From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Dan Rather Goes Monkeyfishing
As everyone knows by now, last week "60 Minutes" aired a "report"
by "newsman" Dan Rather that "revealed" something damaging
about President Bush's early 1970s service in the Texas Air National Guard.
Exactly what, we do not know; as we noted
Thursday, we find the topic too boring to think about.
But it turns out there is a fascinating story here, a story of journalistic fraud, of bloggers humbling ye olde media, and, very likely, of political dirty tricks. Shortly after Rather's story aired, blogger John Hinderaker wrote a post on PowerLineBlog.com in which he noted that the four memos that were central to Rather's story appeared to have been produced on modern word-processing equipment, not 1970s-vintage typewriters. (The memos' putative author has been dead for 20 years, conveniently for Rather.)
At least one of those memos is unquestionably fraudulent. Blogger Charles Johnson typed the text of the memo, putatively written on Saturday, Aug. 18, 1973, into Microsoft Word using the Times New Roman font and default tab-stop and margin settings. The result was an exact match: Everything from which words fell on which line to the annoying little superscript th after an ordinal number was identical. Here is an animated GIF file Johnson prepared that shows the CBS version and his re-creation:
Although this is overwhelmingly persuasive, some are still unconvinced, and CBS so far stands by its story. But the network's own defense proves beyond any doubt that the document is phony. Here is what the network had to say in a Friday press release, which also includes the transcript of a segment from the "CBS Evening News" in which Rather defends his "reporting":
Marcel Mately, the document and handwriting expert used to authenticate the documents for CBS News and 60 MINUTES, asserts that copies of the memos critics are examining have been degraded by reproduction though photocopying, computer scanning and faxing and are not reliable representations of the memos.
The obvious point is that the "degraded" documents Mately is pooh-poohing are the same ones he claims to have "authenticated" for CBS. The less obvious point is that the degraded-document defense bolsters the evidence against CBS.
It is true that old documents degrade with wear, copying, etc. But what happens when a document degrades is that it changes in random ways and becomes less distinctively identifiable with the original. Mateley's defense might have been plausible, then, if the criticism was that the CBS documents differed from some known legitimate contemporaneous document.
But a document produced on a typewriter in 1973 and degraded for 30 years does not end up looking exactly like a Microsoft Word document created in 2004. Johnson's investigation shows that the CBS memo is not degraded enough to disguise its provenance as a modern-day forgery.
It's safe to assume CBS itself got snookered here, but by whom? As long as the network stands by its story, it won't say. Presumably, however, its confidentiality agreement with its source is predicated upon the source's not providing information he knows is false. We have no way of knowing who CBS's source is, but it's certainly a matter of great public interest if the Kerry campaign or the Democratic National Committee has perpetrated a fraud, especially one so shockingly incompetent.
Forge Ahead
Reader Marc Edelstein weighs in with a warning:
All you guys in the blogosphere need to watch yourselves. The National Guard memo forgery hoax is starting to feel like the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Clues," in which Captain Picard demonstrates to a bunch of aliens everything wrong with their first attempt to brainwash the crew--knowledge the aliens promptly use to get it right the next time!
Stop! You're creating an entire race of Democratic forgery experts! At this rate we'll never be able to spot a Dem forgery again!
We must admit, it hadn't occurred to us that this may be a problem. After all, as we noted last week, if the Dems bothered to listen to us, they never would have ended up with such a turkey of a nominee. But just in case, we're going to withhold any advice that might be of use to future fraudsters. For example, we won't mention that they'd be better off dispensing with Times New Roman in favor of an obscure font like this one:
(Confidential to Marc Edelstein: Don't worry, this is something called "reverse psychology." We're not at liberty to explain, but it's a mind trick we learned from Karl Rove.)
Metaphor
Alert
"The bait-and-switch substitution of World War II for Vietnam quickly
proved a bridge too far for both candidates. Just when they thought they
had fled Vietnam, it returned, whacking them in the face like a perpetually
revolving door. No sooner did Mr. Kerry's convention end than he was
impaled by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. No sooner did the Republicans
leave New York than word got out that '60 Minutes' was poking anew into
the president's National Guard stint, a Pandora's box of unanswered questions
first unlocked by The Boston Globe four years ago."--former theater
critic Frank Rich, New York Times, Sept. 12
Scenes
From the Crass Struggle--I
Dallas's KXAS-TV reports that the mother of Chad Drake, a U.S. Army specialist
who was killed in action in Iraq last week, on Wednesday went to what was billed
as a "candlelight vigil . . . to remember U.S. war dead in Iraq."
It turned to be a political rally, with a decidedly pro-Saddam tone:
A family friend said the vigil turned abrasive toward the family members. The friend sent an e-mail message to NBC 5 News that described the alleged treatment some vigil attendees directed at the family.
