[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 18518-18520]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       LEGITIMACY OF NEWS STORIES

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, if I might reminisce for a moment as a 
predicate for what I am about to say. I go back to a time in my career 
when I was the center of considerable national press attention. The 
occasion was the 1970s. The issue was Watergate. I will not bother to 
describe why I was there; I will just tell my colleagues of a phone 
call I received one night just before the ``Evening News with Walter 
Cronkite'' came on CBS.
  A reporter called me to say that Dan Rather was going to be speaking 
about me that night, and he read to me the piece that had been written 
for Dan Rather to give on the evening news. Frankly, it terrified me 
because if it had been delivered in just the way it was read to me on 
the phone, it would have destroyed my business, destroyed my career, 
made it impossible for me to continue to represent the various clients 
I had in my public relations and consulting firm.
  I said that to the reporter. I said: This is terrible, it is not 
true, and you will destroy my career. We had a brief conversation about 
the details of what it is he had in his report, and he said, well, I 
see your point, I will do the best I can, and hung up at about 10 
minutes before the news broadcast was to begin.
  As anyone can understand, I watched the news with great interest that 
night, and Walter Cronkite began by saying: Tonight, Dan Rather has 
important new information about the Watergate scandal that he will be 
bringing us from Washington. It was about 20 minutes after the hour 
when he got around to Rather, and Dan Rather then gave a report, 
mentioned me by name but said the things that I had said to the 
reporter, along with some of the things he had already prepared. It was 
not a pleasant experience for me, but it was nowhere near what it 
sounded as if it would be some half hour before.
  Within 10 minutes after the news broadcast ended, the phone rang 
again at my home, and it was Dan Rather. I thanked him for paying 
attention to the points I was trying to make, and he said: Well, you 
had a strong advocate, referring to the reporter who had been talking 
to me. Then he said: I have been in this town long enough to know the 
difference between a legitimate news story that has somehow come out 
and a situation that is being laid on me for the purpose of getting the 
information forward. He said: Mr. Bennett, this was not a legitimate 
news story. This is something that was laid on me by someone who 
obviously wishes you ill. Who do you think your enemies might be in 
this situation?
  We then had that discussion. That is neither here nor there, but 
obviously I always will remember that time. We do remember the times in 
our lives when trauma comes upon us. I remembered it fondly, with 
respect for Dan Rather and his willingness to listen to something other 
than the preconception that had been handed to him, and for his 
journalistic instinct to tell him that this just might not be a 
legitimate story, this just might be something that someone was feeding 
to him for a purpose and a hidden agenda.
  We now know about the great controversy that has surrounded the 
documents that have come forward with respect to President Bush's 
service in the Texas National Guard. I regret, from my personal 
experience, to find that this newsman whom I have respected all these 
years is in the center of this particular controversy. It would seem to 
me that this time, Dan Rather's instinct has failed him. The instinct 
that told him some 30 years ago, again in his words, that ``something 
was being laid on him'' deserted him this time. It is very clear that 
documents were forged, they were laid on him, and this time he bit.
  I do not join in the chorus that is arising on talk radio and 
elsewhere that he must somehow be driven from the air. I don't think he 
deserves that. But I do think this is a cautionary tale and we need to 
spend a little time talking about it because it represents a new 
phenomenon in the information age where someone has used information-
age technology to forge documents and then insert those forged 
documents and the false information they contain into the political 
debate at a time that is crucial.
  This is the first indication I know of where we have seen that sort 
of thing, a deliberate attempt on the part of a forger to change the 
course of an election and a situation where respected organizations, 
such as the Boston Globe and CBS News, have been conned by that forger 
and have become unwitting participants in foisting a forgery and a 
fraud upon the electorate.
  I believe I am something of an expert on forgery. In this same period 
of time, back in the 1970s, I worked for Howard Hughes. I was working 
for the Hughes organization when we had two of the most significant 
forgery attempts of the last century. The first one was the 
autobiography of Howard Hughes. The second one was the will of Howard 
Hughes.
  We now know, looking back, that the autobiography of Howard Hughes 
was written by a man named Clifford Irving, who had never met Howard 
Hughes, never spoke to him, never had any contact with him at all. But, 
perhaps a parallel to today's situation, two very respected and 
prestigious national organizations bought the Clifford Irving forgery, 
paying $1 million to Clifford Irving for that manuscript. McGraw-Hill 
Publishing Company was going to publish the book, and Time-Life, the 
publishers of Time and Life magazines, now part of Time Warner, was 
going to publish excerpts from the book.
  I won't go into the details of that, but I do remember very clearly 
when the leading investigative reporter for Life magazine came into my 
office to discuss the Howard Hughes autobiography, and I said to him 
there is no way in the world that Howard Hughes has ever met Clifford 
Irving. That is absolute, provable, irrefutable. Clifford Irving and 
Howard Hughes had never, ever met each other.
  The reporter said to me: That may be true. Irving is probably lying 
about how he got the manuscript, but the manuscript itself is genuine. 
The evidence is overwhelming.
  I said: What evidence?
  He said: The handwriting experts. The handwriting experts have looked 
at the handwriting on the note that Clifford Irving put forward--
supposedly written by Howard Hughes--validating the manuscript, and he 
said the handwriting experts are unanimous, Howard Hughes wrote that 
note.
  Now we know, of course, Howard Hughes did not write that note. 
Clifford Irving wrote that note.
  In the course of his trial, one of the prosecutors said to Clifford 
Irving: Is it really possible that you were the man who wrote that 
note? Is it really possible that you had the skills of forgery so that 
you could write something that would fool the best experts in the 
country on handwriting analysis?
  Clifford Irving took a legal pad, wrote out a letter from Howard 
Hughes to this particular prosecutor, signed it ``Howard Hughes,'' and 
handed it over to him. The prosecutor had it framed and it is hanging 
on his wall.
  One of the major lessons I learned from that experience is that the 
experts can be wrong. The experts can be fooled. A good forger who 
concentrates

