Last Thoughts on CBS Follies

Here are some last comments about the Dan Rather document scandal.

We begin with some obvious truths that apparently have never occurred to CBS or to the blue ribbon investigating panel.

You cannot prove authenticity of documents by document analysis alone. There is nothing to stop a forger from using the identical paper, ink and writing implements as used by the supposed creator of them. If they do so there is no way to distinguish between the forgery and an authentic document by analyzing these.

An original signature can be analyzed for compatibility with other signatures created by the supposed author, and some believe it can be authenticated. Forgers have been known to practice the handwriting of others assiduously, and it is certainly plausible that a persistent forger could eventually come up with a signature that no handwriting expert could find incompatible with an original. On the other hand, a copied signature on a copy of a document cannot in principle provide authentication of the document. Even a bungler can copy an authentic signature onto a document using a copying machine, and fill in the rest of the document as he or she sees fit.

So authenticating a signature on a copy of a document proves absolutely no information about the authenticity of the document.

When the document has initials rather than a signature, or has no signing whatever, handwriting analysis is obviously even less useful for authentication.

On the other hand, document analysis can be valuable in the opposite sense. It can provide absolute proof that a document was not produced by its supposed creator.

If the machine or implement is known, then typographic elements in a document which could not have been produced by that device provide absolute proof that the document is fraudulent.

Similarly, but less definitively, a handwriting that differs in many characteristics from the known handwriting of the signor can be judged a forgery (as can an exact copy of a known signature), unless the supposed writer has a history of signing documents in varying styles, a distinctly rare situation.

How then can authenticity be proven?

Testimony from the author or from the typist, for a typed document, can be definitive (unless perjured).

Without it, information about the history of the document: that various witnesses saw it at various times, that it came from a file that was expected to contain it and was not tampered with, can be at least supporting evidence for authenticity, and can theoretically be proof of authenticity..

The statements above are common knowledge, that every educated or even semi-literate person will instantly acknowledge.

Yet, when it came time to authenticate the documents, the Mapes crew did nothing to contact the supposed typist (the supposed author being dead), took no steps to examine the history of the documents, (not even contacting the individual said to be their immediate source), but rather chose to use handwriting and document analysts who could, as we have noted, not possibly provide positive evidence of authenticity.

They chose analysts in a rather haphazard manner, according to the panel report, and received a somewhat negative response. Two of the analysts found questions about the documents that bothered them. Another would only say that the signature that appeared on one of the documents (which had been copied many times) seemed right. The fourth, in the panel report appears as a prostitute, willing to give oral and written opinions that are exact opposites of one another. His initial oral opinion was that he didn’t see anything to disprove the documents.

The vetting committee for the program that quoted the documents seemed to be satisfied by this authentication. One has to wonder: what were they thinking?

The fact that the methods used for authentication could not possibly succeed should have disturbed the vetters in at least some way. What could they have been told about the results of the claimed authentication?

If they were told that the experts authenticated the documents, they should have known that this could not be, unless the vetters are ignorant fools.

If they were told that the authenticators had found nothing wrong with the documents, or had “given them a clean bill of health”, this would have been a lie, but Ms. Mapes definitely lied on several occasions related to these event, according to the panel report, so we have to consider this possibility. Shouldn’t the vetters have been expected to question how this provided authentication?

If they were told the truth, how could they possibly allowed the show to go on?

What is curious about the matter is that Rather was willing to tell the public that he knew the documents were authentic, without any rational source for this knowledge, without it is said knowing the nature of the authentication process or knowing that it could only be bogus.

Contrast this with the attitude of the investigating panel. They had definitive testimony from a true document expert, (as given in an appendix to their report) which establishes that the documents could not have been constructed by the typewriter used in the office they supposedly came from. There was additional evidence which they never mentioned, of pseudo-kerning, which no typewriter of the period could have produced, that they never even investigated. This was supported by evidence from the supposed typist who denied ever typing them. The supposed source turned out to be no source at all, his name as a source being an admitted lie used to shield somebody unknown. And yet the panel refused to de-authenticate the documents, that is to declare them forgeries.

So the vetters were perfectly right in accepting a failed useless and nonsensical authentication process as being sufficient to determine authenticity, Rather was willing to stake his reputation on it, yet the infinitely stronger contrary argument is not persuasive to the panel. This is truly remarkable, a high water mark in inconsistency!

There is a great mystery about these documents, and that is: who forged them?

It would have to be someone with some familiarity, but not that much, with the Texas Air National Guard. The forger would have to know the names of various individuals and some addresses, and something at least sketchy about the time table of Bush’s military service.

