Bolo Boffin: Burkett Is The Forger

USATODAY.com

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.

My first position on this was that the documents were forgeries. I backed off of that, because I saw how well they fit in with official documents, and technology of the time could have produced those documents. But when Marian Knox gave her testimony, that was that for me. She was in the position to know, and she declared them fake.

At that point, though I didn't blog it, my suspicions were that Bill Burkett was the source for the memos. My gut was giving me 5-3 odds on it.

Since my intuition has proven right twice in this debacle, I'm going long and loud with this post: in my opinion, Burkett is the forger. He claims to have had the original documents in his hand, and he destroyed them to protect any forensic evidence from his source, Lucy Ramirez. Then he lied about the source, citing "pressure" from CBS News.

I just can't believe this story. I have great sympathy for the struggles that Burkett has been enduring, I do. But the destruction of the original documents is an inexcusable error. Burkett has only himself to blame for suspicions coming upon him now.