September 9, 2004
CBS News and 60 Minutes claims that it has documents from George Bush's TANG service that prove undue influence had been used to get Bush his excellent ratings. As one of the exhibits, CBS produced this internal memo, dated but unsigned and with no letterhead, stating: "Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job. Harris gave me a message today from Grp regarding Bush's OETR and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it. Bush wasn't here during rating period and I don't have any feedback from 187th in Alabama either." As Power Line notes and Free Republic first saw, something is terribly amiss with this memo. Take a look at "187th". The suffix is represented in superscript, which in 1973 could only be accomplished with a typesetting device -- which in 1973 would have cost thousands of dollars, making it extremely...
The son of the officer who supposedly wrote memos in 1972 and 1973 describing political pressure to make George Bush look good in the TANG says that he has suspicions about the authenticity of the documents: The authenticity of newly unearthed memos stating that George W. Bush failed to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War was questioned Thursday by the son of the late officer who reportedly wrote the memos. ... Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father and retired as a captain in 1991, said one of the memos, signed by his father, appeared legitimate. But he doubted his father would have written another, unsigned memo which said there was pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's performance review. "It just wouldn't happen," he said. "The only thing that can happen when you keep secret files like that are bad things. ......
Stephen Hayes writes in a column just made public at the Weekly Standard that a group of independent document experts express serious doubts about the authenticity of the memos CBS used as proof of their allegations against the President. Hayes notes that one of the experts is a self-described Kerry supporter who nonetheless says he is "99% sure" that the memos were created well after their dating: DOCUMENTS CITED Wednesday by 60 Minutes in a widely-publicized expose of George W. Bush's National Guard Service are very likely forgeries, according to several experts on document authenticity and typography. The documents--four memos from Killian to himself or his files written in 1972 and 1973--appear to indicate that Bush refused or ignored orders to have a physical exam required to continue flying. CBS News anchor Dan Rather reported the segment and sourced the documents this way: "60 Minutes has obtained a number of...
As the documents from CBS get wider dissemination and the questions mount about the typefaces and fonts used, other eyes have noticed other discrepancies. A CQ reader who spent decades in the Air National Guard but who prefers to remain anonymous notices the following problems with the memo purportedly ordering Lt. Bush to submit for a medical exam: 1. The format used in this letter, dated 04 May 1972, which was allegedly prepared/published 16 months prior to Lieutenant Bush’s request for discharge, is completely wrong, as the letter is formatted in a manner that was not used by the Air Force until the very late 1980’s/early 1990’s. 2. The terminology “MEMORANDUM FOR” was never used in the 1970’s. 3. The abbreviations in this letter are incorrectly formatted, in that a period is used after military rank (1st Lt.). According to the Air Force style manual, periods are not used in...
Any hope that the mainstream media would protect its own and ignore the obvious forgeries coming from CBS dies on the pages of tomorrow's Washington Post. Michael Dobbs and Mike Allen report that several news agencies hired documents experts who concluded that the documents were likely faked: After doubts about the documents began circulating on the Internet yesterday morning, The Post contacted several independent experts who said they appeared to have been generated by a word processor. An examination of the documents by The Post shows that they are formatted differently from other Texas Air National Guard documents whose authenticity is not questioned. William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. Documents generated by the kind of typewriters that were widely used in 1972 space letters...
Drudge reports that CBS has launched an internal investigation into the faked documents that 60 Minutes used to attempt a smear job on George Bush: CBS NEWS executives have launched an internal investigation into whether its premiere news program 60 MINUTES aired fabricated documents relating to Bush's National Guard service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. ... The source, who asked not to be named, described CBSNEWS anchor and 60 MINUTES correspondent Dan Rather as being privately "shell-shocked" by the increasingly likelihood that the documents in question were fraudulent. If true, CBS News still has not updated its web site to inform its readers that the documents may be unreliable. If The Dan was truly "shell-shocked", wouldn't he want to pull the story off the Tiffany Network's web site in order to keep a false story from spreading any further? Failing that, he could at least insist that some mention be...
