US: On Wednesday CBS News veteran presenter Dan Rather announced a major exclusive, writes Conor O'Clery
CBS had obtained four typed memos dated 1972 and 1973 from George Bush's commanding officer in the Texas Air National Guard that raised new questions about Bush's military service at home during the Vietnam War.
They showed Bush ignored a direct order from a superior officer.
They confirmed he lost his status as a pilot because he failed to meet military performance standards and undergo a required physical examination.
They revealed pressure from above to "sugarcoat" Bush's record.
Democrats went to town. National chairman Terry McCauliffe suggested Bush had lied by claiming he had fulfilled his duties. But the Democratic euphoria quickly died.
Examination of the documents by experts in other media outlets suggested they were generated on a modern computer using Microsoft Word software rather than a 1970s typewriter.
But CBS News stood firm. "I know that this story is true," said Rather. "I believe that the witnesses and the documents are authentic."
CBS said the memos, written by Col Jerry Killian, were "thoroughly vetted by independent experts".
CBS also said Killian's immediate superior, Maj Gen Bobby Hodges had confirmed that Killian had said the same things to him as were in the memos.
CBS is conducting an internal investigation and Dan Rather is reportedly livid about accusations he was duped But if he was - by whom?
CBS is not saying where it got the documents. The White House did not challenge their authenticity, and gave copies to reporters after getting them from the network.
Republicans cannot believe their good fortune. Other new evidence produced this week by CBS and the Boston Globe that Bush won a coveted spot in the Guard to avoid the Vietnam draft and did not then fulfil his National Guard duties has dropped off the radar screen. The controversy is no longer about Bush's National Guard service but over whether the memos were forged as part of a dirty tricks campaign, either a stupid Democratic blunder or a fiendish Republican plot? In this raw, dirty presidential election campaign anything is possible.
If politics is about marketing, the Republicans are way ahead in the game, an A team competing with a B team from the little league. As Donald Trump remarked this week: "The greatest spin I've ever seen on anything is... that Bush is a war hero and Kerry isn't."
The August campaign by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth battered Kerry's credibility as a Vietnam commander, who still carries shrapnel in his leg.
Their assault has now entered a new phase. The group is running ads showing Kerry's testimony as a 27-year-old Vietnam War protester to a Senate committee investigating atrocities in the war such as that at My Lai in which 569 men woman and children were butchered. The long-haired Kerry is shown giving testimony about US troops behaving "in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan".
Kerry was praised for telling the truth then. Now he is backing away from the words he used. On Meet the Press earlier this year, he said the language was a "bit excessive" and "over the top". "If I had the kind of experience and time behind me that I have today, I'd have framed some of that differently," he said.
This nuance, implying that he wished he had spoken differently only because he was running for president, was seen as a betrayal by many of his fellow "misfits" from the 1970s, an effort to distance himself from the Jane Fonda crowd.
Worse was to come. Kerry retrospectively sentimentalised Vietnam at the Democratic Convention, surrounding himself with his "Band of Brothers" and declaring: "I defended this country as a young man."
Pulitzer prize winning writer and Vietnam war opponent Ron Rosenbaum pointed out in this week's New York Observer that this statement accepts the rationale of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon for fighting on, as if "the slaughter there was somehow defending America".
Even Robert McNamara, the architect of the war, says today it was a terrible mistake.
Kerry is now fighting for election during a war which many Democrats consider to be another terrible mistake. They felt utterly betrayed when on August 9th Kerry made what may be his biggest blunder in a floundering campaign. Speaking to a small pool of reporters on a campaign stop at the Grand Canyon, Kerry was asked to respond to Bush's challenge of the week before.
Knowing what he knows now, would he would still have voted to give the president authority to use force in Iraq? "Yes, I would have voted for the authority," Kerry replied. (Hillary Clinton, asked the same question, was clever enough to say: "It would never have got to Congress.") This effectively made him an ally of Bush on the war and made his sudden attacks this week on the "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" look like political opportunism, or a flip-flop.
Democrats have been agonising all week about why Kerry is slipping in the polls.
Unlike Bill Clinton he is not someone who generates raw passion among the faithful of the kind that Bush is firing up among the Republican electorate campaigning as a decisive, wartime president.
Teresa Heinz Kerry, with her rather disconnected persona, has also not fired up partisans as Hillary Rodham Clinton did 12 years ago, and she did not help the candidate this week by calling anyone who disagreed with her husband's health plan an "idiot".
John Edwards has shrunk in stature and is not making an impact. And in the opinion of some angry Democratic insiders the fault partly lies with Kerry's close adviser, Bob Shrum, who was the strategist behind Al Gore's campaign in 2000 and six losing presidential campaigns before that, earning him the jokey title of "the curse".
"Shrummie", according to a one time associate, is probably the most brilliant speech writer in the US, "but he over-thinks things and is a Washington insider who is a bit disconnected from real life."
Clinton's key strategist, James Carville, makes no secret of his disdain for Shrum's supposedly-convoluted take on every issue.
Kerry is now said to be relying more on an old tough-talking political pal John Sasso rather than Shrum for key on-the-run decisions on the campaign trail. Kerry has also packed his campaign with Clintonites who at least know how to win. Democrats look to the debates now to turn the campaign around.
The first is in Florida on September 29th (if there's anything left of the hurricane-bashed state by then). They recall that at this stage in 2000 Al Gore was several points ahead but George Bush pulled back after doing well in the debates.