"Allah" doesn't waste his time photoshopping anymore.
September 18, 2004
Looks like Dobbs spent most of the day in his pajamas. His article in Saturday's Washington Post is packed with quotes from Bill Burkett's travels in cyberspace, some of which will already be familiar to you. The business about him having "reassembled" Bush's files is noted, as is the fact that certain unusual phrases he's used in online forums also happen to pop up in the Killian memos. Note in particular that Burkett apparently has made reference in the past to pilots' "billets". If you don't know why that's significant, see the second update here.
So far, so good. Clearly, Dobbs thinks Burkett is the forger. But the idea of Burkett being the forger isn't exactly front page news at this point. Why, oh why, then, does Ace have the siren up?
Here's why:
In an Aug. 21 posting, Burkett referred to a conversation with former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) about the need to counteract Republican tactics: "I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with. But none of them have called me back."
Cleland confirmed that he had a two- or three-minute conversation by cell phone with a Texan named Burkett in mid-August while he was on a car ride. He remembers Burkett saying that he had "valuable" information about Bush, and asking what he should [do] with it. "I told him to contact the [Kerry] campaign," Cleland said. "You get this information tens of times a day, and you don't know if it is legit or not."
August 21st falls within the 12-day window described in this morning's post, by the way. But I digress. Elsewhere in the article:
In e-mail messages to a Yahoo discussion group for Texas Democrats over the past few months, Burkett laid out a rationale for using what he termed "down and dirty" tactics against Bush. He said he had passed his ideas to the Democratic National Committee but that the DNC seemed "afraid to do what I suggest."
Doesn't prove anything. But it's one hell of a lead. And you had better believe that if the political orientations in this case were reversed, if it turned out that Bill Burkett had spoken to Trent Lott, say, and been told to "counterattack" by forwarding his information to the Bush campaign, Josh Marshall would be on a gurney somewhere getting zapped with those metal paddles to restart his fucking heart.
We'll see if Dobbs and the rest of the gang have the stones to pursue this angle over the next week. The fact that the Cleland stuff was buried at the bottom of tonight's article makes me less than optimistic. |
