CBS News & Misinformation

[Sparrowhawk]

It used to be the KGB was king of dis-information and for awhile Baghdad Bob held that title, today its CBS News and Dan Rather that continue to hold on to its phony story. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I stand by my...

[Sparrowhawk]

CBS And Dan (http://www.ratherbiased.com/news/)

[Sparrowhawk]

What Bloggers can do, and know.. LMAO

<hr>




Best of the Web Today - September 13, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO


Dan Rather Goes Monkeyfishing
As everyone knows by now, last week "60 Minutes" aired a "report" by "newsman" Dan Rather that "revealed" something damaging about President Bush's early 1970s service in the Texas Air National Guard. Exactly what, we do not know; as we noted Thursday, we find the topic too boring to think about.

But it turns out there is a fascinating story here, a story of journalistic fraud, of bloggers humbling ye olde media, and, very likely, of political dirty tricks. Shortly after Rather's story aired, blogger John Hinderaker wrote a post on PowerLineBlog.com in which he noted that the four memos that were central to Rather's story appeared to have been produced on modern word-processing equipment, not 1970s-vintage typewriters. (The memos' putative author has been dead for 20 years, conveniently for Rather.)

At least one of those memos is unquestionably fraudulent. Blogger Charles Johnson typed the text of the memo, putatively written on Saturday, Aug. 18, 1973, into Microsoft Word using the Times New Roman font and default tab-stop and margin settings. The result was an exact match: Everything from which words fell on which line to the annoying little superscript th after an ordinal number was identical. Here is an animated GIF file Johnson prepared that shows the CBS version and his re-creation:


http://opinionjournal.com/best/cya.gif


Although this is overwhelmingly persuasive, some are still unconvinced, and CBS so far stands by its story. But the network's own defense proves beyond any doubt that the document is phony. Here is what the network had to say in a Friday press release, which also includes the transcript of a segment from the "CBS Evening News" in which Rather defends his "reporting":

Marcel Mately, the document and handwriting expert used to authenticate the documents for CBS News and 60 MINUTES, asserts that copies of the memos critics are examining have been degraded by reproduction though photocopying, computer scanning and faxing and are not reliable representations of the memos.
The obvious point is that the "degraded" documents Mately is pooh-poohing are the same ones he claims to have "authenticated" for CBS. The less obvious point is that the degraded-document defense bolsters the evidence against CBS.

It is true that old documents degrade with wear, copying, etc. But what happens when a document degrades is that it changes in random ways and becomes less distinctively identifiable with the original. Mateley's defense might have been plausible, then, if the criticism was that the CBS documents differed from some known legitimate contemporaneous document.

But a document produced on a typewriter in 1973 and degraded for 30 years does not end up looking exactly like a Microsoft Word document created in 2004. Johnson's investigation shows that the CBS memo is not degraded enough to disguise its provenance as a modern-day forgery.

It's safe to assume CBS itself got snookered here, but by whom? As long as the network stands by it story, it won't say. Presumably, however, its confidentiality agreement with its source is predicated upon the source's not providing information he knows is false. We have no way of knowing who CBS's source is, but it's certainly a matter of great public interest if the Kerry campaign or the Democratic National Committee has perpetrated a fraud, especially one so shockingly incompetent.

[thedrifter]

Dan Rather’s Blunder: The Day Old Media Died?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editorial by CK Rairden
September 13, 2004


The coverage of the presidential campaign saw an interesting turn during the month of August. The most damaging aspect to either candidate came from a group of veterans called the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” But the old media tried to ignore them and shut them out of the campaign. Enter the new media, a combination of the Internet blogosphere, Matt Drudge, talk radio and Fox News. They crammed the “SwiftVets” down the collective throats of the old media, and as they never attempted to do their jobs, they lost the battle. The old media candidate, John F. Kerry, was so rattled that he hid from all media after August 9th. Kerry apparently was paralyzed with fear, afraid to answer the very pointed questions that emerged from the book, “Unfit for Command,” the number one best-seller written by the SwiftVet leader John O’Neill.



So the old media picked last week to strike back. You could just feel the protest, ‘how dare these bloggers and Matt Drudge join talk radio and Fox News and take over the coverage of this campaign.’ So they trotted out old media dinosaur Dan Rather to put these upstarts in their place. Rather and CBS fired up 60 Minutes II with claims of “incredible documents” ready to show that President George W. Bush got special treatment in 1972 and 1973 in the Texas National Guard.



Armed with these memos and a partisan Kerry hack named Ben Barnes, Rather carefully laid out his case. After an interview with Barnes on the program, Rather emerged with “newly uncovered” memos that he believed would damage the president’s chances at re-election. One said that a Guard official was "pushing to sugar coat" Bush's training evaluation. It was cleverly titled “CYA.” So clever--it almost seemed unbelievable. To some folks, it was.



For a few hours, Rather must have been on top of the old media world. It seemed as if this had been handled so clean, and now his old media cohorts would dispatch reporters to demand answers from the president about his Texas National Guard service for the umpteenth time. They would turn this Viet Nam table upside down on the president and hammer him, freeing up their candidate John F. Kerry. But a funny thing happened on the way to the old media lynching of George W. Bush.



The new media stepped in.



They quickly made Dan Rather and old media’s fading credibility the issue. Ben Barnes’ daughter made phone calls early the next day to talk radio stations to politely call her dad a partisan hack and a liar. She was very reluctant to criticize her father but came off as humble and credible while he came off as nothing more than a Kerry operative. Ben Barnes credibility was damaged beyond repair. But it shouldn’t have mattered as Dan Rather still had those “blockbuster memos” that would damage President Bush’s re-election hopes.



According to the LA Times, that began unraveling about 19 minutes after the program ended. Scott Johnson of the blog “Power Line” acted on an e-mail sent to him from a post on a message board that questioned the legitimacy of the memos. Some of the members of the message board apparently began questioning the memos less than 20 minutes after 60 Minutes II had ended. That’s right; the humble beginning of old media’s needed comeuppance came from an anonymous poster on a conservative message board. The claim was simple; it seemed as if the documents were produced on a word processor, not a typewriter from 1972.



At least that’s what a poster said in a thread titled “Documents Suggest Special Treatment for Bush in Guard.”



Johnson posted a link on his Power Line blog the next morning under an entry titled the 61st Minute. Matt Drudge quickly linked to it on the Drudge Report and it exploded from there. Charles Johnson of the Little Green Footballs blog put up an example on his blog with this explanation, “here’s my image where the original PDF document from the CBS News site is overlaid on my Microsoft Word document, showing the exact match of line spacing, character spacing, and character forms.”



It was a near perfect match. Now terms like “forgeries,” and “fake documents” were being thrown around.



The next twelve hours were fascinating, the new media was crushing every facet of the 60 Minutes II story and Dan Rather had no clue how to react. His “experts” were abandoning him, his credibility lay in shambles and the best he could muster was “I stand by this story.” It would be sad if it weren’t someone so condescending and as arrogant as Dan Rather. In less than a day, the story had changed from questions about the president’s National Guard service to questions about CBS and Dan Rather’s credibility.



Old media should have seen this coming. Many of them are now far too partisan and worse they are intellectually lazy. They are losing news consumers to a group of people who are very creative, seem to never sleep and run on a 5-minute news cycle.

Bloggers are a unique breed, some use humor, some simple facts, and some a combination to cite opinion and report on stories. Most use the type of critical thinking that has long been lost in the old media. That’s given them millions of consumers and the new media has used that power well and flexed its collective muscle in the last two months. They used their influence to push the SwiftVets story in August and literally stopped the Kerry camp for over a month. And now in September have derailed Dan Rather’s attempt to derail President Bush and have dominated the coverage of the presidential race for the first 13 days in September.

The domination has been so staggering the question has to be asked—was Dan Rather’s blunder the day old media died?

CK Rairden is the National Editor for the Washington Dispatch.


http://www.washingtondispatch.com/opinion/article_10053.shtml


Ellie

[hrscowboy]

This election cant get here fast enough for me, I am so tired of hearing this crap between kerry and bush..

[CAR]

Cowboy,
Do you think it will get any better in another 4 years??? Simple formula,
Puppet 1 + Puppet 2 + Add mudd = Election
(REPEAT EVERY FOUR YEARS)
(SERVES ONE NATION)

[thedrifter]

Rather Weak... and Embarrassing <br />
<br />
September 13, 2004 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <br />
by Geoff Metcalf <br />
...

[Sparrowhawk]

GLOBAL VIEW
By GEORGE MELLOAN


Kerry's Chances
For a Slump
Grow Slimmer
September 14, 2004; Page A21

Dan Rather's claim of having found a long-hidden stain on George W. Bush's National Guard record seems to be backfiring as news comes out that he and CBS ignored credible testimony to the contrary. It doesn't help that the network news presenter's longstanding sympathies for the Democratic Party are well-known, as are those of quite a number of other TV stars and print newsies.

Further documentation of a general media tilt toward the Dems comes from researchers at the well-respected, albeit admittedly conservative, American Enterprise Institute. AEI economists Kevin A. Hassett and John R. Lott Jr. yesterday revealed results of exhaustive research on press coverage of economic news dating back to the first Bush administration. Bill Clinton consistently got better headlines than the two Bushes on such key matters as unemployment and GDP growth, the researchers say.

Using the LexisNexis database, the researchers sorted through over 13 years of economic coverage in 389 newspapers and the Associated Press. While one could speculate that judgments of what was "favorable" and "unfavorable" were partly subjective, the findings won't come as a big surprise to many people, especially to Republicans. Other surveys have shown that most major-league journalists are registered Democrats, and one might expect that their political affiliations would have some tiny effect on their objectivity. Some polls also show a declining trust in the quality of news reporting, by the way.

But the interesting thing about all this is that no matter how many journos vote Democrat, the U.S. has a Republican president and Congress. So even if some editors let their personal views get in the way of objective headline writing or some big-time anchormen sneer at George W., it apparently doesn't have much effect on how people vote. That would suggest that voters tend to cut through the media fog and listen to what the candidates are actually saying. Or more to the point, they tend to base their votes on an assessment of their personal circumstances.

No doubt John Kerry and his sidekick John Edwards, have been wishing secretly that the American economy would go into a funk before Nov. 2. They would of course never admit to hoping for ill fortune. That would be injudicious indeed. But as experienced politicians, they know that people vote their pocketbooks and that a flattening of those wallets would help their chances.

Unfortunately for them, it doesn't look as if it will happen. With only 60 days to go before e-day, there are no portents of the American economy tanking. In fact, the latest vital signs have suggested improvement in economic health, particularly with regard to prices and employment.

Last Friday, for example, the government reported that the producer price index actually declined slightly in August, confounding widespread predictions by economists of a slight rise. The PPI isn't a dead-certain predictor of consumer prices but the decline made it seem unlikely that shoppers will be getting price shocks in November. A recent drop in crude oil prices raises the possibility that voters will even get cheaper gasoline by election day. This news and a comment by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan last week that the economic recovery had "regained some traction" gave both the stock and bond markets a lift. The lower PPI also lessened the possibility of a further ratcheting up of interest rates by the Fed between now and the election, which is good news for homebuilders, auto dealers and the markets.

Now, of course, there are signs of asset inflation, with home prices still climbing rapidly on average. That's bad news for prospective homebuyers. But it is good news for the record 68% of American householders domiciled in a place they own. For many, home equity is going up, which means that they feel richer and always have the possibility of a home equity loan if they get pinched for funds. There's a lot to be said for Mr. Bush's "ownership society" when it comes to cushioning the shock of asset inflation.

Another happy indicator for the Bushies is the high level of employment and a continued decline in unemployment. The latest data show that nearly 140 million Americans have jobs and that the unemployment rate has declined to 5.4%. Only 5% of males 20 years and older, usually considered to be the principal breadwinners in most households, are out of work. Given the number of workers temporarily sidelined for one reason or another at any point in time, a 4% jobless level is usually regarded as "full employment." At that point, a good many job offers go begging. In some areas, worker shortages already exist.

Yet another indicator of well-being, real disposable personal income, has been climbing steadily. This may help account for why retail sales in July were up 5.5% from a year earlier. All this adds up to expectations by economists that the U.S. economy will grow by more than 4% this year from 2003. That's a very respectable rate of economic growth by historical standards, particularly when you consider the huge $10 trillion base. The average rate of growth in the 1990s was 3.3% from a smaller base.

The Bush administration likes to take credit for the recovery and it has a legitimate claim. Instead of trying to finance homeland security and the Iraqi war and reconstruction with higher taxes, it made the crucial decision to lower taxes instead. A reduced tax burden correlates with faster economic growth just about anywhere you look.