[[Page 18519]]

in the right area can, in fact, come up with forgeries that can get by 
some forensic experts.
  I don't think that is the case with the forgeries with respect to 
President Bush's Texas National Guard service. I think the forgeries 
are fairly clumsy and the expert that CBS has quoted validated only the 
signature and not the document as a whole.
  But the thing I have learned from dealing with the Hughes forgeries, 
the fake autobiography and the fake will, is that one must look at a 
forgery not only for the forensic side of it but also for the content 
and ask this fundamental question whenever something magically appears: 
Why did this appear at this particular time?
  If, indeed, Howard Hughes was planning to write an autobiography, why 
did it appear just after there was a major shakeup in the Hughes 
organization and there was a tremendous amount of publicity about 
Howard Hughes' reclusiveness? Isn't that coincidence a little bit too 
close?
  The will that would have left hundreds of millions of dollars to a 
service station attendant in the state of Utah, why did that appear 
just as the press was reporting that Howard Hughes had died without 
signing a will? What caused this to come forward at just that moment? 
Isn't that content suspicious? Doesn't that suggest that somebody has 
an agenda that is not just a coincidence?
  The third area of forgery with which I am familiar says exactly the 
same thing. I had friends with whom I went to college who were killed 
by the forger-murderer Mark Hoffman. Mark Hoffman earned his living 
over decades forging documents that had relationship to the Mormon 
Church.
  Looking back on it, now that Hoffman is in jail, we should have 
recognized, once again, the great coincidence that these documents 
would come forward at just the right time. There would be scholars who 
would be speculating as to whether the founder of the church had any 
connection with folk magic, and suddenly, at just the right time, 
documents saying that he did have connections with folk magic began to 
appear. We now know they were forged. They came from Mark Hoffman. They 
were created out of whole cloth.
  But they seemed logical because of the context in which they came.
  The application of that to these documents relating to President Bush 
is obvious.
  Why, if these documents have been sitting in the records of the Texas 
National Guard for all of these years, did they suddenly come forward 
with exactly the right amount of validation of the accusations that are 
being made by President Bush's opponents at just the right time in the 
campaign when the Kerry campaign seemed to need a little boost?
  That alone, once again, in historic context, says be on your guard. 
That alone should have alerted Dan Rather's journalistic instincts that 
this is not really a legitimate leak. This is something somebody is 
laying on him for the purpose of their own agenda.
  The rest of the press has gone in after all of the forensic evidence.
  I looked at it with great interest because of my background in 
forgery. I agreed that the memos that are purported to be true do not 
fit with the memos that are written in the Texas National Guard. I 
agree that the typeface is suspect. I agree there can be no explanation 
other than forgery for the fact that someone sat down at a modern 
computer and recreated the memo exactly. You cannot do that with memos 
that are typed on typewriters. You have to go back to the original 
typewriter to recreate a memo and have it match exactly.
  I agree with all of the forensic evidence, and I agree that there is 
absolutely no question that this is a forgery.
  But instead of wallowing in the delight of having caught the Boston 
Globe or CBS in their gullibility, having caught them in the mistake of 
having bought this whole thing, let us ask the more fundamental 
question: Who did it? Who is concerned with the campaign to such a 
degree that they are willing to falsify documents and peddle them to 
national media organizations?
  I have heard three explanations. There are people who have speculated 
on this. Frankly, the speculation in its own way can add to the poison 
of this situation.
  The first speculation I heard was that it was done by supporters of 
President and Senator Clinton. As they put it, the Clinton supporters 
want to make sure Kerry didn't win so that the 2008 nomination would be 
open to Senator Clinton, and they are the ones who forged the documents 
and then put them forward in a way that they knew would be embarrassing 
to the Kerry campaign.
  The second speculation is that Karl Rove did it; that the Republicans 
are the ones who did this; that this is a Republican dirty trick; that 
they are so anxious to destroy Kerry they are willing to forge 
documents and foist them onto an unsuspecting CBS and Boston Globe.
  The third explanation, to me, is the only one that makes any sense, 
which is that there is an overzealous Kerry supporter, or, if you will, 
a Bush hater who is really stupid. This was a really dumb thing for 
someone who supports Senator Kerry to have done.
  I cannot believe it was done by anyone in the Kerry campaign because 
they are smarter than that. But very often in politics we have the 
experience called up from my father when someone was trying to help him 
in the campaign: I can take care of my enemies, may the Good Lord save 
me from my friends.
  But someone who wanted Bush to lose and Kerry to win said if the 
documents to support the charge on the National Guard issue aren't 
there, I will see that they are there. I will do it anonymously. This 
will be my contribution to the campaign.
  It is a really stupid thing to do. But I believe that is the 
explanation of where this came from.
  Stupidity trumps Machiavelli almost every time when you are looking 
for an explanation.
  However, I think everyone ought to focus on finding out who did it. 
Until we do find out who did it, we will continue to poison the 
atmosphere with the suggestion that maybe the Clintons did it, maybe 
Karl Rove did it, or the Republicans played a dirty trick. We know 
there are other forces at work.
  We owe it to clear the atmosphere by finding out who it is that 
forged these documents.
  Back to my own history, we cleared the atmosphere with respect to 
Howard Hughes when we found out and made public the fact that the H.R. 
Hughes to whom the million-dollar payment was made by McGraw Hill was, 
in fact, Clifford Irving's wife. She opened a Swiss bank and told them 
her name was Helga R. Hughes, and asked McGraw Hill to please make the 
checks out to H.R. Hughes. And then Clifford Irving's wife deposited 
them into her account. Naturally, the signature card that endorsed the 
check H.R. Hughes matched the signature card in the bank because 
Clifford Irving wrote them. Once we knew that, then the air was 
cleared.
  The air was cleared with respect to the Howard Hughes will and who 
wrote the will. When Melvin Dumar, the service station attendant who 
would have inherited $100 million from Howard Hughes, exclaimed he knew 
nothing about it, yet was surprised when he came forward and was 
confronted in court by the fact that his thumbprint was on the will 
inside a sealed envelope when the will was found. Again, the air was 
cleared, and there was no more mystery as to where this came from.
  The air was cleared with Mark Hoffman and all of the documents that 
he forged when the murders occurred and we found out that he was trying 
to cover up his forgery by killing people who were in a position to 
expose him.
  The air needs to be cleared here. We should not just stop at 
snickering at newspapers and television stations that seem to have been 
taken in. We should go deeper than that and find out who actually did 
it. Then we can lay to rest the conspiracy theory that says it came 
from all of these other places.
  I end as I began by saying, over the years, I have always had a warm 
spot in my heart and a great sense of respect for Dan Rather because of 
the

