It’s pretty obvious how parts of Rathergate happened. Mary Beth Cahill (who phoned Ben Barnes about his 60 Minutes appearance) and other seniors in the Kerry campaign viewed the TexANG story as the natural foil to SwiftBoatVets. They worked through the latter part of August 2004 to orchestrate a counter-attack against the Swifties with a renewed attack on Bush as a Fortunate Son, who was unjustly aided in getting into the TexANG, and, once there, was a slacker. To execute this strategy, Cahill enlisted Ben Barnes, one of John Kerry’s biggest fundraisers, who was the Texas Lieutenant Governor around the time of Bush’s service, and who was willing to say that he had been the conduit of illicit influence (as he said in this video of a May 27, 2004 speech).

The Kerry campaign’s interest in CBS was not exclusive: they were one of the Old Media swarm looking for Bush hit pieces. Cahill and the Kerry staff were working overtime peddling the TexANG story at this time. The Boston Globe had a number of stories bracketing the CBS report and the Thornburgh/Boccardi Panel identified four or more similar stories that ran before the 60 Minutes broadcast.

The only thing separating CBS from the rest of the Old Media pack was that they got the forged documents and ran with them. Even after the Rathergate report, it is unclear how this happened.

By way of background, we believe that Bill Burkett wrote the Killian memos on or just before August 20, 2004. This is based on a number of factors that we have studied: you can read about them here. Chief among them is a book review that Burkett did of Paul Lukasiak’s Deserter that Burkett wrote on August 13, 2004. The book contains errors of military terminology soon to appear in the Killian memos. Further, Burkett said on August 13, “I have found no documentation from LTC Killian’s hand” — documentation that suddenly appeared in Burkett’s possession in the form of the Rathergate memos a week later. Also note that Burkett said on August 21 that he had just supplied documents to the Kerry campaign.

One key fact is missing from the Thornburgh/Boccardi report: how did Philadephia caterer Paul Lukasiak know of Mary Mapes or vice versa — since that was how Mapes got in contact with Burkett on August 23. In some ways, this could be the most interesting fact of Rathergate. If Mary Mapes did not know Lukasiak, someone had to make that introduction. If she knew him, then the story would appear more innocent. The Thornburgh/Boccardi report is zero help on this critical issue (p. 59):

On Monday, August 23, Mapes learned that Lieutenant Colonel Burkett was rumored to have important documents regarding the President’s TexANG service. Paul Lukasiak, who operates a website on which he posts disparaging analyses of President Bush’s TexANG service, told Mapes that another blogger, Linda Starr, had seen new TexANG documents regarding President Bush.

If someone directed Mapes to Lukasiak, we should know who that person is: it could be a critical piece of the Rathergate puzzle. If Mapes knew Lukasiak, that’s less interesting, though it may speak to the question of bias on Mapes’ part that she was acquianted with the author of Deserter.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2005 at 10:09 am and is filed under General, MSM, New Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.