SwiftVets.com

[the0point]

[lrb111]

[the0point]

[Hammer2]

Anyone see this link that was on Drudge?

http://onlinejournal.com/bush/031903Burkett/031903burkett.html

Boy does he paint a dead on picture of the George W. Bush we all know and love!........NOT!!!

This guy is psychotic!
When this guy's history comes out he will look like a total tinfoil hat loon.
I hope he saved all his fax logs & recorded his phone calls - because no one is going to believe what he says!
_________________
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilence" - Thomas Jefferson
"An armed society is a polite society" - Thomas Jefferson
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it won't be needed until someone tries to take it away." -- Thomas Jefferson

[Hammer2]

What fun! Here is a link to a search, on the same leftist website, that lists all his articles:
http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-a=000238e4-sp00000000&sp-f=iso-8859-1&sp-q=%22Bill+Burkett%22&FormsButton6=Search

"We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
on down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico." - Jimmy Driftwood

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/battleof.htm

"They're coming to take me away ha ha!"
_________________
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilence" - Thomas Jefferson
"An armed society is a polite society" - Thomas Jefferson
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it won't be needed until someone tries to take it away." -- Thomas Jefferson

[Badabing]

[CandiM]

Come to think of it, I wonder how much money some of these fine folks have given to moveon.org--That would show a connection, too, I would think--C
_________________
“I haven’t seen anyone milk this much out of a bad boat ride since Gilligan” -- Dennis Miller

[a6502]

The problem with prosecution is the issue of money. If the person sending the memo got paid - then ZAP, otherwise it winds up being an 'is is' issue.

I just love that the whole scheme blew up in the faces of the perpetrators.

There 'are' six documents, CBS releases four, waiting for someone to question the content - holding two in reserve, with one of those 'authenticated' at the same time as the four. Newsweek also has the documents to provide further proof of the charges.

Then BLOOIE! he-he-he. The whole news cycle, all of the coordinated ads, all of the DNC's 'new' talking points are ruined by some pajama clad idiots who don't know that the internet is only supposed to be used to pipe kiddy porn into libraries.

I just know that the poor souls at Newsweek are having to re-do this whole issue. Almost makes you feel sorry for them.

[Kimmymac]

Almost--and yet, not. To quote a drill instructor I knew once, "YouPeople VolunteeredForThisAndIHaveNoSympathyForYou." When I feel anything other than disgust for the MSM I will be ready to share quarters with ol' Dan Rather's pet, the cillyserpent secretary, at The O For Pete's Sake Give it a Rest Home for the Terminally Class Envious.

Saw that 60 Minutes thing tonight (yeah right if you believed I got out of my hammock under the stars to watch that camel dung you would be so incorrect) but I did look at the transcript, and I have posted some of it here.

QUOTE: "There were a lot of young whipper snappers, running around in their tight flight suits and not asking me out for dates. I wasn't good enough, sure. They had their fancy women, their rich debs, sure. It's just, type this Miss Flocker, and type that, Miss Flocker. Sure, sure, I know. Well, George Bush didn't ask me out in 1971, and I didn't vote for George Bush in 2000."

Question: Isn't moveon.commie funded by Mrs. HeinzHyphenKerry? Or is that just an urban myth?

And faxes from Kinkos? How very...pathetically...you mean, the dork with the docs didn't even have his or her own fax machine? Who are these people? A group of dangerously p.o.'d middle school girls?

Well, I only hope these documents were never in Sandy Berger's panties. Or Dan Rathers. Or Miss Flocker's.

[Sun Tzu]

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/045912.php

"This source's identity is withheld not to protect the source, but to protect Rather-- because exposure of this source to scrutiny would prove embarassing to Rather and CBS News. The source in question has a strong political animus against George Bush -- he is a member of what might be charitably called "the florid left" -- and a personal animus against Bush as well. The source in question blames Bush personally for (as Governor) denying him medical treatment he needed due to illness resulting in subsequent nervous breakdowns (the latter according to Newsweek).

This man is Bill Burkett. Although he has an obvious motive to lie about Bush, Burkett was nevertheless used as a principal source for Dan Rather's now-infamous 60 Minutes II attack on George Bush's TANG service, and, indeed, is one of the sources called "unimpeachable" by Rather in defense of that report.

The New York Times has asked his lawyer whether Burkett was responsible for providing Dan Rather with the forgeries, a question the lawyer refused to answer. But it is not necessary to assume he had anything at all to do with the actual forgeries to question Rather's objectivity and ethics in using Mr. Burkett as a source at all -- and an anonymous one at that.

Because even if Burkett only provided background information and confirmations for other parts of the story, his credibility is extremely questionable -- and certainly not "unimpeachable" credibility in any event.

The following relies upon the work of two other bloggers. Part I draws heavily on Kevin Drum/Calpundit's preliminary research into Burkett. Part II draws heavily from "Who Is Bill Burnett?" by blogger Fried Man. (Note that many of the articles Fried Man cites are no longer available on line.) Part III draws from both Calpundit's preliminary research and his interview with Bill Burkett. Sources found in those posts are linked directly in the article for reader convenience, not to claim independent discovery.

I.

Burkett sued superior officers for refusing to grant him the active-duty status he needed in order to secure medical treatment for an illness contracted in Panama. He sued the officers as individuals, charging that they had "acted purely as individuals, not as military officers, albeit pretending to have military authority and abusing their offices through such pretense in order to willfully and maliciously wreak havoc upon [Burkett's] life."

He ultimately received treatment from the military, but by that time "the disease had ravaged his body, and left him disabled and unable to return to either military duty or gainful civilian employment."

The suit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. Whether he actually had good cause to complain is not relevant to this discussion; wronged or not, he blamed his superior officers for "wreak[ing] havoc upon [his] life." Furthermore, he blamed then-Governor Bush specifically; he believed that the denial of health care was a retaliation for Burkett's previous whistle-blowing in the Guard.

II.

But Burkett's animus against Bush is not only personal. He also loathes Bush's politics. Burkett is a left-liberal of a fairly intemperate sort. He's far more extreme in his political views and passions than the average Republican voter -- or the average conservative blogger, for that matter.

"Who Is Bill Burnett?" by blogger Fried Man documents some of Burkett's political writings (unfortunately, many of his links are no longer working; uncited quotes come from his article).

First of all, Burkett is a partisan Democrat, as should be obvious from his membership in a Texas Democrats yahoo group.

And Burkett is not what you'd term a moderate Democrat, either:

That's right, [the Texas redistricting is] the same concept that was tried in South Africa within the past 30 years. It's also the root of the Tulsa massacres in which "black districts" were eventually attacked by the Oklahoma National Guard and the police.
Don't even get him started on Iraq:

I've sat in total grief for the past three years, watching the institutions of America being spent as if they were lottery winnings.
...

As I said, a UN vote would not stop GW Bush from attacking Iraq. Nor will anything else. And weapons of mass destruction will be discovered in great quantities; but the entire affair will stink to high heavens because it will be as staged as the White House press conference you just viewed.

... We will have insured that America's dynasty is nearing an end.

While GW Bush will be cast as a conquering hero by his political team and accepted by the population as such, history will treat him as Napoleonic. Bush will reach a new lofty level of acceptance by first fear and then staged triumph. Those who waited too long to gain their voice will lose their voice again.

America will over pledge economically in order to establish this new footprint; but the economic worth will not go to offset our fiscal investment, or to the Iraqi people. Iraq will be stripped by the vanquishers; the major corporations, who will then control not only the assets, but the cash flow. Their names will be Mobil, Exxon, Halliburton and the likes.

...

What do you do? Watching the sunrise on a beautiful morning, I used to feel hope. Before my illness, I felt exhilaration at the prospects of the day. After my illness, I felt hope that I might work hard to live. Now I feel sickness that today another massive group of people, held worthless by this anointed king, will be trampled upon like grapes. But their blood will not be rendered into wine. It will be spilled into the sands of this desert or another, or on the streets of Washington, or in the halls of the US Congress, or in the courts.

...

