Reports fuel doubts on Bush documents
Two CBS experts cannot vouch for their
authenticity
NEW YORK - Two experts hired by CBS News to examine records of President Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard told ABC on Tuesday that they could not vouch for the documents’ veracity.
Meanwhile, a former secretary in the guard said she believed the documents CBS used were fake, although they accurately reflected the thoughts of one of Bush’s commanders.
As questions continued about Dan Rather’s report on “60 Minutes” last week, CBS News on Tuesday said it did not rely on assessments made by the two examiners quoted in the ABC report, and found it notable the secretary affirmed the content of the documents.
“We continue to believe in this story,” said Betsy West, CBS News’ senior vice president.
CBS said its story about Bush’s guard service relied on much more than documents. But the controversy has raised significant credibility questions for the network news division and it’s not certain if those questions will be definitively answered.
CBS says the documents from one of Bush’s commanders, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, indicated Bush didn’t follow orders to take a physical and that Killian was being pressured to sugarcoat his performance ratings. Bush’s father was a Texas congressman at the time.
Questions were immediately raised about the documents’ legitimacy, with some believing they were produced by a computer not available at the time.
'I did not
authenticate anything'
Emily Will, a documents examiner from North Carolina hired by CBS, said she
told the network before the report aired that she questioned handwriting in
the documents and whether it could have been produced by a typewriter.
She told ABC that she e-mailed a CBS producer and strongly urged her the night before the broadcast not to use the documents, and that other experts would raise the same questions.
“I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply,” Will told ABC News.
Another expert hired by CBS, Linda James of Plano, Texas, told ABC that “I did not authenticate anything and I don’t want it understood that I did.”
James told The Associated Press on Tuesday that she did not have enough samples of Killian’s signature to verify its authenticity.
“I voiced those concerns to CBS. I really pressed that because I knew that other document examiners looking at the same documents would have a real problem authenticating these,” she said.
CBS News said that Will and James played only a “peripheral role” in assessing the documents, and had seen only one of the four used in the report. Ultimately they deferred to another expert who has seen all four documents, Marcel Matley, and who continues to back up CBS’ account.
West said Will did not contact the network the night before the report aired.
“I am not aware of any substantive objections raised,” she said. “She did not urge us to hold the story.”
James told CBS News that she needed to know more about the documents before rendering any judgments, West said. CBS contacted five document experts before the report aired and two since, and continues to report the story, the network said.
Killian’s former secretary, 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox, also questioned the documents in an interview with The Dallas Morning News.
'Not real'
“These are not real,” Knox said in a story posted Tuesday on the newspaper’s
Web site. “They’re not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him.”
Knox told the newspaper she did not recall typing the memos, but that they echoed Killian’s views on Bush. She said he retained memos for a personal “cover his back” file he kept in a locked drawer of his desk, but she was not sure what happened to them when he died in 1984.
When contacted Tuesday at her Houston home, Knox’s son, Pat Carr, told The Associated Press his mother did not wish to elaborate on her comments to the newspaper.
CBS News spokeswoman Sandra Genelius said CBS did not believe Knox was a documents expert.
“We believe the documents, which were one part of the ‘60 Minutes’ story, to be genuine. It is notable that she confirms the content of the documents, which was the primary focus of our story in the first place,” Genelius said.
First lady Laura Bush was the first in the GOP campaign to say the latest documents were probably forged. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: “There are serious questions that are being raised and they should be looked into” by the media.
Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One, McClellan said Bush felt no need to further address questions about his National Guard service and that the public wants the candidates to talk about the future rather than the past.
He said the first lady was speaking for herself. The White House has not come to any conclusions about the documents and is not investigating them, he said.