Brokaw Chides Buchanan for Calling Felt "Traitor," But He Didn't (Chris Matthews)

MRC ^ | Friday June 3, 2005 | Brent Baker

[fight_truth_decay]

Will Tom Brokaw, the Today show, Chris Matthews and CBS's Early Show offer a correction? As Brit Hume noted Thursday night, the Washington Post corrected a Wednesday article which reported, that on Hardball Tuesday night, Pat Buchanan had called Mark Felt a "traitor." The correction explained: "Buchanan said that Felt had no personal loyalty to President Richard M. Nixon, 'so I don't consider him a traitor in that sense.'" In fact, it was Matthews who first falsely claimed that Buchanan had tagged Felt a "traitor." On Wednesday's Today, Brokaw was appalled by Buchanan's supposed characterization: "I think Pat said yesterday that Mark Felt was a 'traitor.' A traitor to what? The truth?!" On CBS's Early Show the same day, Wyatt Andrews asserted: "Several former aides to President Nixon still argue what Felt did was wrong with one aide, Pat Buchanan, calling Felt a 'traitor.'"

Hume's June 2 "Grapevine" item on FNC's Special Report with Brit Hume: "The Washington Post reported yesterday that after learning that Deep Throat was actually former FBI number-two Mark Felt, quote 'former Nixon speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan labeled Felt a 'traitor' for having worked with reporters on stories that did severe damage to the administration.' What's more, while chatting with readers about it online later in the day, one Washington Post reporter called Buchanan's reaction quote, 'darkly hilarious.' But Buchanan never called Felt a traitor. In fact, in an interview with Chris Matthews, Buchanan said that because Felt had no personal loyalty to Nixon quote, 'I don't consider him a traitor in that sense.' The Post has now issued a correction."

Indeed, the June 2 Post carried this correction on page A2: "A June 1 article on reaction to the confirmation that former FBI official W. Mark Felt was the Watergate source known as 'Deep Throat' incorrectly said that Patrick J. Buchanan called Felt a 'traitor' in an interview on MSNBC's Hardball. Buchanan said that Felt had no personal loyalty to President Richard M. Nixon, 'so I don't consider him a traitor in that sense.'" That's posted at: www.washingtonpost.com

Full story: http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2005/cyb20050603.asp#3

[fight_truth_decay]

CBS's Lesley Stahl proclaimed on Thursday's Hardball that she admires Mark Felt "as a big hero, and I just, I know that he's a very old man and he's had some strokes, I hope he really understands what a great service he did." Chris Matthews chipped in: "I agree with you." Stahl pointed out how Felt thought those in the Nixon White House "were like Nazis. That was in his own mind. So if he knows that he cleaned out that corruption, he shouldn't be called a 'traitor' by anybody, and he certainly shouldn't feel like one."

(Stahl's reference to Felt being called a "traitor" may be a pick up of a false quote attributed to Pat Buchanan)

http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2005/cyb20050603.asp#2

[JAWs]

I won't take seriously anything the MSM say... well I don't take anything they say seriously... but I digress. I will respect them even less on the Deep Throat/Mark Felt matter until they come to terms with how shabbily they treated Linda Tripp.

[kpp_kpp]

newspaper's should come with a daily correction: "we're sorry for pulling yesterday's stories out of our as*es"

of course it would be in the tinyiest of fonts in the middle of a section no one actually reads

[maestro]

.....Feltgate.....what was Felt's religious denominational claim while in "Hoover's OLD FBI"...?

....it wasn't JEWISH or non-denominational!

....was it....Mormon?

[mlstier]

This isn't the first time that Chris Matthews incorretly latches onto words. He did this with Michelle Malkins during the 2004 elections.

[highlander_UW]

So CBS got their story wrong? Now there's a shocker. /sarcasm

[fight_truth_decay]

Tripp was a nobody compared to Felt, the #2 man.

[bpjam]

Killing off the Vietname war and sentencing 2,000,000 people to death in S.E. Asia along with knocking of Nixon with Watergate are the hey-day for liberal baby boomers. This was their golden era. It is what they think of as 'the good old days' and they are just reliving their youth. Almost all of the people you see on TV formed their world views from Vietnam or Watergate.

