Hugh Hewitt - Beldar has more on the "who are you to question the mighty Oz?" tone of critics of the blogosphere, including a nice summary of my travels. What's really a hoot is that Beldar represented CBS before the 5th Circuit in a defamation case a few years back. Doesn't it follow that a fellow trustworthy enough to defend Rather's gang has the credentials to pay attention to the man behind the curtain when that man is losing it?
Bill Hobbes has one simple question. It is a very good one.
Forgery Update: One Simple Question
CBS anchorman Dan Rather has hung his fragile defense in the case of the most-certainly forged memos on the fact of the existence of typewriters that could do superscript in the early 1970s. He's referring to the IBM Selectric Composer, but as bloggers elsewhere have pointed out, that typewriter cost around $4,000 in the early 1970s, or about $17,000 in today's money, so it is unlikely that the Texas Air National Guard had one.
Questions about the IBM Selectric Composer sideswipe the key point about office equipment available in 1972. It doesn't matter if equipment to produce the memos was available if the Texas Air National Guard didn't have it.
I have a simple question: What kind of typewriters did the TANG have in 1972 and 1973 when the CBS memos were allegedly typed? Surely, a military that keeps records on everything would have a record somewhere of the kind of office equipment that the TANG had back then. If not an IBM Selectric Composer, than surely whatever typewriter the TANG had there is likely an identical one in some typewriter afficionado's collection, or for sale on eBay.
If it can't produce the memos as well as today's ... game over.
On Bill Hobbes' excellent question, linked below, this response from the e-mail flood:
"Mr. Hewitt,
Mr. Hobbes question, “I have a simple question: What kind of typewriters did the TANG have in 1972 and 1973 when the CBS memos were allegedly typed?” may, indeed be able to be answered.
The TANG should have had a property division which assigned responsibility for all gov’t equipment to an individual, usually an NCOIC (non-commissioned officer in charge). The Property division should have had a “property book” which was a log of all government equipment. The NCOIC would have a ‘hand receipt’ which would be the list, monetary value, serial number and national stock number of each item the NCOIC was responsible for. There were probably several property books depending on the type of equipment – airplane parts would be accounted for separately from office equipment, I would assume.
I’m sure someone of the former TANG officers would know who their hand-receipt holder was. I’m sure the current TANG office may even know where the old property books are, or if they still even exist.
It would be an interesting exercise, anyhow, and would certainly show how little effort Dan put into his “research” and vetting of the newly discovered CYA memos.
Best,
Dave"
Now that is an investigation I am unwilling to make, but if you are going to smear the president using docs that took less than 12 hours to discredit, and you have the resources of CBS at your disposal, searching for a TANG "hand-receipt holder" would have been a minimum effort. Certainly, any semi-sophisticated mid-level big-firm litigation associate could have figured out the correct questions to ask.
So when does Rather apologize and shift the blame? Tuesday? When does the Globe, which has pretensions far beyond those of a television network, throw in the towel? Whichever goes first recovers at least a little bit of dignity. |
