The Interocitor

Deceive, Inveigle and Obfuscate

In two articles in today's LA Times, the idea is floated that CBS was entrapped by the crafty-but-stupid Bush administration. On the front page is a story about how In the Rush for a Scoop, CBS Found Trouble Fast".

It was 11 a.m. on Sept. 8 — nine hours before "60 Minutes" was to air. But as news executives debated whether to broadcast a story on newly obtained paperwork offering fresh evidence about President Bush's National Guard service, a big question hung over CBS News' Westside headquarters: Were the photocopied documents real or fake?

Suddenly, the answer seemed to materialize, and from an unlikely source — the White House itself.

John Roberts, the network's White House correspondent, called to report he'd just completed an on-camera interview with Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. Bartlett, it appeared, had no quarrel with the authenticity of the documents.

That was the turning point.

"If we had gotten back from the White House any kind of red flag, raised eyebrow, anything that said, 'Are you sure about this stuff?' we would have gone back to square one," Josh Howard, the program's executive producer, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Friday. "The White House said they were authentic, and that carried a lot of weight with us."

So, it was the White House that authenticated, and Rather trusted them, you see. As he always has. Down in the bottom of the story, of course, they do mention that the White House disputed most of the memo's "facts" and was non-committal about the memos themselves. But they didn't say they were fakes, so they must have been genuine, or so CBS claims to have thought.

The story gives quite a bit of internal detail to the CBS story preparation timeline, indicating that several sources at CBS contributed to the article.

The other story outs "Buckhead" as being a Conservative lawyer from the South who helped disbar Clinton, is a member of the Federalist Society, and (gasp) opposes affirmative action and McCain-Feingold. He even knows Kenneth Starr! Strange that a Freeper would be a conservative, as Patterico points out in some detail. And again, in the second paragraph, the meme of Republican Conspiracy is floated:

The identity of "Buckhead," a blogger known previously only by his screen name on the site freerepublic.com and lifted to folk hero status in the conservative blogosphere since last week's posting, is likely to fuel speculation among Democrats that the efforts to discredit the CBS memos were engineered by Republicans eager to undermine reports that Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard more than 30 years ago.

Republican officials have denied any involvement among those debunking the CBS story.

Later they come right out and say it:

While bloggers and some conservative activists hailed Buckhead as a hero in their longtime efforts to paint the mainstream media as politically biased, some Democrats and even some conservative bloggers have marveled at Buckhead's detailed knowledge of the memos and wondered whether that suggested a White House conspiracy.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe even speculated openly to reporters that the whole thing could have been orchestrated by White House political advisor Karl Rove. The Bush campaign called the allegation "nonsense."

MacDougald is an outspoken conservative and a Republican active in local politics.

The damage control has started. Look for more of this innuendo on the pages of the national newspapers, possibly with calls for the White House to "come clean" on their involvement.

Deceive, inveigle and obfuscate.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at September 18, 2004 10:31 AM | TrackBack