Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY): Well, you know, they are manipulating the media, they did it in the very beginning through intimidation. They would intimidate the people in the, uh, in the press conference. And ... they would ask — they would allow questions to be asked only of people that they knew were going to ask the right kind of questions, from their point of view. And, you know, that has its effect, had, had its effect on people. People have been — people in the media have been intimidated. The media has changed in the last four years. People have changed in the last four years. They’ve had a very very direct, aggressive attack on the, on the media, and the way it’s handled. Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers. Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilties in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it: they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they — and they distributed those out to elements of the media. And it was only — what, like was it CBS? Or whatever, whatever which one Rather works for. They — the people there — they finally bought into it, and they, and they aired it. And when they did, they had ’em. They didn’t care who did it! All they had to do is to get some element of the media to advance that issue. Based upon the false papers that they produced.
Audience Member: Do you have any evidence for that?
Congressman Hinchey: Yes I do. Once they did that —
Audience: [Murmuring]
Congressman Hinchey: ...once they did that, then it undermined everything else about Bush’s draft dodging. Once they were able to say, ‘This is false! These papers are not accurate, they’re, they’re, they’re false, they’ve been falsified.’ That had the effect of taking the whole issue away.
Audience Member: So you have evidence that the papers came from the Bush administration?
Congressman Hinchey: No. I — that’s my belief.
Audience Member: OK.
Congressman Hinchey: And I said that. In the very beginning. I said, ‘It’s my belief that those papers, and that setup, originated with Karl Rove and the White House.’
Audience Member: Don’t you think it’s irresponsible to make charges like that?
Congressman Hinchey: No I don’t. I think it’s very important to make charges like that. I think it’s very important to combat this kind of activity in every way that you can. And I’m willing — and most people are not — to step forward in situations like this and take risks.
Audience: [Clapping and cheering.]
Hinchey feels that this is true, therefore it must be true, despite a complete lack of facts as grounds for his claims. He has absolutely no basis in fact to explain the origination of the bogus memos, nor why they were not exposed as frauds before they were used by CBS to prop up an exclusive piece that would never had run without the presence of the memos in the first place. Hinchey has no problem making baseless charges because his position insulates him from repercussions of his claims. Instead, he used the forum as a place to rant about how Karl Rove planted these documents for CBS to be duped, which in and of itself should have questioned the authenticity further to make sure that it wasn't getting duped. This, in no way, shape or form, can even begin to absolve CBS of responsibility in this whole mess, because they had the last clear chance to determine the authenticity. Indeed, they could have brought in any number of experts to check the documents, and failed to do so. CBS wanted those documents to be true, and went out of their way to assert that fact, despite every reason to be critical of them.
And that is before the bloggers began digging into the story and determined the memos to be bogus, created using modern word processors using default settings.
The fact is that CBS has never said where it got the memos from, and all of the individuals involved, from Bill Burkett to Mary Mapes to Dan Rather were all Democratic party boosters/operatives and partisans. They had been following this story for years, trying to pin something on President Bush, yet these documents came up at a crucial time in a presidential campaign.
Rep. Hinchey, you know that you made baseless accusations that are patently false and untrue. You continue to spread lies about the origins of the documents. If you were even the slightest bit interested in learning the truth behind the documents, you would call for CBS to unveil its sources. Open up the investigation to law enforcement. See where the paper trail leads.
However, you wont do so because you know where the paper trail will lead, and it isn't to the Republicans. Not when there are significant links between those involved and highly placed members of the Kerry campaign (Joe Lockhart).
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