My heart sank when "60 Minutes" reported that they had "authenticated" the documents they had received on W's inglorious war record. The need to authenticate indicates that the provenance is questionable, and questionable provenance is a pretty good indicator in and of itself that the documents are fake.
If the segment had not included discussion of those documents, then all attention would have remained on the first-hand testimony that Bush had received preferential treatment. The documents thus served the purposes of misdirection -- in other words, the hoax ultimately benefits Bush.
If we want to figure out who the hoaxer is, "Cui Bono?" remains our first, best question.
To shed further light on that question, I would like to remind readers of an odd bit of history. In 1974, as some of you will recall, Jack Anderson reported that behind-the-scenes player Gordon Novel had been approached by Charles Colson to come up with a bizarre method to erase incriminating Nixon tapes from a remote location. Many people have heard of Novel's claim, and many (probably correctly) have dismissed it.
Few recall that, later in the same interview, Novel made a more interesting suggestion to Anderson as to how Nixon might have been rescued from Watergate.
The plan was simple: Novel said that he would have hired a Nixon impersonator to make a phone call to Hunt. The pseudo-Nixon would have said something grossly incriminating. A tape of the phone call would have been released to the press. Media accomplices (both witting ones and dupes) would then have ensured that the entire Watergate controversy revolved around the authenticity of that one piece of tape.
Once the impersonation was revealed as a hoax, Nixon's enemies would have looked horrible. Every legitimate point they raised thereafter would have been de-fanged.
Novel's idea was not put into action, of course. But I would not discount the notion that some modern behind-the-scenes manipulator considers that sort of tactic "a neat idea."
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