They are still pining for a time when they can be relevant again. And in the words of then President Clinton in 1995 - "I am still relevant..." Yeah, sure you were.

[Logical me]

Felt is a traitor. He is so because it was his responsibility to bring the information up the chair of command. Instead he betrayed his oath of office and went outside. This cowardly act did not allow the Administration to conduct it's own investigation. This is the proper way we in America do. If there was a cover up, they do what you may.

[Jim W N]

Last year, I changed my TV remotes to skip over ABC,CBS,NBC,CNN, etc. They're so completely unreliable and biased against all things conservative (the old meaning of "liberal", by the way). I only watch FOX News.

[toddlintown]

Nixon got us out of a mess in Vietnam instigated by Kennedy and pushed along by Johnson, but he was vilifiled by the MSM and the hippie/anit-war/liberal movement for not ending the war quick enough.

Watergate was a second-rate political operation, no different than the crap that goes on now. Nixon should have held his ground, and now that he's dead, the MSM is dancing on his grave.

Pitiful.

[Peach]

You may have seen this already; MSM lies about Buchanan calling Felt a traitor.

[fight_truth_decay]

I am beginning to believe the far Right has infiltrated cBS as string reporters purposely feeding the big guns false stories to make them appear bungling. (..this will be the excuse on the DU).

Repeated factual mistakes like these just never seem to end. They never heard of transcripts or audio/MP3?

[pcottraux]

Buchannan didn't say that Mark Felt was a "TRAITOR," just that he was a "Jewish Nazi part of the right-winged conspiracy to destroy American culture."

[highlander_UW]

I am beginning to believe the far Right has infiltrated cBS as string reporters purposely feeding the big guns false stories to make them appear bungling. (..this will be the excuse on the DU)

That's funny. So even the DUmmies see the ineptness of CBS but true to their tin foil hat ways they also see conspiracies behind every error of their beloved MSM.

[umgud]

It's the seriesness of what they thought (assumed) he said that matters more than what he really said.

[realman]

Pat Buchanan is a good man,that's why they hate him.

[fight_truth_decay]

Felt is a traitor...you say but:

Pat Buchanan did not say Felt was a traitor. However, Stahl pointed out how Felt thought those in the Nixon White House "were like Nazis...and she seems alright with that.

In fact later, Lauer brought up the NBC interview with Pat Buchanan and Chuck Colson, which only made the Woodstein duo feisty:

"On this program yesterday, Pat Buchanan and Chuck Colson, a couple of the President's men, teed off on Mark Felt, saying he's not a patriot, he's a traitor. They said he should have gone to a grand jury or resigned. And in closing, Pat Buchanan said the following, he said, 'Woodward and Bernstein were stenographers in the end,' meaning that you simply wrote what Mark Felt wanted you to write."

(In fact, neither Buchanan or Colson used the term "traitor" during their June 1 Today appearance.

[pcottraux]

"Pat Buchanan is a good man..."

Um...no comment.

[fight_truth_decay]

In their interview on MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, Don Imus tried to get to Felt's motives. MRC's Jessica Barnes reported he said to Bernstein: "I'm asking Bob about what exactly Felt was doing if he wasn't leaking information. He was providing guidance? I mean, how would you characterize what he was doing?"

Bernstein suggested it's not leaking if you're a reluctant leaker (lol): "I think there's a lot more guidance than actually giving of information. I always stay away from the term 'leak' because usually it's held to get information out of anybody, including people who are inclined to be willing to give it to you, that usually you still have to do some real pulling and this was the case. He was a very reluctant giver of information...."

Imus followed up: "So he didn't look at what he was doing as being a violation of his oath of office in providing information that they were gathering as an official investigative arm of this investigation, the FBI, in providing the newspaper with this."

Woodward: "Well, it's got all of the ambiguity and the approach, avoidance of human nature. You know, I think he was distancing himself from, so he wouldn't be in a position of, you know, this came in from a specific FBI file, butâ€""

Bernstein: "The truth is we don't know, you know, all of his motivations, and during the period, he was really never asked. You know, I think there was enough trouble when Bob had these brief meetings and conversations to deal with whatever information we were trying to get without going into a question of what was motivating him. So it's only later, much later, that we could really speculate and never have got a complete answer to his motivation."