Journalists at mainstream media outlets rushed to consult with experts to check the validity of the documents. The claims of seemingly legitimate analysts posting commentary online could not be ignored.
"If the blog enthusiasts wanted to write a better scenario, they'd have a hard time coming up with one more spectacular than this one," said Jim Geraghty, host of the Kerry Spot blog published by the conservative National Review, whose e-mail queue was filled by font experts from across the nation wanting to weigh in.
Democrats point to the timeline as evidence of a right-wing conspiracy; Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe suggested to reporters Friday that White House political advisor Karl Rove might have cooked up the memos, presumably with the idea that they would be discredited. A Bush spokesman called the charge "nonsense."
"It was amazing Thursday to watch the documents story go from FreeRepublic.com, a bastion of right-wing lunacy, to Drudge to the mainstream media in less than 12 hours," said Jim Jordan, a strategist for independent Democratic groups opposed to Bush.
"That's not to say the documents didn't deserve examination. But apparently the entire thing was cooked up by a couple of amateurs on Free Republic. The speed with which it moved was breathtaking."
By Friday, articles in The Times, the Washington Post and other news outlets were quoting some analysts raising questions about the CBS documents, and others saying it was impossible to judge the memos' authenticity without seeing the originals.
Rather opened his evening news broadcast Friday with a defense of his report, producing an analyst who vouched for the memos.
But at the same time, one man who Rather had said would corroborate CBS' report -- retired Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, Killian's direct supervisor -- told The Times that he did not think the memos were real.
Media experts said the role of the bloggers illustrated a significant development in the relationship between mainstream news and the still-nascent phenomenon of blogging.
This was the first time, some said, that the Web logs were engaging in their own form of investigative journalism -- and readers, they warned, should be cautious.
"The mainstream press is having to follow them," said Jeffrey Seglin, a professor at Emerson College in Boston. "The fear I have is: How do you know who's doing the Web logs?
"And what happens when this stuff gets into the mainstream, and it eventually turns out that the '60 Minutes' documents were perfectly legitimate, but because there's been so much reporting about what's being reported, it has already taken on a life of its own?"
"All hail 'Buckhead,' " wrote one posting to Free Republic.
"Here, here," wrote another. "But how do we know Buckhead is really not Karl Rove.... "
