CBS Expert Has "Lots More Documents"
Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 1:38:50 pm PDT
Kerry Spot has an email from Garry Moon, columnist for the Athens, Ga. Banner-Herald, about James J. Pierce—CBS’s latest expert, identified Wednesday night as having verified their Killian memos:
I called Pierce at about 7:30 p.m. Thursday night. I told him I was with the Athens Banner-Herald newspaper, doing a piece about the Killian memos. He asked me how I got his home phone number, and I told him. I thought he might hang up, but he stayed on the line... maybe because I was upfront with him and not aggressive in asking him questions. He said he couldn’t give me many details about his analysis of the documents that CBS gave him because he was still “in the middle of studying them”. More on that to come...
- The key point: Pierce seemed upset that CBS is using his ‘Professional Opinion’ memo of 9/14 to prop up their defense about the Killian memos being authentic. Pierce said “CBS is wrong, CBS is wrong” to portray it that way, saying it twice for emphasis. He said that his PO memo was only a preliminary judgment, “not a final conclusion” on all the documents.
- The (for me) stunner: Pierce said that the reason he hadn’t rendered a final conclusion yet was that he was only “midway through his analysis” of all the documents - speaking as though there were many docs. CBS gave you other documents besides the four that 60 Minutes used in the story? “Lots more documents” were his exact words.
- Pierce is not happy that CBS plastered his home address all over the Internet (it’s on the ‘professional opinion’ memo in the letterhead). A CNN crew was “banging on his door at 5:00am” on Thursday morning trying to get a statement, and camped there until he called the local police to have them removed from his property. His phone’s been ringing off the hook, and he said a reporter [with a major publication] has been “hounding” him the last couple of days, with veiled threats of some kind of legal action against Pierce unless he gave an interview to the reporter. He said the last few days have been “hellish” for him.
- Pierce came off to me as a very nice fellow, but he sounded tired and even a little bewildered... he’s in a bit over his head, I think. I think I could have coaxed more out of him but I overheard someone calling him to the front door, saying “the sergeant” was at the door, so he had to get off the phone - perhaps he had summoned the police again to hold the CNN hounds at bay (I caught Aaron Brown’s show on CNN last night and they ran a clip of Pierce leaving his house and getting into his car...looked like they were set up across the street from his house).
So it seems like CBS News is - again - misrepresenting what their own experts have told them about the Killian documents. Indeed, given that “lots of documents” are involved, who knows whether the documents that he referred to in his PO actually concerned the four that 60 Minutes used in the story.
