What kind of hush money did the 4 lambs at CBS receive?

FYI Back when the controversy was raging, someone claiming to be Martin Heldt actually responded directly to the accusation on my website as follows:

>>"In January 2004, former Democratic political consultant Brooks Gregory identified Marty Heldt as peddling a bogus set of documents that Gregory had easily proved were forgeries."

This is quite untrue.

For starters, Brooks Gregory is a fictitional character created to attack me. The following is something that has floated around for awhile from the fictional "Brooks Gregory":

>>When all of this crap began back in 1999, I was a political consultant for several Democratic candidates, as well as later being a senior consultant for Janet Reno in her run for Governor. I bought the document package from Marty Heldt and we subjected them to the most thorough investigation one could imagine. Why? Because if there was anything there, we damn sure wanted to use it. But guess what? Only two of those documents proved to be authentic and they were not even related to the charge being levelled. Many of them are so blatant in their alterations it is almost funny. Several purport to be signed by real live military personnel, yet they don't even know the proper format for a military date. -- Brooks Gregory 2004-01-28 08:27:57 PST" at Google Newsgroup: talk.politics.misc.

1.) No Brooks Gregory. He doesn’t exist.

2.) I received my documents via the FOIA in the summer of 2000. I posted them to my website shortly after receiving them. They are still there, freely available to all, displayed in the same lousy scanning job I did at the time.( www.cis.net/~coldfeet )

One need only look at the documents released by the White House last February (available here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/2004-02-14-bush-docs.htm ) to discern the fraudulent nature of the "Gregory" claims and the validity of my documents.

There were very few documents I received in 2000 that were not again released by the White House in February.

From this mornings news reports I understand that yesterday's release included the order ( for May and June service in 1973) -- which I received in 2000 but were not included in the February release. I also note that the PR release which mentioned "gets high from flying" was included in last nights release. This, again, was a document I received in 2000 but which was not released by the White House in February.

These last releases provide complete validation for all of the documents I received.

You are the first one to raise the thread about the identity of the forger of the documents.

With more than one party involved (CBS, DNC, etc.), you have the makings of a pretty broadly based, posssilby loosely coordinated conspiracy.

Interesting....

They are not forgeries they are FAKE documents. Forgery carries with it the idea that there are real documents out there from which these FAKES were created. One may make a forgery of a 100 dollar bill but when one makes documents up from scratch that never existed those documents are fake.

Here's a comment I posted over on Roger Simon's site earlier today:

Roger,

Do these folks actually get paid for all this smoozing and distorting the facts? Don't they realize the important significance of the Blogos here to independently fact check what in the past has been the MSM'S sole perogative as to what the news is?

Mapes and Rather were "outed" for running a story that was an attack piece on President Bush (doesn't mater who you were rooting). They wanted to believe this so badly, they ignored all the red flags along the way. This is what makes con games so successful. The marks want to believe and lose their common sense. The only thing is that they got caught with their hands "red handed" in cookie jar and exposed their true motives.

[...]

The important lesson is the emergence of a new medium of human thought that has the power to transcend political boundaries and filtering of editoral and congolomerate boardrooms. This medium is almost free and does not have to pander for readers and audiences by senstationalizing the news which inherently causes it to be out of proportion and perspective.

[...]

Now here's my challenge to the Blogos. Here's a much bigger story that needs to be reported to the American people and let them decide what the is the truth and/or fiction.

The MSM is sitting on this story and not reporting it because they are too scared to put their foot in the water. Go figure you'd think they would be all over this like flies on poop!

THERE IS DIRECT FORENSIC EVIDENCE THAT AN ADDITIVE IN THE DOD's ANTHRAX VACCINE IS THE CAUSUL AGENT FOR GULF WAR SYNDROME.

FURTHER THE DOD'S LIL SHOPPE OF HORRORS, ALONG WITH THE NIH, AND THE PHARMA INDUSTRY ARE RUNNING EXPERIMENTAL CLINICAL TRIALS ON OUR BRAVE MEN IN WOMEN IN UNIFORM WITHTOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE.

In my book this is nothing more than premeditated murder. Oh well what do I know?

