WASHINGTON — It was the first public allegation that CBS News had used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's Air National Guard service -- a highly technical explanation posted on the Web within hours of airtime, citing proportional spacing and font styles.
But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history, as some first thought. Instead, it was the work of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes who had helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, the Los Angeles Times has learned.
The identity of "Buckhead" -- a blogger previously known only by his screen name on the site freerepublic.com and since lifted to folk hero status in the conservative blogosphere -- is likely to fuel speculation among Democrats that the effort to discredit the memos was engineered by Republicans eager to undermine reports that Bush received preferential treatment in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago.
Republican officials have denied any involvement among those attempting to debunk the CBS report.
Reached by telephone Friday, MacDougald, 46, confirmed that he was Buckhead but declined to answer questions about his political background or how he learned so much about the CBS documents so quickly.
"You can ask the questions, but I'm not going to answer them," he said. "I'm just going to stick to doing no interviews."
Until The Times identified him by piecing together information from his postings over the last two years, MacDougald had taken pains to remain in the shadows -- saying the credit for challenging CBS should remain with the blogosphere as a whole and not one individual.
"Freepers collectively possess more analytical horsepower than the entire news division at CBS," he wrote in an e-mail, using the slang term for users of the freerepublic.com site.
MacDougald is a lawyer in the Atlanta office of the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice and is affiliated with two prominent conservative legal groups: the Federalist Society and the Southeastern Legal Foundation, where he serves on the legal advisory board.
The foundation, created in 1976, advocates "limited government, individual economic freedom and the free-enterprise system," according to its website.
