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BigBadBrian
09-16-2004, 10:14 PM
Rather Concedes Papers Are Suspect
CBS Anchor Urges Media to Focus On Bush Service

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."

freak
09-16-2004, 10:19 PM
Translation: Mr. Rather, defuse this situation or retire.

Tell ya what, Danny Boy, you want to win your journalism halo back? Investigate who's actually responsible for peddling this shit. If, of course, you aren't part of the scam.

ELVIS
09-16-2004, 10:27 PM
He is part of it...

He underestimated todays news junkies...

freak
09-16-2004, 10:38 PM
Originally posted by ELVIS
He is part of it...

He underestimated todays news junkies...

That CBS exec's slam on the blogsphere was pretty funny.

Trying to paint the whole thing as mommy's basement types.

You'd be amazed at how many PHds are out there running blogs.

The Internet has too many intellegent eyes. It makes for an amazing bullshit filtration system.

If you're going to present evidence to the world, you'd best be certain your ducks are all in a row before you set out. Long gone are the days where Mom and Pop got their world-view from Brinkley and Chancellor.

ELVIS
09-16-2004, 10:50 PM
Originally posted by freak

The Internet has too many intellegent eyes. It makes for an amazing bullshit filtration system.



..and FORD spells bullshit as far as the DLRArmy is concerned!

Fuck that conspiracy bullshit!

It won't see the light of day as lond as I'm here...

You can believe that, FORD, Bitch!

Warham
09-17-2004, 06:52 AM
Rather says he wants to break the story that the documents are fake!?

LMAO!

He's a true news veteran!

freak
09-17-2004, 07:22 AM
Originally posted by Warham
Rather says he wants to break the story that the documents are fake!?

LMAO!

He's a true news veteran!

The official CBS stance is this:
"The documents are in all likelihood fake but what they say is true. Please disregard the fake documents and take our word that their contents is true. We have corroborating evidence from the testimony of an 86 year old secretary to the long-dead man who's true opinion was expressed in the aformentioned document."

CBS has zero credibility at this point.

John Ashcroft
09-17-2004, 08:08 AM
Even Andy Rooney says so...

Rooney'd rather CBS fessed up

CBS curmudgeon Andy Rooney indicated yesterday he believes the controversial documents on President Bush's National Guard service are fake and said it could cost Dan Rather down the road.
"I'm surprised at their reluctance to concede they're wrong," Rooney said, referring to CBS brass.

Despite praising Rather as "a good, honest newsman," Rooney added, "I'm unsure if they're whistling in the dark instead of apologizing."

The flap over the documents has rocked CBS News, has Republicans calling for Rather's head and has people questioning the credibility of Rather instead of Bush.

Rooney doesn't think the network would try to ease out Rather over the memo mess, but he added, "It might have an effect on him six months from now."

You mean, "Continue to have an effect on him six months from now"...

Rooney and other CBS staffers are still holding out hope that Rather will produce something to authenticate the supposed memos from the early 1970s that criticized Bush's record in the Texas Air National Guard.

Alex Jones, head of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, described a recent phone call from Rather: "He is very much aware that this is his story, his responsibility, and he's got to sort it out and resolve it."

Jones added, "Journalism is a human activity. If they made a mistake, they should own up to it, take the bullet and move on."

CBS News spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said there has been no consideration of Rather stepping down, but others were less certain of Rather's standing.

"If Dan Rather wants to stay at the 'CBS Evening News' and be the premier anchor at the network, this whole imbroglio didn't help him," said Max Robins, editor in chief of Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

However, unlike NBC News, which has groomed Brian Williams to take over from Tom Brokaw after the presidential election, CBS has no succession plan.

The betting is that CBS White House correspondent John Roberts or "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley will one day succeed Rather, who's 72.

Link: here (http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/233064p-200044c.html)

ODShowtime
09-17-2004, 11:51 AM
What pisses me off is that these documents don't even say anything that revolutionary. We all know Bush was a lazy, good-for-nothing, spoiled, rich kid incompetent. Some take issue with this, such as myself, others accept that it's a necessary evil these days in politics, and some just believe whatever he says or don't even care.