The upshot of all that spending, of course, was a large federal deficit, now estimated at $422 billion for the fiscal year ending 16 days from now. Earlier, a $477 billion shortfall was predicted, but faster growth pumped up revenues. The deficit is huge, of course, and Mr. Bush has caught hell from both left and right for not exercising better control of spending. Yet Dems of the past, citing the sainted Lord Keynes, would have argued that deficit spending was exactly the right medicine for recession. A better argument is that when interest rates are low, it's wiser to borrow than to tax.

It's wiser still to control spending. But that's an argument for another time. Right now, Mr. Kerry has a problem. The good times are rolling on.


URL for this article:

Kerry's Chances (http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109512282564516960,00.html)

[enviro]

You're right CAR, however, this has been the nastiest election in history.

My personal belief is that when Al Gore lost the election, and the congress became a majority of republicans, the democrats vowed to make life hard as hell for George Bush. They have succeeded in making everyone miserable.

I think the republicans will counter attack if and when a democrat gets elected. The media sympathizes with the democrats making it even harder for republicans. When the role is reversed, the republicans will be labled by the media as just playing dirty. We've already had a taste of this in the DNC 527s vs RNC 527s.

I think George Bush is the best choice for President - however, the sh|tstorm that follows him will have to be endured by all of us. The democrats will make sure of that.

[hrscowboy]

Thats exactly why i said that enviro i am tired of all this crap its time to put whom ever in the office and move on..

[Sparrowhawk]

at this time in history;


We need a "War President," and
http://stupidpoliticians.bizland.com/Kerryfflops.jpg
is not the answer!

[hrscowboy]

man i wish i could get me another pair of ho chi min sandels i like those sandles

[thedrifter]

What's the Rumpus?
I'll show you the life of the mind!




Movie Quote of the Day -- Dedicated to CBS News
Overheard from a CBS News producer to the hitman chosen to forge the Killian Memos for Dan Rather...

"I want someone good, I mean very good, to plant that gun. I don't want my brother coming out of the bathroom with just his dick in his hands."


http://mysite.verizon.net/res7546k/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/godfatherposter.jpg.w180h118.jpg

-- James Caan (Santino "Sonny" Corleone) in the The Godfather

[thedrifter]

DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX TUE SEP 14, 2004 17:48:35 ET XXXXX

TEXAS GUARD SECRETARY SURFACES: SAYS CBS DOCS 'FORGERIES', BUT STANDS BY ACCUSATIONS AGAINST BUSH

The DRUDGE REPORT has found Lt. Col. Jerry Killian's former secretary who claims that the Texas Air National Guard documents offered by CBS in its 60 MINUTES II report filed by Dan Rather last week are indeed 'forgeries'.

"I did not type these particular memos. I typed memos like these," Knox told the DRUDGE REPORT from her home in Houston.

"I typed memos that had this information in them, but I did not type these memos. There are terms in these memos that are not Guard terms but that are Army terms. They use the word 'Billets'. I think they were using that to refer to the slot. That would be a non-flying slot the way we would use it. And the style... they are sloppy looking."

But Marion Carr Knox stands by the accusations contained in the allegedly fraudulent documents that Bush skirted a medical and flight exam without suffering institutional repercussions.

"The information in these memos is correct -- like Killian's dealing with the problems."

"It was General Staudt, not then Lt. Colonel Hodges [who succeeded Staudt], that was putting on the pressure to whitewash Bush. For instance he didnt take his flight examination or his physical. And the pilots had to take them by their birthdays. Once in a while there would be a reason why a pilot would miss these things because some of them were commercial pilots. But they had to make arrangements to take their exams."

Knox speculated as to how she thought the forgeries were created saying, "My guess is that someone in the outfit got hold of the real ones and discussed it with a former Army person."

Knox worked for the Guard from 1957 until she retired in 1979, and she was Lt. Col. Killian's secretary during the time President Bush served in Texas.

Contacted by the DRUDGE REPORT, Lt. Col. Killian's son Gary, who also served in the unit during the same period, responded: "I know Marion Carr. I remember her as a sweet lady who reminded me then of a dear aunt."

"But if Staudt had put pressure on my dad, there would have been a blow-up -- instantly. It was one of the reasons they got along so well. They had a mutual respect for one another."

"As has been pointed out by so many others, then Col Staudt had been out of the unit for 18 months. And I stand by my previous comments regarding my dad's admiration for Lt. Bush and his regard for him as an officer and pilot -- which was exemplary."

Knox told the DRUDGE REPORT that she did not vote for Bush in 2000 because he is 'unqualified' for the job, and does not intend to vote for him in 2004, either.

"Bush was not the only person of privilege who had a spot in the Guard. Senator [Lloyd] Bensen's nephew was in headquarters. There was a big jewelery store, Gordons. Their son was in the Guard. The owner of Batelstein's, a posh department store in the area, his son was in. The other kids couldn't get in like that. Hugh Roy Cullen's grandson was also in. He was a big oil man."

Knox, however, did have some kind words about then Lt. Bush.

"[Bush] was always pleasant and gentlemanly to me," she said. "I never noticed him not being respectful. I thought he was a nice young man and that he must have had very nice parents to produce a son as nice as he seemed to be."

Knox has been following the story since last week when the 60 MINUTES II broadcast aired, and on Friday she contacted the HOUSTON CHRONICLE wanting to tell her side of the story. Since then the DALLAS MORNING NEWS has also contacted her.

"What really hecked me off was when it was somebody on TV, associated with the White House, who said that all of this information was lies. And I got excited at the time because I knew that I had typed documents with this information because a person like Bush stood out from the others -- because of his association with his father."

Asked about reports that Lt. Col. Killian's wife and son saying he didn't type, Knox stated, "He didn't need to. He had me."

Knox explains that the August 18, 1973 date typed on one of the "forged" documents proves that they were faked. Group Commander Staudt, who allegedly had been putting pressure on Killian, retired in 1972.

To the best of her recollection, Knox explains that Staudt must have put pressure on Killian in 1972 -- the year he retired.

"If my father was going to type a CYA memo, which he didn't," Gary Killian responded. "He would have typed it himself because he wouldn't have wanted anyone to see it. But it's academic because Colonel Staudt had been out of the unit for 18 months -- as is well documented."

Contacted at his office in Bartlett, Texas, former Major Dean Roome, who served with Lt. Bush, responded to the latest information.

"If the memos are fraudulent, then why were they generated? Roome asked.

"Marion Carr Knox is validating what the rest of us are saying. She says once in a while a pilot would miss a physical because some of them were commercial pilots. I was also a commercial pilot with Continental Airlines. The clinic did not just open up for us to take a personal physical. The Flight Surgeons had to be there along with a full complement of medical personnel. We took our physical during the Uniformed Training Assembly (UTA) just like everyone else."

"The 'former Army person' she references is the person we believe may have created the fraudulent documents in an effort to injure President Bush. He has his own agenda and I doubt that he has any 'real ones' [documents].

Ms. Knox states emphatically that she is not acting for political motives, and has no formal relationship with any political party. She says she just wants to set the record straight.

Developing...

http://drudgereport.com/bushtang.htm


Ellie

[Sparrowhawk]

CBS ows the president an apology as well as to the American people whom they fooled into believing a lie. <br />
<br />
I think this is nothing less then &quot;KerryGate,&quot; he authorized those documents for release...

[Sparrowhawk]

Questions About Bush Memos Linger

NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 2004


"These are not real."
Lt. Col. Jerry Killian's former secretary, 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox


(CBS/AP) 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. Bush's commanders.

On Tuesday, a private anti-Bush group called Texans for Truth offered a $50,000 reward for "anyone who can prove Bush's claim that he fulfilled his service requirements."

Also on Tuesday, Mr. Bush addressed the National Guard Association of the United States conference in Las Vegas, Nev. He honored the sacrifice of National Guardsmen in Iraq and Afghanistan, and expressed pride in his stateside stint in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. He did not address the controversy over his service.

Last week CBS News 60 Minutes reported that documents from one of Mr. Bush's commanders, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, indicated Mr. Bush didn't follow orders to take a physical and that Killian was being pressured to sugarcoat his performance ratings. Mr. Bush's father was a Texas congressman at the time. The network has not revealed how it obtained the documents.

Questions were immediately raised about the documents' legitimacy, with some believing they were produced by a computer not available at the time.

CBS News says the original report used several different techniques to make sure the memos were genuine, including talking to handwriting and document analysts and other experts who strongly insist that the documents could have been created on a typewriter in the 1970s – as opposed to a modern-day word-processing software program.

CBS has also said its story about Mr. Bush's guard service relied on much more than documents. Featured in the segment was former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, a Democrat who claims he pulled strings to get Mr. Bush into the Guard in 1968.

CBS News on Tuesday said the report by Dan Rather did not rely on assessments made by the two examiners quoted in the ABC report, and found it notable the secretary affirmed the content of the documents.

"We continue to believe in this story," said CBS News senior vice president Betsy West.

Emily Will, a documents examiner from North Carolina hired by CBS, said she told the network before the report aired that she questioned handwriting in the documents she was shown and whether it could have been produced by a typewriter.

Her main concern was that she was not provided a known sample of the signature to use for comparison.

Will said she e-mailed a CBS producer and urged her the night before the broadcast not to play up that a professional document examiner had authenticated the papers.

"I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Will told ABC News.

Another expert hired by CBS, Linda James of Plano, Texas, told ABC that "I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it understood that I did."

James told AP late Tuesday she raised similar concerns about signature samples.

"I really pressed that because I knew that other document examiners looking at the same documents would have a real problem authenticating these," she said.

West said Will did not contact the network the night before the report aired.

"I am not aware of any substantive objections raised," she said. "She did not urge us to hold the story."

James told CBS News that she needed to know more about the documents before rendering any judgments, West said. CBS contacted five document experts before the report aired and two since, and continues to report the story, the network said.

CBS News said that Will and James played only a "peripheral role" in assessing the documents, and had seen only one of the four used in the report. Ultimately they deferred to another expert who has seen all four documents, Marcel Matley, and who continues to back up CBS' account.

However, Matley has told CNN, The Washington Post and other media organizations that his work was limited to verifying that the signatures on the memos came from the same source. He did not, he says, claim that the documents themselves were authentic.

Killian's former secretary, 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox, also questioned the documents in an interview with The Dallas Morning News.

"These are not real," Knox said in a story posted Tuesday on the newspaper's Web site. "They're not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him."

Knox told the newspaper she did not recall typing the memos, but that they echoed Killian's views on Mr. Bush. She said he retained memos for a personal "cover his back" file he kept in a locked drawer of his desk, but she was not sure what happened to them when he died in 1984.

CBS News spokeswoman Sandra Genelius said CBS did not believe Knox was a documents expert and that the network believes the documents are genuine.

"It is notable that she confirms the content of the documents, which was the primary focus of our story in the first place," Genelius said.

Questions have been raised for years about Mr. Bush's entry into and service in the Guard, especially a period from mid-1972 to mid-1973 for which there is conflicting evidence Mr. Bush performed his duties. It is known that he missed a flight physical during that time.

The White House contends Mr. Bush received no favorable treatment and fulfilled his duties.

Newly released computerized payroll records show no indication Mr. Bush drilled with the Alabama unit during July, August and September of 1972, The Associated Press has reported.

The Boston Globe newspaper has reported that on two occasions while serving in the Guard, Mr. Bush signed documents in which he pledged to fulfill training commitments or else face an involuntary call-up to active duty.


©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Sparrowhawk]

By Dave Dreeszen, Journal business editor



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.''

Schieffer was responding to a 60 Minutes II report last week that referenced memos allegedly written by Bush's former squadron commander, the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. The typed memos were part of anchor Dan Rather's investigation that asserted Bush benefited from political favoritism in getting into the Air National Guard.


But there has been growing evidence that the documents are forgeries, with national news organizations citing dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from different word-processing techniques to conflicting military terminology.

CBS has stood by its story, with Rather saying there is "no definitive evidence'' that has emeged to prove the documents are fake.

"He is very confident of his sources,'' said Schieffer, who has talked to Rather daily during the flap. "He says he is absolutely convinced these documents are real.''

CBS, which has declined to reveal the source of the memos, has pointed to its own experts who have verified that documents could have been produced on typewriters of the 1970s. But the Washington Post reported Tuesday that the lead expert CBS retained said he examined only Killian's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.

Casting further doubt on the documents, the Dallas Morning News reported Saturday that the officer named in a memo as exerting pressure to "sugar coat'' Bush's record had retired from the Texas Air National Guard 1.5 years before the memo was dated. Killian's widow and son also have told reporters that they doubt he wrote the memos, they did not come from his personal possessions and that he admired Bush while in served in the Air National Guard.