But the documents had flaws, beyond having wrong fonts. Here are some.

Many of the abbreviations and stylistic details in the forgings were incompatible with TANG usage.
The dating in the claimed order to Bush to take his physical was somewhat off from what it could legally be.
The superior who was supposedly trying to sugar coat Bush’s record at TANG was not connected to TANG at all when he was supposedly trying to do so.
One of the documents appeared to be a memorandum from Col. Killian to himself, which would not naturally be in any official file but his own.

The source of these documents was supposed to be from those taken out of Bush’s official files, when they were supposedly expurgated to remove incriminating documents.

That is the reason given that there were only a few documents (6 of which 4 were published), from widely different dates.

There are also other clues.

A peculiarity of the documents was the number of copyings that they had apparently undergone. If they were taken from a file and kept by someone, why would it be copied at all? What reason would anyone have to copy each document then copy each copy and so on, and provide only the final copy of copy of copy etc., to Burkett and CBS. If they are spurious then this could have been done to make them look old, but only by someone who believed that they would not be examined carefully.

If we assume the documents are forgeries, we can ask, what the forgers were trying to accomplish. Apparently they were trying to get something against Bush that someone could publicize to damage his campaign.

To do this they wanted to establish: that Bush had done something wrong during his career in TANG, something that deserved punishment.

They also seemed to want to show that Bush had avoided punishment through political pull, (though I do not understand what the pull of an ex-Republican representative in Democrat-controlled Texas in those days would have been).

Now Bush joined TANG in 1968, did lots of flying in the first two years, and even volunteered for service in Viet-Nam. By 1972 we were out of Viet Nam and the military was downsizing. Bush stopped flying and took up other interests.

Bush’s service in TANG was quite uninteresting, and without anything positive or negative worth mentioning.

One forged document claims to be an explicit order from his superior, Killian, to take his physical in the spring of 1972. His failure to do so could then be described as a failure to obey a particular order, and therefore something wrong and worth punishing. (Killian was not known to issue such orders to anyone, and there is no record of anyone in that year or any other receiving an order from him to take a physical, which suggests there is something strange about this order and is consistent with it being a forgery.)

A second claims to be an order suspending Bush’s permission to fly, for not taking the physical and other unspecified reasons. (Again this document is suspicious because the automatic suspension for not taking a physical was issued by another office and doesn’t refer to unspecified reasons.)

A third is a claim of resentment by Killian at attempts to influence Bush’s record by someone who was not in Tang at the time.

These documents are each suspicious each being unlike anything in any TANG record; they are almost unquestionably forgeries. (It is also impossible that exactly these documents and no other Killian documents had been composed on an unknown and unknowable typewriter.)

And what do they convey?

The first claims that Bush did something wrong by not taking his physical.
The second suggests there were other wrong doings.
The third suggests that there were efforts at a cover up.

So who would want to establish these claims?

The perpetrator would have to be somebody familiar with Bush’s record, and of its points of vulnerability, and in particular, in the fact that he did not take his physical in 1972, his fifth year of service, when he was no longer flying.

It seems as if the perpetrator was strongly anti-Bush, with a powerful urge to bring him down.

The perpetrator apparently was so excited about Bush’s record that he or she was unaware that few people if any could be influenced in their vote by anything that happened back in 1972. (otherwise Kerry would have lost in a landslide given his behavior in those days.)

The perpetrator apparently was so strongly motivated as to be willing to commit a crime to advance his or her political goals.

The number of people who could do this is actually quite small.

Here are the possible candidates.

1. Mary Mapes, or one of her collaborators, especially Mr. Smith.
2. Burkett or one of his pals
3. an outsider
4. Karl Rove or some Republican mischief maker
5. Someone connected to the DNC

Burkett is a flake and a crank, and a Bush-hater. This qualifies him as a potential forger. He does not appear to be particularly careful or intelligent, which qualifies him further. However, Burkett was in TANG for many years and would be unlikely to make the stylistic and abbreviational errors in the forgeries. He is also a bit old to turn forger. He is a possibility but not a strong one.

One problem with Burkett is his story of where the documents came from. His initial story was an admitted lie. If he originated the documents, this story would be dangerous and stupid. It would be relatively easy to check it with the source, and discredit the enterprise. He would have had to assume that CBS would check on the source and as a result kill the story. The story seemed aimed at making the documents appear plausible, but to have no capacity for withstanding investigation.

