The rightwing lie-osphere has been buzzing for two weeks with baseless circle-jerk rumors that Democrats manufactured the Schiavo Senate strategy memo to embarrass Republicans.
As John Aravosis beautifully documents, this horseshit was enthusiastically shoveled by such shameless media liars as Tucker Carlson, Fred Barnes, Newsmax, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin (drill down with Holden's obsession), Powerline's John Hindraker, and AIM's Cliff Kincaid, as well as Senators Robert Bennett and Trent Lott.
Armando reveals WaPo's Howie Kurtz planned to have Hindraker on his Sunday CNN show attacking Kurtz's own WaPo colleague Mike Allen, who broke the original memo story. Kurtz's journalistic demise was momentarily delayed by the physical demise of Pope John Paul II.
Mike Allen got sweet revenge in today's WaPo when Republican Senator Mel Martinez fired his 39-year-old counsel, Brian H. Darling, for writing the memo.
Now the last time a major news organization got a memo story wrong, rightwing bloggers demanded - and ultimately got - the lead reporter's head on a platter, along with everyone else involved in the story.
So let me offer a challenge to the progressive blogosphere: can we end the careers of those who embraced the bogus "evil Democratic memo" theory?
Which progressive blogger wants to take the lead in removing incompetent rightwing journalists from the newsosphere?
And now that this memo mystery has been solved, this is an excellent opportunity to return to the still-unsolved mystery over the Mother of All Memos - the memos that brought down Dan Rather & Co.
The ongoing mystery is: who wrote the Killian memos?
Lt. Col. Bill Burkett received the memos in March 2004, shortly after he appeared in several news stories and TV interviews describing how he witnessed the shredding of Bush's National Guard records in 1997.
Burkett heard about the memos from a woman caller who identified herself "Lucy Ramirez." She arranged to deliver the memos to Burkett at a Texas livestock show. When Burkett arrived at the appointed spot, he was met not by "Lucy," but by a man who handed him an envelope.
Burkett was deeply skeptical of the memos. He took them to a copy shop, made a few copies, and burned the originals. He then sat on the memos for five months, telling only his closest friends, because he was skeptical - and afraid.
But word leaked out to the media, and many news organizations begged him for a copy. CBS's Mary Mapes was especially persistent, and Burkett finally agreed to give her the memos - on condition that CBS use its vast corporate resources to authenticate the memos.
CBS's authentication effort was crummy, which is common in American journalism. But this one caused a furor, and it was eventually dissected in the Thornburgh report.
Yet even the Thornburgh report was unable to determine whether the Killian memos were authentic or not. The Executive Summary (page 14) reads:
The Panel has not been able to conclude with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents are authentic or forgeries.
So that leaves three possibilities:
- The Killian memos were authentic, just as the Schiavo memo was authentic
- The Killian memos were forged by Democrats
- The Killian memos were forged by Republicans
Mary Mapes believes #1, and will argue her case in a book tentatively called “The Other Side of the Story” and scheduled for publication in fall. The book will reportedly include 40 pages of evidence to buttress her case.
Rightwing blogs believe #2, and have loudly demanded prosecution of the forger.
Rep. Christopher Cox (R.-Calif.) told HUMAN EVENTS: "This isn't the final chapter. That won't be written until we know where the apparently forged government documents came from. Every citizen has a stake in the answer to that question, because if it is true the documents are fake, a serious crime was committed. It's high time we got to the bottom of this. Where are the investigative journalists when we need them?"
I agree with Cox completely - but I believe #3. And the most likely suspect is Roger Stone, as Sherlock Google argued on DailyKos.
C'mon progressive bloggers - let's get to the bottom of the Killian memos!