September 10, 2004
NOTE: This post has been substantially updated -- see below. The blog Threshold -55 does some crack investigative work on the Chicago Tribune, which appears to be attempting to "disappear" the Killian-memo story from its archives. Beth and Terry explain how the ChiTrib (whose parent, I believe, also owns the LA Times) keys its archives to allow for searches and how that has been manipulated here: A Threshold -55 examination of the Chicago Tribune website reveals that the newspaper appears to have quietly removed all references to a September 10th front page article that called into question President Bush's military service during Vietnam. The article, "Questions Raised About Bush Guard Service" has been completely replaced with a new article titled, "Bush Piloted Guard Trainers Before He Quit". The new one tries to paint the President as a poor flyer who frequently required multiple approaches to land his jet. The removed...
Power Line notes a rare Dan Rather appearance on CNN, where Rather personally vouched for the authenticity of the Killian memos despite all evidence of their fraudulent nature. He also told CNN viewers that there is no need for any investigation, apparently believing that his own personal credibility can make up for the fact that errors in both content and typography unequivocally demonstrate them to be fakes. No transcript is available as of yet, although hopefully CNN will provide one soon. However, it moves the question from "how did CBS allow such obvious and poor forgeries to form the heart of their story" to "how long has Dan Rather been able to bypass any editorial control at CBS"? Because Rather, it would seem from this new statement, forced the story on the air without doing any journalistic work to verify the facts, something that even bloggers routinely do before writing....
Via Instapundit, the CBS meltdown continues. Just hours after Dan Rather told the nation that he personally vouched for the authenticity of the Killian memos due to the preponderance of supporting evidence surrounding them, the "preponderance" told ABC News that he thinks the documents are forged: Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt." Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud". So now we find out that not only did CBS fail to show the documents to the one...
September 11, 2004
Rowan Scarborough at the Washington Times reports this morning that the signatures on the memos CBS produced to bolster its claim of preferential treatment for George Bush during his National Guard duty are forged: Eugene P. Hussey, a certified forensic document examiner in Washington state, said yesterday there is another flaw in the CBS memos. Mr. Hussey studied the known signatures of Col. Killian on Air Force documents, and two signatures on documents dated 1972 and 1973 that aired on "60 Minutes" Wednesday night. "It is my limited opinion that Killian did not sign those documents," Mr. Hussey told The Washington Times. He said he uses the phrase "limited opinion" because he does not have the original documents. He, like other experts interviewed by the press, relied on copies of originals first obtained by CBS. Dan Rather had earlier tried to pre-empt any debate about the documents by producing the...
CBS has not yet learned its lesson from the Killian forgery debacle, according to CQ reader Retired Military. RM saw the following notice in the Killeen Daily Herald's on-line user forums, which is the newspaper for the community near Fort Hood. Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson are scouting for 60 Minutes producers, who want to hear any stories they can find that cast the military in a bad light: Dear Military Families, We received the email below from Leslie Cockburn, a producer for CBS's 60 Minutes. She is looking into the lack of supplies, equipment, maintenance of vehicles/equipment, etc. in Iraq. If you are interested in contacting her, her email is LCCockburn@aol.com and her phone number in Washington DC is 202 342 9488. In Peace and Solidarity, Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson, for Military Families Speak Out www.mfso.org www.bringthemhomenow.org According to this post, Cockburn's objective approach to CBS News investigations...
Dan Rather interviewed former Texas legislator and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes in order to establish that Barnes used undue influence to get George Bush into the Texas Air National Guard. Rather didn't mention the fact that Barnes has been a major contributor to the Democrats and to the Kerry campaign; over the past five years, he has generated almost a half-million dollars for the DNC and John Kerry, as I reported earlier. Rather treated Barnes as a reluctant witness instead of the partisan he is. However, CBS News did not always treat Barnes with such kid gloves. New Jersey blogger Just Dan notes that as late as June, CBS looked at Barnes more critically as a potential beneficiary of a John Kerry victory: The Kerry campaign has begun tracking major fundraisers using a Trustee Leader Board, CBS News has learned. While keeping tabs on fundraisers is nothing new, the twist...
September 13, 2004
Ratherbiased.com has an instant transcript of Dan Rather's latest evasion of the charges that he used forgeries in a crude attempt to smear George Bush. After noting, finally, that not all of the critics of the documents are "political partisans", Rather latches onto a very arcane defense in order to establish their authenticity: Rather: Richard katz, a software designer found other indications in the documents. He noticed the lower case l is used in documents instead of the actual numeral one. That would be difficult to reproduce on the computer today. If you were doing this a week ago or a month ago on a normal laser jet printer, it wouldn't work. The font wouldn't be available to you. Really? I could also note that the Selectric had a number 1 as well as the lower-case l, unlike some other typewriters of the time. If you think that authenticates the...