Though Schieffer discounted suggestions that Rather received fraudulent documents, he acknowledged the source could have been a Bush opponent.

"People ask me, 'Do I think somebody was trying to set up Dan Rather?' I say, "No that's completely out of the question,'' said Schieffer, who addressed the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce's annual dinner/meeting Tuesday night. "Would somebody do this in an effort to smear George Bush? That may be so. We're in the middle of a political campaign, and this would not be the first campaign where somebody on one side slipped something to a reporter because he feels it would hurt the guy on the other side.''

Dave Dreeszen can be reached at (712) 293-4211 or davedreeszen@siouxcityjournal.com

[CplDawson]

September 15, 2004, 5:52 a.m.
The First Rathergate
The CBS anchor’s precarious relationship with the truth.

By Anne Morse

Critics are calling the media scandal over the Jerry Killian forgeries "Rathergate." But to thousands of Vietnam veterans, the real Rathergate took place 16 years ago when Dan Rather successfully foisted a fraud onto the American people. Then, unlike now, there was no blogosphere to expose him.


On June 2, 1988, CBS aired an hour-long special titled CBS Reports: The Wall Within, which CBS trumpeted as the "rebirth of the TV documentary." It purported to tell the true story of Vietnam through the eyes of six of the men who fought there. And what terrible stories they had to tell.

"I think I was one of the highest trained, underpaid, eighteen-cent-an-hour assassins ever put together by a team of people who knew exactly what they were looking for," said Steve Southards, a Navy SEAL who told Rather he had escaped society to live in the forests of Washington state. Under Rather's gentle coaxing, Southards described slaughtering Vietnamese civilians, making his work appear to be that of the North Vietnamese.

"You're telling me that you went into the village, killed people, burned part of the village, then made it appear that the other side had done this?" Rather asked.

"Yeah," Steve replied. "It was kill VC, and I was good at what I did."

Steve arrived home "in a straitjacket, addicted to alcohol and drugs" knowing that "combat had made him different," Rather intoned. "He asked for help; that's unusual, many vets don't. They hold back until they explode."

Rather then moved on to suicidal veteran named George Grule, who was stationed on the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga off the coast of Vietnam during a secret mission. Grule described the horror of watching a friend walk into the spinning propeller of a plane, which chopped him to pieces and sprayed Grule with his blood. The memory of this trauma left Grule, like Steve, unable to function in normal society.

Neither could Mikal Rice, who broke down as he described a grenade attack at Cam Ranh Bay, which blew in half the body of a buddy, "Sergeant Call." "He died in my arms," Rice tearfully recalled. Rice described how the sound of thunder and cars backfiring would regularly trigger his terrible memories.

Most horrific of all were the memories of Terry Bradley, a "fighting sergeant" who told Rather he had skinned alive 50 Vietnamese men, women, and children in one hour and stacked their bodies in piles. "Could you do this for one hour of your life, you stack up every way a body could be mangled, up into a body, an arm, a tit, an eyeball . . . Imagine us over there for a year and doing it intensely," Bradley said. "That is sick."

"You've got to be angry about it," Rather replied. "I'm suicidal about it," Bradley responded.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, drug abuse, alcoholism, joblessness, homelessness, suicidal thoughts: These tattered warriors suffered from them all.

The The Wall Within was hailed by critics who — like the Washington Post's Tom Shales — gushed that the documentary was "extraordinarily powerful." There was just one problem: Almost none of it was true.

The truth was uncovered by B.G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran and author of Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History (with Glenna Whitley). Burkett discovered that only one of the vets had actually served in combat. Steve Southards, who'd claimed to be a 16-year-old Navy SEAL assassin, had actually served as an equipment repairman stationed far from combat. Later transferred to Subic Bay in the Philippines, Steve spent most of his time in the brig for repeatedly going AWOL.

And George Gruel, who claimed he was traumatized by the sight of his friend being chopped to pieces by a propeller? Navy records reveal that a propeller accident did take place on the Ticonderoga when Gruel was aboard — but that he wasn't around when it happened. During Gruel's tour, the ship had been converted to an antisubmarine warfare carrier which operated, not on "secret mission" along the Vietnam coast, but on training missions off the California coastline. Nevertheless, Burkett notes, Gruel receives $1,952 a month from the Veterans Administration for "psychological trauma" related to an event he only heard about.

Mikal Rice — the anguished vet who claimed to have cradled his dying buddy in his arms — actually spent his tour as a guard with an MP company at Cam Ranh Bay. He never saw combat. Neither did Terry Bradley, who was not the "fighting sergeant" he'd claimed to be. Instead, military records reveal he served as an ammo handler in the 25th Infantry Division and spent nearly a year in the stockade for being AWOL. That's good news for the hundreds of Vietnamese civilians Bradley claimed to have slaughtered. But it doesn't say much for Dan Rather's credibility.

As Burkett notes, the records of all of these vets were easily checkable through Freedom of Information Act requests of their military records — something Rather and his producers simply didn't bother to do. They accepted at face value the lurid tales of atrocities committed in Vietnam and the stories of criminal behavior, drug addiction, and despair at home.

Perhaps that's because this is what they wanted to believe. Says Burkett: The Wall Within "precisely fit what Americans have grown to believe about the Vietnam War and its veterans: They routinely committed war crimes. They came home from an immoral war traumatized, vilified, then pitied. Jobless, homeless, addicted, suicidal, they remain afflicted by inner conflicts, stranded on the fringes of society."

Burkett, who did check the records of the vets Rather interviewed, shared his discoveries with CBS. So did Thomas Turnage, then administrator of the Veterans Administration, who was appalled by Rather's use of bogus statistics on the rates of suicide, homelessness, and mental illness among Vietnam veterans — statistics that can also be easily checked. Rather initially refused to comment, and CBS spokeswoman Kim Akhtar said, "The producers stand behind their story. They had enough proof of who they are." For his part, CBS president Howard Stringer defended the network with irrelevancies. "Your criticisms were not shared by a vast majority of our viewers," he sniffed, adding that "CBS News and its affiliates received acclaim from most quarters . . . In sum, this was a broadcast of which we at CBS News and I personally am proud. There are no apologies to make."

Sarah Lee Pilley, who ran a restaurant in Colville, Washington where the CBS crew dined while filming The Wall Within, would not agree. The wife of a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who saw combat in Vietnam, Pilley, said she "got the distinct feeling that CBS had a story they had decided on before they left New York." After interviewing 87 Vietnam veterans, CBS chose the "four or five saddest cases to put on the film," Pilley said. "The factual part of it didn't seem to matter as long as they captured the high drama and emotion that these few individuals offered. We felt all along that CBS committed tremendous exploitation of some very sick individuals."

Why would Dan Rather do such a thing? Partly because the stories of deranged, trip-wire vets is much more dramatic than the true story: That most Vietnam veterans came home to live normal, productive, happy lives. Second, Rather apparently wanted the story of whacked-out Vietnam veterans to be true — just as he now wants the Jerry Killian story to be true.

Or maybe — despite a preponderance of the evidence — he considered the sources of these tales of Vietnam atrocities "unimpeachable." As angry Vietnam veterans began calling CBS to complain about the factual inaccuracies of The Wall Within, Perry Wolff, the executive producer who wrote the documentary, claimed that "No one has attacked us on the facts." Despite the growing evidence that he'd been had, Rather also continued to defend the documentary — which is now part of CBS's video history series on the Vietnam War.

Perhaps Vietnam veterans ought to take a page out of the book of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and air television ads exposing Rather's deceits — something along the lines of: "Dan Rather lied about his Vietnam documentary. I know. I was there. I saw what happened. When the chips were down, you could not count on Dan Rather."

Certainly, we cannot count on him for the truth. During a 1993 speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Rather criticized his colleagues for competing with entertainment shows for "dead bodies, mayhem, and lurid tales." "We should all be ashamed of what we have and have not done, measured against what we could do," Rather said.

Thousands of Vietnam veterans — not to mention the Bush campaign — would agree.

— Anne Morse is a writer living in Maryland.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/morse200409150552.asp

[CplDawson]

Welcome Home, and Thank you all for a job well done!

We are proud of you all those home, abroad, and guarding the gates of heaven you salute you all.

You are not forgotten....

[Sparrowhawk]

Letter to Chairman Fred Upton
By Rep. Christopher Cox (R-California)
September 15, 2004

(Editor's note: What follows is the text of a letter requesting that the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications investigate CBS News's use of apparently forged documents in a "60 Minutes II" report critical of President Bush's National Guard service.)

September 14, 2004

The Honorable Fred Upton
Chairman
Subcommittee on Telecommunications

HAND-DELIVERED

Dear Chairman Upton:

This is a request that you commence a Subcommittee investigation into the continued use by CBS News of apparently forged of documents concerning the service record of President George W. Bush intended to unfairly damage his reputation and influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election.

In February 2001, the Energy & Commerce Committee held hearings calling the television networks to account for irresponsibly (and inaccurately) calling the outcome of the presidential election in Florida before the polls had closed. At those hearings, CBS News vowed that the competitive drive to get the story first would be subordinated to "making sure we are correct," given that the stakes -- the outcome of the presidential election -- were so high.

On September 14, 2004, the Dallas Morning News reported that the secretary who purportedly typed the documents used by CBS News to criticize the President's service in the National Guard stated, "These are not real." The Washington Post of the same day reported that contrary to representations by CBS News, the expert retained by the network to examine the disputed memos "made no attempt to authenticate the documents" -- and, according to the expert, "there is no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them." The Post's own examination of the documents found "dozens of inconsistencies" indicating forgery or tampering. "I am personally 100 percent sure that they are fake," the Post quoted a computer document expert as saying.

Despite the growing abundance of evidence that CBS News has aided and abetted fraud, the network has declined to reveal the source of the disputed documents. USA Today possesses the same documents, obtained independently from a person representing them to be authentic, and likewise is refusing to disclose his identity.

Given the shortness of time between now and the election which the apparent fraud is meant to influence, and the even shorter time before Congress is scheduled to adjourn, 1 strongly urge that the Subcommittee move with all deliberate speed to uncover the facts. Thank you for your attention to this important matter within the Subcommittee's jurisdiction.


Christopher Cox
U.S.Representative

[Sparrowhawk]

CBSNEWS PLANS STATEMENT TO 'CLARIFY' BUSH GUARD DOCUMENTS STORY...


<strike>At 12:00 Noon</strike>

<strike>At 2:30 pm</strike>


NEW TIME: 5:00PM

I guess they are having a hard time deciding what to say.

LOL

[Sparrowhawk]

http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2002/08/06/image517703l.jpg

This is the culpid that wrote those memo's CBS Executives are now saying...

picture is posted on the CBS news web site...


Memos (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/10/national/main536134.shtml)

[Sparrowhawk]

'A Preponderance of Evidence'
Wed Sep 15 2004 19:39:35 ET

The CBS News report was based on a preponderance of evidence: many interviews, both on- and off-camera, with individuals with direct and indirect knowledge of the situation, atmosphere and events of the period in question, as well as the procedures, character and thinking of Lt. Col. Killian, Lt. Bush's squadron commander in the Guard, at the time.

The report also included the first television interview with Ben Barnes, a Democrat and current fundraiser for John Kerry, who said he helped get Mr. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard at the request of a Bush family friend.

Numerous questions have been raised about the authenticity of the documents. CBS News believes it is important for the news media to be accountable and address legitimate questions.

Procurement of The Documents

The 60 MINUTES Wednesday broadcast reported that it obtained six documents from the personal files of Lt. Col. Killian, four of which were used in the broadcast. In accordance with longstanding journalistic ethics, CBS News is not prepared to reveal its confidential sources or the method by which 60 MINUTES Wednesday received the documents. CBS News' reporting determined that the source of the memos had access to the documents he provided and an opportunity to obtain copies of them. Our sources included individuals who had first-hand knowledge of the events in question.

Additionally, Mary Mapes, the producer of the report and a well-respected, veteran journalist whose credibility has never been questioned, has been following this story for more than five years. She has a vast and detailed knowledge of the issues surrounding President Bush's service in the Guard and of the individuals involved in the story. Before the report was broadcast, it was vetted and screened in accordance with CBS News standards by several veteran 60 MINUTES Wednesday senior producers and CBS News executives.

Authentication of the Documents

Four independent individuals with expertise in the authentication of documents were consulted prior to the broadcast of the story regarding the documents 60 MINUTES Wednesday obtained: document examiners Marcel B. Matley, James J. Pierce, Emily Will and Linda James.

As CBS News has publicly stated, the documents used in the report were photocopies of originals.

