Webcast News Service, September 20, 2004

The television network CBS has admitted a "mistake in judgment" in its story questioning George W. Bush's National Guard service. CBS says that it was misled by the source of documents that several experts have dismissed as fakes.

CBS News anchor Dan Rather said in a statement, "I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers."

CBS said that former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett "has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source."

Dan Rather and CBS News obtained Texas Air National Guard documents which say that then-Lieutenant George W. Bush was suspended from flight status for not performing up to standards and for failing to take his annual physical exam. Dated from 1972 and 1973, the documents were allegedly written by one of Mr. Bush's commanding officers, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, who has since died.

CBS aired their story about the memos in a "60 Minutes" segment narrated by Rather.

Bush initially trained as a fighter pilot in the Texas National Guard, but later transferred to ground duty in the Alabama National Guard. The White House says that the transfer to Alabama was arranged so Bush could work on the Republican Senate campaign of one of his father's friends.

Almost immediately after the CBS story aired on September 8, document experts questioned the authenticity of the memos. Several experts have pointed out that the memos were written on a computer. The memos were purportedly written between 1972 and 1973, and computers did not come into widespread use for word processing until the mid-1980's.

Experts cited several pieces of evidence pointing to the memos being written on a computer. The memos use "Times New Roman" font, which was not used on typewriters in 1973 but is a default font setting on Microsoft Word used on most computer. In addition, two of the four memos used raised superscripts. For example, "111th F.I.S." (Fighter Interceptor Squadron) is rendered "111^th F.I.S." In a second memo, the number "187th" is rendered "187^th." Raised superscripts (with reduced size) were impossible on typewriters 30 years ago, but Microsoft Word automatically puts the "th" after a number in superscript. Finally, the print type and spacing in all the memos are proportional, meaning that narrow letters like "i" and "t" take up less space than wider letters like "G" and "F." Proportional spacing is normal with Microsoft Word, but that capability did not exist on typewriters 30 years ago. Each letter took the same amount of space, either 10 letters to the inch or 12 letters to the inch.

In addition to the use of a computer, other inconsistencies have been cited. Only two of the memos are signed. The supposed author of all four, Jerry Killian (Bush's squadron commander) is dead. Killian's widow says Killian didn't type. Killian's secretary says she didn't type the memos. Three of the four documents are memos Killian wrote to himself ("memo for record" or "memo to file"). Killian's son says that Killian didn't keep this kind of records. One of the memos accuses Killian's one-time superior Walter Staudt of exerting pressure to "sugarcoat" Bush's records. But Staudt had retired a year and a half before the date of the memo.

The expert who CBS says authenticated the memos told the Washington Post that he never tried to authenticate the documents themselves, merely the signature. Copies of the memos published on the CBS website appeared to be photocopies.

For a week after doubts about the documents were raised, Dan Rather and CBS continued to defend their authenticity. CBS said last week in a statement that, "Contrary to some rumors, no internal investigation is underway at CBS News nor is one planned. We have complete confidence in our reporting and will continue to pursue the story."

CBS's source for the documents, former Texas National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, has actively opposed Bush since January 1998, when Burkett returned from an assignment in Panama. Burkett claims that he caught a potentially deadly case of encephalitis in Panama and blamed Bush, then the governor of Texas, for sending him on the assignment.

While CBS officials have acknowledged that they "cannot prove that the documents are authentic," they have not admitted that the documents are fake.