Michael Dobbs and Howard Kurtz continue the Washington Post's tough look at the Killian forgeries promoted by CBS and Dan Rather as "authentic", even as late as today, as both their typography and their content clearly show them to be fraudulent. Now their expert witness has recanted his support, leaving Rather twisting in the wind: The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves. "There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are "copies" that are "far removed" from the originals. That makes two "experts" cited by CBS and Rather who have backpedaled furiously in the face...
September 14, 2004
ABC Evening News continues to chase down its competitor, CBS, on the Killian forgeries. Tonight, they broadcast an expose that alleges that CBS ignored the advice of several document experts who tried to warn them that the Killian memos were faked: ABC's Brian Ross interviewed the two experts who CBS hired to validate the National Guard documents and reports they ignored concerns they raised prior to the CBS News broadcast. "I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Emily Will told Ross. "I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it to be misunderstood that I did," Linda James told Ross. Ross reports 2 experts told ABC News today that even the most advanced typewriter available in 1972 could not have produced the documents. Up to now, we assumed that CBS ran with the forgeries not out of malice as much as avarice and ignorance....
September 15, 2004
Drudge links to a Sioux City (IA) Journal interview with Bob Schieffer, host of the CBS show Face the Nation and their longtime Washington correspondent. Schieffer distances himself from both Rather and his network by acknowledging that CBS has to either prove the memos are genuine or withdraw their story: CBS News' Bob Schieffer said Tuesday he hopes the network does more reporting to definitively prove the authenticity of memos 60 Minutes II received about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard. "I think we have to find some way to show our viewers they are not forgeries," Schieffer, CBS' chief Washington correspondent and host of the network's "Face the Nation," said at a news conference in Sioux City. "I don't know how we're going to do that without violating the confidentiality of sources." I believe this is the first attributed source within the Tiffany Network to acknowledge on...
Fox News reported that CBS would be making a statement today at noon ET regarding the forgery fiasco that Dan Rather brought upon the Tiffany Network. If this is their response to the demands for accountability coming from new media and old, then CBS has more problems than just Dan Rather. CBS continues to insist that the memos are genuine, laughably both relying on and disputing the same statement by the octogenarian former secretary of Jerry Killian to authenticate the documents: CBS News continued to defend the legitimacy of its recent story about President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard, even as two experts it hired to examine records CBS used told ABC they could not vouch for their veracity. Meanwhile, a former secretary in the guard said Tuesday she believed the documents in question were fake, although they accurately reflected the thoughts of one of Mr....
UPDATE, 6:15 ET: UPDATE, 6:30 ET: UPDATE, 6:40 ET: Okay, CBS didn't release this on their own website, but Drudge got it instead, from CBS News division President Andrew Heyward: We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television. There was a great deal of coroborating [sic] evidence from people in a position to know. Having said that, given all the questions about them, we believe we should redouble our efforts to answer those questions, so that's what we are doing. As Instapundit and Kerryspot have both noted, Heyward not only misspelled "corroborated" (and they sat on this for six-and-a-half hours?), but they pronounce the memos "accurate" and not "authentic". The message: We presented America with fraudulent materials, for which Dan Rather personally vouched. Having spent the past four days desperately seeking anyone to back us up, we've now given...
September 16, 2004
Bill Burkett, the man suspected to be the source of the forged Killian memos, wrote a scathing editorial piece for Online Journal as an open letter to George Bush, explicitly calling him a "liar" several times. More to the point of the recent controversy, Burkett made a startling assertion in the body of this op-ed piece: George W. Bush, you may be the president [sic]. But I know that you lied. I know from your files that we have now reassembled, the fact that you did not fulfill your oath, taken when you were commissioned to "obey the orders of the officers appointed over you". I know that you not only lied to the American people in 1994, but have lied consistently since then. Mr. Bush, not every serviceman except you is incompetent. When you failed to show up as ordered for duty, they simply recorded the truth. And the...