The family friend's message alleges Drake's mother was "harassed and yelled at, booed and hissed, told her son died for nothing."
Drake's mother reportedly left the event in tears.
The Dallas Peace Center, which sponsored the event, did apologize to the Drake family.
Fighting
Terror With Hot Air
"The Daily Recycler," an anonymous blogress, has unearthed video of
an MTV interview with John Kerry that is either hilarious or frightening, depending
on whether you still think the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat,
who by the way served in Vietnam, has a chance of becoming president. Here's
a transcript:
Q: Your exit strategy for Iraq is based on the idea that if you're elected, you'll be able to bring all of our traditional allies back to the table to help our cause. But what if they say no to you?
Kerry: Well, I have a lot of tools available to me. This president has not done the statesmanship and has not shown the leadership necessary to bring other countries to us. Iraq, and their resistance to Iraq, is not only based on Iraq. It's based on the fact that we walked away from the global warming treaty and we dissed 160 nations that worked 10 years to try to build a cooperative attitude. Only the U.S. said no and walked away.
In addition, the president has done almost nothing to reduce the increasing clash of radical Islam with moderate Islam and the rest of the world's religions. We need to reach out to people and isolate the fundamentalist extremists, not have them isolate us. That's a big difference. I'll conduct a foreign policy that lives up to America's values. I'll conduct a war that makes America safer. And I will win friends and allies to our side.
"Apparently this is what Kerry means when he says he would have taken us to war in a different way," quips the Recycler. "First comes the ultimatum, then the inspectors, then the Kyoto treaty, then the tanks (presumably solar-powered) start rolling."
This makes about as much sense as the advice proffered by Gov. Gary Locke of Washington state in his statement on the third anniversary of Sept. 11:
Let's make a pledge together that on September 11, we will each do one tangible, real thing to improve our community, our state, our nation. Sign up as a volunteer. Pledge to contribute to a non-profit organization. Drop off some groceries at a food bank. Give blood. Clean up a park. Help a neighbor. Help a stranger.
In a cave somewhere sits Osama bin Laden, quaking at the thought of the Evergreen State's pristine parks and overflowing food banks.
Zawahiri
Imitates Kerry
Al Qaeda's No. 2 man issued a videotaped message Thursday, the first since December
2001, the Associated Press reports:
"The defeat of America in Iraq and Afghanistan has become a matter of time, with God's help," Ayman al-Zawahri said on the tape, which was broadcast by the pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera. "The Americans in both countries are between two fires, if they continue they bleed to death and if they withdraw they lose everything."
This came just four days after John Kerry issued a statement calling Iraq a "quagmire."
The AP notes that in the video, "an assault weapon was leaning on the wall" behind Zawahiri. The same day, Kerry issued a statement saying that if the "assault weapons ban" is allowed to expire--as it did, first thing this morning--the terrorists will have won. How then did Zawahiri manage to get an "assault weapon" while the ban was still in effect?
Scenes
From the Crass Struggle--II
Here's a DemocraticUnderground.com posting from one "Joanne98" last
Friday (quoted verbatim, except the redaction of a four-letter word):
Since tomorrow is the anniversary of the "excuse" the cowboy uses to attack anybody he wants to. I'm bracing myself for the ongoing images of people in small red state towns exploiting the victims of 9/11.
CNN is already showing people in small town Texas CRYING over New York City's loses. Well, you know what. You never liked New Yorkers. You hated New Yorkers remember. If you really cared about the victims of 9/11 you would vote for John Kerry because that's the only thing they want you to do. But NO! Instead you brought the Bush bastard's convention to ground Zero and thought NYC would be glad to see you.
Instead of getting flowers and candy you got protesters, a half a million of them that said. GO HOME. Do you remember the Evita song...
DON'T CRY FOR ME DIRTSVILLE TEXAS..........
Let's get this straight, Dirtsville, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN TO YOU and it never will because no self respecting terra-rist would ever attack something so unimportant. It would be like the USA attacking Goatsgrave Yemen. It's never going to happen.
The bottom line is, you don't care about NYC or the pain, all you care about is getting Boosh re-elected and fighting a Holy pissing contest with the darkie Muslims. All in the name of Jesus which you're sure is coming back the day after tomorrow.
Nobody needs this sh--, especially the people of NYC who still watch airplanes when they fly overhead. The people in big cities are in more danger than ever thanks to the cowboy's invasion of Iraq. But that's something the good people of Dirtsville don't have to worry about.
So take your flags, your prayers, your rodeos and your country music and stick it. You're waging war because you want too, because you like it and you're not fooling anybody. You're only happy when you have an enemy, if it wasn't 9/11 it would be something else. Like "libruls". At least have the decency to admit that.
