RATHERGATE UPDATE:
Two of the document experts hired by CBS News now say the network ignored concerns they raised prior to the broadcast of 60 Minutes II about the disputed National Guard records attributed to Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.
Emily Will, a veteran document examiner from North Carolina, told ABC News she saw problems right away with the one document CBS hired her to check the weekend before the broadcast.
“I found five significant differences in the questioned handwriting, and I found problems with the printing itself as to whether it could have been produced by a typewriter,” she said.
Will says she sent the CBS producer an e-mail message about her concerns and strongly urged the network the night before the broadcast not to use the documents.
“I told them that all the questions I was asking them on Tuesday night, they were going to be asked by hundreds of other document examiners on Thursday if they ran that story,” Will said.
But the documents became a key part of the 60 Minutes II broadcast questioning President Bush’s National Guard service in 1972. CBS made no mention that any expert disputed the authenticity.
“I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply,” Will told ABC News. . . .
A second document examiner hired by CBS News, Linda James of Plano, Texas, also told ABC News she had concerns about the documents and could not authenticate them.
“I did not authenticate anything and I don’t want it to be misunderstood that I did,” James said. “And that’s why I have come forth to talk about it because I don’t want anybody to think I did authenticate these documents.”
A third examiner hired by CBS for its story, Marcel Matley, appeared on CBS Evening News last Friday and was described as saying the document was real.
According to The Washington Post, Matley said he examined only the signature attributed to Killian and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.
Read the whole thing. I have to say, I’ve spent years criticizing the media and this still makes my jaw drop.
(Via Jim Geraghty, who adds: “And this bit of news tells us that CBS was not ‘duped’ onto this, that they weren’t ‘fooled,’ but that they knew the documents were probably fake and ran with it anyway.”)
UPDATE: CBS was obviously holding this incriminating document in reserve!
ANOTHER UPDATE: New painting by Vermeer discovered! It’s been authenticated by anonymous experts who will later make clear that they didn’t!