Fake Killian Documents Really a White House Leak?
by Adrienne E. Gusoff

September 10, 2004

Over the past couple of days, it's been all over the news that certain documents, written by George Bush's superior officer during the time of his supposed service in the National Guard (The Killian Memos) "prove" that Bush did not complete his service, and that he was in fact derelict in his duties, and had perhaps even disobeyed a direct order from his commander. These documents seem to be corroborated by hundreds of official documents and scores of eyewitness (or should I say, lack of eyewitness accounts. (http://www.texansfortruth.com/)

Then, today, the big headline is that these Killian documents are fake! So obviously fake, in fact, that they were created on a computer using Microsoft Word even though they'd supposedly been written in the early 70's, (when Bill Gates was still in high school!)

I can't help but see here the hand of Karl Rove, Bush senior advisor, nasty trickster, liar and manipulator extraordinaire. He's certainly done this kind of thing before, specifically during the 2000 campaign when the media were starting to investigate Bush's past drunken behavior:

"Rove, who has a long history planting false stories to create political waves designed to benefit his candidate, was also apparently the unnamed source for a false leak about a photo of W dancing naked on top of a bar. Rove planted the false story in the Drudge report to raise the media's scandal bar. When the photo never surfaced, the press ignored W's alcoholic past for the rest of the 2000 campaign" --Toby Rogers see full article here

Let's stop and think for a moment. Hundreds of documents were released by the White House in a big jumble, assuming nobody would be able to pour through the mess and decipher the true story. They were wrong. Experts were able to discern the truth by tracing payroll stubs and other mundane threads of evidence, which to an untrained eye, might indeed, go unnoticed. The evidence has been damning. The press is all over this story.

Rove must have been livid! Up all night, plotting ways to stop the hemorrhaging of uncontrolled spin. Now, Karl Rove, I grudgingly acknowledge, is a genius. An evil genius, but a genius nonetheless. He knows how play the media like a fine violin. He is the Surgeon General of Spin Doctors. So, to paraphrase, WWKRD?* Why not use methods which have worked so well in the past?

By leaking documents which initially seems to prove that Bush was a deserter, (over which he knew the media would salivate) then outing those documents as forgeries, he makes the attacking media look like fools and Kerry supporters look like liars. It also brings doubt upon all those hundreds of other unequivocal documents, and calls the entire media examination into Bush's tenure in the Guard into question. This is such a classic Rove tactic, I'm shocked the media isn't all over it.

*What would Karl Rove do?