WAS THE “KILLIAN MEMO SCANDAL” A SET UP

WAS THE “KILLIAN MEMO SCANDAL” A SET UP?

Bartlett pledged that he had put out "absolutely everything" he had of Bush's nonmedical military records. "The only thing being redacted is the Social Security number -- that's it," he said…. The documents include what the White House describes as all the non- medical elements of Bush's military personnel file, including performance evaluations, documentation of his honorable discharge and a thick bureaucratic paper trail of applications, promotions and transfers.

Dana Milibank and Mike Allen, Bush's National Guard file released…, Washington Post, 2/14/04

Newly released documents from George W. Bush’s military personnel files lead new weight to the theory that the White House engineered the recent scandal regarding CBS’s use of the “Killian memos”. Acting under a court order, on Friday, September 24, the Department of Defense released 10 new pages of documents, including an official Texas Air National Guard memo which conclusively refutes the technological questions that were raised about the “Killian memos.”

And it can now be shown that these “new documents” were deliberately withheld by the White House when it released “absolutely everything” on February 13, 2004.

The document in question is a memo written to “First Lieutenant George W. Bush” notifying him of his promotion to First Lieutenant. The memo is dated Febrary 19, 1971, more than a year before the date on the first of the Killian memos. And, like the Killian memos, this document uses a “proportionately spaced font”, and has all the characteristics of a document produced on a modern day computer using “Microsoft Word”.

ß------------------------41 Letters----------------------------à

ß-------------------------33 Letters----------------------------à

When the White House released “all the documents” in February, they were arranged in three groups; “Personnel File from Texas ANG”, Personnel File from NPRC in 2000”, and Personnel File from NPRC in 2004”[1]. (“ANG” is “Air National Guard”, “NPRC” is the National Personnel Records Center”, which holds the “master files” of all former military personnel.)

The proportionately spaced “promotion memo” in question was among those documents released under FOIA to at least two researchers in 2000, including a reporter from a major media organization, and Marty Heldt, an independent researcher from Iowa. In other words, this memo was provided to the White House as part of the “Personnel File from NPRC in 2000” or “Personnel File from Texas ANG”, but was withheld by the White House when it released “all the documents” in February.

The Department of Defense, under orders from the Bush administration, fought a lawsuit filed by the Associated Press in July to have the original microfiche records examined to determine if documents were withheld by the White House. And even though the DoD released Bush’s flight records on September 10^th, just when the “Killian memo” controversy was gaining steam, and released 200 additional pages of records on September 17^th, it did not release the “proportionately spaced” memo at either point.

It was not until the date on which a Federal court order required all documents to be released, September 24^th, that the Department of Defense finally released the “proportionately spaced” document, even though this document was in the “2000 NRPC files.” And it was not until the next week that the document was made available to the general public on the DoD website.

The heart and soul of the controversy over the Killian memos was the question of typewriter technology in 1972. Throughout the media, false claims were promulgated regarding the existence of certain type faces, the capability of typewriters to produce “proportionately spaced” documents, and declarations that the Texas Air National Guard would not have had typewriters that could have produced the Killian memos. The latter claim was given broad exposure because an examination of the documents released by the White House in February---a release that the White House claimed represented “all the documents”—showed that not a single Texas Air National Guard document was produced on a typewriter using proportionate spacing.

When asked about the newly released document, James Moore, author of Bush’s Brain the acclaimed best seller about Karl Rove and his relationship with George W. Bush, Moore said

"I find the timing of the release of this proportionally spaced document to
be very curious.  The CBS documents were attacked for similar spacing
because of an argument that typewriters did not have that capability more
than 30 years ago.  But this new document clearly proves that to be wrong.
And if the White House had already released it in February with the rest of
the file, critics might have arrived at different conclusions about the CBS
documents.  This proves they were potentially real.  Karl Rove thinks of
everything."

"My suspicions about Rove's involvement in the CBS document controversy
arose after the well-coordinated attack on the memos.  Critics were ready
with their analysis almost before CBS got off the air.  And they knew
precisely the forensic arguments to make.  This didn't happen through simple
due diligence.  They were tipped in advance.  And that was only possible if
Rove was involved in the creation and leaking of the documents or if he got
them in advance and set up his attack machine.  Admittedly, this is a five
cushion political bank shot, but if anybody can pull those off, it's Rove."

