Text 2273, 101 rader
Skriven 2004-09-15 05:34:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: CBS
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http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Investigation/bush_guard_documents_04
0914.html

Casting Further Doubt
Document Analysts: CBS News Ignored Concerns About Disputed Bush 
Military Records
By Brian Ross
ABCNEWS.com
Sept. 14, 2004— Two of the document experts hired by CBS News say the 
network ignored concerns they raised prior to the broadcast of a report 
citing documents that questioned George W. Bush's service in the 
National Guard during the Vietnam War. 

 
The authenticity of the documents in the report by CBS News' 60 Minutes 
II has been widely questioned. The documents were allegedly written by 
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. 

‘I Did Not Authenticate Anything’ 

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. She said she expressed her concerns to CBS before 
the 60 Minutes II broadcast. 

"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. 

At the heart of the dispute is whether any typewriter existed in 1972 
that could have produced the documents, with their distinct type style, 
even spacing, and the tiny raised "th" known as superscript. 

Two experts told ABC News today there was no such machine, not even the 
IBM Selectric Composer, the most advanced typewriter available in 1972. 

"This machine is not the culprit for these documents," said software 
engineer Gerry Kaplan. 

Other new questions were raised today by National Guard officials who 
told ABC News that some of the language and abbreviations in the 
documents were not in use at the time. 

CBS Stands by Its Report

CBS News says it still believes the documents are authentic. 

"CBS News did not rely on either Emily Will or Linda James for a final 
assessment of the documents regarding George Bush's service in the Texas 
Air National Guard. Ms. Will and Ms. James were among a group of experts 
we consulted to assess one of the four documents used in the report and 
they did not render definitive judgment on that document. Ultimately, 
they played a peripheral role and deferred to another expert who 
examined all four of the documents used," the network said in a 
statement. 

"Most importantly, the content of the documents was backed up by our 
reporting and our sources who knew the thoughts and behavior of Lt. Col. 
Jerry Killian at the time," the statement said. 

Killian's former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, told ABC News she believes 
the documents are fake, but that they do reflect some of what her former 
boss thought of then-Lt. George W. Bush. 

"He did have complaints about Bush. Bush missed his physical and went 
off to Alabama with none of the paperwork, I remember Killian talking 
about that," Knox said. "But it wasn't in memo file." 

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