Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Timeline suggest Burkett call to Cleland coincided with CBS revived interest in story

Allahpundit:

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...The Times says the story became active again in "mid- to late August" when Mapes suddenly claimed to be "on to something". Here again is my post from yesterday morning comparing Bill Burkett's statement on August 13th that he'd found no documentation from Colonel Killian to his cryptic remark on August 25th about having now "reassembled" some of Bush's files. And what about that phone call with Max Cleland? When did that happen? According to today's article in the Post, by Cleland's account it was . . . mid-August. And when did Burkett assert online that he had already given his "information" to the Kerry campaign? According to the article in today's NYT, August 21st.

The point? If the LA Times is right, then Kerry's campaign had Burkett's information before CBS got the memos from its mystery source, a possibility that until now had seemed unlikely given the six-week timeline mentioned in the Post on September 10th. Not only that, but the story seems to have attracted Mary Mapes's renewed attention right around the same time that Kerry's people were getting stuff from Burkett. An interesting coincidence, no? We already know what Steyn thinks.

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UPDATE: I realized after I posted that I neglected to include in the LAT excerpt the info about the fax from Kinko's: According to Emily Will, the copies of the documents she received from CBS had a fax footer with a time stamp of 6:41 p.m. Sept. 2. Presumably, the fax was sent to Mapes at her home in Dallas, which is why she could phone her boss the next day and say she had the docs. It should be noted, though, that the article doesn't say specifically how she got them.

UPDATE: A reader passes along a link to another Bill Burkett message board posting, this one dated August 31st. He talks about trying to contact Kerry's campaign but says he hasn't been able to get through. And then, towards the end, he says something very interesting:

"Many of us have risked everything on this election."

Would the Cleland cell phone call have been when he was doing wheelies outside of Bush's gate trying to deliver a letter about the Swiftvets? That would fit with context of the conversation as described by Cleland. And, who would have given Burkett Cleland's cell phone number? Would his "lawyer" Os have access to Cleland's number?