Anyone think Karl Rove might have planted 'the documents'...?
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Killing the Messenger: Who Gave Rather the Memos and Why
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004
democracynow.org
<<...AMY GOODMAN: You wrote the book, James Moore, Bush's Brain. You speculate in your piece about these CBS memos. Can you do that for us now?
JAMES MOORE: Well, I think that a number of things have to be considered. I know that people --people have often said of me, and any number of other people who watched Karl Rove for years, that we give him credit for more than he deserves; but I, like any other political reporter who’s been around for twenty or thirty years, knows talent when they see it. I have watched Rove closely for over twenty years, almost twenty-five years. And he's the best there is. He's the best there ever has been at political skullduggery, and it is not beyond comprehension for him to have planted these documents, knowing that they might surface and get them into the right hands. Mr. Burkett doesn't know the individual who gave them to him. He has checked out the background of this person and says he may have had access to the National Guard, but he doesn't know the person. He never met the person. The individual who gave him the documents apparently -- he had no way of knowing if that was a person who called him on the phone. So, he appears on television and all of a sudden he gets a mysterious phone call, and a few months later, when he is at a livestock show, he gets these documents. They're planted. They're either planted, or someone -- someone who was so angry about what Mr. Bush was doing to the country recreated something that they knew was in the original file. Either way we have a situation where the good guys ended up using lies to take on the bad guys, and now they’ve smeared themselves and they’ve covered up what I think is a critical question about our President's background, and that is: How did he behave at a time in our country's history when he had taken a pledge to protect us during the war in Vietnam? And I think the context for this is what's critical, as far as I'm concerned, in terms of the President's National Guard service. He is presently calling young people into active duty from the National Guard, and they're dying in Baghdad and all over Iraq. These are young people that are supporting our war and serving based upon their pledge. Mr. Bush's war would be nowhere if those young people were acting as irresponsibly as he did. I think that this goes to his moral authority to call people to active duty and to send them into combat.
AMY GOODMAN: But James Moore, could you explain more why would -- I mean this is something that's been swirling around for the last few weeks: Did Karl Rove plant these documents? -- but why would it be in any way in George W. Bush's interests?
JAMES MOORE: Say that again.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you --
JAMES MOORE: Why wouldn't it be in George W. Bush's interests?
AMY GOODMAN: Why would it be? This whole controversy. These whole allegations.
JAMES MOORE: This is -- this is a standard Rove tactic, to attack -- to attack the messenger, rather than the message. If you can discredit the messenger, therefore you’ve discredited what the messenger is saying. Now, look at -- look at the fact that the White House -- the White House has believed that Bill Burkett was discredited by the Boston Globe story back in February. Now, if we can get documents into the political discourse and attach them to Bill Burkett (and during this process his personal medical files were leaked that showed he had a nervous breakdown while he was suffering from a viral attack he contracted in Panama) -- Well, if you can take a story that is generally viewed as probably true by the majority of people, and you can attach that story to someone who is discredited, well you’ve pretty much destroyed the story, and that would serve the President in this whole National Guard controversy quite well. Frankly, from now on, I think in any political campaign, for some time to come, when documents surface, people are immediately going to say, “Oh, it's not one of those National Guard things, is it?” Because Bill Burkett has been discredited and his story has now been discredited. If this were a political tactic or strategy employed by Rove or by Republican operatives, it's worked quite well.
AMY GOODMAN: James Moore is author of Bush's War for Re-Election and co-author of the book, Bush's Brain.
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