Questions about the authenticity of the documents cropped up on the Internet shortly after CBS aired the original story. The questions centered on characteristics that indicated they had been produced on a computer, not on the typewriters generally in use by the National Guard in 1972. Atlanta lawyer Harry W. MacDougald, writing under the name "Buckhead" and posting on the conservative website FreeRepublic.com, raised the first doubt.

"I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old," he said in posting within four hours of the first CBS report.

In short order, several document experts joined the chorus of doubters. Even the document experts CBS used raised doubts.

Burkett, who lives in Baird, Texas, has been a longtime, high-volume Bush critic. He has told many reporters that he overheard top Bush aides order the destruction of Texas Air National Guard records as the then-governor prepared to run for president.

In a March 2003 posting on a Veterans for Peace Web site, Burkett detailed what he said was retribution from Bush for trying to get the story out.

"In January of 1998 and what seems like a full lifetime ago, I was stricken by a deadly case of meningoencephalitis," Burkett wrote, alleging he contracted the disease while in Panama on a punitive Guard mission "after angering George W. Bush by refusing to falsify readiness information and reports . . . and refusing to alter official personnel records of George W. Bush."

"George W. Bush and his lieutenants were mad. They ordered that I not be accessed to emergency medical care services; and I was withheld from medical care for 154 days before I was withdrawn from Texas responsibility by the Department of the Army, by order of the White House," Burkett wrote.

"I was a pawn then caught in a struggle for right and wrong, but also caught within a political struggle between a man who would do anything to be 'king' of America and an institution of laws that we knew as America," he wrote.

Burkett said he had to "relearn to walk and to live."

"My daily pain is far worse than anything I could have previously imagined. I suffer from extreme constant headaches, body pain and even my hair hurts," he added.

Burkett filed an unsuccessful lawsuit alleging the military had illegally denied him medical care.

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Contributing: Associated Press