We must now revert to the history of Europe to discern what to do. We must study the nemesis of France and how Napoleon was felled before understanding the damage a tyrant does to a nation and society. We must examine the ruthless and dictatorial rise of yet another of the three small men - one whose name is not spoken out of fear of reprisal, but his name was Adolf. We must examine history, in order to not repeat it, and to understand the mesmerism of a public to a murderous scheme. Three small men who wanted to conquer . . . and vanquish. Each created a need for a balancing throng; history then recorded the damage from a far better perspective.


And there's more. Because apparently this lieutenant colonel in the National Guard was involved in high-level foreign policy debates with current Bush Administration officials as far back as 1996:

I have argued with the senior members of the Bush team since 1996, insisting that preventive war was not an option for the United States. The Preventive War concept is a WARHAWK product which, in my opinion, is totally foreign to the principles the Founding Fathers established for the USA.
I don't like being snide, but if there's one thing I've learned on the internet, it's Watch out for people who use CAPITALIZED BUZZWORDS for EMPHASIS.

In Demand Integrity, Burkett instructs us thusly:

America recently reached a point of understanding within her World of denial. ...
The Israeli intelligence network Mossad dispatched two agents to Washington to hand over evidence of the threat of 9-11, and even gave a timeline within the week of 9-11. Instead of saying, "We Blew it, America, and it won't happen again," we have again chosen denial and excuse.

...

Only one Democrat chose to step forward and openly place blame, which was deserved, squarely on the shoulders of high-paid professionals who were armed with every advantage other nations would die for. She was castigated and called every named. She is now ostracized from her own party as well as the party of the President. Where were her defenders? More important, where were the defenders of the Constitution and this nation?


He's talking about Cynthia McKinney there, in case you weren't sure.

This isn't liberalism; this is left-liberalism of the paranoid style, the overheated Hitlerian rhetoric of the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party. It has to be pointed out again that Dan Rather dismisses nearly all conservative critics as inherently untrustworthy simply because of their political beliefs, and yet he apparently finds no fault at all in Burkett's screeds.

If Dan Rather finds critics like PowerLine and Charles Johnson presumptively dishonorable and dishonest because they dare to vote Republican, shouldn't he be a little more wary of a declared Cynthia McKinney fan?

III.

It is against this background of extreme loathing of George Bush that Burkett's claims must be evaluated. Having a motive to lie does not make one a liar, and being strongly opposed to a political figure does not necessarily make one's claims untrue-- although Dan Rather ought to consider that himself the next time he's inclined to dismiss his critics as "political partisans."

Nevertheless, strong reasons to lie also do not buttress one's credibility.

Burkett claims to have personally witnessed other military personnel "scrubbing" or "cleansing" Bush's Texas Air National Guards records of embarassing files. Actually, Burkett seems to have been one of the first to make the Bush AWOL charges-- if he wasn't the innovator, he does seem to have at least been there at the creation.

But his accounts have not been consistent.

In November 2000, he was quoted by OnlineJournal as saying:

“As the State Plans Officer for the Texas National Guard, I was on full-time duty at Camp Mabry when [Bush aide] Dan Bartlett was cleansing the George W Bush file prior to G.W.'s presidential announcement. For most soldiers at Camp Mabry, this was a generally known event. The archives were closely scrutinized to make sure that the Bush autobiography plans and the record did not directly contradict each other. In essence it was the script of the autobiography which Dan Bartlett and his small team used to scrub a file to be released. This effort was further involved by General Daniel James and Chief of Staff William W. Goodwin at Camp Mabry.”
He then stepped back from the "cleansing" charge in press release. Asking himself (it seems) if he had been alleging that Bush's records had been "doctored," Burkett answered:

No, instead I stated that the way this had been handled by the Bush staff including knowledgeable military officials at the Texas national guard, that it left the implication that the Bush staff had first incompetently provided an incomplete military file for the Governor which was consistent with his autobiography....
His story then changed again. In an interview with Greg Palast, he now claimed that the files had not been handled incompetently, but rather criminally, and that he heard Bush Chief of Staff Joe Allbaugh say, over a speakerphone, to General Daniel James, "Make sure there’s not anything in there that’ll embarrass the Governor."

