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Here is an interesting example of the wisdom of crowds, in today's
Opinion Journal, by John Fund: <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110005611">http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110005611</a><br>
<br>
The energy of the internet to solve difficult problems (oil, space) has
not yet been effectively tapped. There may be great ways to do it.<br>
<br>
<font face="Garamond, Times" size="5"><b>I'd Rather Be Blogging</b></font>
<br>
<font face="Garamond, Times" size="4">CBS stonewalls as "guys in
pajamas" uncover a fraud.</font>
<br>
<font face="Verdana, Times" size="2"><br>
<i>Monday, September 13, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT</i>
</font>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">A watershed media
moment occurred Friday on Fox News Channel, when Jonathan Klein, a
former executive vice president of CBS News who oversaw "60 Minutes,"
debated Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard, on the
documents CBS used to raise questions about George W. Bush's
Vietnam-era National Guard service. </font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Mr. Klein dismissed the
bloggers
who are raising questions about the authenticity of the memos: "You
couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check
and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in
his pajamas writing."</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">He will regret that snide
disparagement of the bloggers, many of whom are skilled lawyers or have
backgrounds in military intelligence or typeface design. A growing
number of design and document experts say they are certain or almost
certain the memos on which CBS relied are forgeries. </font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Mr. Klein didn't directly
address
the mounting objections to CBS's story. He fell back on what high
school debaters call the appeal to authority, implying that the
reputation of "60 Minutes" should be enough to dissolve doubts without
the network sharing its methods with other journalists and experts. He
told Fox's Tony Snow that the "60 Minutes" team is "the most careful
news organization, certainly on television." He said that Mary Mapes,
the producer of the story, was "a crack journalist" who had broken the
Abu Ghraib prison abuse story.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2"><img
src="cid:part1.02040000.08010504@solution-consulting.com" alt=""
width="88" height="6" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" align="middle"></font></p>
<p></p>
<font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">But leaning on reputations does
nothing to dispel the doubts raised by bloggers, experts and relatives
and associates of the late Lt. Gen. Jerry Killian, the memos' putative
author. Gary Killian, Gen. Killian's son, says CBS apparently didn't
call several people he suggested they contact who would have
contradicted the CBS story. Bobby Hodges, a former Texas Air National
Guard general whom "60 Minutes" claimed had authenticated the memos,
says that when he was read them over the phone he assumed they were
handwritten and wasn't told that CBS didn't have the originals. He now
says he doesn't believe the memos are genuine. </font>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Hugh Hewitt, the unofficial
historian of the blogging movement, says that "bloggers have been
overwhelmed with e-mails from active-duty and retired military who
scoff at the form of the memos." They point out the man cited in the
memo as pressuring Mr. Killian to "sugar coat" the Bush military record
had left the Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo
was supposedly written. In addition, typewriters with perfect centering
ability were nonexistent in 1972 and 1973, and National Guard
regulations barred the maintenance of such records. Mr. Killian's widow
adds that her late husband kept no personal files from his Guard duty,
notes that CBS won't reveal its source, and says the memos are bogus.
Earl Lively, director of operations for the Texas Air National Guard in
the 1970s, told the Washington Times that the memos are "forged as
hell."</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">CBS's fallback defense is that
its
story was only partly based on the documents and points to its
on-camera interview with former Texas House speaker and lieutenant
governor Ben Barnes, who claimed that he pulled strings to gain a place
for Mr. Bush in the National Guard. But Mr. Barnes is clearly
unreliable. The New York Times reported last February that an unnamed
former Texas official--later revealed to be Mr. Barnes--was telling
reporters he had interceded on behalf of Mr. Bush but that his story
"was subject to change, and there were no documents to support his
claims."</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Indeed, Mr. Barnes's own
daughter
says her father's story can't be trusted. Amy Barnes Stites called a
talk radio show Thursday to report that her father had told her a
different version in 2000, when Mr. Bush first ran for president. "I
love my father very much, but he's doing this for purely political
reasons," she said. "He is a big Kerry fund-raiser and he is writing a
book also. And the [Bush story] is what he's leading the book off with.
. . . denied this to me in 2000 that he did get Bush out (of Vietnam).
Now he's saying he did." When hostess Monica Crowley asked Ms. Stites
if she believed her father had lied in his interview on "60 Minutes,"
she replied "Yes, I do. I absolutely do."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2"><img
src="cid:part1.02040000.08010504@solution-consulting.com" alt=""
width="88" height="6" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" align="middle"></font></p>
<p></p>
<font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">"60 Minutes" may have a sterling
reputation in journalism, but it has been burned before by forged
documents. In 1997 it broadcast a report alleging that U.S. Customs
Service inspectors looked the other way as drugs crossed the Mexican
border at San Diego. The story's prize exhibit was a memo from Rudy
Comacho, head of the San Diego customs office, ordering that vehicles
belonging to one trucking company should be given special leniency in
crossing the border. The memo was given to "60 Minutes" by Mike Horner,
a former customs inspector who had left the service five years earlier.
When asked by CBS for additional proof, he sent another copy with an
official stamp on it. </font>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">CBS did not interview Mr.
Camacho
for its story. "It was horrible for him," says Bill Anthony, at the
time head of public affairs for the Customs Service. "For 18 months,
internal affairs and the Secret Service had him under a cloud while
they established that Horner had forged the document out of bitterness
over how he'd been treated." In 2000, Mr. Horner admitted he forged the
memo "for media exposure" and was sentenced to 10 months in federal
prison. "Mr. Camacho's reputation was tarnished significantly," Judge
Judith Keep noted. </font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Mr. Camacho sued CBS and
eventually settled for an undisclosed sum. In 1999 Leslie Stahl read an
apology on the air: "We have concluded we were deceived, and
ultimately, so were you, the viewers." </font></p>
<p></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2"><img
src="cid:part1.02040000.08010504@solution-consulting.com" alt=""
width="88" height="6" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" align="middle"></font></p>
<p></p>
<font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">If it turns out that the Killian
memos are indeed forgeries, the Internet will have played an invaluable
role in exposing the fraud much faster than the 18 months Mr. Camacho
had to twist in the wind. Free Republic, a Web bulletin board, raised
early warning signals about the memos within hours of last Wednesday's
"60 Minutes" broadcast. Powerlineblog.com, a site run by three lawyers,
reposted those comments, which were amplified by indcjournal.com. Then
design expert Charles Johnson, who blogs at littlegreenfootballs.com,
retyped one of the memos using Microsoft Word and showed them to be a
perfect typographic match. </font>
<font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">A defensive Dan Rather went on the
air Friday to complain of what he called a "counterattack" from
"partisan political operatives." In reality, traditional journalism now
has a new set of watchdogs in the "blogosphere." In the words of
blogger Mickey Kaus, they can trade information and publicize it "fast
enough to have real-world consequences." Sure, blogs can be
transmission belts for errors, vicious gossip and last-minute
disinformation efforts. But they can also correct themselves almost
instantaneously--in sharp contrast with CBS's stonewalling.</font><br>
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