Smoking Gun Update: What Else is the White House Hiding?

SMOKING GUN UPDATE: WHAT ELSE IS THE WHITE HOUSE HIDING?….CBS has posted copies of the four documents from George Bush’s National Guard squadron commander that they made public on 60 Minutes this evening. Here they are:

• May 4, 1972

• May 19, 1972

• August 1, 1972

• August 18, 1973

Full confession: my first reaction when I saw these memos (and heard Dan Rather’s cagey refusal to say where they came from) was skepticism. Were they for real?

Apparently so. In fact, the White House has now released their own copies of two of the memos and doesn’t dispute their authenticity. So if I had to guess, I’d say that these are copies taken from the microfilm archives of the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. How else would the White House have its own copies?

[UPDATE: Because CBS faxed the memos to them, that’s how. See below.]

But that’s just fluff. The real question now is: what other documents does the White House have? Obviously they’ve had these sitting around for a while, and just as obviously they’ve held them back even though they claimed in February that they had made available every known document related to Bush’s National Guard record.

So what else are they hiding? And when are they going to approve AP’s FOIA request to view all relevant microfilm records directly?

UPDATE: I now have copies of the memos the White House released, and they are just versions that CBS faxed to the White House the day before the 60 Minutes segment aired. There’s no indication that the White House had its own copies of these memos and had been sitting on them.

Apologies.