Two of the examiners, Mssrs. Matley and Pierce, attested and continue to attest to their belief in the documents' authenticity. (see attachments 1 and 2) Two others, Ms. Will and Ms. James, appeared on a competing network yesterday, where they misrepresented their conversations and communication with CBS News. In fact, they assessed only one of the four documents used in the report, and while one of them raised a question about one aspect of that one document, they did not raise substantial objections or render definitive judgment on the document. Ultimately, they played a peripheral role in the authentication process and deferred to Mr. Matley, who examined all four of the documents used.

Additionally, two more individuals with specific expertise relative to the documents - Bill Glennon, a technology consultant and long-time IBM typewriter service technician, and Richard Katz, a computer software expert - were asked to examine the documents after the broadcast for a report in the Sept. 13 CBS EVENING NEWS. They, too, found nothing to lead them to believe that the documents did not date back to the early 1970s. They strongly refuted the claim made by some critics that there were no typewriters in existence in the early 1970s that could have produced such documents. (see attachments 3 and 4)

CBS News Experts' Conclusions About the Documents

- Katz believes the documents were written on a typewriter and not a computer. (attachment 3)

- Glennon confirms that the superscript "th" and proportional spacing of the typeface of the four documents were definitely available on typewriters as early as the late 1960s. (attachment 4)

- Pierce believes that the documents in question are authentic as best as he can determine, given that they are copies and not originals. (attachment 2)

- Matley says the signatures are, indeed, Killian's. (attachment 1)

Again, the documents used for the 60 MINUTES Wednesday report were copies, and most of the analysis fueling the current controversy is based on scanned, downloaded, faxed or re-copied copies. For now, the disagreements among "dueling experts" have not been resolved.

Other Issues

Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, who was group commander of Lt. Bush's squadron, has stated to The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, among others, that he believes the documents are not real, but also told The New York Times, in an article that appeared on Sept. 12, that the information in the CBS News report "...reflected issues he and Col. Killian had discussed-namely Mr. Bush's failure to appear for a physical, which military records released previously by the White House show, led to a suspension from flying." That is consistent with what he told CBS News off-camera as part of the research for this report.

A reference in one memo to Gen. Buck Staudt applying pressure on behalf of Lt. Bush raised questions because Staudt had left his job 18 months before the memo was written. But CBS News' background reporting determined that Staudt remained a powerful figure in the Guard for years after his retirement, a fact that is confirmed by Ms. Knox in a newspaper interview. More importantly, the same memo referred to unhappiness in Austin, an obvious reference to Staudt's successor at the Austin, Texas, headquarters of the Texas Air National Guard.

Conclusions

The editorial content of the report was not based solely on the physical documents, but also on numerous credible sources who supported what the documents said.

Through all of the frenzied debate of the past week, the basic content of the 60 MINUTES Wednesday report - that President Bush received preferential treatment to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard and that he may not have fulfilled all of the requirements -- has not been substantially challenged.

CBS News will make every effort to resolve the contradictions and answer the unanswered questions about the documents and will continue to report on all aspects of the story.

END

[Sparrowhawk]

Washingtonpost.com


Rather Talks of Questions On Papers
Controversy About Bush and Guard 'Not About Me'
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 16, 2004; Page A01


CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged for the first time yesterday that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents he used to question President Bush's National Guard record last week on "60 Minutes."

"If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story," Rather said in an interview last night. "Any time I'm wrong, I want to be right out front and say, 'Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.' "

Rather spoke after interviewing the secretary to Bush's former squadron commander, who told him that the memos attributed to her late boss are fake -- but that they reflect the commander's belief that Bush was receiving preferential treatment to escape some of his Guard commitments.

The former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, is the latest person to raise questions about the "60 Minutes" story, which Rather and top CBS officials still defend while vowing to investigate mounting questions about whether the 30-year-old documents used in the story were part of a hoax. Their shift in tone yesterday came as GOP critics as well as some media commentators demanded that the story be retracted and suggested that Rather should step down.

"This is not about me," Rather said before anchoring last night's newscast. "I recognize that those who didn't want the information out and tried to discredit the story are trying to make it about me, and I accept that."

For Rather, 72, it is an all-too-familiar role. In his CBS career, he has survived an impertinent exchange with President Richard M. Nixon during Watergate, a clandestine trek through the mountains of Afghanistan, an on-air confrontation with George H.W. Bush over Iran-contra and a much-debated sitdown with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

Now, on the final leg of a career launched by a Texas hurricane, Rather is trying to weather his biggest storm. And some of his closest friends and associates are concerned.

"I think this is very, very serious," said Bob Schieffer, CBS's chief Washington correspondent. "When Dan tells me these documents are not forgeries, I believe him. But somehow we've got to find a way to show people these documents are not forgeries." Some friends of Rather, whose contract runs until the end of 2006, are discussing whether he might be forced to make an early exit from CBS.

In her interview with Rather yesterday, Knox repeated her contention that the documents used by "60 Minutes" were bogus. Knox, 86, worked for Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian while he supervised Bush's unit in the early 1970s.

"I know that I didn't type them," Knox said of the Killian memos. "However, the information in there is correct," she said, adding that Killian and the other officers would "snicker about what [Bush] was getting away with."

Rather said he was "relieved and pleased" by Knox's comments that the disputed memos reflected Killian's view of the favorable treatment that Bush received in the military unit. But he said, "I take very seriously her belief that the documents are not authentic." If Knox is right, Rather said, the public "won't hear about it from a spokesman. They'll learn it from me."

But he also delivered a message to "our journalistic competitors," including The Washington Post and rival networks: "Instead of asking President Bush and his staff questions about what is true and not true about the president's military service, they ask me questions: 'How do you know this and that about the documents?' "

CBS News President Andrew Heyward defended the work that went into the Guard story. "I feel that we did a tremendous amount of reporting before the story went on the air or we wouldn't have put it on the air," Heyward said last night. "But we want to get to the bottom of these unresolved issues," including questions about the memos' typography, signatures and format. "There's such a ferocious debate about these documents."

Heyward said the account by Knox is "significant, which is why we're putting it on our prime-time program," "60 Minutes."

As a former Houston reporter, White House correspondent and "60 Minutes" regular, Rather has always taken pride in unchaining himself from the anchor desk to cover wars, political campaigns and various other crises. Determined not to be just a multimillion-dollar news reader like some younger-generation stars, he continued to anchor "48 Hours" before finally giving it up and to contribute pieces to "60 Minutes," even at the cost of being stretched thin. So it was not unusual for Rather to be crashing an investigative piece, as he did last week.

The most controversial of the three broadcast network anchors who took the reins in the early 1980s -- the others are ABC's Peter Jennings, 66, and NBC's Tom Brokaw, 64, who is retiring after the election -- Rather has long drawn the most headlines and the sharpest criticism from conservatives who view him as biased.

"Dan is a lightning rod, compared to Brokaw and Jennings, because of his personality," said Lawrence Grossman, a former president of PBS and NBC News. "He's had some very strange incidents. His colorful use of language makes him a little quirky in many people's eyes. So he's a little vulnerable."

But ABC News executive Tom Bettag, who once produced Rather's evening news, said his friend has been "quite extraordinary" in shouldering the burden. "He is the sort of person who could easily say 'this is a team effort,' but he's one of those anchors who puts it all on his shoulders and doesn't pass it down the line to anyone else," Bettag said.

Bernard Goldberg, a longtime CBS correspondent who has turned sharply critical of his former employer, said he believes that Rather was duped and will survive. But, he said, "CBS News is acting the way the Nixon administration did during Watergate. I'm really sad to say that Dan Rather is acting like Richard Nixon. It's the coverup, it's the stonewalling."

Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, said that "if it turns out CBS got this wrong, it's very damaging." He added that Rather "has a 'hot' personality that provokes strong reactions."

That may be an understatement. Rather has a penchant for down-home Texas truisms, the sort of globe-trotting that earned him the nickname "Gunga Dan" for his Afghan foray, and plain old strange behavior -- such as signing off his broadcasts for a time with the word "courage."

In 1986, he was mugged on Park Avenue with one of his attackers shouting, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" In 1987, the network went to black because Rather had angrily walked off the set in the belief that a U.S. Open tennis match would bump his broadcast. In 1988, he got into an emotional shouting match with then-Vice President Bush, who accused Rather of being unfair. In 2001, he apologized for speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Texas in which his daughter was involved.

His career has seemed revitalized in the past year and a half. He landed an interview with then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein shortly before the U.S. invaded Iraq and the first sitdown with Bill Clinton about his autobiography. And with producer Mary Mapes, who also spearheaded the National Guard story, Rather broke the news of Iraqi prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib -- after agreeing to a two-week delay at the Bush administration's request.

Once the most watched of the three anchors' broadcasts, Rather's show has been ranked third for several years. Now he is even the target of a new Web site, Rathergate.com.

Some media analysts are already comparing the Guard controversy to the 1993 fiasco in which NBC's "Dateline" apologized for staging the fiery crash of a truck, and the 1998 debacle in which CNN apologized for the "Tailwind" story that accused U.S. troops of using nerve gas during the Vietnam War.

"Dan knows that trying to do a story about a Republican president is immediately going to stir up a hornet's nest from the conservatives who have jumped on him since the Nixon days," Bettag said. "He could have been excused for saying 'I don't need this kind of grief.' But he didn't."

As Rather signed off to rush back into the studio last night, he sounded a defiant note.

"I try to look people in the eye and tell them the truth," Rather said. "I don't back up. I don't back down. I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces."



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

[Sparrowhawk]

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols2/malkin_new.jpg
Michelle Malkin


Dan Rather, Professional Journalist, and CBS News, Professional News Network, want us to keep believing that they are the ordained purveyors of truth. They are the mature and responsible mavens of media ethics. They are the information gatekeepers with unparalleled judgment, dedicated to the high principles of The Craft of Journalism, unwavering in their crusade for the public interest.


As the saying goes in the blogosphere: Bwah-hah-hah.


With a click of the mouse and easy-to-use Web log software, Internet-savvy citizens across America and around the world are relentlessly unmasking the frauds of snob journalism as never before. The wall between the self-anointed press protectorate and the unwashed masses has crumbled.


Rather and The Suits face crushing evidence that CBS relied on bogus military documents in a recent "60 Minutes II" hit piece challenging President Bush's National Guard service. Questions about the documents' authenticity were first raised last week on the indispensible conservative Internet forum, FreeRepublic.com, then amplified and supplemented by the intrepid independent bloggers of Powerline, Little Green Footballs, INDC Journal and Allahpundit.


Rather and his geriatric empire are combating these powerfully persuasive blogs with anemic smears and sneers. And they are losing so very, very badly that they can't keep on top of their own spin.


Rather recklessly suggests that the bloggers who broke the story are disciplined "partisan political operatives," presumably affiliated with the Bush campaign and/or Republican National Convention. Former CBS news executive Jonathan Klein, on the other hand, suggests that the bloggers are loose cannons and amateur yahoos. The blogger, Klein told Fox News, is a "guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing" without acceptable journalistic credentials or a genuine commitment to "checks and balances."

It's no surprise, of course, that the conspiratorial, central-planning mindset of the mainstream media kingpins conjures up a top-down plot where there is none and where none could ever be orchestrated even if the Bush White House wanted one. Bloggers take orders from no one. But with that irresistible platter of publishing freedom comes a tall glass of responsibility. For serious blogging pundits and news-gatherers and discussion board operators, cyber-cred is everything. Mainstream media anthropologists often attach the adjective "free-wheeling" to the blogger culture — ignoring the flip side of the brutally quick-fixing and 24/7 fact-checking nature of the medium.


What is amazing is that Rather would shamelessly traffic in such paranoid nonsense against conservative-leaning bloggers, without a shred of substantiation, in the middle of his own disastrous journalistic hurricane — and on the heels of CNN's recent disclosure that two of its most prominent talk show co-hosts, Paul Begala and James Carville, have been hired as official consultants to the Kerry presidential campaign but will remain in their current positions at the network.


About these proven Democratic "partisan political operatives," Rather has made no comment on CBS.


As for Klein, his pajama put-down will go down in media history as the death cry of snob journalism.


With amusement, I have watched my colleagues in the Old Media fight every democratizing and choice-enhancing trend during the dozen years I've spent in the information business. They scoffed at Rush Limbaugh as a flash in the pan (and have searched in vain for a commercially viable liberal counterpart for the last 15 years). They sneered at The Drudge Report (then bookmarked his site for hourly reading). They sniped at Fox News (then ripped off every one of Roger Ailes' innovations). They laughed at Regnery Publishing (then snatched up its editors and formed New York knock-offs). They mocked the insurgent New York Post (as their own circulation figures and ad sales tanked). And now, in final desperation, they trash the blogging revolution as an irresponsible pajama party for unprofessional hobbyists (even as they launch their own corporate-scrubbed versions to exhibit their "edginess").


