[p. henry]

Thornburgh needs to get the business and cell phone logs of Mapes, Rather, and every other CBS employee who worked on this story. When and how often did they call Lockhart or any other person associated with the Kerry campaign or the DNC? Mapes has shown her willingness to act as a conduit for people who would prefer that others not know they are communicating. Further, the release of Fortunate Son one day after the Rather report cannot be coincidental. I question the timing. Flagrant breach of standard journalistic practices is not the issue here. Collusion between CBS and the Democrats is.

[Eva]

I think that the Gillespie statement on the connection between the DNC and CBS was a public message to Thornburgh, telling him what to look for. I have to wonder what parameters that CBS has laid out for the investigation though. It is possible that they are only looking for the source of the forged documents, not who else contributed to the story.

[Cicero]

Phone logs, email. I suppose everyone at CBS is probably scrubbing his hard drive right now as we speak.

It would be interesting to have a full log of contacts with the DNC and the RNC and see how they compare.

[dead]

Thornburgh needs to get the business and cell phone logs of Mapes, Rather, and every other CBS employee who worked on this story. When and how often did they call Lockhart or any other person associated with the Kerry campaign or the DNC? Mapes has shown her willingness to act as a conduit for people who would prefer that others not know they are communicating. Further, the release of Fortunate Son one day after the Rather report cannot be coincidental. I question the timing. Flagrant breach of standard journalistic practices is not the issue here. Collusion between CBS and the Democrats is.

This is merely an internal CBS investigation. He is not going to have anything approaching subpeona power.

The biggest threat he could try would be to fire anybody who doesn't turn over their (non-company issued) phone records, and even that might open CBS to a lawsuit from any dismissed employee.

Rather would just say No to any such request. And Mapes would like just quit and go work at some other biased news outfit (its not like there's a shortage of those.)

He'll have only the information that he can glean from company phone lines and e-mail, as well as what employees willingly turn over to him, which will be worthless.

I'm not expecting his investigation to find anything other than "ethical lapses and errors in judgement" regarding journalist norms.

[QQQQQ]

The problem I have with all this, is that they appear to be limiting the investigation to the role of the CBS employees.

Someone needs to investigate WHO FORGED THE MEMO and WHAT DID KERRY & the DNC KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT?