Provenance

The New York Times reports (rr) today that Bill Burkett apparently sent the forged memos to the DNC on August 20:

"I spent some time on the phone with the Kerry campaign seniors yesterday," Mr. Burkett wrote on Aug. 21 in an e-mail letter circulated to a list of about 600 Texas Democrats.

He complained that he had to "get through seven layers of bureaucratic kids trying to get a job after the election."

"I talked with Max Cleland," Mr. Burkett continued, referring to the former senator from Georgia who has been supporting Senator John Kerry's Democratic presidential bid.

Alluding to advertisements by a veterans group that deprecates Mr. Kerry's Vietnam service, Mr. Burkett continued, "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," Mr. Burkett wrote. "But none of them have called me back."

The LA Times reports (rr) today that Mary Mapes first learned of the memos existence in mid to late August:

Although CBS News notes that Mapes had been chasing the National Guard story for five years, it only came back on the active burner in mid- to late August.

That's when executive producer Howard got a call from her, telling him "she was on to something" and wanted to put her other projects aside.

Over the next couple of weeks, he said, "she would call from time to time, telling me she was getting closer, not closer, something that she was looking up that was a blind alley — those kinds of things that reporters do when tracking a story. There was nothing definitive" until he got the call from her on Sept. 3, Howard recalled.

On that Friday, just before the Labor Day weekend, Mapes excitedly phoned her bosses from Texas to report a breakthrough in the document quest. "I've got them," she told Howard.

As excitement spread through CBS offices on West 57th Street, there was a rush to get the pieces in place.

So we've got the coincidence of CBS learning about the documents around the same time as the documents' possible author, Bill Burkett, sent them to the DNC.

One possible scenario here is that Mary Mapes obtained the documents from the DNC in mid to late August, but without much to indicate their source. [edit: One of the document experts CBS hired says that Mapes told her that CBS received the memos anonymously in the mail.] It is also possible that she only learned of their existence from the DNC or someone working there. After some digging at the DNC or elsewhere, she finally located the source and received them anew via fax on September 2. [edit: Rather, speaking on the CBS Evening News on 20 Sept confirms that CBS contacted Burkett; Burkett did not contact CBS.]

It makes sense that CBS obtained the forged memos from the DNC but was unwilling to use them until they obtained copies from the original source. Too original a source for CBS's own good, as it turns out.

This explains Mapes's statement, according to the LA Times, that "I've got them." Her statement demonstrates that they were either already in possesion of DNC copies or were aware that the memos existed prior to the September 2 faxing. She knew there was a "them" to get. That CBS acted as if Bill Burkett was a less partisan source than the DNC makes CBS either naive or willfully biased.

It would be consistent with this scenario and other CBS statements that the documents CBS posted to their website were the versions that CBS obtained from the DNC and that the documents they submitted to experts during their expert shopping were fresher versions faxed from Abilene on September 2.

It may be possible that Burkett originally sent the documents to Max Cleland personally rather than the DNC, and that it was Cleland, or someone close to him that alerted Mapes. Cleland has stated that he only referred Burkett to the DNC [edit: he states he referred Burkett to the Kerry campaign, not the DNC].

Much depends on Burkett's August 21 email, which I don't have access to. But the general outline of the provenance of these forgeries is becoming clearer.

Update: The NY Times today further reports (rr):

Mr. Cleland said in a telephone interview that Mr. Burkett called him "a couple of weeks ago," as he was out campaigning for Mr. Kerry.

"I couldn't swear to it whether he used the term documents or information," Mr. Cleland said. "It was some kind of stuff, some kind of information he wanted to get to the campaign, or something, regarding Bush's National Guard service. I referred him up to somebody in the campaign."

Mr. Cleland said he received up to 100 calls a week from people with tips and ideas. "He sounded like he had something," Mr. Cleland said. "But of course, in this business, you go around, every friend, everyone around the corner, has some something or other."

Campaign officials said Mr. Cleland had referred Mr. Burkett to someone at the campaign who passed his message on to the research department, where the message was set aside amid the deluge of other calls.

So the Kerry campaign admits that they received something from Burkett, and that it was set aside. Cleland doesn't recall if what Burkett had was actual documents or mere information.

The tone, in either the article or from Cleland, suggests that this was a run of the mill unsolicited piece of "helpful" advice. But if this were true, would Cleland have referred Burkett up to someone in the campaign? If Cleland thought that Burkett's documents or information were that of an annoying kook, would he have referred him to someone higher up, or would Cleland have tried to dismiss him? Will Cleland say who in the Kerry campaign he referred Burkett to?

And if Cleland does receive "up to 100 calls a week", how likely is it that he'd be able to remember this particular call and how he dispositioned it? Not bloody likely I'd guess.

Update: Commenter Gretchen at LGF recalls CBS's claim that the documents came from "an unimpeachable source". To be kind to CBS, it is doubtful that they would have considered Bill Burkett to have been an unimpeachable source. But former Senator Max Cleland might well qualify, if he was the one who submitted the documents to CBS or tipped them off that they existed.

Update: The Washington Post reports:

In mid-August, Mapes told her bosses that she had finally tracked down a source who claimed to have access to memos written in 1972 and 1973 by the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, Bush's squadron commander in the Texas Air National Guard. The memos, she was told, revealed how the young pilot from a famous family had received favorable treatment, even after refusing an order to report for a physical. Rather and his producer met the source at an out-of-the-way location....

On Friday, Sept. 3, the day after the [Republican] convention ended, Mapes hit pay dirt. She told Howard her source had given her the documents. Within hours, Mapes began calling around to find independent analysts who could examine the handful of memos said to have been written by Killian. She found one in Dallas, who helped put her in touch with three others.

If my outline is correct, then the source in the first paragraph above is someone in the Kerry campaign (Cleland?), and the source in the second paragraph is Burkett himself. The WaPo article seems to suggest, however, that there is just one source. At least, there's no indication that the word "source" refers to separate people.

But I find it difficult to believe that Burkett, eager to put the memos to good use, would wait two weeks after being contacted by Mapes before handing the memos over to her. Unless that is, he didn't want to be known as the source, even confidentially, and had to be talked into it by CBS. This might explain why Burkett submitted the documents to the Kerry campaign rather than going to the media from the start. On the other hand, his frequent and leading insinuations on the Texas Democrats bulletin board and in emails do not argue for a concern with propriety.

In any case, I think this will all come out in the next several days.