Burkett Reveals His Role - Truth is Now Out?

The man CBS News touted as the "unimpeachable source" of explosive documents about President Bush's National Guard service turns out to be a former Guard officer with a history of self-described mental problems who has denounced Bush as a liar with "demonic personality shortcomings." [snip] For 10 days, CBS declined to name Burkett as the person who provided the disputed Guard documents, saying only that they came from an "unimpeachable source." CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards said yesterday that the network was investigating a Sept. 9 statement that asserted the network had spoken with "individuals who saw the documents at the time they were written."

The problem in this case is that before yesterday CBS never gave its viewers even a hint that its entire controversial story hinged on the word of someone who has made it one of his main goals in life to defeat Mr. Bush. Even after the documents on Mr. Bush’s National Guard service were called into question, CBS refused to let viewers in on the secret of its source’s motives.

This is the real scandal here, and it makes us wonder if Mr. Burkett is the end of this story. It isn’t as if Mr. Burkett’s motives were hard to discover. On August 25, addressing Mr. Bush in the second person, Mr. Burkett wrote in a Web posting, “I know from your files that we have now reassembled, the fact that you did not fulfill your oath, taken when you were commissioned to ‘obey the orders of the officers appointed over you.’”

More intriguing, in an August 21 posting, Mr. Burkett said he had spoken with Max Cleland, the former Georgia Senator and fierce John Kerry advocate, about how to respond to Republican campaign tactics. “I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with. But none of them have called me back.”

This, believe it or not, is the source Mr. Rather described as “unimpeachable.” The kindest interpretation is that the famous anchor and CBS were gullible. But perhaps they will forgive their audience for also now suspecting some partisan bias—especially in light of an interview with Mr. Rather that the trade publication Broadcasting & Cable published August 30.

Asked if the media were paying too much attention to the Swift Boat Veterans’ criticisms of John Kerry, Mr. Rather replied: “In the end, what difference does it make what one candidate or the other did or didn’t do during the Vietnam War? In some ways, that war is as distant as the Napoleonic campaigns.” Yet nine days later Mr. Rather was reporting on Mr. Bush’s National Guard service as if it were the story of a lifetime.

Burkett's lawyers, David Van Os and Gabe Quintanilla, on Tuesday completed the story of how their client obtained the memos.

They gave this account: Burkett received a phone call in March from a former Guard employee named Lucy Ramirez, who said she had heard Burkett's allegations against Bush and had the documents that could help prove them.

The two then arranged a document drop at a Houston livestock show, with Burkett actually quickly receiving the copies, in a manila envelope, from a man he did not know. He copied the papers and stored them in a meat locker, burning the originals to prevent anyone from tracing them back to Ramirez.

The Times could not locate Ramirez, identify the mysterious man who purportedly passed the memos, or verify any of the other details of that account.