Text 2719, 112 rader
Skriven 2004-09-30 05:20:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: CBS
===========
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134013,00.html

More Than Scandal, CBS Saga May Indicate Crime 
Thursday, September 30, 2004
By Matt Hayes 

As any police officer or prosecutor will tell you, there is a remarkable 
consistency in the statements made by people pulled over by police while 
driving a stolen vehicle.  

"I didn't know it was stolen. I just bought it from this guy I met," the 
driver will say. When pressed for details, the driver will usually 
insist that he bought the nearly new vehicle for about $1000, almost 
always from an unknown individual or person whose name doesn't check 
out, customarily at about 4:00 a.m., on a street whose name he can't 
recall. 

Prosecutors use these statements as evidence of a consciousness of 
guilt. That, combined with possession of the stolen vehicle, is enough 
to secure a criminal conviction.

Much has been written about CBS' concession that it can no longer vouch 
for the authenticity of the documents that served as the foundation of 
its Bush National Guard story. But another story is developing, one that 
could possibly lead someone not just to public humiliation, but to a 
jail cell.

The watershed event for CBS was Dan Rather's (search) weekend meeting 
with retired National Guardsman Bill Burkett (search). During the 
meeting, Burkett said something that dislodged CBS from its death grip 
on the assertion that the story was true. CBS' about-face suggests that 
whatever Burkett conveyed to Rather that weekend was something wholly 
different from whatever he had originally presented to the network as a 
rational and consistent explanation of the memos' origin. This 
"something" suggested to the network that the creation of the memos 
might actually constitute a crime. 


In Texas, the state in which Burkett concedes the false National Guard 
memos originated, it is a felony to make or present two or more 
documents with knowledge of their falsity and with intent that they be 
taken as a genuine governmental record. Under the U.S. Code, use of an 
interstate telephone wire, such as the one used to transmit an image of 
the forged documents from Texas to CBS headquarters, triggers federal 
jurisdiction.

Burkett's recent statements are just as amusing as those given by 
drivers of stolen vehicles, and anyone hearing them could be forgiven 
for thinking that there really is no source for the memos other than 
Burkett. (His National Guard background certainly gives him the 
knowledge to write a memo that might not look convincing, but at least 
contains the jargon to sound convincing.)

We will probably never know just what Burkett confessed to Rather that 
weekend, but he said enough for CBS to almost immediately state that it 
had been "misled" as to the as original source of the documents. Though 
we don't know the identity of that source, the vast majority of experts 
agree that it was someone who did his or her typing at a personal 
computer loaded with Microsoft Word. 

Burkett now asks us to understand that if CBS was misled, it was because 
he was only trying to protect someone named "Lucy Ramirez," an 
individual who Burkett now alleges provided him with the documents. To 
date, no media organization, including USA Today and CBS (which now has 
a huge incentive to track down and verify everything Burkett has ever 
said) has been able to locate such a person. 

Burkett now insists that he presented the documents to CBS with the 
proviso that CBS verify them, but there is plenty of evidence that this 
conversation never took place, and that Burkett in fact presented them 
as genuine National Guard (search) documents. Indeed, CBS has insisted 
that prior to broadcast, it was satisfied after speaking with Burkett — 
whom they dubbed an "unimpeachable source" — that the two memos were 
real. 

It defies logic that Burkett would first lie to CBS about the documents' 
source in an effort to foil verification (as he now suddenly says he 
did), and then tell CBS that the documents required verification. But if 
this is in fact the case, Burkett not only frustrated CBS' verification 
efforts, but necessarily closed his eyes to what otherwise would have 
been obvious to him: that the documents were fakes. That alone would 
probably be enough to satisfy a jury that Burkett knew the documents 
were fake when he presented them to CBS, which would result in a 
criminal conviction in a Texas court. 

CBS has cause for concern, too. The documents were not just forged; they 
were obviously forged to the generation over age 40, which has used both 
a typewriter and a computer to write; CBS did not have to be misled 
about the source of the documents to be tipped that the documents were 
not real. While Burkett might have been willfully blind to things that 
would indicate that the memos were fake, there is mounting evidence that 
even CBS' experts told producers of 60 Minutes II that they could not 
verify that the documents were real. The story was aired – or in the 
terms of the Texas forgery statute, "presented" — in spite of this.

If Lucy Ramirez (search) is real, then Bill Burkett and CBS should find 
her as soon as possible. Burkett in particular is mired in evidence that 
he created the two memos claiming President Bush shirked his National 
Guard service, and CBS is faced with deliberately ignoring the many 
facts, not to mention expert opinions, that would have told a more 
vigilant organization that the memos were fabricated.

Until Lucy Ramirez is found, Bill Burkett is driving around in that 
brand new car at 4:00 a.m., waiting to be pulled over.      

Matt Hayes began practicing immigration law shortly after graduating 
from Pace University School of Law in 1994, representing new immigrants 
in civil and criminal matters. He is the author of The New Immigration 
Law and Practice, to be published in October.

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