The Finch Formerly Known As Gold

15 September 2004

Forging ahead

Susanna Cornett has come up with a possible profile of the person who faked those infamous CBS memos:

I'm coming down on the side of rabid-leftist geeky on-the-fringe-of-the-important-people guy (I think it was a guy, yes) in his late 20s, who maybe has a dad or an uncle or someone who was in the military, possibly in Texas, who wanted to see Bush go down. He handed it off to someone who wanted to believe, who then handed it off to Rather who wanted to believe. Without the ones so desperately wanting to believe, this would not have gotten legs. And if it hadn't gotten legs, no one would have been able to cut them off at the knees.

This makes as much sense as any speculation I've seen, and far more than the ludicrous notion that the Bush campaign engineered the whole thing. Karl Rove may be the second coming of Machiavelli, but I doubt even he could have plotted something this intricate in advance.

Posted at 8:53 AM to Political Science Fiction