-♻RetweetThe Lucy Ramirez Connection
Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 7:51:49 am PDT
In earlier conversations with USA TODAY, Burkett had identified the source of the documents as George Conn, a former Texas National Guard colleague who works for the U.S. Army in Europe. Burkett now says he made up the story about Conn’s involvement to divert attention from himself and the woman he now says provided him with the documents. He told USA TODAY that he also lied to CBS.
Burkett now maintains that the source of the papers was Lucy Ramirez, who he says phoned him from Houston in March to offer the documents. USA TODAY has been unable to locate Ramirez.
When Burkett gave copies of the documents to USA TODAY, it was on the understanding that his identity would not be disclosed. USA TODAY honored that agreement until Burkett waived his confidentiality Monday.
“I didn’t forge anything,” Burkett said. “I didn’t fake any documents. The only thing I’ve done here is to transfer documents from people I thought were real to people I thought were real. And that has been the limitation of my role. I may have been a patsy.”
Another section of this USA Today article shows what a loon Bill Burkett is, and how insane CBS was to tie their reputation to this guy:
Testaments to Burkett’s intense feelings about politics are all over his house. On a side table is a copy of the book Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential. In the front entry is a photograph of Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whom his wife supported against Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries.
After he received the documents in Houston, Burkett said, he drove home, stopping on the way at a Kinko’s shop in Waco to copy the six memos. In the parking lot outside, he said, he burned the ones he had been given and the envelope they were in. Ramirez was worried about leaving forensic evidence on them that might lead back to her, Burkett said, acknowledging that the story sounded fantastic. “This is going to sound like some damn sci-fi movie,” he said.
After keeping the copies for a couple of days, he said he drove to a location he would not specify, about 100 miles from his ranch, to put them “in cold storage.” Burkett said he took the action because he believed the papers were politically explosive and made him nervous. “I treated them like absolute TNT,” he said. “They looked to me like they were devastating.”
Over in the fever swamps of Daily “Screw Them” Kos, they haven’t considered the possibility that there might be more than one “Lucy Ramirez” in Texas, in their paranoid scramble to find a connection with the evil Karl Rove.
Frank says:
