Betsy's Page 
      



HOME



Betsy neither necessarily uses,
nor endorses,
the products advertised on this site.








The 2008 Weblog Awards



The truth about Avesil

Cheap Hosting

Atlanta Bankruptcy Attorney

Dallas Bankruptcy Attorney

Wikio

Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights

Online Bachelors Degree



Comments from an AP history
and government teacher in Raleigh, NC.

e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com




Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you.



Site Feed

Buy Conservative Advertising





 

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

 
William Campenni, who served in the Texas Air National Gang when Bush was there has a simple, but striking point to show why at least one of the memos was a fake.
So, putting aside the typos, the superscripts, the signatures, the wrong header and address, and all the previously dissected items susceptible to subjective interpretations, how do I prove this memo is a fake? Easy — for the weekend that 1st Lt. Bush was supposedly ordered to report for his physical, May 13-14, 1972, the Ellington Air Guard Base was closed. It was Mother's Day. Except for emergencies, Air Guard units never drilled on Mother's Day; the divorce lawyers would be waiting at the gate.
If George Bush showed up at the clinic that weekend, he would have had to get the key from the gate guard.

Campenni gave this information to the panel and they apparently ignored it and still maintain that there is no conclusive proof that the memos were fake. Give me a break.

The drill weekend for May 1972 was the following weekend, May 20-21. A survey of the pay and flight records of several of the Texas Air Guard members of that period shows no activity for May 13-14, but drill pay vouchers and flights for May 20-21. Guard flight physicals were normally conducted on the drill weekends, because that is the only time all the required clinic personnel were on hand to complete lab work and flight surgeon consultations mandated for aircrew. Does anyone think that Jerry Killian, squadron commander and one of the drill-schedule planners would not know on May 4 that the clinic was closed the next weekend? While CBS, in its rush to judgment, might have missed this fatal flaw in the Burkett memo, its investigative law firm, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, cannot be excused. Why? Because one of their investigating lawyers was informed of this fact on Nov. 15 and given a list of seven witnesses who worked in the same offices with Jerry Killian every day in 1972. (Disclosure statement: I was the source.) The panel report makes no mention of this, and a canvass of most of the witness list reveals no contact attempt by Kirkpatrick & Lockhart.
Why ignore such a plump target? It makes Tony Blankley's point about Dick Thornburgh having a conflict of interest suddenly seem more intriguing.
The two greatest dangers to CBS coming out of the September 8 broadcast were that it would be found that they: 1) knowingly broadcast fraudulent Defense Department documents, and 2) were motivated to do so because they are biased against George Bush and the Republican Party.
And it was on those two vital points that the Thornburgh Report failed to come to a conclusion. The report's concession of bad journalism merely conceded the undeniable. That fact had been apparent to most of the public and virtually all of the major news outlets by about September 10. Conceding bad journalism was merely a belated bow to undeniable reality. They couldn't possibly have conceded less than they did.
But the "Independent Panel" provided one more service to CBS. It showed the report to CBS executives before it released it to the public. Thus CBS was given a public-relations crises management expert's dream -- the extraordinarily valuable opportunity of simultaneously announcing the report's findings and CBS's corporate response to the findings -- which was to fire key executives and producers below Mr. Rather.
Thus, there was no headline this week stating that CBS admits documents were a fraud or caused by partisan bias. Instead, the headlines in papers as diverse as The New York Times, The Washington Times and The Washington Post were all the same: CBS fires 4. That headline was followed by the finding that CBS's journalistic standards had been deficient. As they say -- that's old news.
The crisis has been defused. The damage has been limited. Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP have earned every last penny of the undoubtedly huge legal/PR bill that is now, presumably, in the mail to CBS.
And who works for that law firm? You guessed it. Dick Thornburgh.

0 comments



Comments:
 
William Campenni, who served in the Texas Air National Gang when Bush was there has a simple, but striking point to show why at least one of the memos was a fake.
So, putting aside the typos, the superscripts, the signatures, the wrong header and address, and all the previously dissected items susceptible to subjective interpretations, how do I prove this memo is a fake? Easy — for the weekend that 1st Lt. Bush was supposedly ordered to report for his physical, May 13-14, 1972, the Ellington Air Guard Base was closed. It was Mother's Day. Except for emergencies, Air Guard units never drilled on Mother's Day; the divorce lawyers would be waiting at the gate.
If George Bush showed up at the clinic that weekend, he would have had to get the key from the gate guard.

Campenni gave this information to the panel and they apparently ignored it and still maintain that there is no conclusive proof that the memos were fake. Give me a break.

The drill weekend for May 1972 was the following weekend, May 20-21. A survey of the pay and flight records of several of the Texas Air Guard members of that period shows no activity for May 13-14, but drill pay vouchers and flights for May 20-21. Guard flight physicals were normally conducted on the drill weekends, because that is the only time all the required clinic personnel were on hand to complete lab work and flight surgeon consultations mandated for aircrew. Does anyone think that Jerry Killian, squadron commander and one of the drill-schedule planners would not know on May 4 that the clinic was closed the next weekend? While CBS, in its rush to judgment, might have missed this fatal flaw in the Burkett memo, its investigative law firm, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, cannot be excused. Why? Because one of their investigating lawyers was informed of this fact on Nov. 15 and given a list of seven witnesses who worked in the same offices with Jerry Killian every day in 1972. (Disclosure statement: I was the source.) The panel report makes no mention of this, and a canvass of most of the witness list reveals no contact attempt by Kirkpatrick & Lockhart.
Why ignore such a plump target? It makes Tony Blankley's point about Dick Thornburgh having a conflict of interest suddenly seem more intriguing.
The two greatest dangers to CBS coming out of the September 8 broadcast were that it would be found that they: 1) knowingly broadcast fraudulent Defense Department documents, and 2) were motivated to do so because they are biased against George Bush and the Republican Party.
And it was on those two vital points that the Thornburgh Report failed to come to a conclusion. The report's concession of bad journalism merely conceded the undeniable. That fact had been apparent to most of the public and virtually all of the major news outlets by about September 10. Conceding bad journalism was merely a belated bow to undeniable reality. They couldn't possibly have conceded less than they did.
But the "Independent Panel" provided one more service to CBS. It showed the report to CBS executives before it released it to the public. Thus CBS was given a public-relations crises management expert's dream -- the extraordinarily valuable opportunity of simultaneously announcing the report's findings and CBS's corporate response to the findings -- which was to fire key executives and producers below Mr. Rather.
Thus, there was no headline this week stating that CBS admits documents were a fraud or caused by partisan bias. Instead, the headlines in papers as diverse as The New York Times, The Washington Times and The Washington Post were all the same: CBS fires 4. That headline was followed by the finding that CBS's journalistic standards had been deficient. As they say -- that's old news.
The crisis has been defused. The damage has been limited. Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP have earned every last penny of the undoubtedly huge legal/PR bill that is now, presumably, in the mail to CBS.
And who works for that law firm? You guessed it. Dick Thornburgh.

0 comments



Comments: Post a Comment




This page is powered by Blogger.