September 17, 2004
In an article sure to raise blood pressure among CBS and Viacom executives, the Houston Chronicle reports that Bill Burkett -- the main suspect in the forgery scam that CBS propogated -- has a long history of false accusations against George Bush: Bill Burkett, who has emerged as a possible CBS source for disputed memos about President Bush's Guard service, has a long history of making charges against Bush and the Texas National Guard. But Burkett's allegations have changed over the years, and have been dismissed as baseless by former Guard colleagues, state legislators and others. Even Burkett has admitted some of his allegations are false. If that last sentence isn't bad enough, Michael Hedges provides the background on those charges which Burkett has yet to acknowledge as false: In an article Burkett wrote for the Internet last year he compared Bush to Hitler and Napoleon as one of "the...
ABC News finally located retired National Guard colonel Walter Staudt and interviewed him this afternoon. Andrew Heyward will wish that Dan Rather and the CBS News crew had taken the time to do the same before running with the Killian forgeries: The man cited in media reports as having allegedly pressured others in the Texas Air National Guard to help George W. Bush is speaking out, telling ABC News in an exclusive interview that he never sought special treatment for Bush. Retired Col. Walter Staudt, who was brigadier general of Bush's unit in Texas, interviewed Bush for the Guard position and retired in March 1972. He was mentioned in one of the memos allegedly written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian as having pressured Killian to assist Bush, though Bush supposedly was not meeting Guard standards. "I never pressured anybody about George Bush because I had no reason to," Staudt told...
Michael Dobbs pushes the Rathergate story even farther forward in tomorrow's Washington Post, in the first indication that the Kerry campaign may have been explicitly involved in the Killian forgeries: The former Texas National Guard officer suspected of providing CBS News with possibly forged records on President Bush's military service called on Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks" in a series of Internet postings in which he also used phrases similar to several employed in the disputed documents. ... In e-mail messages to a Yahoo discussion group for Texas Democrats over the past few months, Burkett laid out a rationale for using what he termed "down and dirty" tactics against Bush. He said he had passed his ideas to the Democratic National Committee but that the DNC seemed "afraid to do what I suggest." In another message, dated Sept. 4, Burkett hinted he might have had advance...
September 18, 2004
As Dan Rather might put it, a strong preponderance of evidence points to Bill Burkett as the culprit behind the forgeries that CBS used to smear George Bush. His lawyer, David Van Os, turns out to be a powerful man in the Texas Democratic Party, as Power Line shows us this morning. Here's a partial list of Van Os' accomplishments from his resume: * Travis County Democratic Precinct Chairman * Travis County Democratic Party Chairman * Bexar County Democratic Precinct Chairman Another interesting item on Van Os' CV is the final entry, where he notes his assistance in Palm Beach County, Florida, in Democratic efforts for the recounts in the 2000 Presidential election. No doubt that Van Os is well-known for his 30-year party-building work, and as he has now run for the Texas Supreme Court twice (including his current campaign), he has built a strong level of support within...
Bill Burkett made an admission even further than that of his op-ed piece on August 25th, when he stated that he had "reassembled" the files he claimed were destroyed in 1997. The AP reports that four days before that publication, Burkett sent an e-mail to his Yahoo group that describes his contact with the Democratic campaign: The retired Guard official, Bill Burkett, said in an Aug. 21 e-mail to a list of Texas Democrats that after getting through "seven layers of bureaucratic kids" in the Democrat's campaign, he talked with former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland about information that would counter criticism of Kerry's Vietnam War service. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the e-mail Saturday. "I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. (Cleland) said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with," Burkett wrote....
September 19, 2004
As the preponderance of evidence in the Killian forgeries turns into a tsunami that threatens to overwhelm CBS news, the Washington Post reports on the string of events that led to the publication of the forgeries. It looks like the hunt is on for the scapegoat. In fact, one of the people that CBS attempts to hold responsible demonstrates their desperation: In the early-morning hours of Sept. 8, Dan Rather was preparing to fly to Washington for a crucial interview in the Old Executive Office Building, but torrential rain kept him in New York. White House communications director Dan Bartlett had agreed to talk to "60 Minutes," but only on condition that the CBS program provide copies of what were being billed as newly unearthed memos indicating that President Bush had received preferential treatment in the National Guard. The papers were hand-delivered at 7:45 a.m. CBS correspondent John Roberts, filling...
In an intriguing detail to the Killian forgeries, Newsweek reports today that Dan Rather called Bill Burkett offering his continued support the day after CBS ran the discredited story on George Bush's TANG service: Three days before the broadcast, Burkett e-mailed a friend that there was "a real heavy situation regarding Bush's records" about to break. "He was having a lot of fun with this," said the friend, Dennis Adams. Burkett told a visitor that after the story ran, Rather phoned him and expressed his and the network's "full support." Newsweek's source is the friend, of course, and that's based on the oddball testimony of Burkett himself. Burkett's mention of the conversation preceded his outing as a suspect in the forgeries, however, and at least confirms that Burkett sees himself as a primary source for the CBS story. Burkett claims now that someone has killed his dog since he became...