OK bloggors[sic] go and prove me wrong. This could affect everyone of us in that the vaccines we depend upon to protect against real pathogens like "smallpox" will be compromise

[...]

RLS Link

Read HSPIG - Commentary on vaccine issue

Ron Wright
www.hspig.org

Kev - it would be great to have that sidebar with links to all Wizbang Rathergate matters again, so that regulars and newcomers can easily access the highlights from 9/8/04 onwards. (The Search function doesn't include Comments content anymore like it used to.)

I remember reading somewhere here or at another site, a comment by a wise person - that we'll probably find the forger/faker making comments with the rest of us, just like one finds an arsonist in the crowd looking at a fire, discussing the whys and wherefors of the fire.

I recall both Martin Heldt and Paul Lukasiak in the chorus of commenters here at wizbang and ace.mu.nu.

LUKASIAK (possibly with Lechliter and Heldt's help)

USA Today's 6 doc-pdf inadvertently showed me how the forgeries/fabrications were created:

USA Today's set of the fake docs are here.
Scroll down below the picture to: "(Related items: Text of the four new memos - See the memos in PDF)" Click on PDF. There are actually 6 memos all in one pdf. (CBS received all 6, but only published 4 of them.)

Per USA Today, these 6 were PERSONALLY obtained by a USA Today reporter from Burkett who was visiting friends in Montana on the night CBS aired the "AWOL/Fortunate Son" story.

This is important because it means that set of 6 was not faxed. USA Today got copies closer to the first "draft". If you have a laptop (i.e. plasma screen), you can easily see the cut-and-paste crop markings around the text, the signatures and the various square "dots" all over the pages. Move your screen angle a little back and forth to get darker and lighter versions and you'll see it.

You can also see these same markings on a 7th document at Paul Lukasiak's glcq.com AWOL Project site: here. (First referenced here at wizbang on 9/18/04 and later.) Paul Lukasiak's site also has the mis-acronym "OETR" seven times on one page and elsewhere at glcq.com.

So, the new data from the Thornburgh Report is that Lukasiak contacted Mapes. One question is whether Lukasiak was a DNC or Kerry campaign worker or volunteer.

I see Lukasiak has been a researcher, writing pro-DNC, anti-Bush articles at least as early as 2001 regarding Florida 2000 recounts at www.failureisimpossible.com/topicindex.htm . The articles hew to the Soros line: racism claims, voting rights for felons.

I'd like to know who signs Lukasiak's paychecks.

"Cut-and-paste crop markings" - my theory is that text sentences were typed on computer, then overlaid on a page where the square "dots" had already been created digitally. Then the signatures were lifted from real military docs and overlaid on the same doc. The sequence of overlaying may be different, but that's the basic process I see when looking at the USA Today set of 6 fake docs.

Talk of the d.... - see his loooong posting at http://dailykos.com/story/2005/1/10/183312/357 refuting the Thornburgh Report.

I'm off to bed now, so if anyone tries to impersonate me, as in the recent rash of impersonations here at wizbang, we'll know!

Just heard Buchanan make a good point. If cbs was set up, where is the outrage? Why aren't they hunting down the person?

Is it because it would make them appear more dumb and foolish than they already are? They have to be protecting somebody. Why? Don't give me this crap that they are protecting their sources. People should demand that cbs start turning over names. Frankly, I think the forger was Mrs. Burkett.

Also heard Howie Fineman make some dumb comment about Rather/Mapes having this Texas populist politics view vs. the big bad Bush corporate view. I don't remember things being so great political-wise under Johnson. Couldn't get any dirty back than him.

Yeah, Julie - Buchanan spoke with passion on Scarborough Country, MSNBC, last night. It's such a glaring omitted outrage on Dan Rather and CBS's part. If they had been "set up", why don't they find out who did it? They had no qualms leaving their Afghanistan source, Jack Idema, in the lurch; so it's not loyalty to sources that's keeping them mute. Burkett was someone's CYA conduit. That someone is either too close to home or otherwise too fearsome to confront. I wonder if the forger/faker is connected to Hillary/Soros. Hillary would not want a Democrat president in 2004-2008 if she intends to run in 2008. Perhaps Lockhart and McAuliffe were also used as patsies in a greater game.