Faced with an unstoppable onslaught of competitive traffic, Dan Rather and the great pretenders in Trusted Journalism have only one choice for survival: Yield.

JWR contributor Michelle Malkin is the author of, most recently, "In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror".

[Sparrowhawk]

Kathleen Parker <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Bloggers knew! <br />
The CBS mess variously known as &quot;Forgerygate&quot; or &quot;Rathergate&quot; is by any other name a seminal moment in the blogosphere that holds promise not only for...

[MillRatUSMC]

Will 2 November ever get here?
All this spinning has to end...
The "truth" is whatever we want to hear.
There's a part in "Battle Ready" by Tom Clancy with General Tony Zinni USMC and Tony Koltz that covers all this.
It's advise given to General Zinni by a member of the Irsaeli Defense Force commander.
Without typing it all out, it has to do with some too firm in the their respected beliefs that no good will ever come from them.
The second are too deep entrenched that no compromise will ever come from them.
The last or final group, has no interest or are they too deep in their beliefs, this group might compromise but it has little or no power.
Those are the problems we face in the Middle East.
As the views from yesterday's news, it's getting worst instread of getting better.
The Muslim clerics have no interest or they deserve a change to their form of life pior to our entry to the Middle East as we see it...

Semper Fidelis/Semper Fi
Ricardo

[Sparrowhawk]

It seems that the fellow that leaked the papers to CBS and Dan Rather is none other then;

Bill Burkett.

Who is Bill Burkett?
Former Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett is the man who claims that Bush and the Texas National Guard cleaned out any damaging information in Bush's National Guard files in 1997.

He has been institutionalized twice for nervous breakdowns and he blames Bush for the military denying him medical care during an illness in 1998.

Burkett has strongly held loony left political views. He has written numerous articles espousing his positions and clearly wishes to sway the electorate. This gives him another obvious motive to lie about Bush's National Guard files.

But, did he go as far as to make up the phony documents he gave to CBS?

Probably. Burkett had said for years that Bush's hatchet men threw out Bush’s documents, but he may have combined several rumors together to put that story together.

Burkett and an 86-year-old woman that is easily swayed for free gifts from CBS is CBS's ace in the hole for this story.

The documents are fake, and the memory of an 86-year-old secretary who has said she hates Bush and supports Kerry for president are what CBS has based this entire story on.

But how do you hold a major news network accountable?

CBS's dis-information reporting reminds of the Arab News Network Al Jazeera, and Democrat Dan of Baghdad Bob.

[hrscowboy]

well here we go again an 86 year old woman that claims killians spoke of bush not following orders and all the information is correct. The white house spokesperson is saying bush is not concerned with the question of the documents authenticity?

Well i dont know about you all, but if someone said all this **** was true and i knew in my heart it wasnt i would be raising hell about it.

[thedrifter]

Rather Confused - And Irritated <br />
Posted September 16, 2004 <br />
By Paul M. Rodriguez <br />
<br />
I had to wait until after lunch before sharing my thoughts because, quite frankly, I was so baffled at the CBS...

[thedrifter]

Not even CBS has gone that far - to accuse Bush of failing to meet his requirements. A statement from CBS says that if the gist of the story is correct, then Bush long ago may not have fulfilled some...

[thedrifter]

C-BS <br />
<br />
By Ann Coulter <br />
<br />
Why do TV commentators on CBS' forgery-gate insist on issuing lengthy caveats to the effect that of course this was an innocent mistake and no one is accusing Dan Rather of...

[thedrifter]

David Letterman February 08, 1995

Top Ten Things Dan Rather Would Never Say On The CBS EVENING NEWS


10. I'm Dan Rather, your love anchor

9. Connie, mind if I borrow your mascara?

8. Wanna buy a fake Rolex?

7. And now a report from our White House correspondent, Howie Mandel

6. Maybe Letterman ought to spend some of that big-time TV money on better wigs

5. That's the news, I'm Oprah Winfrey



4. Hey, let's bomb Alaska!

3. Honey, I'll be home soon--have the tequila ready

2. Good evening. I'm Dan Rather and I'm not wearing pants

1. I made that last story up

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Rathergate . . .


By Larry Elder


Dan Rather, in a breathless "60 Minutes" piece, said he obtained documents showing then-Lt. George W. Bush didn't report for a physical, and his commanding officer accused him of failing to meet National Guard standards.
Mr. Rather also interviewed former Texas House Speaker and Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, who says he used his influence to get Mr. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard (TexANG).
But a funny thing happened on the way to the expose. Mr. Barnes' daughter — after saying she loves her father — called him a liar and said Mr. Barnes told her the opposite only a few years ago. Indeed, during the 2000 presidential campaign, Mr. Barnes dismissed accusations Mr. Bush received favoritism. Daughter Amy says Mr. Barnes is writing a book and spoke out against Mr. Bush to generate publicity.







Mr. Barnes, it turns out, is a vice-chairman to the campaign of . . . John Kerry. But suppose Swift Boat Veterans for Truth co-founder John O'Neill served as a Bush campaign vice-chairman? For mainstream media, that would have meant "case closed." Indeed, the mainstream media virtually ignored the Swift Boaters' accusations until Mr. Kerry's counterassault.
Yet less than two months before the election, a man working for the Kerry campaign makes an accusation he earlier denied — and boom: A one-on-one with Dan Rather on "60 Minutes."
CBS' "60 Minutes" says it obtained documents from TexANG Col. Jerry Killian's personal files. But Killian died in 1984, conveniently unavailable to comment. Killian's son, a former TexANG captain, says the documents appear inconsistent with his father's high opinion of the current president. Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, says her husband wasn't a typist, handwrote his notes, kept no "personal files" and the wording does not reflect her late husband's writing style. Killian's son and widow say they talked to "60 Minutes" before the story aired — yet Mr. Rather did not mention them in his piece.
Former Guard commander Bobby Hodges — one of Killian's "colleagues" CBS used to "verify" the documents — now says CBS read the documents to him over the phone, and he assumed they were handwritten notes. He told CBS the documents addressed issues he and Killian had discussed — that Mr. Bush's failure to appear for a physical (as previously released records show) led to a flying suspension. But once he saw the documents after the broadcast, he concluded — based on inconsistencies he noticed — the documents were bogus.
There's more. CBS identified its "document and handwriting examiner" as Marcel Matley. Mr. Matley, however, says he only examined the signature, and could not verify the documents' authenticity. He also qualified his examination by noting he looked at copies, not originals.
Several outside handwriting experts think the signatures are fraudulent. William Flynn, considered one of the most respected American document analysts, says the documents appear phony. Why? The print type and spacing are "proportional," extremely rare more than 30 years ago. (Proportional means skinny letters like "I" and "t" take up less space, common with modern computers and word processors, not common in the early '70s.) Mr. Flynn notes the line spacing would have been impossible on equipment available in 1973.
Also, the documents showed a superscripted "th" — as in "147th" — when typewriters in those days did not automatically elevate the "th" but typed it on the same line as other letters.
Mr. Rather addressed the "th" superscript controversy by producing a 1968 document with a small "th" next to the numbers "111." But experts say Mr. Rather's 1968 "proof" is not superscript, because the top of the "th" character is at the same level as the rest of the type, while superscripts rise above the rest of the type. None of more than 100 records made available by the 147th Group and TexANG shows proportional spacing or the superscripted "th."
Previously released memos show Killian signed his rank "Lt Col" or "LT Colonel, TexANG," in a single line after his name with no periods. CBS' memos have "Lt Colonel" on the next line, sometimes with a period, and without the customary "TexANG." The documents show the acronym "F.I.S." (Fighter Intercept Squadron), but military acronyms don't include periods. They have the abbreviations "grp" (group) and "OETR" (officer evaluation review) but the correct military terminology is "gp" and "OER."
One May 4, 1972, memo shows G.H.W. Bush's mailing address, which G.W. Bush stopped using in 1970, and didn't use again until late 1973 or 1974 while attending Harvard Business School. Another dated Aug. 18, 1973, cites pressure from "Staudt" — yet Col. Staudt retired a year and half earlier.
CBS said their "evidence" included "... interviews with former Texas National Guard officials and individuals who worked closely back in the early 1970s with Col. Jerry Killian and were well acquainted with his procedures, his character and his thinking." More "well acquainted" than Killian's son or wife?
CBS' Andy Rooney once called Dan Rather "transparently liberal" and advised him to "be more careful." It appears Mr. Rather should have listened.

Larry Elder is a nationally syndicated columnist.


http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20040917-075938-4911r.htm


Ellie

[Jim]

This is not the first time Rather and CBS have pulled this stunt. Several years ago they raked Gen Westmoreland over the coals with the same techniques. I am not a Westmoreland fan but their treatment of the story was completely unprofessional. I haven't watched CBS news since then. It's too bad that the media watchdogs don't provide information about that event as well.

[thedrifter]

The Real Concern About Rathergate <br />
<br />
September 19, 2004 <br />
<br />
<br />
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <br />
by Thomas D. Segel ...

[Sparrowhawk]

EXCLUSIVE // Mon Sep 20 2004 11:58:02 ET
STATEMENT FROM DAN RATHER:

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Sections/Newsweek/Components/Photos/mag/040927_Issue/040918_periscope_hd.hmedium.jpg


Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

[Sparrowhawk]

NEW YORK, Sept. 20, 2004 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
&quot;Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent...

[Sparrowhawk]

rather say

http://vvakerry.bizland.com/ratherslies.gif

[thedrifter]

September 20, 2004, 8:19 a.m.
It’s All About Me
A world exclusive.



EDITOR'S NOTE: National Review Online is instituting a series of exclusive contributions from the most eminent figures of our age. Drawn from all the proverbial walks of life — even your own! — our contributors will reveal themselves as never before to you. The rich, the powerful, the influential, the famous, the really smart, the vulgar...they will all be here only at National Review Online. Celebrities, authors, journalists, TV stars, politicians, international statesmen, top CEOs, rock idols, will unbutton themselves solely for your pleasure. Imaginatively invented and edited by Alexander Rose, It's All About Me's contributors represent the grand comedy and faintly depressing tragedy that is American life as we know it.
***

Our first contributor has been in the news a lot recently. Or should I say, he has been the news for 40 years. But he's no has-been. You've watched him, you've laughed with him, you're laughing at him, it's CBS current-affairs supremo Dan Rather, who tells NRO how he lives with himself.

As the world's hardest-working journalist, I am often approached in the street by fans demanding to know how frequently I'm on CBS — though they often confuse me with Kenneth Anger, who Lesley Stahl once told me I resembled! "Kenneth, what is the frequency?", they ask, politely but firmly, before pummeling me. Well, to use one of my pithiest down-home Ratherisms, you're seeing me more often these days than a Bush-voting southerner is hurricanes!

If you watch CBS Evening News, as many of America's seniors do, you'll know that some partisan "bloggers" — Republicans too lazy to get out of bed in the morning, I think! — are casting doubt on the veracity of documents dating from early 2004 that conclusively prove that George Bush is not fit to be president of the United States, unlike John Kerry. For these people, I have one simple, direct question that you can stick in your own Memo to File: Do you have any idea of how important I am?

I am a world-respected reporter who bases his reporting on unimpeachable sources and anonymous tips, not like that dilettante Cronkite. I report. I report the decisive facts. I report, and I decide the facts. No opinion. Just pure, unfiltered, substantive, fair and accurate facticitude, as we used to say at Sam Houston State Teachers College, my alma mater. As my good friend and fellow "Sam Houstonian," James Carville, remarked over lunch at the Mile Eye Club when the partisan political ideological forces at the Washington Post and ABC started spreading their lies, the sacred institution of nightly network news is the mainstay of our democracy, and has been since the Louisiana Purchase. That's why I am called an anchor — I provide Americans with the kind of weighty news bogged down in silt and covered with barnacles they're crying out for in this information-starved age. In other words, presenting 60 Minutes II is a hallowed trust, a boon to mankind. I am that trusting boon. "Bias" is simply not in my vocabulary. And neither is "Chandra Levy," come to think of it.