There are large numbers of Bush haters who might stoop to forgery, but it is hard to envision one who would use Burkett as a conduit for the forgeries, Burkett being am established crank.

The notion that Rove or a Republican operative would create this mess makes little sense. Why would the documents go to Burkett? What would be the purpose of the plot? The author of the plot would have to assume that CBS (or whoever Burkett gave the documents to) would be too incompetent to evaluate them sensibly, and would be unable to trace them to their source. The authors of the plot could have had no idea that CBS would discredit itself over the documents, and have no particular reason for trying to make CBS News self-destruct. And the author could have had no idea that CBS would show the documents to bloggers, and that bloggers would discredit them. He or she would have to assume that the documents would cause damage mainly to Bush.

Similarly, while the DNC as a source is slightly more plausible than the RNC, there is no evidence at all that it had anything to do with the matter. One has to credit the DNC with either the integrity or good sense not to do something whose exposure would discredit the party. The prospect of being blackmailed by participants is just too horrible for an organization like DNC (or RNC) to risk.

The only remaining potential forger is someone in the Mapes group. Mapes had the opportunity to direct the authentication process down the futile and inane direction she did. Smith had military experience and might have been responsible for some of the stylistic errors. She had the motive to do it. Otherwise her contribution to unseating Bush would never see the light. Mapes was able to handle the vetting and get the documents approved for airing. Yes, the documents could not stand much scrutiny, but where would they get it?

It was only the arrogance of CBS in displaying the documents on its website, and the intelligence of bloggers who noticed problems with them that created doubts.

Without that arrogance, without bloggers, it could have taken weeks or months for the documents to suffer an investigation. An investigation, once initiated, would have proceeded at the pace of the panel investigation; with a conclusion available in January 2005. If Rather and Mapes stonewalled as they did quite probably no investigation would have taken place at all. If nobody got to see the documents and no questions were raised about details of the documents that made investigation inevitable there would have been no obvious channel for investigation.

In fact, anyone creating the documents would have had to expect that the main authentication effort would be aimed at verifying them with the typist, or tracing down the supposed source, and that no document could be authenticated at all without a plausible history attached to it.

Mr. Burkett and Ms. Mapes both impeached themselves by telling admitted lies about these documents. Only a fool can then give credence to anything they have to say about it.

So who was the author of these documents?

Mapes or Smith had the strongest motive, sufficient knowledge, opportunity, appropriate degree of ignorance, demonstrated lack of scruple, unique ability to guide authentication and unique ability to shield investigation necessary to make this hoax succeed, under normal circumstances. No other candidate comes even close.

We cannot know who was responsible for the hoax because all this evidence is circumstantial.

Nevertheless, by the Dan Rather criterion of “preponderance of the evidence” we are justified in concluding that the forgeries came from Mapes and/or Smith or a trusted accomplice.

Mapes and Rather

The CBS report of what went wrong in the Mapes-Rather scandal about Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard was just issued.

It makes dull reading, but it does have some interesting information.

First Mary Mapes comes across as a completely unprincipled liar.

Dan Rather comes out better. His main sin lies in his pompous and pious claims of the truth of absurd foolishness, day after day. He seems better only because he seems not to have been aware at all of the awful details, or perhaps of any of them. He comes across as a senile fool.

The report reveals that Mapes had been told that the Texas National Guard at all times had vacancies for fighter pilots. It had trouble attracting them. “It was hurtin’ for them,” as someone told her.

The implication of this appears to be that no pull whatsoever was needed to join the TANG as a fighter pilot trainee.

Yet Mapes persisted in publicize the story that Bush was allowed joined the TANG only through political pull. The September 8, 2004 segment on Bush’s service began with a claim by the Democrat politician Barnes, that, in 1968 he recommended Bush for the TANG and that was how Bush got in as a fighter pilot. Apparently we are to understand that the solicitude of politicians for others of their ilk crosses party lines in Texas, and that a Democrat politician would go out of his way to use his influence to get the son of a Republican ex-Congressman accepted as a fighter pilot-trainee. Since apparently no influence at all was needed, perhaps Barnes unwittingly did do enough to get Bush in: by doing nothing.

The unstated, or maybe it was stated, implication was that Bush wanted into the Texas National Guard to avoid service in Viet-Nam.

I learned from this report that during his training Bush volunteered to serve in Viet-Nam, but was turned down, apparently because their were more fighter pilot volunteers than positions open, and he had relatively little experience in the air at that time. This is another thing that Mapes learned in her study of Bush’s service. I am amazed at how well our main stream press publicized this fact!