Additionally, the recent study by Dr. David E Hailey Jr., Director of the Interactive Media Research Laboratory at Utah State University conclusively demonstrates that the “Killian memos” were produced on a typewriter, and not by a computer based printer. Unlike the “forensic document experts” who pontificated about the Killian memos, falsely declaring them “impossible” to have been produced by a typewriter without ever acknowledging that they did not have the expertise to determine the authenticity of copies of documents, Dr. Hailey is an expert on images, and has demonstrated that there are consistent flaws in certain letters that can only be attributed to a typewritten document. Hailey’s study has received no attention from the major media, despite the fact that it refutes the primary “evidence” that the Killian memos were forgeries.

Indeed, (and despite the statements of the talking heads on television) the Killian memos have never been shown to be forgeries, and the only reason that CBS retracted its story was because it found out that the source of the documents had lied about where they originated. As more and more information comes out, however, the authenticity of the memos is less and less in doubt. The recent statement of the widow of Jan Peter Linke, an F102 pilot who was recruited to fly with the 111^th Fighter Interceptor Squadrons, confirms a statement found in the memos concerning recruitment of new pilots---a statement that was unsupported by documentary evidence at the time the Killian memos were released.

With each day that passes, it becomes clearer that either the “Killian memos” are copies of true originals, or were retyped by someone whose purpose was to destroy the credibility of Bill Burkett. Burkett’s credentials as a source of confidential information were well established by USA Today in 2001, when he was the source for that paper’s series on “ghost soldiers” in the National Guard. Burkett provided USA Today with the proof that the Texas National Guard was receiving federal funding for the training of Guardmen who were not showing up for training, but were being signed in on rosters as if they had attended that training. Burkett subsequently disclosed (and was backed up by numerous witnesses) that he had observed Bush campaign officials in the act of purging Bush’s Texas Air National Guard files, and until the Killian memo controversy, Burkett’s account was considered highly credible.

The questions over the authenticity of the Killian memos has made Bush’s National Guard record a “non-story” for most major media organizations, despite the fact that the documents that have been released under a court order prove that the White House has been lying about what happened during Bush’s last two years in the Armed Forces. Evidence found in Bush’s flight records (when examined against evidence in the payroll records) indicate that he was ordered to perform four days of active duty training in March 1972 with an experienced co-pilot in a “general purpose” training jet (the T033). Either Bush was ordered to perform remedial flight training, or was attempting to qualify for another jet, and had failed to do so. (There is no mention of this training in Bush’s annual “Training Report” that covered this period.)

And evidence found in the “Historical Record of the 147^th gives the lie to the White House’s contention that Bush did not resume flying when he returned to Texas after the November 1972 election because the F102 was being phased out and there were not enough jets to go around. The “history” shows that the 147^th had a combined total of 18 F102s and TF102s (the training version of the F102) in 1968, and 21 such jets in February 1973. And, in 1973, the 147^th had three more T033s in 1973 than it had in 1968 (5 in 1968, 8 in 1973) and that by 1973 the 147^th had acquired eight of the F101s---the jet which would eventually replace the 147^th’s F102s. Considering that the 111^th Fighter Interceptor Squadron had only 30 pilot slots, there was clearly no shortage of F102s for Bush to fly when he returned to Texas.

Yet these facts have received virtually no attention from the major media which had engaged in a complete feeding frenzy with concern to the “Killian memos”, a “feeding frenzy” that was driven by the questions regarding typewriter technologies in the early 1970s---and which, had the White House not withheld the “proportionately spaced” memo of February 19, 1971 would never have been an issue.

The evidence that literally every major media organization in the United States has been duped is sitting on a Department of Defense website, yet not one of those networks or newspapers has seen fit to report the fact that the White House withheld a key document which disproves the falsehoods that these media outlets promulgated for weeks. CBS has acknowledged that it failed to thoroughly authenticate the Killian memos, yet the same media organizations that have criticized CBS so thoroughly have not owned up to their own reporting of flat out, and now indisputable, lies on the Killian memo story.

Nor has one of these outlets questioned the White House to determine why the “promotion memo” was withheld in February, and why the White House lied about releasing “all the documents” at that time. It is clear that the major media thinks that when CBS makes a mistake, it is a far more important story that the deliberate withholding of documents by the Bush Administration, and lies concerning Bush’s military records being told by the White House.