I can tell you that my sources, including some with ties to the intelligence community who have experience in such matters, contend that this whole CBS/Bill Burkett affair smells like a classic sting right out of the playbook of Karl Rove, the man behind the controls of the George W. Bush re-election video game.

CBS is on the ropes right now over airing a story based on documents critical of Bush’s National Guard service, documents that now appear to be forgeries. The documents were leaked to CBS by Burkett, who has previously claimed that Bush operatives orchestrated the destruction of National Guard records that reflected poorly on the president.

Remember the Mike Horner case, where CBS in 1997 fell for forged documents from a U.S. Customs whistleblower? Most of what Horner was saying at the time was true, my sources contend. The problem was that Horner couldn’t handle the heat in the kitchen anymore, and so he did fabricate a memo to advance his story.

In 2000, Mr. Horner admitted he forged the memo "for media exposure" and was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison.

... In 1999 Leslie Stahl read an apology on the air: "We have concluded we were deceived, and ultimately, so were you, the viewers."

That same scenario could be unfolding in the Burkett affair, true. But that assumes Burkett acted alone in fabricating the documents. Was he the lone gunman, or were their other players on this grassy knoll?

The Dallas Morning News has come out with yet another story updating the investigation into the “House of Death” in Juárez, Mexico. The current story, like prior media stories on the case, reaffirms Narco News’ original reporting on the whole sordid affair.

In late April, Narco News published a major exposé (called “The House of Death”) about an informant for the U.S. government who was implicated in a series of murders in Juárez -- located just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The informant’s handlers, agents with the El Paso office of the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), were allegedly fully aware of the informant’s complicity in the murders, yet did nothing to stop the killing for fear of jeopardizing the cases they were trying to make with the informant’s help.

The recent story in the Dallas Morning News (ID required) reports the following concerning the ongoing investigation into the case involving that informant, who is known by the alias Lalo:

After some nine days in Cochabamba, Bolivia, participating in the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism, I’m finally starting to get used to the thin moutain air here in the Andes. More importantly, I have gotten a glimpse of another culture, of a land that is experiencing democracy in a more vital way than I have seen play out in the canned elections we experience in the United States.

Here, it seems to me, the stakes of the game are very real, very much in front of the people. In my short time in this country in the heart of South America, I have heard about the struggle to change the country from the bottom up. Although divided at times over strategy, labor and farmers are unified in their quest to return control of the nation’s natural resources to the people in an effort to foster job creation, enhanced living conditions and a brighter future for Bolivia.

The Washington Times breathlessly reported the following from El Paso, Texas, earlier this week:

An unusual narcotics slaying in neighboring Juarez, Mexico, last summer has law-enforcement officials here and in Washington, D.C., asking serious questions about the role of government agencies in handling undercover informants.

Narco News reported in-depth on this story in April. The story revealed that an informant for the U.S. government was implicated in a series of murders in Juárez, Mexico -- located just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The informant’s handlers, agents with the El Paso office of the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), were allegedly fully aware of the informant’s complicity in the murders, yet did nothing to stop the killing for fear of jeopardizing the cases they were trying to make with the informant’s help.

The recent Washington Times story also pulls the following out of the air:

Some "bad blood" between ICE and the DEA remains, sources told The Washington Times, because Contreras was once involved in an aborted attempt to kill two DEA agents in Juarez. Some DEA agents think ICE was aware of the scheme.

Again, Narco News reported the whole sordid affair in April. Here’s a teaser: