"John Roberts, the network's White House correspondent, called to report he'd just completed an on-camera interview with Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. Bartlett, it appeared, had no quarrel with the authenticity of the documents. That was the turning point."
"If we had gotten back from the White House any kind of red flag, raised eyebrow, anything that said, 'Are you sure about this stuff?' we would have gone back to square one," Josh Howard, the program's executive producer, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Friday. "The White House said they were authentic, and that carried a lot of weight with us."
"So Sixty Minutes II went with the story using these documents. The White House released a copy of those documents to the media and Scott McClellan affirmed that the White House believed in the authenticity of those documents."
"Yet, only hours later, an anonymous blogger known as Buckhead posted at freerepublic.com that the documents were forgeries and said "this should be pursued aggressively". And so it was. And the right-wing pack of hounds was off baying for Dan Rather's blood."
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002815.html#moreShort version: the White House (through Dan Bartlett) vetted the CBS documents as authentic. CBS aired the story. Then Buckhead at FR raised the questions. Buckhead, though, is not an expert on typography but a Republican operative. Who fed Buckhead the info to use against CBS?
Lost in the shuffle: the story. The story that the memos told, that Bush* was AWOL, refused a flight physical, just basically quit the Guard before his commitment was fulfilled, and was allowed to get away with it.