September 20, 2004
According to the New York Times' Jim Rutenberg, CBS management has finally taken the ball away from CBS News and is prepared to admit that the Killian memos were forgeries. They also appear prepared to burn Bill Burkett as their source: The officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air. Had CBS News been more interested in reporting the news than creating it, they could have saved themselves long days of agony and...
In two separate statements, CBS and Dan Rather apologized for using documents that they failed to authenticate in their George Bush-TANG investigation: CBS News said Monday it cannot prove the authenticity of documents used in a 60 Minutes story about President Bush's National Guard service and that airing the story was a "mistake" that CBS regretted. ... In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett "has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source." CBS still cannot bring itself to use the word "forgeries," preferring to stick to the less-egregious assertion that they should have worked harder to authenticate the documents before going to air. They now acknowledge that their "unimpeachable" source was lunatic-fringe ranter...
September 21, 2004
USA Today conducted a remarkable interview with the CBS source for the Killiam forgeries, longtime Bush-hater Bill Burkett, which must be read to be disbelieved. Burkett convulses, Burkett claims he's a patsy, Burkett admits to lying to everyone, and in the same breath says he's still talking to "save his name", which by any standard is a ship that's long since sailed. Burkett agreed to go on the record with USA Today after being outed by CBS as its source, and offered a fantastic explanation of the Killian memos' origin: Burkett's emotions varied widely in the interviews. One session ended when Burkett suffered a violent seizure and collapsed in his chair. Earlier, he said he was coming forward now to explain what he had done and why to try to salvage his reputation. In the past week, Burkett was named by many news reports as the probable source of the...
September 23, 2004
I've received a number of e-mails from CQ readers pointing me towards this story in tomorrow's San Jose Mercury News, a reputable if small central California paper, in which disgraced news source Bill Burkett claims that senior Kerry advisor Joe Lockhart repeatedly asked for the Killian memos: During a single phone conversation with Lockhart, Burkett said he suggested a "couple of concepts on what I thought (Kerry) had to do" to beat Bush. In return, he said, Lockhart tried to "convince me as to why I should give them the documents." Bill at INDC Journal was the first to look into this story, as far as I can tell. I think he takes a pragmatic view -- he wants to watch as the media shreds this previously "unimpeachable" source in order to save Lockhart's (and Kerry's) hide. Bill, as always, plays it smart by not buying into the story. Let's...
September 30, 2004
Attorney and Pace University law instructor Matt Hayes writes an opinion piece today for Fox asserting that Bill Burkett and CBS broke Texas and federal laws in their publication of the Killian fakes: In Texas, the state in which Burkett concedes the false National Guard memos originated, it is a felony to make or present two or more documents with knowledge of their falsity and with intent that they be taken as a genuine governmental record. Under the U.S. Code, use of an interstate telephone wire, such as the one used to transmit an image of the forged documents from Texas to CBS headquarters, triggers federal jurisdiction. ... CBS has cause for concern, too. The documents were not just forged; they were obviously forged to the generation over age 40, which has used both a typewriter and a computer to write; CBS did not have to be misled about the...
October 1, 2004
Don Hewitt, the creator of the original 60 Minutes who recently got pushed out by CBS, spoke out in a South Dakota radio interview on Rathergate and the election: The creator of "60 Minutes," Don Hewitt, said Thursday he would not have done the story on President Bush's National Guard service that got CBS anchor Dan Rather in so much hot water. ... "I never would have done the story," said Hewitt, who retired in June as the show's executive producer after 36 years. "I would have been very wary injecting myself into a campaign. You've got to be very careful that you're not perceived as doing the job that one of the two candidates should be doing himself." Hewitt told the audience that the problem with running a gotcha story like that during an election is that it has to be perfect to be successful; one mistake, and "you're...