I mean, if there's gonna be fake documents, I want postive drug tests, repremands for saturday evening AWOL festivities, receipts from tiajuana abortion doctors, you know, juicy stuff!!

This is bullshit! It's like the fake documents discredit the real facts. Gee, who benefits from that? Well played Rovie

John Ashcroft
09-17-2004, 01:04 PM
We don't all "know" that at all dude. But if you're gonna insist, we also all "know" that Kerry didn't deserve a single one of his medals, and fabricated tall tales to get them (complete with war-footage reenactments for the video camera).

FORD
09-17-2004, 01:16 PM
Originally posted by ODShowtime
What pisses me off is that these documents don't even say anything that revolutionary. We all know Bush was a lazy, good-for-nothing, spoiled, rich kid incompetent. Some take issue with this, such as myself, others accept that it's a necessary evil these days in politics, and some just believe whatever he says or don't even care.

I mean, if there's gonna be fake documents, I want postive drug tests, repremands for saturday evening AWOL festivities, receipts from tiajuana abortion doctors, you know, juicy stuff!!

This is bullshit! It's like the fake documents discredit the real facts. Gee, who benefits from that? Well played Rovie

Yeah, there hasn't been this much fuckup over allegedly "false evidence" since Markkk Fuhrman and the LAPD framed a guilty man for a double homicide back in 1994.

If the documents are "fake" it's likely that Dan was set up, and the right wing blog who posted the alleged "proof" is likely Rove operatives.

OJ didn't deserve to get away with his crimes just because a racist cop fucked up, and Junior doesn't deserve to get away with his either.

ODShowtime
09-17-2004, 01:26 PM
I'm sayin'

ODShowtime
09-17-2004, 01:28 PM
Originally posted by John Ashcroft
We don't all "know" that at all dude. But if you're gonna insist, we also all "know" that Kerry didn't deserve a single one of his medals, and fabricated tall tales to get them (complete with war-footage reenactments for the video camera).

I can't believe he actually took a camera to Vietnam. Do you really think he was planning his political career back then? I guess if idolized JFK and read Profiles of Courage it is believable. I'd be worried about saving my neck if I was in those jungles.

John Ashcroft
09-17-2004, 02:11 PM
One would think...

ODShowtime
09-17-2004, 03:32 PM
I should make a Kim Jong Il Character. that would be fun.

Wayne L.
09-19-2004, 09:32 AM
Dan Rather thinks he's bigger than CBS & more important than any U. S. president whether they be Republican or Democrat which is ludicrious which is why it's time for this self important asshole to resign from CBS News or be fired immediately after the Bush/National Guard fiasco on 60 Min. because he's a joke & has always been a joke as a journalist & TV news personality with a self important grudge hiding behind his Texas accent.

DrMaddVibe
09-19-2004, 01:26 PM
Dan...you're DONE!

Join Uncle Walter in the "where are they know" section!


BITCH!

DrMaddVibe
09-20-2004, 07:00 AM
September 20, 2004
THE NEWS MEDIA
CBS News Concludes It Was Misled on National Guard Memos, Network Officials Say
By JIM RUTENBERG

fter days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a "60 Minutes'' report that raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air.

But they cautioned that CBS News could still pull back from an announcement. Officials met last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it had collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision. Mr. Rather was not available for comment late last night.

The report relied in large part on four memorandums purported to be from the personal file of Mr. Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who died 20 years ago. The memos, dated from the early 1970's, said that Colonel Killian was under pressure to "sugar coat'' the record of the young Lieutenant Bush and that the officer had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical.

Mr. Rather and others at the network are said to still believe that the sentiment in the memos accurately reflected Mr. Killian's feelings but that the documents' authenticity was now in grave doubt.

The developments last night marked a dramatic turn for CBS News, which for a week stood steadfastly by its Sept. 8 report as various document experts asserted that the typeface of the memos could have been produced only by a modern-day word processor, not Vietnam War-era typewriters.

The seemingly unflappable confidence of Mr. Rather and top news division officials in the documents allayed fears within the network and created doubt among some in the news media at large that those specialists were correct. CBS News officials had said they had reason to be certain that the documents indeed had come from the personal file of Colonel Killian.