[[Page 18520]]

way he treated a story in which I was a principal some 30 years ago. I 
know he is a journalist with the highest professional standards. I 
extend to him my regrets at this time that his journalistic instincts 
failed him, and he didn't realize this was one that was being laid on 
him in the hope that he would be taken in. I hope he will recover from 
this. I know at some point he will recognize that he was taken in and 
step forward and make that acknowledgment clear.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have enjoyed listening to my friend 
from Utah. He always speaks eloquently and brings a different insight 
than most of us can to issues. It is a remarkable saga which he 
recounts. It also makes me think that here we are, 6 weeks before a 
Presidential election, which all parties are describing as one of the 
most important in our history, when we are at war and we have 
significant issues of health care, immigration--we could make a list a 
mile long--and jobs, can we keep our jobs in the competitive 
marketplace, and the dominant issue of the moment is the media covering 
the media about something that might or probably didn't happen 30 years 
ago.
  My hope is that we recognize that Senator Kerry served, President 
Bush served, and they both supported the war in Iraq. It is now at the 
forefront of American consciousness. And the question before us in the 
Presidential race is which one of these men is the best prepared to be 
Commander in Chief to lead us into the future? My hope is the media 
coverage would be more on those issues, more on the future. I don't 
want to hear too much more about what happened 30 years ago.
  The distinguished occupant of the chair was heroic in his service 30 
years ago. We admire that. But he spent most of his time looking toward 
the future, as I do mine, and I think the American people do. We are 
not elected to CBS president of the United States.
  It is my hope that whatever the circumstances, if they made a 
mistake, admit it--we politicians have learned the hard way that is the 
best thing to do--and get on with it. Talk about 30 years from now, 
instead of the media covering the media about what happened 30 years 
ago or what might not have happened 30 years ago.
  Earlier, the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, came to the 
Chamber and talked primarily about the devastating hurricane in New 
Orleans. Having lived in New Orleans a year, at the time of another 
great hurricane in 1965, I know how difficult that is going to be for 
New Orleans, Mobile, and that part of the world. Our hearts and support 
are with the people of the gulf coast. We are thinking about them and 
their families and hope they are safe.

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