Downplaying Doubts on Dubious Anti-Bush Memos -- September 10, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for September 10, 2004

Downplaying Doubts on Dubious Anti-Bush Memos

On Thursday the Times put anti-Bush charges on its front page--charges based on memos given to the CBS News program "60 Minutes" suggesting George W. Bush got special treatment during the Vietnam War. On Friday, the Times files a follow-up story that casts grave doubt on the authenticity of those memos, including allegations of forgery. That story appears on page A17.

(By contrast, the Washington Post places its follow-up story on the front page, where its original article appeared.)

Jim Rutenberg and Katharine Seelye's Friday story is titled "Commander's Son Questions Memos on Bush's Service." But that headline doesn't flag the true source of the controversy--concerns raised by forensic document experts that the memos, which purport to be from the files of the late Col. Jerry B. Killian of the Texas Air National Guard and were aired on the CBS News program "60 Minutes," are in fact forgeries.

Rutenberg and Seelye note: "CBS said in a statement that it stood by its story and the memos' authenticity. '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,' the statement said. Still, throughout the afternoon and evening, questions arose about the authenticity of the memos as various forensics experts told news organizations, including The New York Times, that the fonts of the documents resembled those of modern-day word processors, specifically Microsoft Word. Farrell C. Shiver, a forensic document examiner based in Georgia who said he was a Republican, said the superscript 'th's' throughout the memos were 'something you would expect to find being done with a computer' and were 'not consistent with something that you would expect to find from someone typing a document; they used typewriters in that particular time.' Mr. Shiver also said he was suspicious of the spacing in the memos and the curves in their apostrophes. But he said that while the font seemed unusual for the period, 'that does not prove that the documents are not genuine.' Philip Bouffard, a forensic document specialist from Ohio who created a commonly used database of at least 3,000 old type fonts, said he had suspicions as well. 'I found nothing like this in any of my typewriter specimens,' said Dr. Bouffard, a Democrat. He also said the fonts were 'certainly consistent with what I see in Times Roman,' the commonly used Microsoft Word font."

For the full follow-up Thursday story (page A17) casting doubting on the Times story from Wednesday (page A1), click here.

Bumiller All Wet on "Explosive" Cheney Remark

There's more misleading by the Times regarding a recent Dick Cheney quote on fighting the terror war, this time in White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller's Friday story, "Bush Attacks His Opponent Over His Record on Taxes."

Reporting from a Cheney appearance in Cincinnati, she writes: "Mr. Cheney did not repeat the explosive accusation he made on Tuesday in Des Moines that the nation was more likely to 'get hit again' by terrorists if Mr. Kerry was elected president."

(At the risk of being tiresome, here's what Cheney actually said on Tuesday: "Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake.")

Bumiller notes: "One heckler, Jennifer Cohn, was pulled by her hair and marched out of the room by a supporter of Mr. Bush. 'How did you even get in here?' another man said angrily to Ms. Cohn as he helped remove her from the room. In an interview afterward, Ms. Cohn said that she wanted Mr. Bush to spend $30 billion fighting AIDS rather than the $15 billion he has promised. When Ms. Cohn tried to shout that the president is a liar, the crowd drowned her out with loud chants of 'four more years.'"

Bumiller's article includes an AP photo of the hair-pulling incident. But does the Times cover all hecklers equally?

After heckling John Kerry at a speech in Cincinatti, Michael Russell was put in a headlock by a Kerry supporter (scroll halfway down this archived Drudge Report page for a photo). Yet David Halbfinger's article doesn't even mention the incident, much less run a photo of it or run a comment from the heckler.

For the rest of Bumiller's story, click here.

"If A Republican Had Said That…."

Jodi Wilgoren follows Kerry to the National Baptist Convention in New Orleans and hears him rip into Bush in "Kerry Invokes the Bible In Appeal for Black Votes." The pull-out quote reads, "Citing Scripture and attacking Bush at a Baptist gathering."