If I were not television's most respected newsman, then why is it that I am repeatedly asked by Les Moonves to cover the world's most dangerous assignments? One week, I'm braving the fiery temper of Hurricane Ivan by myself in a rowboat off Cuba; the next, I'm literally "on-air" when I fly — with a monkey test-pilot at the controls, if you can believe that! — the Air Force's untried, experimental nuclear-fission jetplane somewhere over the South Pacific. Or what about the time Andrew Heyward said at the morning conference, after I'd proposed doing an in-depth, challenging story about subversive CIA operations in Western Samoa in 1978, that he wished I'd move there! And everyone else at the table agreed! I'm sorry, pajama-clad partisans, but no other anchor could demand — and receive — so much time off from appearing on CBS network affiliates to get the kind of in-depth, challenging stories I'm renowned for.

Here's another tough question — the kind for which I'm justly renowned. How is it, if my critics are right to say that "Rather has lost it" or that "CBS stands for Counterfeit Bush Scandal," that I have so many explosive scoops in the pipeline? I don't want to spill any trade secrets, of course, but I'm working on two — beat that, Shafer, you loser — blockbuster segments for 60 Minutes II! Tomorrow, I'm flying to Abilene to liaise with an unimpeachable source who's providing me with copies of copies of diaries written by Adolf Hitler between 1906 and 1947. These will finally prove to the world that this gadabout housepainter refused to take a medical exam before entering the Imperial German army in 1914, so rendering him unfit to command Oberkommando der Wehrmacht come 1939. I've even arranged with world-renowned historian Hugh Trevor-Roper to consult them with me, though he hasn't returned my calls. But my producer assures me that Professor Michael Bellsiles, universally regarded as an expert forensic-document examiner in the groves of academe, will be there to authenticate them. After that, I'll be investigating the most controversial story of my career: I can't say much now, but a secret text, typed on a superscript-equipped 1897 model IBM Selectric, called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been provided for my eyes only by an unimpeachable and anonymous source codenamed DAVID IRVING. Its conclusions are going to rock the world. No longer will America believe that Lord Rothschild did not use his family's influence to pull a few strings when he financed the Suez Canal. A few random "bloggers" and the American public as a whole will refuse to believe me, but CBS stands by the accuracy of its story for the moment. Personally, I think the lack of definitive evidence disproving the book's authenticity speaks for itself. That is the real story here.

Courage.

http://www.nationalreview.com/rose/rather200409200819.asp

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Last update: September 20, 2004 at 11:36 PM
CBS: Story on Guard papers was a 'mistake'
David Bauder, Associated Press
September 21, 2004 CBS0921


NEW YORK -- CBS News apologized on Monday for a "mistake in judgment" in its story questioning President Bush's National Guard service, claiming it was misled by the source of documents that several experts have dismissed as fakes.

The story has mushroomed into a major media scandal, threatening the reputation of CBS News and chief anchor Dan Rather.

It also has become an issue in the presidential campaign. The White House said the affair raises questions about the connections between CBS' source, retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, and Democrat John Kerry's campaign.

Rather joined CBS News President Andrew Heyward on Monday in issuing an apology.

"We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry," Rather said. "It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism."

Doubts arose quickly

Almost immediately after the story aired Sept. 8, document experts questioned memos purportedly written by Bush's late squadron leader, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, saying they appeared to have been created on a computer and not on the kind of typewriter in use during the 1970s.

In addition, questions about the documents were raised on a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, less than four hours after the CBS report aired. The following morning, the issue got plenty of attention on other conservative Internet blog sites, including on Power Line (www.powerlineblog.com), a site based in the Twin Cities.

CBS strongly defended its story. It wasn't until a week later -- after Killian's former secretary said she believed the memos were fake -- that the news division admitted they were questionable.

Burkett admitted this weekend to CBS that he lied about obtaining the documents from another former National Guard member, the network said. CBS said that inconsistencies in the cloak-and-dagger account he had given them in the past few days had left the network unable to say definitively where the memos came from. But the network has given up trying to defend them.

"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," Heyward said. "We should not have used them."

Burkett, in an interview with Rather aired Monday on the "CBS Evening News," said he was pressured by CBS to reveal his source for the documents, and "I simply threw out a name that was basically, I guess, to get a little pressure off for the moment."

Burkett, well-known in National Guard circles for trying to discredit Bush's military record, insisted the documents were genuine.

"I didn't totally mislead you," he said. "I did mislead you about one individual."

Burkett said he also insisted that CBS authenticate the documents on its own. Two document experts consulted by CBS later said they raised red flags that network officials apparently disregarded. Rather acknowledged CBS did not properly determine whether the documents were genuine.

The network said it was appointing an outside panel of experts to review the process by which such a flawed report got onto the air, especially one with such explosive implications for a sitting president some 50 days before an election, and it said it would report publicly.

Alex Jones, director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, said questions will probably center on the story's producer, Mary Mapes, who is one of the network's top investigators and who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal photos.

Fallout at CBS uncertain

Heyward said it was not clear what, if any, disciplinary action would be taken against CBS News employees. Besides tainting the network's flagship broadcast, "60 Minutes," the report was a damaging blow to Rather, 72. Some have suggested that the scandal, along with the low ratings of the "CBS Evening News," could hasten Rather's retirement.

By the accounts of Rather and other officials, they began to understand their report was falling apart last Thursday, when Burkett confessed to CBS that he had lied about where he got the four memorandums. While he had initially said he got them from another former guardsman, people at CBS said, he then told them that the documents came through a convoluted process that started with a phone call from a stranger and ended with the handoff of an envelope at the Houston Livestock Show, that city's version of Mardi Gras.

Burkett, who could be seen Monday working on his farm in Abilene, Texas, refused repeated requests to comment.

Ripple effect

The network's admissions quickly reverberated on the campaign trail as Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, demanded that the source of the documents be found and Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said that attention should still be paid to questions about whether Bush fulfilled his service 30 years ago.

In addition, Joe Lockhart, a senior Kerry adviser, said he had talked to Burkett at the behest of a CBS producer. He said there was no connection between the campaign and the memos.

McClellan said the White House appreciated CBS's apology but that there were still serious questions about Burkett. "Bill Burkett is a source who has been discredited and so this raises a lot of questions," he said. "There were media reports about Mr. Burkett having senior-level contacts with the Kerry campaign."

The Kerry campaign has said it had nothing to do with the story.

Lockhart said he had called Burkett at the suggestion of Mapes shortly before the documents were released. Lockhart said he does not recall talking about Bush's Guard records.

Asked why Mapes had suggested making the call, CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards said, "This is an example of the kind of thing that the independent panel that will be named in a few days will look into. When that review is complete, we will comment."

Heyward told the Associated Press he has "no reason to believe either the Kerry campaign or the Bush campaign was involved in this."

The so-called Killian documents indicated he was being pressured to "sugarcoat" the performance ratings of a young Bush, then the son of a former Texas congressman, and that Bush disobeyed orders to take a physical. Killian died in 1984.

Heyward said he did not think CBS' story was the result of any bias against Bush. The National Guard service story was "a legitimate area of inquiry" that several news organizations were pursuing, he said.

The New York Times and the Washington Post contributed to this report.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/4990561.html


Ellie

[Sparrowhawk]

Just hours after CBSNEWS admitted it cannot prove the authenticity of documents used in a 60 MINUTES story about President Bush's National Guard service, top Bush advisers are recommending a CBS reporter be removed as moderator of a planned presidential debate, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

At question is the approved Oct. 13 debate at Arizona State University in Tempe with Bob Schieffer, chief Washington correspondent for CBSNEWS, moderating.

"Considering the circumstances, we should definitely ask that Schieffer be replaced," a top Bush adviser told the president on Monday, according to a well-placed source.

The well-placed source continued: "Who can trust these CBS people to play it straight [during the debate]? I suspect they will be out for revenge."

The president is said to have not made any decision whether to seek a removal of the planned CBSNEWS moderator.

[Sparrowhawk]

By Kevin Johnson, Dave Moniz and Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY


WASHINGTON — CBS arranged for a confidential source to talk with Joe Lockhart, a top aide to John Kerry, after the source provided the network with the now-disputed documents about President Bush's service in the Texas National Guard.

http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2004/09/20/inside-lockhart.jpg http://vvakerry.bizland.com/lockhart.jpg
John Kerry aide Joe Lockhart, shown here in 1998, chatted with a former Texas National Guard officer, whose number CBS provided.
AP

Lockhart, the former press secretary to President Clinton, said a producer talked to him about the 60 Minutes program a few days before it aired on Sept. 8. She gave Lockhart a telephone number and asked him to call Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard officer who gave CBS the documents. Lockhart couldn't recall the producer's name. But CBS said Monday night that it would examine the role of producer Mary Mapes in passing the name to Lockhart.

Burkett told USA TODAY that he had agreed to turn over the documents to CBS if the network would arrange a conversation with the Kerry campaign.

The network's effort to place Burkett in contact with a top Democratic official raises ethical questions about CBS' handling of material potentially damaging to the Republican president in the midst of an election. This "poses a real danger to the potential credibility ... of a news organization," said Aly Colón, a news ethicist at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

"At Burkett's request, we gave his (telephone) number to the campaign," said Betsy West, senior CBS News vice president.

CBS would not discuss the propriety of the network serving as a conduit between Burkett and the Kerry campaign. "It was not part of any deal" to obtain the documents, West said, declining to elaborate.

But Burkett said Monday that his contact with Lockhart was indeed part of an "understanding" with CBS. Burkett said his interest in contacting the campaign was to offer advice in responding to Republican criticisms about Kerry's Vietnam service. It had nothing to do with the documents, he said.

"My interest was to get the attention of the national (campaign) to defend against the ... attacks," Burkett said, adding that he also talked to former Georgia senator Max Cleland and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean during the past 45 days. "Neither the Democratic Party or the Kerry campaign had anything to do with the documents," he said.

Lockhart said he phoned Burkett at the number provided by CBS. Lockhart also said that the documents never came up in his conversation with Burkett. Lockhart said the conversation lasted just a few minutes. "It's possible that the producer said they had documents" before his conversation with Burkett, he said.

At the end of the conversation, Lockhart said he thanked Burkett for his interest, and there was no further contact with him. Asked why he called Burkett, Lockhart said he talks to "a lot of people."

"I called you, didn't I?"

The White House said CBS' contact with Lockhart was inappropriate. "The fact that CBS News would coordinate with the most senior levels of Sen. Kerry's campaign to attack the president is a stunning and deeply troubling revelation," said Dan Bartlett, White House communications director.

Contributing: Judy Keen

[Sparrowhawk]

By Dave Moniz, Kevin Johnson and Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY <br />
CBS News acknowledged Monday that it received disputed documents critical of President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard from a...

[Sparrowhawk]

Rather: CBS was 'mislead' <br />
<br />
Excerpts from Dan Rather's statement: <br />
<br />
&quot;Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 Minutes Wednesday story...

[Sparrowhawk]

"Burkett made some good points, I listened"

Is the kerry campaign going to use that information from Burkett?

Burkett wanted to get to Kerry and CBS made the arrangments.

The Keery campaign then calls Burkett and Lockhart now says,

"Burkett made some good points," and it sounded like something Kerry will be using...

It gets beter and better each day.

[Sparrowhawk]

Gore campaign rejected allegations similar to CBS report, former campaign chief says
- MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004


(09-21) 15:54 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

Former Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign heard but did not pursue allegations about George W. Bush's Air National Guard service, similar to the information in discredited documents aired by CBS News this month, a former campaign official said Tuesday.

Tony Coelho, who ran the campaign for several months in 2000, said he did not follow up on the claims because they were not serious enough to demand further attention.

"Of everyone I talked to, no one had anything that rose to the level that we should get ourselves into," Coelho said.

CBS and anchor Dan Rather apologized Monday for a "60 Minutes" segment that quoted documents purported to be from one of Bush's commanders in the Texas Air National Guard. The documents say the commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, ordered Bush to take a medical exam, which he did not, and felt pressured to sugarcoat an evaluation of then-1st Lt. Bush.

Rather said the network could not determine if the memos were authentic.

White House officials and other Republicans suggested that Democrat John Kerry's presidential campaign was behind the CBS report. Kerry campaign officials denied that.

Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart said he spoke with Bill Burkett, who gave CBS the documents, after a network producer suggested it. Lockhart and Burkett said they only discussed how Kerry could respond to a group of Republican veterans who accuse Kerry of exaggerating his Vietnam War record.

Coelho said he remembered taking phone calls in 2000 from several Texans with allegations about Bush's Guard service. He said he did not remember if any were from Burkett, a former Texas Army National Guard officer and longtime Bush critic.

"I never felt there was anything substantive for us to try to deal with or not, so we never pursued it," Coelho said. "We never had any documents given to us. That would have been something different. We would have had to check it out."


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/09/21/politics1854EDT0752.DTL

[thedrifter]

So, Do We Get to Call Dan Rather a Liar?

