Bush's unit.
"It would be nearly impossible for all this technology to have existed at that time," said Flynn, who runs a document authentication company in Phoenix.
Other experts largely concurred. Phil Bouffard, a forensic document examiner from Cleveland, said the font used in the CBS documents appeared to be Times Roman, which is widely used by word-processing programs but was not common on typewriters.
CBS officials insisted that the network had done due diligence in checking out the authenticity of the documents with independent experts over six weeks. The senior CBS official said the network had talked to four typewriting and handwriting experts "who put our concerns to rest" and confirmed the authenticity of Killian's signature.
The doubts about the documents left the White House and the Bush campaign in a state of suspended animation, with Bush aides encouraging doubts about the documents but conceding that the possibility that they were forged seemed too good to be true. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said that officials there had not attempted to authenticate the documents but simply released copies "provided to us by CBS in the interests of openness."
The Bush administration's strategy yesterday was to let news organizations raise doubts and conduct forensic examinations, without taking an official position on whether the documents were genuine.
"It's clear in reviewing the documents that they do nothing to change the fact that the president served honorably, and was proud of his service in the Air National Guard," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5955784/
Edited 9/10/2004 1:03 am ET ET by blueishxx
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Sorry, Metrochick, and sorry board.
Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board
Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board
More about the Killian memo forgeries on CBS:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml
It's really starting to hit the fan now, folks.
All over some font types unavailable until much later. Is the Kerry camp really that stupid? It would appear so, and also that they believe you are.
Of course the die-hard Kerry lovers will believe what they hear on the anti-Bush networks, but CBS went WAY over the top in its non-objective "reporting" against Bush.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-bush10.html
But I understand if it's difficult with your ears and eyes covered to everything but hatred of Bush.
Good luck in 53 days, you're going to desperately need it.
Dan Rather can't help you. Neither can Clinton, ABC, CBS, CNN, or NBC. All you've got are lies and your rabid hatred of the Commander in Chief and for those in his command.
>>But I understand if it's difficult with your ears and eyes covered to everything but hatred of Bush. <<
What in the world are you talking about?
I'd appreciate an explanation of this outrageous statement please.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/News/Politics/BushGuardDocs.PDF
or
http://wid.ap.org/documents/bush/040908xfer.pdf
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Valley Widow Casts Doubts on Bush Memos
http://www.krgv.net/cgi-bin/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1094786172,88169,
Son of late officer questions memos attributed to his dad
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/special_packages/election2004/9622680.htm
Is It a Hoax?
Experts weigh in on the 60 Minutes documents. Says one: "I'm a Kerry supporter myself, but . . . I'm 99% sure that these documents were not produced in the early 1970s."
by Stephen F. Hayes
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/596astgo.asp
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