While the article itself is pretty neutral, the Times would probably faint in religious fear if it had heard an avowedly Christian Republican like President Bush telling an audience to "beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing." Also note the mild headline, which doesn't take into account Kerry's hellfire tone.

The article also features another appearance of the Times latest misleading meme: "As Mr. Kerry hammered Mr. Bush on health care, his running mate, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, sharply criticized Vice President Dick Cheney for his recent remark that the United States was more likely 'to get hit again' by terrorists if Mr. Kerry was elected."

For the rest of Wilgoren in New Orleans, click here.

"Convincing Case" Made By Left-Wing Paranoids

Anita Gates reviews an obscure left-wing documentary playing in Manhattan's East Village, "Hijacking Catastrophe--9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire," and finds it makes a "convincing case." Its modest premise: Republicans want to take over the world.

"The writers and directors of this openly polemical but also sobering documentary--Sut Jhally, a professor of communications at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Jeremy Earp, a doctoral candidate there--suggest that the reality is much bigger and even more disturbing. They suggest that the real reason for the war with Iraq is a two-decade, three-administration, neo-conservative master plan to--well, let's let Norman Mailer say the words, as he does in the film. At the end of the cold war, he proposes, the Republicans saw a 'golden opportunity, now that Russia is out of the way, to take over the world.' Or as the author Chalmers Johnson says on camera, without irony, they wanted to create 'a new Rome, beyond good and evil.'

After gently mocking the premise, Gates seems to find it credible: "You don't hear phrases like 'take over the world' often these days without a James Bond movie review attached, but 'Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire' makes a convincing case with simple methods: talking heads, newspaper articles, an authoritative narrator (Julian Bond) and the occasional chart on military spending or the national debt. The voices speaking out are not all wild-eyed liberals. In addition to predictable administration critics like Mr. Mailer, Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, they include Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq; Stan Goff, a retired Army Special Forces master sergeant; and Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (Air Force, retired), a former staff officer at the Pentagon. Their arguments appear to support the filmmakers' most serious accusations."

But at least two of the three figures she cites seem to fit the "wild-eyed liberal" tag. Before the Iraq war Scott Ritter told a South African radio audience: "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated...We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable….We will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost."

And Stan Goff considers himself a socialist, judging by the interview he gave to the far-left website Counterpunch, where he said: "This tendency of thought, of constantly crying about the world not conforming to our wishes, is a symptom of a deep malaise among socialists. There's good reason for that malaise. We've been getting our asses kicked for a long time, and we're still trying to learn some hard lessons from history. But history is moving into a period right now where we are needed, and not as a bunch of whiners."

When the filmmakers implicitly compare the Bush administration to Nazis, Gates simply terms it "hardball": "The filmmakers are definitely playing hardball. 'Hijacking Catastrophe' begins with a quotation about the ease of making people do what a country's leaders want. 'All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,' it begins. Then, after a deliberate pause, the screen reveals that this is something Hermann Göring said during the Nuremberg trials."

For the rest of Gates on the left-wing documentary, click here.

Did Bush Get a Bounce? "Yes, but…."

Campaign reporter Adam Nagourney Friday reluctantly admits the obvious--Bush got a bounce out of his convention--in "On a Bounce or a Roll, Bush Leads as a Critical Stage Begins."

He writes: "President Bush enters the fall campaign with a modest lead over Senator John Kerry after fortifying his standing as the better candidate to fight terrorism and turning many Americans against Mr. Kerry, according to polls released since the Republican National Convention and interviews with campaign aides….Still, the polls conducted last week hardly offer the final verdict on the conventions. Typically, the postconvention bounce fades over the next two weeks, and aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry said they expected the lead to drop over the next few days."

Nagourney admits: "Still, Mr. Bush appears to be in a much better position than Mr. Kerry was after his convention. The polls suggest that Mr. Bush now has a powerful advantage on the issue of terrorism and has turned voter opinion against Mr. Kerry. And even Mr. Kerry's advisers said the White House decision to hold the convention so close to Labor Day apparently paid off, leaving Mr. Bush well-positioned going into the fall campaign."

For Nagourney's latest poll analysis, click here.

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org