By 1972, our Viet-Nam effort was essentially over, and the military was trying to downsize. Bush was fully trained, but the plane he trained on was being phased out, and he was as useful to the military, and to TANG as an extra thumb.

Bush got involved in a political campaign in Alabama in 1972 and subsequently went to Harvard and got an MBA.

He applied for a transfer to an Alabama Guard unit in the Spring of 1972, which transfer was approved by TANG and the Alabama Guard, but retroactively (in August) turned down by some bureaucrats in Utah. He applied again, and this time the bureaucrats approved. Meanwhile the 90 days (May through July) in which he was supposed to have his (annual) Texas physical exam had expired, so his commander’s commander suspended his permission to fly. Bush eventually got his honorable discharge.

Mapes, we learn, went over every detail of this story in 1999-2000, hoping to find something newsworthy in it. She failed.

She tried again in 2004. Of course there is no evidence that she had any political motivation for doing so. She just got urges every four years to study Bush’s TANG service. It’s something like premenstrual tension. I guess you could call it pre-election tension.

This time she found a fellow named Burkett, who claimed to find documents that seemed to establish:
1. Bush’s commander was mad at him for some unstated reason.
2. Bush’s commander ordered him to take a physical within the first two weeks of his 90 day window for doing so.
3. Bush’s commander suspended his permission to fly for not taking the physical and other unspecified reasons.
4. Some superior officer was pressuring the commander to “sugar coat” Bush’s records.
The implication of all these was apparently that Bush violated an explicit order by failing to take his physical. And he did other unspecified bad things. And a cover-up of all this was attempted.
Burkett also had claimed previously that he had overheard a plot to cover up Bush’s bad behavior.


We learn from the report that:
1. The commander’s wife and son claim that the commander loved Bush and would be campaigning for him if he were alive today.
2. The secretary who would have typed these denies having done so, based on non-standard notations and terminology.
3. The secretary has no recollection of an order to take a physical, a suspension, or anything about sugar coating.
4. The superior who was implicated in the documents as trying to pressure the commander to “sugar coat” Bush’s records had left TANG more than a year before the claimed attempt, and claims to have had nothing to do with TANG after his retirement, a statement confirmed by the commander’s commander.
5. The documents were submitted to four supposed experts on documents, none of whom vouched for it!
6. Burkett had a reputation as a crank, with a grudge against TANG based on some medical issue.
7. Burkett showed distinct paranoid symptoms. In particular he seemed to feel that his life was in danger from his revelations. (Could he be right? The more he spoke the better Bush looked, so Republicans would not have been after him. For all Kerry’s faults, Burkett could not have expected Kerry to go after him. Who would then be trying to kill him? Mapes herself? Dan Rather? Ralph Nader? No, it is paranoia.)
8. Burkett lied about the source of the documents, and there was an insignificant effort to check him.
9. The documents were typed using characteristics easy to duplicate today on a computer and apparently non-existent on Olympia typewriters used by TANG. They differed from all known authentic documents in having proportional spacing and true superscripting, and various other features.
10. The commander’s commander believes the documents to be forgeries, and disbelieves their content.
11. There is no record of Bush’s commander ever ordering anyone to take a physical or any reason he would order Bush to do so.
12. After September 8 CBS sought document experts who would authenticate the documents. No authentication = no pay! Authentication = pay! (Is there a crime of expert shopping akin to doctor shopping?)
13. One of the original experts who said he could not authenticate the documents was asked to write a statement claiming to authenticate them. He did so! CBS read this statement on the air, after strengthening it some!!
14. Mapes denied having contacted the DNC, then admitted doing it after September 8, then admitted doing it before receiving all the documents. These statements are mutually contradictory. Two of the three have to be lies!
15. Mapes claimed that her superior OKed the contact. He denied it.
16. Mapes and friends spent time worrying that the documents were planted by Bush supporters, though why Bush supporters would forge documents seeming to cast aspersions on his behavior 32 years ago is hard to fathom. But they never worried, that the documents, which came from a confirmed Bush-hater, could have been fabricated by Bush haters. I suppose they could not imagine Bush haters who lie or distort.

I could go on, but after a point it becomes boring.

It seems to me that the one feature which makes it 100% certain that the documents are forgeries is the pseudo-kerning used in them. There was definitely no typewriter at all available in the 1970’s that did pseudo-kerning. The authors of this report apparently haven’t even heard of it.

The parallel between Bush’s military service and Kerry’s is curious.

Bush enlisted in TANG. He apparently, according to this report, volunteered for service in Viet-Nam but was turned down. His unit was never sent there.

