Via Instapundit, the CBS meltdown continues. Just hours after Dan Rather told the nation that he personally vouched for the authenticity of the Killian memos due to the preponderance of supporting evidence surrounding them, the "preponderance" told ABC News that he thinks the documents are forged:

Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."

Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud".

So now we find out that not only did CBS fail to show the documents to the one witness who could have verified them, but they also told him that the memos were handwritten -- which would have made Hodges more likely to accept them as genuine, since everyone who knew Col. Jerry Killian knew he didn't type. This is what CBS said earlier about how important Hodges was in certifying the documents as genuine:

"This report was not based solely on recovered documents, but rather on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources, interviews with former Texas National Guard officials and individuals who worked closely back in the early 1970s with Colonel Jerry Killian and were well acquainted with his procedures, his character and his thinking," the network said in a statement reported on its Web site.

First the documents came from Killian's personal files, until Killian's family insisted that Killian kept no personal files, and didn't type to boot. Then CBS trotted out Major General Bobby Hodges's testimony that the documents accurately reflected Killian's thinking at the time, which the Killian family also refuted. Now we find out that Hodges never saw the documents, were told they were handwritten, and only said that if CBS had notes in Killian's handwriting then the notes must have reflected Killian's thoughts at the time, which is nothing more than a common-sense statement.

The house that Edward R Murrow built is fast crumbling all around one man: Dan Rather. How much longer will this go on before CBS has enough?

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