Did Bush spy on CBS re NG desertion story?

[Hokie]

I have been troubled by how fast the right wing blogs were so quick to jump on the NG memo story and attempt to discredit CBS. I always figured they were tipped off about the details. Could CBS have been one of the NSA targets? I suspect they were spying on the Kerry camp from day one.

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

1. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the memo was a plant and/or

they were eavesdropping on Kerry and CBS.

[FreedomAngel82]

7. Greg Palast had a great article about this on his page

He basically told how Rove had to take down Mapes and Rather at CBS so he could control them and their news room like he does all the others. I'm reading some of Mapes book (I haven't been able to read too much cause of traveling in the holiday's and now back to school) but try to find the article if you can from Palast. He does a great job at explaning why they're targeting journalist like Mapes and Rather.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. My bet is that the memo was a plant and they had that Buckhead guy

all primed & ready to go with the supposed typeface analysis.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Actually, it was that thread that prompted my question.

As I suggested in my post there, I think the whole caper was a setup--an ambush, if you will--with people pre-positioned to throw their hand grenades at CBS.

But what about the Kerry camp? Are there any interesting anomalies that might give us some clues as to where to start digging?

[Slit Skirt]

4. of course they did..................Carl Rove would screw his mother....

if it meant achieving his agenda

[Doctor_J]

5. Unfortunately, I think they probably covered their tracks

but yes, they have been and will continue to spy on anyone who is a threat

[Hokie]

6. Wonder if Mary Mapes has an opinion on this?

She has stood by the story all along. I would be interested to hear what she thinks.

[FreedomAngel82]

8. Get her book

It's great about all the story. I haven't read all of it yet but it's very good so far. I wonder too. Remember when someone asked on CNN about this woman Christine something who worked on CNN and her husband worked on the Kerry camp and this reporter asked if this person was spied on.

[Doctor_J]

9. THat's Christianne Amanpour

and yes, she has been spied on - "because of her close contact with all types of ME folks", of course :sarcasm:

[emulatorloo]

10. Mary Mapes Book Excerpt in Vanity Fair -- link here -- read it!

http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/printables/051114roco01?print=true

<snip>

Things began to change at about 11 a.m., when I started hearing rumbles from some producers at CBS News that a handful of far-right Web sites were saying the documents had been forged.

I was incredulous. That couldn't be possible. When we'd shown the president's people the memos, the White House hadn't attempted to deny the truth of the documents. In fact, the president's communications director, Dan Bartlett, had claimed that the documents supported their version of events: that then Lieutenant Bush had asked for permission to leave the unit.

Within a few minutes, I was visiting Web sites I had never heard of: Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, Power Line. They were hard-core, politically angry, hyperconservative sites loaded with vitriol about Dan Rather and CBS. People posted their questionable recollections that electric typewriters in the 1970s did not do "superscripts," the small "th" or "st" suffixes following a number and lifted higher than the other letters. This was important because, in the Killian memos, "111th" was sometimes typed with a superscript. Other bloggers claimed there was no proportional spacing on old typewriters—using different widths for different characters—even though some of the old official documents had proportional spacing. The claims snowballed.

I remember staring, disheartened and angry, at one posting. "60 Minutes is going down," the writer crowed.

<snip>

[McCamy Taylor]

11. Hmmm. Can you wiretap a fax? They faxed the document. It was

a faxed document that did not look right when you analyzed the type (even though the photocopied document looked ok). Could the NSA have been spying on CBS, maybe on the grounds that Mapes had done the Abu Ghraib story so she might talk to al Qaeda and they intercepted a fax of the AWOL document?

THis is VERY suspicious. I like this theory. Too bad CBS and Viacom are in bed with the WH. Maybe Mapes can sue the NSA personally and find out if she was wiretapped.