October 26, 2004
In a story rich with irony, the Los Angeles Times reported last night -- before NBC made the Al-Qaqaa story moot -- that CBS had the story first but couldn't nail it down before the New York Times published it: CBS News' "60 Minutes" landed a major story last week: the disappearance in Iraq of a large cache of explosives supposed to be under guard by the U.S. military. But the network nevertheless found itself in the journalistically awkward position of playing catch-up when it wasn't able to get the piece on the air as soon as its reporting partner, the New York Times, which made the report its lead story Monday. Breaking the story would have been a welcome coup for CBS News as it seeks to emerge from the cloud cast by its use of unverified documents in reporting on President Bush's 1970s military service. Unnoticed in all...
Alert CQ reader Samuel Silver sent me this article from the archives of CBS News -- the same organization that helped prepped NYTrogate with the New York Times -- which shows that the Third Infantry Division had reached Al Qaqaa and discovered thousands of vials of a mysterious powdered explosive by April 3, 2003 (coincidentally, my birthday): U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad. But a senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the materials were believed to be explosives. Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad. ... The facility is part of a larger complex known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa Qaa [emph...
November 23, 2004
CBS has announced Dan Rather's resignation from the anchor and managing editor positions for CBS Evening News. CBS calls it "retirement," even though in the same breath they announce that Rather will continue to work for 60 Minutes as an investigative reporter: Dan Rather, embattled anchor of the "CBS Evening News," announced Tuesday that he will step down in March, on the 24th anniversary of taking over the job from Walter Cronkite. The veteran anchor has been under fire in recent months for his role in a "60 Minutes Wednesday" story that questioned President Bush's service in the National Guard, which turned out to based on allegedly forged documents. Rather, 73, said he will continue to work for CBS, as a correspondent for both editions of "60 Minutes." Two years ago, this announcement would have been a blockbuster. By this point, the reaction will mostly focus on why CBS waited...
November 29, 2004
Bill O'Reilly issues a scathing editorial on all those who dared to criticize Dan Rather over the forgeries used in the 60 Minutes story on George Bush's Air National Guard service. According to O'Reilly, Rather's torment at the hands of critics using (gasp!) the First Amendment to speak out against him shows that the American system of innocent until proven guilty has been utterly discarded. What a load of horse puckey. The ordeal of Dan Rather goes far beyond the man himself. It speaks to the presumption of guilt that now rules the day in America. Because of a ruthless and callow media, no citizen, much less one who achieves fame, is given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations or personal attacks. The smearing of America is in full bloom. The presumption of innocence relates to criminal proceedings, Bill, not media criticism. Criticism doesn't equate to...
December 9, 2004
CBS News, reeling under the assault on its integrity, has decided to switch to offense ahead of its report on the fraudulent memos published by its 60 Minutes unit. Tonight, CBS reports on bloggers and their supposed lack of credibility and neutrality, a laughable nit to have picked by a news organization that couldn't be bothered to listen to its own document experts: While many are must-reads for political junkies, are some Internet blogs also being used as proxies for campaigns? In the nation’s hottest Senate race, this past year, the answer was yes. Little over a month ago, the first Senate party leader in 52 years was ousted when South Dakota Republican John Thune defeated top Senate Democrat Tom Daschle. While more than $40 million was spent in the race, saturating the airwaves with advertising, a potentially more intriguing front was also opened. The two leading South Dakota blogs...
January 10, 2005
CBS has produced its long-awaited report on the TANG/Killian documents fiasco it started in September last year, when its news program 60 Minutes Wednesday published four memos purporting to document preferential treatment for George Bush. The hammer fell on four CBS employees as well -- three executives and producer Mary Mapes: Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been ousted for their role in preparing and reporting a disputed story about President Bush’s National Guard service. The action was prompted by the report of an independent panel that concluded that CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. The panel also said CBS News had compounded that failure with “rigid and blind” defense of the 60 Minutes Wednesday report. Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard;...
I would encourage everyone to make sure they read the entire report coming from the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel on the Killian memos. I have read a number of comments on my earlier post, and most of you see the report as a whitewash. I agree in part with this analysis, mostly on the question of motivation. The report gives way too much credence to the notion that the only motivating factor involved in Mapes' and CBS' decision to run a story without ever checking its central "evidence" was competitive pressure to air their exposé first. CBS and Thornburgh-Boccardi never discuss in any detail Mapes' five-year quest on Bush's National Guard service, nor does competitive pressure explain how so many safeguards and direct orders from management were ignored, both before and after the segment aired. (See also this excellent piece of reporting by Michelle Malkin.) However, on the question of authentication, the...