He then claimed to have actually seen discarded files -- files being criminally removed from the records, all within the plain sight of a non-paticipant in the crime -- in a trashcan.

But in his interview with Calpundit, he adds a new wrinkle-- that he had actually physically touched the "cleansed" files:

Instead I looked down into the trashcan.... And on top of that pile of paper, approximately five-eighths of an inch thick, and Jim wanted me to estimate the number of pages and I said probably between 20 and 40 pages of documents that were clearly originals and photocopies. And it wasn't any big deal, I looked at it, it was a glance situation, and it made no sense to me at all except at the top of that top page was Bush, George W., 1LT.
And I look back at it now and I know I was troubled that those documents were in the trashcan. I did ruffle through the top six to eight pages.


He described those documents as

Those documents were performance, what I term performance documents, which would include retirement points, [unintelligible] type documents, which would be a record of drill performance or nonperformance, and there was at least one pay document copy within the top six to eight pages of that stack that was in the trash…
It seems fairly unlikely that Republican political operatives committing a federal crime could be so indiscreet as to announce their intent within earshot of a noncooperating witness.

And it seems just plain outlandish that persons committing such a crime would invite a noncriminal in to watch them as they work and then ask that noncriminal to count the number of pages they were illegally removing from the files.

The story is further undermined by the fact that two of the fellow Guardsmen supposedly involved in the records-scrubbing flatly deny that any such thing happened.

Despite Calpundit's claim, there is no one who corroborates Burkett's story.

One man does report that Burkett told him this story (or something similar) shortly after it was supposed to have happened, but that only proves that Burkett has been telling the story for a while.

Calpundit's other "witnesses" in Burkett's favor are men making general statements; one man says he believes there was some "scrubbing" of Bush's files and an anonymous source says he believed the Bush people were worried what might be in the files as regards arrests and the like. Neither man actually claims to have witnessed the events in question, or any scrubbing at all for that matter.

IV.

This is the man upon whom so much of Dan Rather's story relies.

Bill Burkett, according to Newsweek, was a principal source for Dan Rather's story.

Bill Burkett, by implication, is an "unimpeachable" source, according to Dan Rather.

I don't know Bill Burkett and I don't know for certain if he is lying. I believe his story is fairly implausible, and his obvious hatred of Bush the man and Bush the President makes me even less willing to give his tales any credence. He has no witnesses to the crimes he claims he overheard, witnessed, and, ultimately, inadvertantly cooperated in by agreeing to count files for records-scrubbing political operatives.

And yet this is the man upon CBS News has decided to risk its reputation.

Bill Burkett has previously been all-too-willing to speak to the press. He's done so on numerous occasions, and he's written political columns for the internet under his own name.

Why is he suddenly so camera-shy that CBS News must protect his identity and treat him as an anonymous source?

Is this Bill Burkett's idea?

Or has this been Dan Rather's decision all along? Should Burkett's prior history and extreme political partisanship be revealed to the press, the story would be immediately condemned as irresponsible and baseless; but, as stealth techonology teaches, you can't hit what you can't see. Perhaps better to hide away this source, lest he whither in the light.

There is one final point to be made. I don't know who provided Dan Rather with his shoddy forgeries. It could have been anyone.

But if, hypothetically, Bill Burkett did provide those documents to Rather -- something, again, that Burkett's lawyer repeatedly refused to deny, but for which there is no genuine evidence -- then this would be a grave indictment of Dan Rather's integrity.

For here we would have a man who, for four years, has been making these very same allegations against George Bush, only to be dismissed by the press as lacking credibility. And yet we would have to believe two things:

1) That all along -- all the time since Burkett first "ruffled through" Bush's files in 1999 -- he actually had copies of those files all along, but has never once mentioned them before now; and

2) That Dan Rather actually believed Burkett's ludicrous claim, and was untroubled by Burkett's surprise announcement that he'd been secretly hanging on to the files for five years.

If Bill Burkett is the source of the documents, it should have been plain to any reporter that they were forgeries; a man trying to prove an allegation doesn't wait five years to reveal he's had the proof all along.