Sandy Genelius, a network spokeswoman, said last week, "We are confident about the chain of custody; we're confident in how we secured the documents.''

But officials decided yesterday that they would most likely have to declare that they had been misled about the records' origin after Mr. Rather and a top network executive, Betsy West, met in Texas with a man who was said to have helped the news division obtain the memos, a former Guard officer named Bill Burkett.

Mr. Rather interviewed Mr. Burkett on camera this weekend, and several people close to the reporting process said his answers to Mr. Rather's questions led officials to conclude that their initial confidence that the memos had come from Mr. Killian's own files was not warranted. These people indicated that Mr. Burkett had previously led the producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, to have the utmost confidence in the material.

It was unclear last night if Mr. Burkett had told Mr. Rather that he had been misled about the documents' provenance or that he had been the one who did the misleading.

In an e-mail message yesterday, Mr. Burkett declined to answer any questions about the documents.

Yesterday, Emily J. Will, a document specialist who inspected the records for CBS News and said last week that she had raised concerns about their authenticity with CBS News producers, confirmed a report in Newsweek that a producer had told her that the source of the documents said they had been obtained anonymously and through the mail.

In an interview last night she declined to name the producer who told her this but said the producer was in a position to know. CBS News officials have disputed her contention that she warned the network the night before the initial "60 Minutes'' report that it would face questions from documents experts.

In the coming days CBS News officials plan to focus on how the network moved ahead with the report when there were warning signs that the memorandums were not genuine.

Ms. Will is one of two documents experts consulted by the network who said they raised doubts about the material before the segment was broadcast. Another expert, Marcel B. Matley, said in interviews that he had vouched only for Colonel Killian's signatures on the records and not the authenticity of the records themselves. Mr. Matley said he could not rule out that the signatures had been cut and pasted from official records pertaining to Colonel Killian.

In examining where the network had gone wrong, officials at CBS News turning their attention to Ms. Mapes, one of their most respected producers, who was riding particularly high this year after breaking news about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal for the network.

In a telephone interview this weekend, Josh Howard, the executive producer of the "60 Minutes'' Wednesday edition, said that he did not initially know who was Ms. Mapes' primary source for the documents but that he did not see any reason to doubt them. He said he believed Ms. Mapes and her team had appropriately answered all questions about the documents' authenticity and, he noted, no one seemed to be casting doubt upon the essential thrust of the report.

"The editorial story line was still intact, and still is, to this day,'' he said, "and the reporting that was done in it was by a person who has turned in decades of flawless reporting with no challenge to her credibility.''

He added, "We in management had no sense that the producing team wasn't completely comfortable with the results of the document analysis.''

Ms. Mapes has not responded to requests for comment.

Mr. Howard also said in the interview that the White House did not dispute the veracity of the documents when it was presented to them on the morning of the report. That reaction, he said, was "the icing on the cake'' of the other reporting the network was conducting on the documents. White House officials have said they saw no reason to challenge documents being presented by a credible news organization.

Several people familiar with the situation said they were girding for a particularly tough week for Mr. Rather and the news division should the network announce its new doubts.

One person close to the situation said the critical question would be, "Where was everybody's judgment on that last day?''



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company





WHO'S LAUGHING NOW!

ELVIS
09-20-2004, 07:32 AM
Misled ??

John Ashcroft
09-20-2004, 08:18 AM
You know, the absolutely most appaulling thing about this whole situation is that no matter how much the story falls apart, Rather and CBS are still saying they believe the essence of the story to be true.

What are they basing this on??? I mean, every single person they've based this story on has turned out to be a democratic party hack. If this doesn't show their bias (with their feverish desire for the story to be true), I don't know what will?

Pink Spider
09-20-2004, 08:37 AM
Am I the only one that doesn't fall into insignificant distractions like this and doesn't care either way? What difference does it make in the real world?

The media are liars and Bush is an asshole. Why can't I choose both? :)

DrMaddVibe
09-20-2004, 12:16 PM
EXCLUSIVE // Mon Sep 20 2004 11:58:02 ET
STATEMENT FROM DAN RATHER:

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.



FUCK YOU DAN!!!!!