About That Physical
Powerline blog
I've said many times that in my opinion, the most important arguments showing the falsity of the 60 Minutes documents related not to their typography or to fine points of military protocol (although those points are certainly valid), but to their content. We have enumerated various reasons why the fake documents are wrong in substance, and the Thornburgh report does an excellent job of itemizing and explaining those issues.
A new one was added today by William Campenni in the Washington Times:
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The selected memo is that dated May 4, 1972, wherein the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian orders 1st Lt. Bush to report for a flight physical not later than May 14. ... [T]his particular memo is posited as a direct order to 1st Lt. Bush, mailed to his (wrong) home address. It was used obsessively by CBS and Bush opponents in the campaign as evidence of his refusal to obey a direct order.
[P]utting 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.
If George Bush showed up at the clinic that weekend, he would have had to get the key from the gate guard.
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.
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Mr. Campenni was a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s.
Several readers pointed out this article; I believe Betsy Newmark was the first blogger to pick up on it.
Posted by Hindrocket
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