Kerry enlisted in the Inactive Naval Reserve. His unit was activated and sent to VietNam. He volunteered for Swiftboat service. At the time these boats were used only for ferrying from one ship to another, never in combat. Just Kerry’s luck, after he arrived they were sent into combat, mainly patrolling rivers to prevent VC crossings at night, in addition to ferrying. Kerry managed to infuriate his colleagues; some of them claim it was by fleeing from combat when other boats were attacked, and firing first asking questions later when encountering VietNamese. Somehow he wrote up all the action reports and, somehow he was always the hero in them. He wrote lengthy soliloquys (published in the Boston Globe) and fantasized about going to Cambodia. He was sent home after a few months with three purple hearts and other medals. Then, he started attacking the war and even had private meetings with North Vietnamese leaders. This definitely infuriated his colleagues. It is said by some suspicious observers that as a result he got a dishonorable discharge, and his medals were taken away from him. When he got to Congress, they claim, his discharge was changed to honorable, by political influence of course, and eventually his medals were reissued.

There is no question that Kerry got medals and wounds and Bush did not. On the other hand, there were many seemingly ordinary people who raised serious questions about Kerry’s military service, Bush’s service was routine and boring and without any obvious points that anyone would normally care about.

Yet CBS spent lots of money and effort attempting to develop a story with two main points: that political influence was used on Bush’s behalf in his military service; and that Bush’s failure to take a physical exam needed for flying when he was no longer flying was a violation of orders that should have been heavily penalized, and wasn’t, presumably for political reasons.

In some sense this represents a laudable attempt to probe Bush’s character, as represented by his behavior thirty odd years ago. On the other hand, a news media that claims to be politically neutral, as CBS does, would be expected to devote a similar amount of effort to investigating Kerry’s military career. Yet it did nothing of the kind. All sorts of sensational questions were raised by critics of Kerry, many of whom were democrats, and were respectable citizens, attorneys, etc. CBS ignored them all.

You have to wonder why CBS did this. A serious and unbiased report focused on one of Kerry’s heroic exploits that exonerated Kerry from even one of the charges against him would have highlighted his courage and helped his campaign. It was only fair and reasonable to create one. Why was there nothing whatever done? The only reason I can think of is fear that something negative about Kerry would turn up and have to be reported. Is there another explanation?

The whole story is a sad one.

The protagonists, all of them, showed not the slightest interest in truth. Rather was perfectly willing to state that he knew the documents were genuine, on the basis of nothing but the word of Mapes, a pathological liar (according to this report), based upon evidence supplied by Burkett, a crank and a paranoid.

They authenticated the documents by showing it to four “document experts”. None of these experts would vouch for them. And nobody seemed to care. Apparently authentication to CBS consists of submitting material to experts, independent of their opinions. One of the “experts’ agreed to write a statement in direct contradiction to his oral opinion in response to a request to do so. And this statement was read to the American public!

Apparently it is acceptable at CBS to consult “experts” until you find some that agree with you; then ignore what the others have said.

Apparently also Mapes and associates played fast and loose with every single witness. Everyone shown anything, without exception, was told that the documents had been verified and authenticated, and was asked what he or she thought of them. If the witness said, well, if you say so it must be so, that was enough to confirm them. That was enough to allow CBS to quote only when asked, Are they authentic? X answered : it must be so.” This is not an exact quote but it conveys the structure of practically every claim made in this incredibly distorted farce.

Vetting reports at CBS was an abysmal joke. The vetters met and questioned the authentication process, not its result. Thus they asked, in effect. How did you authenticate? Answer: we consulted four experts. And that answer was enough for the vetters, There was no question at all about the conclusions of the authenticators.

Reading this report is really depressing. It is like wandering through circles of Hell, watching the damned wallowing in their disgrace.

But even the panelists appear clueless. They refuse themselves to judge the authenticity of the documents, seem unaware of the meaning of kerning, and have nothing to say about political motivation.

I can’t help wondering how this panel would attempt to address the question of political motivation. What would it take to establish it?

For their benefit, here are some questions I would ask:

Were the participants in this activity interested in politics at all?
Did they have strong political views that they openly expressed?
Were openly expressed political views, if any, evenly divided among parties or candidates?
Was the expression of such views of any possible influence on hiring of any CBS employees?
Did any participants express an interest in influencing the election?
Do any of the participants today admit to having wanted to influence the election through their activities on this project?


These questions would only show a political motivation if the participants admitted it. Why were they not asked?