Put on your public grieving shows tomorrow because you already have them planned but spare us the DRAMA next year. It didn't happen to you. Get over it.
I know this is harsh and I know not all people in small rural towns are Republicans but they ARE voting for Bush, who is only making big cities more dangerous. This is how I feel about it. Flame away.
Reuterville
Is His Kind of Town
Don Wycliff, the Chicago Tribune's "public editor," defends (rightly,
in our view) the paper's decision to publish a gruesome photo of a victim of
the Beslan massacre. But he then goes on to defend the paper's sensitivity to
the perpetrators:
One other facet of the Russian hostage story also provoked considerable reader response: It was the Tribune's use of the words "militant" or "rebel," but not "terrorist," to refer to the hostage-takers in news stories.
"How can you . . . describe these folks as anything but 'terrorists'?" asked Jim Ihlenfeld of Aurora, in one of the more temperate such messages.
Our eschewal of the word "terrorist" was in keeping with a stylebook policy adopted several years ago, a policy that is in keeping with the journalistic purpose of the news pages: to provide as complete, thorough and unbiased an account as possible of the important news of the day.
No intellectually honest person can deny that "terrorist" is a word freighted with negative judgment and bias. So we sought terms that carried no such judgment.
All they did was murder children, after all. Why would anyone want to judge them? That wouldn't be intellectually honest!
This
Just In
"Bloggers Hoping to Become Fabulously Wealthy May Have Long Wait"--headline,
Associated Press, Sept. 12
Not
Too Brite--CLXIII
"A boiler that exploded at a Chinese sauna sailed over a six-story building
and landed on an old man crossing the road," Reuters reports from Beijing.
"The 63-year-old pedestrian was killed instantly."
Oddly Enough!
(For an explanation of the "Not Too Brite" series, click here.)
L'Arme
D'Assaut Est Arrivé
In an otherwise predictable editorial bemoaning the expiration of the "assault
weapon ban," the New York Times declares: "Now the greedier gun dealers
are preparing to profit on the law's expiration as if it signaled the arrival
of Beaujolais nouveau." The notion of gun dealers thinking in terms of
French wines is counterstereotypical, to say the least, but one wonders: Is
Gail Collins angling for a job as a speechwriter for John Kerry?
If so, she'd better brush up on her French. The headline misspells en garde.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michael Siegel, Mark Wallace, Jeffrey Techentin, Ed Lilly, Ed Lasky, Bennett Langlotz, Cathy Fasano, Jonathan Rothenberg, Doug Levene, Barak Moore, Stephen Barns, Henry Hanks, Jonathan Yunger, Trevor Dewey, Michael Muczynski, William Specht, Tom Linehan, Andrew Kunian, Allen O'Donnell, Tuula-Anneli Salin, Michael Zukerman, Mike Zimmerman, Mark Schulze, Charles Matthews, Pat Moran, Leonora LaMantia, Richard Haisley, Michael Segal, Kevin Watkins, Jerome Marcus, Ethel Fenig, Fred Medero, Rosanne Klass, Brent Silver, Howard Weiser, Daniella Abrams, Brooks Mick, Thomas Conway, John Gaylord, Nathan Dewey, Gerry McCracken, Joey Tyson, Steve Roberts, Bill Dyer, Joe Seely, Frank Bifulco, S.E. Brenner, Joel Goldberg, Bill McConaghy, Andy Keetch, Hampton Stevens, Don Yassin, Marco Parillo, Mara Gold, David Bookless, David Babcock, Hari Singh, Christine Spresser, Michael Williamson, Patrick Frey, Justin Taylor, Buddy Smith, Bill Sholar, Lee Hollaar, Steven Getman, Brad Griffith, Ned Barnett, Mary Serr, Anil Adyanthaya, Donald Waterworth, C.E. Dobkin, Ron Wright, Gerry Balsley, Bob Paglee, John Steele Gordon, Barry Kaplovitz, Peter Rice, Thomas Crimmins, Rod Clement, M. Gilbertson, Jeff Meling, Paul Dyck, Robert Sherrod, Michael Miller, Clark Perkins, Weldon Johnson, David Worley, Stephan Oestreicher, Neal Sanders, Jerry Treadway, Douglas Glick, Jennifer Ray, John Archer, Stephen Williams, S. Murphy, Robert Brooks, Kirk Teutschbein, Ray Samori, David Anderson and Robert Royce. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Zell Miller: My critics act as if nothing changed on 9/11.
- John Fund: CBS stonewalls as "guys in pajamas" uncover a fraud.
- Arthur Chrenkoff: A roundup of the past two weeks' good news from Iraq.
