Kerry camp rejects CBS link

Another Kerry adviser, former Sen. Max Cleland, Georgia Democrat, has said Col. Burkett also contacted him to talk about how Mr. Kerry should defend against accusations about the candidate’s service in the Vietnam War.

Mr. Cleland said he gave Col. Burkett’s name to the Kerry campaign research team.

Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Terry McAuliffe said yesterday he stands by his statement that neither the DNC nor any other Democratic operative had a hand in producing or disseminating the documents.

He said Mr. Lockhart’s explanation that he did not discuss the memos backs up that position.

“I can unequivocally state the DNC had nothing to do with the CBS documents,” he said, before challenging Mr. Bush to be as certain in his own answers. “Why doesn’t George Bush unequivocally state why he skipped that flight exam?”

He said the evidence concerning Mr. Bush’s shirking duty stems from other sources, including reports by the Associated Press, the Boston Globe and U.S. News & World Report.

And yesterday, he repeated his charge that Republicans might be behind release of the memos.

“In today’s ‘New York Post,’ Roger Stone, who became associated with political ‘dirty tricks’ while working for Nixon, refused to deny that he was the source of the CBS documents,” Mr. McAuliffe said.

“Will Ed Gillespie or the White House admit today what they know about Mr. Stone’s relationship with these forged documents?” he said. “Will they unequivocally rule out Mr. Stone’s involvement? Or for that matter, others with a known history of dirty tricks, such as Karl Rove or Ralph Reed?”

Two weeks ago, amid the first stories questioning the documents’ authenticity, Mr. McAuliffe insinuated that Mr. Rove, political adviser to the president, might have been behind them.

Mr. McCurry implied that the White House is keeping the story alive for political gain.

“It changed the subject from talking about Iraq — anything they can do to change the subject,” he said.

For his part, Mr. Gillespie upped the rhetorical ante in the two-week-old controversy by pointing out that forging official military documents is against the law.

“There could be criminal involvement here,” he said. “I don’t know that that’s the part of Kerry campaign. Somebody in this process clearly has committed a crime.”

RNC adviser Terry Holt also doubted the Kerry campaign’s attempt to distance itself from Col. Burkett and CBS, which has apologized for what Mr. Holt called “one of those classic dirty tricks that happen in campaigns.”

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