September 21, 2004


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Frank Salvato

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now that management at CBS has concluded that Dan Rather and the crew at CBS News were “duped” into the Memogate scandal – yes I’m calling it a scandal – I have one question for the liberal left and the equally liberally biased media, do I get to call Dan Rather a liar?

It may seem a little harsh for people to go around calling poor Dan a liar; after all, he was fed bad information. It would seem just a bit unfair to call him a liar when he was simply acting in good faith, trusting those that surrounded him professionally, his “allies” as it were. In fact, the responsible thing to do would be to examine how information so absurd, documents so tainted, could end up being accepted as truthful. In an effort to learn from the mistakes made it would seem a wise thing to find out where the weakest link exists so the defective fact verification procedure might be corrected, never to happen again. I am sure that CBS News, the responsible news organization that it is, will do just that, right after they impale the scapegoat’s head onto the stake out in front of CBS News headquarters for all to see.

As the “golden chairs” at CBS finally come clean with the American public about the actualities of Memogate – and isn’t it time we stop attaching the suffix “gate” to every scandal that comes to pass? – I couldn’t help but make a parallel distinction between the CBS memo scandal and another scandal that took place not too long ago.

How is it that the liberal left and the mainstream media can so “introspectively” examine the “flawed process” at CBS News, a process that gave us pathetically forged documents designed to smear George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service, and then turn around and embrace those who call President Bush a “liar” about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Aren’t the situations exactly the same? President Bush, the CIA, British Intelligence and even the United Nations were fed bad information on the capabilities of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs yet the president has been continuously called a liar because he trusted information given to him by organizations that were supposed to give him reliable information. What Mary Mapes is to Dan Rather, the CIA, British Intelligence and the information from the UN were to President Bush. Yet Dan Rather was “duped” and President Bush is a liar. There just seems to be a certain inequity about the difference.

This, however, is where the two “scandals” part ways when it comes to how they get reported in the “non-biased” mainstream news media.

While the alphabet networks and their bomb-throwing counterparts in the print media inundate us with every detail about CBS’s memo scandal it is interesting to see that information invalidating Terry McAuliffe’s claim that President Bush is a liar goes unreported. As we read, listen and watch we are bombarded with information about every detail of Bill Burkett’s disgruntled life. Meanwhile, it goes unreported – at least in the United States – that the Italian businessman who supplied the bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger admitted that he was in the pay of France. Hhmm…interesting.

The Telegraph, an British publication, reports that Rocco Martino – or “Giacomo” as he was known in the clandestine circles – admitted to Italian magistrates that he was commissioned by the French government to “produce and circulate” the documents used by the US and Britain in their case for removing Saddam Hussein from power. It is suggested by some Italian diplomats that, “by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade ‘yellowcake’ uranium from Niger, France was trying to ‘set up’ Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.” By any standards this would make Rocco Martino the equivalent to Bill Burkett, Dan Rather the equivalent to the CIA and the American people the equivalent to President Bush.

So, it would seem that we are at a philosophical crossroads. Do we continue to allow Terry McAuliffe and his McAulinistras to call President Bush a liar when he was fed bad information while we accept that Dan Rather was “duped?” Or do we demand an end to the deception, the double-standard, and chastise Terry and the boys for being so incredibly partisan as to use slanderous rhetoric when talking about the President of the United States while embracing those who would forge documents for personal and political gain, all in the name of acquiring power?

Through it all one thing is abundantly obvious. No matter who is reporting what, it is pretty clear who the liars are.


Frank Salvato

Copyright © 2004 Frank Salvato

http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/s/salvato/2004/salvato092104.htm


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Dan Rather Does History <br />
September 21, 2004 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <br />
by Doug Patton <br />
...

[thedrifter]

New Media Claims Bragging Rights in Rathergate Flap

September 22, 2004


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Carey Roberts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When anchorman Dan Rather dropped the bombshell about George Bush’s National Guard service, little did he expect it would trigger a crisis of confidence at CBS News. But once people began to compare Dan Rather’s performance to the antics of former president Richard Nixon, CBS knew it would have to abandon its strategy of plausible deniability.

When people believe that their news is no longer balanced or objective, they begin to look elsewhere. That “elsewhere” has come to be known as the New Media, the thousands of internet sites that have sprung into existence in the past 10 years.

And it was the internet bloggers who hammered away at the obvious forgeries in the fake memos. They tracked down the source of the documents. And it was they who insisted that Rather come clean with an apology.

But Mr. Rather was not the person who did the legwork on the ill-fated 60 Minutes II show. That task fell to producer Mary Mapes. She’s the one who researched the story and obtained the four fake memos.

One would expect a 60 Minutes producer to be highly objective in her work. But recently Mary’s father, Don, appeared on KVI radio in Seattle. When asked about the 60 Minutes brouhaha, Mr. Mapes described his daughter as “a typical liberal. She went into journalism with an ax to grind, and that was to promote radical feminism.”

So much for journalistic objectivity.

It’s no secret that the fem-liberal worldview permeates the Old Media. The Sisterhood doesn’t even bother to deny it any more. Here’s Susan Winston, former executive producer of Good Morning America: “We were feminists. We were liberals, and most of us still are.”

The feminist-driven media rigidly cleaves to three rules in its coverage of gender issues:

1. Portray women as deserving virtually limitless rights, with no corresponding responsibilities.

2. Whenever possible, present men as bumbling fools. If they also can be shown to be abusive clods, so much the better.

3. Never depict men as victims or being treated unfairly.

Take articles about missing persons. People don’t normally consider this to be a gender issue.

But a recent Fox News article carried this provocative headline: “Missing Women Grab Headlines, But What About the Men?” The article rattled off the list of women whose disappearances have gripped the nation in recent years, and then posed the question, “But where are all the missing young men?”

Another story at MSNBC raised the same unsettling question. Missing men, especially those who are black, seemingly don’t rate as much media attention as young, white females.

How can any journalist in good conscience write a story on missing persons, and then spin the article to pander to the only-women-count mindset?

The New York Times is one of the most dependable sources of Ms.-Information. Previous columns have documented how the New York Times has portrayed men in a negative light, biased its coverage of gender health issues, and worked covertly with pro-feminist legislators in the Senate to influence national legislation.

Author Warren Farrell has come up with a novel theory to explain the media’s neglect of men. He calls it the Lace Curtain, which he describes as the tendency of the media to view gender issues only from a female or feminist perspective. His book, Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say, documents the head-numbing experiences of male authors who have hit the estrogen ceiling.

And in his recent book Arrogance, reporter Bernard Goldberg recounts how CBS talk shows routinely invited radical feminists to appear as gender “experts.”

Some people like to dismiss the New Media as a flaky source of news and commentary. Jonathan Klein, former vice president of CBS News, recently derided the internet bloggers as “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”

No doubt the fem-liberal establishment got a chuckle out of that remark. But they need to face up to this sad but obvious conclusion: When it comes to men’s and gender issues, the Old Media’s coverage can no longer be said to be accurate, balanced, and fair.


Carey Roberts



http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts092204.htm


Ellie

[Sparrowhawk]

Elder Bush Slams CBS For Story About Son's Military Service
Former President Calls Account 'Insidious'

UPDATED: 3:00 PM EDT September 22, 2004

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Former President George H.W. Bush on Wednesday called a recent CBS News account of his son's military service an "insidious" attempt to malign the president.

Although he endured negative coverage during his own presidency, the elder Bush said he has a hard time dealing with critical media coverage of his son.

"This disgraceful thing with CBS, trying to malign our son's service as a jet pilot, was insidious," Bush told about 300 Republican supporters at a private ballroom in Columbus.

CBS and anchor Dan Rather apologized Monday for a "60 Minutes" segment that quoted documents, purported to be from one of Bush's commanders in the Texas Air National Guard, saying George W. Bush did not take a medical exam as ordered and that the commander felt pressured to sugarcoat an evaluation of then-1st Lt. Bush.

Rather said the network could not determine if the memos were authentic.

In an 11-minute speech, Bush also praised his son's religious faith, saying he knows the president has been criticized for his beliefs.

"He gets strength, great strength, from knowing that there's a being far greater than any of us, and I believe that is one of the things that has sustained him when the going gets really tough," Bush said.

In Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack," released last spring, the reporter quoted President Bush as saying he did not turn to his father for advice on going to war in Iraq, saying, "There is a higher father that I appeal to."

The former president also said he was heartened by recent polls showing his son leading Democrat John Kerry.

"But the message I want to leave with you is you can't take anything for granted," Bush said. "They're going to roll out every gun they have."
Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


http://www.newsnet5.com/politics/3752309/detail.html

[CAR]

OK, maybe I'm not a detective but, what ever happened to common sense? <br />
<br />
Three things: <br />
1) Per the DNC, they get thousands of these types of calls a day and can't respond to them. So why this...

[Predator]

I think, they would do a better investigation then, someone appointed by CBS.

Morning Marines

My two-Cent worth. From what I remember, the Democratic Party had been saying the same things, these documents supposedly revealed for about two weeks before they were “discovered.”


This was a tit-for tat between the DNC and CBS.

This is my speculation, but it makes “common sense.” Someone in the Kerry Camp forged the documents from information Burkett had been saying, especially after he appeared on “NBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews in early February.

<a href=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/>”Transcript: Burkett's earlier allegations”</a>

Now let’s not forget about CBS’s Mary Mapes who along with Dan Rather had been working on this story for some five years. Do you really believe they had not seen these documents before Burkett faxed them a copy. Does anyone believe that the DNC had not passed those documents back and forth for awhile?

They needed someone like Burkett and they found him, if not conspired with him to produce the documents.

All of a sudden CBS obtains the “documents,” to prove what they believe. Someone in the Kerry camp has connections to the highest levels of CBS, so how many other phone calls between Mapes and Joe Lockhart, the former White House press secretary in the Clinton administration?

The reason CBS ditched the story they were going to air that night and substituted the Bush story was because the time had already been purchased by the DNC and they had already released the commercials to be aired, so that placed CBS in a spot. They had to go with the story that night.

[Sparrowhawk]

Guess Who's a GOP Booster?
The CEO of CBS's parent company endorses President Bush.

Friday, September 24, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

From The Asian Wall Street Journal

With the scandal at CBS still festering, questions are being raised about whether a felony was committed when the network broadcast apparently forged memos in an attempt to discredit George W. Bush. Yesterday, the chairman of CBS's parent company chose Hong Kong as a place to drop a little bomb. Sumner Redstone, who calls himself a "liberal Democrat," said he's supporting President Bush.

The chairman of the entertainment giant Viacom said the reason was simple: Republican values are what U.S. companies need. Speaking to some of America's and Asia's top executives gathered for Forbes magazine's annual Global CEO Conference, Mr. Redstone declared: "I look at the election from what's good for Viacom. I vote for what's good for Viacom. I vote, today, Viacom.

"I don't want to denigrate Kerry," he went on, "but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people. . . . But from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company."

Sharing the stage with Mr. Redstone was Steve Forbes, CEO, president and editor in chief of Forbes and a former Republican presidential aspirant, who quipped: "Obviously you're a very enlightened CEO."





Mr. Redstone's unexpected declaration came at a time when an unwelcome spotlight is directed at him and his board because of the CBS airing of what everyone now believes was a fake memo alleging that Mr. Bush shirked his duties three decades ago in the Texas Air National Guard. On Tuesday, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie alleged a leftist bias at Viacom. While it was well known that Mary Mapes, the producer who did most of the reporting on the memos, is a liberal, and that anchorman Dan Rather, has always been much tougher on Republicans, the Viacom board had heretofore remained in the background.
Mr. Gillespie said, "This demonstrates a serious lack of judgment separate and apart from the lack of judgment demonstrated in running a report based on discredited documents. Did this producer's own political viewpoint cloud her judgment? Is CBS News's decision to neither suspend nor release the producer in question a result of judgment clouded by Viacom and CBS owner Sumner Redstone's role as a Kerry fundraiser, or Viacom President Tom Freston's public support of John Kerry for President?"

Mr. Redstone's office immediately went into overdrive, denying on Wednesday that he's a raised funds for the Democratic presidential nominee. Then came yesterday's "I vote Republican" vow in Hong Kong.

It was all the more surprising because the Boston-born Mr. Redstone was co-chairman of Edmund Muskie's presidential campaign in 1972. He's also a close friend of the other Massachusetts senator, Ted Kennedy. Monday's New York Sun, quoting the Federal Election Commission, said that since 1998 Mr. Redstone had given $50,000 to the Democratic Party. He's also donated the maximum $2,000 to the Kerry campaign, after supporting Al Gore in 2000.