You wouldn't need technical typographical analysis to determine that they're forgeries; you would just need a dollop of common sense.

But if Burkett was the source, and yet Dan Rather went along with this transparent hoax anyway, then he is guilty of something much worse than negligence.

Either way, it seems that Rather had good reason to want to hide his Unimpeachable Source away from the world, and away from prying eyes, and away from nosey questions.

And away farthest of all from all those conservative critics who just can't be trusted because they -- they! -- have a political agenda at work that makes them inherently untrustworthy."
_________________
"Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it." - Mark Twain

[arkadyfolkner]

www.opensecrets.org

Currently searching this website for links, dunno if there will be any I can see, but this website is fascinating with the major 527 players and other groups listed...

[/url]

[Skypilot]

REPOST


Skypilot



Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 44
Location: Eastern PA
Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 11:46 pm Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is this Blogger on to something?

http://wizbangblog.com/archives/003652.php

On The Trail Of The Forger
I'd planned on sitting on this information until tomorrow to do more research, but developments are moving fast, so I think it's time to shine some light on one of the most likely suspects behind the CBS memo forgery.

Marty Heldt (or someone known to him)

Why? Three recent developments.

Development #1

The previous article at Wizbang notes that USA Today independently obtained copies of the memo's that CBS had six weeks ago. Interestingly enough they had six memos (as opposed to CBS's four), and it's the first of those that is the first plank in identifying the forger. The first of the new memos is shown below:


View Full Size Image

Notice that this memo attempts to lay the groundwork for subsequent memos. In making the case for forgery it presents difficulties because the other name (Bath) is redacted in the version of Administrative Order 87 the White House released [View image].

A forger relying on the records released by the White House wouldn't know Bath's name making it unlikely that they would have been able to recreate this document. There is one man, an Iowa farmer named Marty Heldt bent advancing the theory that George W. Bush's was a deserter who was in possession of an unredacted version of Administrative Order 87 (All the way back in August 2000), as received in response to a FOIA request [View image]. Notice that James Bath's name is NOT redacted in the FOIA copy (paragraphs 6 and 7).

Development #2

In January 2004, former Democratic political consultant Brooks Gregory identified Marty Heldt as peddling a bogus set of documents that Gregory had easily proved were forgeries. The original thread is here, but the relevant paragraph is shown below:

When all of this crap began back in 1999, I was a political consultant for several Democratic candidates, as well as later being a senior consultant for Janet Reno in her run for Governor. I bought the document package from Marty Heldt and we subjected them to the most thorough investigation one could imagine. Why? Because if there was anything there, we damn sure wanted to use it. But guess what? Only two of those documents proved to be authentic and they were not even related to the charge being levelled. Many of them are so blatant in their alterations it is almost funny. Several purport to be signed by real live military personnel, yet they don't even know the proper format for a military date.
I'm attempting to get the same set of memos the Gregory claims to have received from Heldt, but circumstantially the trail of evidence leads directly to one person who fits the shadowy description of "unimpeachable." From the time-lines it is possible that Heldt was selling a set of documents before he had received his FOIA requested documents.

Another person who was in contact with Marty about the authenticity of his documents in 2000 has this to say about the CBS documents:

The memos are forgeries. The story is bogus. The memo were done on a modern word processor or computer, and not on 1970's era typewriter.

I have the same evidence I used to discredit Marty Heldt in 2000. It is almost comical some of the obvious alterations and these documents came from the exact same place.

Just one little item. The address PO Box 34567, is a bit dubious, and that's what tipped me off back then. I talked to Marty Heldt about that. His answer was that this was Killians home address. So, I decided to check. This address was, at the time shown on the document, unassigned. Further, the address was a po box at the main post office in Houston, Texas. The zip code was for a small town in Texas, Genoa, Texas that did NOT have po boxes.

From, there, I went on to prove the document titled "Chronological" had been altered, and done by someone that had no idea what a military date format looked like.

That took me about 3 days after which, Marty stopped communicating with me. I think I know who dummied up all of these documents but I can't prove it. But I just have this feeling that if the culprit is ever found out, he will come from a small town outside of Boston, Mass. And I'm not talking about John Kerry either.


