The Senescent Man

As our fellow Bloggers dig deeper into the Thornburgh-Boccardi Report on CBS and Rathergate, we are learning more and more about how Thornburgh-Boccardi let CBS, Rather, Mapes and cohorts off the hook. Blogger Jonathan Last (Galley Slaves and The Weekly Standard) exclaims: It is Worse than We Thought:

The panel reports, "[Typewriter expert, Peter] Tytell concluded that the Killian documents were generated on a computer [not a typewriter]."

So how did Thornburgh and Boccardi manage to walk away from their own expert's decisive verdict? The answer is hidden in footnote 16 on page 7 of Appendix 4:

Although his reasoning seems credible and persuasive, the Panel does not know for certain whether Tytell has accounted for all alternative typestyles that might have been available on typewriters during that era.

Leave aside the "no political bias" finding; leave aside the kid-glove treatment of Dan Rather and Andrew Heyward. This abdication of responsibility by the panel in the face of their own expert's conclusions is so startling that it legitimately calls into question--by itself--everything else in the report.

Check it out here.