There are more "memos" out there. Allah.
It's hard to believe that things can get any worse for CBS -- but they're about to. I just read an article at Free Republic which I think answers a question people have been asking for the past three days. As you probably know, CBS has produced four newly discovered Killian memos; USA Today, which obtained the memos independently of CBS, has produced six: The same four that CBS has plus two others dated February 2, 1972 and June 24, 1973, respectively. The question is, did CBS have those two additional memos when they first aired their report about the documents last Wednesday on 60 Minutes II? The evidence strongly suggests that they did.
Here are several screenshots from last night's ABC World News segment about the forgeries. (You may have to scroll down after you click.) According to the Freeper who wrote the article, the hand in the photos belongs to Emily Will, the document expert hired by CBS who told ABC tonight that she warned CBS that the memos were probably forgeries. What you want to focus on in the screenshot is Killian's signature; take a good hard look, then click here and compare it to the signatures on the documents in USA Today's PDF cache. From which memo does that particular signature, with its telltale "J", come? That's right: The June 24, 1973 memo. One of the two mystery memos that only USA Today is known to have. One of the two memos that doesn't appear in the sidebar on CBS's website, but which, it now seems clear, CBS had in its possession and gave to Emily Will to analyze.
If they had it, why did they withhold it? Maybe, just maybe, because Will did tell them it was bogus and they knew that sharing those findings with their viewers would destroy the credibility of not only that individual memo but the entire set. Note that the ABC News article on the forgeries says Will was given only one document to review, not all six. Why? Maybe, just maybe, because CBS suspected it was going to have authentication problems and figured the best way to ensure that at least some of the memos got the requisite approval was to give each discrete document to a separate expert. That way, if any single document was adjudged a forgery, it wouldn't "taint" the rest of the set -- since, after all, that particular expert hadn't seen the rest of the set. The author of the Freeper article refers to this strategy as "authentication shopping." It allows you to say of each individual document, "This was authenticated by an expert," despite the fact that a similar document was deemed a forgery by a different expert -- one who didn't get the chance to review the document you're passing off as authentic.
Are the Freepers and I off the rails here? Or is there a pretty decent chance that CBS suppressed a "bad" memo because releasing it would have forced them to mention Will's doubts, which in turn would have cast doubt on the other five documents, which in turn would have spoiled their big "Bush is a draft dodger" party? E-mail me if you think I'm wrong and I'll update as needed. But if I'm not wrong, then I think Beldar maybe, just maybe, might have himself a case.
UPDATE: The Daily Recycler has high resolution video of the ABC News segment. Watch it yourself. It's exactly how the Freepers described it. You can also see side-by-side comparisons of the three Killian signatures from the USA Today cache here at Rant Wraith's place. There's no question the one Emily Will was looking at came from the June 24, 1973 memo.
Meanwhile, a reader named "RM" makes a brilliant catch that appears to independently confirm the Freepers' hypothesis. He points to a passage about Marcel Matley, another CBS document expert, in this LA Times article from Saturday:
Rather said Matley had corroborated the four Killian memos. But in an interview with The Times, the analyst said he had only judged a May 4, 1972, memo — in which Killian ordered Bush to take his physical — to be authentic.
He said he did not form a judgment on the three other disputed memos because they only included Killian's initials and he did not have validated samples of the officer's initials to use for comparison.
Of the four Killian memos CBS has released, two are signed and two are unsigned. Matley says he saw three that were unsigned, which means almost certainly that CBS also had the unsigned February 2, 1972 mystery memo that only appears in USA Today's cache.
RM goes on to explain the rationale behind authentication shopping, which, in the case of a signature expert like Matley, meant giving him only one signed document:
It allows CBS to believe that its vulnerability to discredited experts and memos found to be factually incorrect is reduced. Keep in mind that it is akin to pouring a glass of milk, finding it spoiled, and then pouring a second glass from the same container and wondering if that glass will be spoiled as well. It also allows CBS to imply that there was review by multiple experts, when in fact it is likely that each doc may have only been reviewed by a single "cherry picked" expert. CBS could also give the strongest documents to the higher profile experts as well. The lesser experts could be called to authenticate the more problematic documents, assuming that there are degrees of credibility within the set of memos. The system is designed to lower the threshold for the determination of authenticity of the documents and guarantee that not all of the memos will be discounted in the review process. The ultimate goal is to increase the probability that untainted docs will survive the vetting process. CBS wants to believe that milk spoils by the glass rather than by the gallon.
Precisely. Tell me we're wrong.
UPDATE: Reader "arim" offers a bit of dialogue from "Manhattan" to sum it all up:
"Your analyst warned you about me."
"I know my analyst warned me, but you were so beautiful that I got another analyst."
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