In his book, "A Passion to Win," Mr. Redstone wrote, "From my early days I have considered myself a liberal Democrat. . . . I had no respect for Nixon. . . . My efforts on Senator Muskie's behalf apparently landed me on Nixon's notorious 'enemies list.' I took that as a badge of honor."


Of his 13-member board, two are former cabinet members for Democratic presidents. It is this board that will ponder what to do about the Rather-Mapes-CBS mess. The bombshell from Hong Kong will not come as welcome news to those responsible for "memogate."

[Ed Palmer]

this might not come out right but this is politicts

http://home.pacbell.net/diana_do/knowjack.htm

if it doesent open got to this site

Ed

[thedrifter]

Memogate: Why Did Dan Rather Do It?

October 1, 2004


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Nicholas Stix

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Dan Rather’s motives in foisting the Memogate hoax on the American people were: Ratings, revenge, and power.

Ratings. Any journalist worth his salt wants to reach everyone, and blow away the competition. Anyone who says otherwise, is either lying or in the wrong business. The best way for a journalist to reach the largest possible audience is with scoops on scandals. It’s good journalism, and it’s popular journalism. One of the reasons why the pc journalism of the socialist mainstream media (SMSM) and even the older, Republican mainstream media (RMSM; think, National Review) have been losing audience share in recent years, is because editors kill or ignore scoops that expose corruption among protected minorities and women. (In an interview last year with Bernard Chapin, NR staffer John Derbyshire said that the younger, affluent Republicans the magazine had attracted, in its attempt to revitalize its subscriber base, will not tolerate articles that criticize blacks and Hispanics.)

There is an abundance of scoops involving protected groups that are easy pickins, for anyone willing to do the work. In addition to the moral outrage of the corruption itself, I write so much on corrupt, protected groups, and the corrupt policies on police departments, and in newsrooms, schools and universities protecting them, because the stories are there for the telling, and MSM reporters won’t tell them. Often, cowardly, lazy, reporters from the RMSM refuse to tell them, as well, or don’t even know about them. Double-standards and protection from scrutiny guarantee corruption, which among human beings requires little encouragement, to begin with.

The SMSM have sought to compensate for their indifference and even hostility towards so much news, by generating audience share through fabricating “scoops” that are either hoaxes or wild exaggerations. The most common genre of such phony “scoops” is the race hoax. The most notorious media-generated race hoaxes have been the phony claims of reporters, columnists, and racist black organizations and leaders that white police engage in the “racial profiling” of innocent black males, which began in 1999, and the myth of the 2000 disenfranchisement of black Florida voters, which began the day after George W. Bush won the election. The classic example of creating a scoop via exaggeration would be the Abu Ghraib prison “scandal,” which was created by none other than CBS News’ Mary Mapes, the same producer who gave us Memogate/Rathergate. In the Abu Ghraib story, journalists demanded that the public see a little sexual degradation of prisoners as “torture.” In any previous American war, even Vietnam, no self-respecting producer would have seen a story in Abu Ghraib. That Mapes will probably win every award in the book for it, is an unwitting statement on the moral collapse -- or should I say, “transformation”? -- of the journalism profession.

For years, CBS News had been in a distant third place, behind NBC and ABC. In New York, the CBS affiliate, WCBS News at 11 p.m., has long been beaten by Seinfeld reruns! And then, with the coverage of the Republican National Convention, Fox beat all of the Big Three in the ratings, but it whipped CBS worst of all. Rather was livid about that beating.

Revenge. The Fox media empire, known as News Corp, is of course the creation of Australian-born mogul Rupert Murdoch. Fox News star5ted broadcasting on October 7, 1996, and was founded and is still run by Ohio-born Republican Roger Ailes, who was media guru to presidents Nixon and Reagan. In 1988, while working for Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, Ailes laid a trap for Rather. Ailes and Bush offered Rather an exclusive interview, but it had to be live. As I wrote on July 31, 2001:

And then there was the Black Eye at Black Rock of the Bush interview. In 1988, media guru Roger Ailes suckered Rather into conducting a live interview with Vice President George Bush, then the Republican presidential candidate. Journalists don't like to conduct live interviews, because they then lose the power of the final cut. Being able to cut a story means being able to shape it. Instead, Ailes and Bush did the shaping, with Bush, in a politician's fantasy come true, going on the offensive, attacking Rather.

If you don’t think Rather hasn’t sought ever since to avenge himself against Ailes and the Bushes, then you haven’t left Kansas. As the Web site RatherBiased.com has shown, Rather has long been openly hostile towards George Bush the Elder, going back to before the 1988 interview. But that doesn’t mean Rather would knowingly participate in a hoax, just to harm the President. It does mean, however, that in his desire for some Texas justice, media-style, he let down his guard and his standards. My experience is that most people can be pretty vindictive (and yes, that applies to yours truly in spades), but powerful people are much more vindictive than the rest of us, and are able to exercise their vindictiveness.

Power. Rather also wanted the power of having broken a story that decided the election. Again, although he is a socialist, that doesn’t mean that he saw himself as John Kerry’s personal “plumber” squad (though his 60 Minutes producer, Mary Mapes, may be another story). Recall that we are in the midst of a presidential campaign. Any reporter who succeeds at unearthing a terrible scandal, in which one of the major candidates is implicated, might just tip the election in the other candidate’s favor, and guarantee the reporter’s place in journalism’s pantheon … as long as the scandal implicates Pres. Bush!

Now, I’m going to say something that seems contradictory. I believe that Rather sought to cost Pres. Bush the election, but not in the sense of consciously seeing himself as a Democrat operative. Rather, he was -- along with virtually all of his colleagues at CBS, ABC, and NBC -- engaging in self-deception. The alleged journalists of the SMSM don’t see themselves as helping John Kerry win the election because they are socialists in journalistic drag, but because they believe that this is simply what any decent person in the same position would do. That is how hermetically sealed their corrupt subculture is.

For an example of how that subculture operates, a few years ago, ABC News reporter Bob Zelnick started working on a book on then-Vice President Al Gore. Since Zelnick was not a socialist, and thus could not be relied on to write a book with the “correct” omissions, evasions, and conclusions, his bosses at ABC News ordered him to cease and desist from writing the book. When he persisted, they fired him.

That’s called “zero tolerance.” Such repression would never have occurred, had Zelnick been working on a book on a powerful Republican, and had anyone at ABC News sought to muzzle such a book, the entire industry would have risen, outraged, in Zelnick’s support. Instead, there was silence.

The young Dan Rather would not have done the Memogate story. Memogate story is a product of a time in which the media routinely publish as “news,” insane accusations and rumors without a shred of evidence, and specifically of an election season in which fraudulent “October surprises” have popped up on a monthly, and sometimes weekly basis. Over the past several years, journalistic fraud has been continually defined down, and Rather was just going with the flow.

Nicholas Stix

http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/s/stix/2004/stix100104.htm


Ellie

[thedrifter]

To CBS: Here's Your Sign

October 2, 2004


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Dr. Marvin Folkertsma

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The principle culprit of the major media's latest round of non-stop insipid news coverage is of course CBS News and its Sixty Minutes II report based on what the network claimed was a number of documents that cast doubt on the President’s military service.

For many, CBS’s claims didn’t pass the smell test, something that the network should have figured out immediately. A dozen news organizations, including several not friendly to President Bush, came forward contesting the authenticity of the documents, and the issue lit up the Bloggersphere like fireworks. CBS has relented, but only a little bit; its strategy seems to be that if a story doesn’t have legs, give it crutches. But after a week of devastating counterattacks demonstrating the absurdity of its claims, now the network has been reduced to supplying a walker to support its rationale for going with the story; in another week or two perhaps a wheelchair will come into play.

Others may continue to contest the network’s claims, but an equally interesting question is why CBS threw its reputation into the frying pan to begin with. Here are two suggestions: moral equivalence and stupidity. Moral equivalence means simply that there’s not much to distinguish between two sides of a question or an issue. It is an attitude that informed liberal-left attitudes during the second half of the Cold War, when supposedly smart journalists concluded that there really wasn’t much difference in behavior or morality between the USSR and America. Thus, Afghanistan was “Russia’s Vietnam”; never mind that one country was trying to stop totalitarianism and the other was trying to impose it. The Soviets had their Gulags, but then the USA had its civil rights problems. In this case, John Kerry had his peccadilloes during a war he opposed, and President Bush now has his. It’s the same, or perhaps worse for the President, don’t you see?

Naturally, such analyses are not only morally obtuse, they’re stupid, and that brings us to the second point. The collective echo chambers known as “mainstream media,” consistently fail to check their own opinions with views expressed from non-liberal sources. Genuine diversity at network news organizations would automatically generate an intellectual checks and balance system to keep everyone honest. In short, talking only with people who agree with you is stupid; it deprives you of crucial feedback on questionable proposals. This is the real cure for stupidity, not more “fact-checking.” An intellectually honest opponent would say: “What are you really trying to prove here? Would you pursue this matter if you weren’t opposed to the President? While you’re at it, why don’t you check Fahrenheit 911 for accuracy?”

In the meantime, the rest of us may profit from the stupidity of CBS (and many other major media outlets) by taking a lesson from Bill Engvall, a ‘redneck” comedian known most recently for his standup routine with the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. He has a terrific trademark expression. It’s called, “Here’s your sign.” This means that if you say something incredibly stupid, the victim of your inanity should hand you a sign that says, “I’m Stupid!” or, “I say stupid things!” Then you respond with an equally absurd answer.

Of course, we would have to add another wing to the White House just to store the number of signs needed to hand out to the Washington Press Corps and the major media outlets. Still, Bush’s press secretary would probably run out. But here’s a suggestion the next time a reporter asks about the President’s military service. “Did the President serve honorably in the National Guard?” The answer should be, “Nope! In Fifth Grade he flew fighter jets for the Hitler Youth."

A final suggestion: instead of the signs saying “I say stupid things,” the only line they need is, “I’m from CBS News.”

Here’s your sign.


Dr. Marvin Folkertsma


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marvin Folkertsma, Ph.D. is a professor of political science at Grove City College. He is the author of several books. His latest release is a high-energy novel titled "The Thirteenth Commandment. Contact Folkertsma at mjfolkertsma@gcc.edu.

http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/f/folkertsma/2004/folkertsma100204.htm


Ellie

[thedrifter]

A CBS Criminal Conspiracy?
By Cliff Kincaid | October 5, 2004

Commenting on Rathergate, columnist Pat Buchanan says that, "CBS appears to have been complicit in a criminal conspiracy to use forged U.S. government documents to bring down a president. CBS must have suspected it was using counterfeit documents. An investigation must be conducted into who tried to affect an election using forgeries of federal documents."

Those are tough words, but the fact is that federal law prohibits the forging of public records for the purpose of defrauding the U.S. Federal law also prohibits conspiracy to defraud the United States. In a Supreme Court case, Hammerschmidt v. United States, Chief Justice Taft defined "defraud" as follows: "To conspire to defraud the United States means primarily to cheat the Government out of property or money, but it also means to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest." This means, the Justice said, that it "is not necessary that the Government shall be subjected to property or pecuniary loss by the fraud, but only that its legitimate official action and purpose shall be defeated by misrepresentation" or fraud.

The broadcasting of forged documents to affect a presidential campaign and election clearly falls in the parameters of "conspiracy to defraud." In terms of state law, the Texas Penal Code explicitly outlaws the use of forged government or public documents.

Ironically, CBS is now claiming that it was the responsibility of the White House to expose the documents as forgeries. Its rationale is that it turned the forgeries over to the White House communications director Dan Bartlett, who did not immediately expose or denounce them as forgeries. The Washington Post reported that CBS correspondent John Roberts called "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes "with word that Bartlett was not challenging the authenticity of the documents. Mapes told her bosses, who were so relieved that they cut from Rather's story an interview with a handwriting expert who had examined the memos. At that point, said '60 Minutes' executive Josh Howard, 'we completely abandoned the process of authenticating the documents.'"

With such a position, CBS should not now object to an FBI investigation into the origin and distribution of the forgeries. It should be prepared to waive its First Amendment privileges in order to determine the truth and punish the perpetrators of this fraud.

The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather ran several stories about forgeries that described Iraqi interest in buying uranium from Africa. Rather tried to tie these forgeries to the Bush Administration's drive for war against Iraq. In March 2003, the FBI announced that it was investigating the matter after West Virginia Democratic Senator Sen. Jay Rockefeller said that, "he was concerned about a possible campaign to deceive the public on Iraq…" It looks like the use of the forgeries against Bush was another campaign to deceive the public. Why isn't this a matter for the FBI?

http://www.aim.org/media_monitor_print/1997_0_2_0/


Ellie