Development #3

Who do Salon and David Brock's Media Matters trot out as their rebuttal witness against the forgery charges? None other than "independent researcher" Marty Heldt.

Conclusion

It's a circumstantial case at this point, but Heldt (or someone known to him) is looking pretty good. There's more information on the way on this story, but new tips and leads are always welcome.

Update: The PO box argument, as presented in the quoted text, is not conclusive. It's been shot down here, and here. It's only presented in the context of this article to give an accurate account of the comments found.

Update 2: Heldt is certainly not the only suspect. Bill Burkett, a former Texas Air National Guard member and the person who claims to have witnessed shredding of Bush's Guard records is also high on the list. Tim Blair, Ace of Spades, and JustOneMinute all have more on the Burkett angle.

Interestingly Heldt and Burkett, were they to have worked together, would have had the insider knowledge; background in the minutia of the official documents; and the technical skills necessary to have made a pretty convincing set of memos.
_________________


I posted this on Monday and didn't see any responses. So repost again. Does this Heldt guy ring any bells?




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_________________
Please Mr. Kerry Sign Form #180 Now!
Let the truth set you free? NOT!

[Skypilot]

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The National Review seems to be hitting this story pretty hard!

http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerryspot.asp



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_________________
Please Mr. Kerry Sign Form #180 Now!
Let the truth set you free? NOT!

[Skypilot]

More links to info about Bill Burkett and forged documents:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/02/13/doubts_raised_on_bush_accuser/


http://www.steveverdon.com/archives/politics/001110.html


http://www.calpundit.com/archives/003249.html#more


http://onlinejournal.com/Commentary/


http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12638_Memos_Traced_to_Kinkos_in_Texas!#comments


Interesting thought:

Look at the sequence of events:

1. There is not a paper, radio, blog in the US that isn’t discussing this daily and the heat in increasing. All agree the memos are fake—or most likely fake. Even the LA Times, for goodness sake, is demanding an answer.
2. CBS will release a statement at noon-----at 3:30-----at 5 PM. (no doubt they are scrambling for the correct answer and finding none, come up with the same old story with a few added characters—a Pierce that no one heard of before and searches bring up only one handwriting analyst from CA that works in low level court cases ( could be another Pierce—I admit).
3. CBS runs with 86 year old secretary (to the entire group of officers and puts her across as a personal secretary to Killian) who remembers they talked about Bush. (not effective)
4. CBS affiliates are getting hammered—some do not carry 60II Wed. night.
5. Plan isn’t working------nothing has worked right from day one------time to bail.
6. After the broadcast of Wed night, Rather gives an interview stating they may have made and error and wants to be the first to break the story if that is the case. (First to tell us they are fakes—FIRST?!?! )
7. Within hours, Robert Strong who hasn’t said a word about this for a week, suddenly remembers there was a Kinko mark on the memo and *gasp* its from "Kinko's Abilene."
8. New York Times quickly published that the forger is none other than Bill Burkett-----who by the way had been the suspect of many.
Items 6, 7, and 8 were almost simultaneous.
It this just a little tooooooooooooooooo neat? I smell a scapegoat.
_________________
Please Mr. Kerry Sign Form #180 Now!
Let the truth set you free? NOT!

[nightingale97]

After 20 years in the military I can honestly say that both performance and medical records are not always accurate and I have had to "tidy up" many times. I have found the following inaccuracies in my records over the past 20 years:

Misfiled documents of other officers
Multiple copies of the same document suchas orders, etc
Documents with missing or inaccurate information
Documents that do not belong in the permanent file
Duplicates of perfromance evaluations

I can assure you that when I tidied up my records those extra copies, etc DID NOT go into the TRASH CAN! They all had my SSN on them and were properly disposed of...Mr Shredder! (of course the mifiled documents were given to personel).

My point being that I would think it very unusual that a senior officer would carelessly throw any documents, especially controversial ones, in the trash can. It's every officers responsibility to make sure their files are accurate and complete and I'm sure Kerry's files have all been "tidied up" as well.
_________________
Proud to serve! No medals required!