Posted on 05/01/2012 6:47:53 AM PDT by MindBender26
Dan Rather just won’t let it go.
Nearly eight years after his fabled career at CBS News imploded like a death star over the notorious George W. Bush/Texas Air National Guard segment on 60 Minutes Wednesday, he can’t stop combing the debris for shards of vindication.
“I have a story to tell from my point of view,” he says about his new book, Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, which roasts network management for its “spineless” behavior during the Bush episode; takes potshots at his successor in the CBS Evening News anchor chair, Katie Couric, as a purveyor of “News Lite”; and settles scores with former colleagues who, as he writes, “after pretending to be friends for all those years, stealthily snuck around giving anonymous newspaper quotes and otherwise scheming to put the dirk in deep when I was down and hurting.”
Rather explains: “I wanted to tell it as honestly and as candidly as I could with—as Lyndon Johnson used to say—the bark off.”
The Sept. 8, 2004, Bush segment and its use of dubious documents to bolster the case that the 43rd president benefited from family connections and then went AWOL during his Vietnam-era stint in a “champagne unit” of the guard, plus Rather’s subsequent lawsuit against the network he served for 44 years—24 of them as anchor and managing editor of CBS’s flagship news program—account for only a fourth of the book. Rather initially dug in his heels during the firestorm that accompanied his damning report on a sitting president two months before his reelection. But he ultimately apologized for airing widely debunked photocopies of purported memos critical of young Bush’s performance and allegedly written by his commanding officer, the late Jerry B. Killian, lieutenant colonel in the Texas Air National Guard, saying CBS News could no longer vouch for their authenticity.
A CBS-commissioned investigation of the disaster—headed by Richard Thornburgh, U.S. attorney general when Bush’s father was president, and Associated Press chief executive Louis D. Boccardi—faulted Rather and his top producer, Mary Mapes, among others, for their misplaced reliance on a dubious source and their sloppy vetting of the questionable documents, which should never have aired. They made the situation far worse, the investigation concluded, by defending the documents for nearly two weeks after the initial report—never mind the mounting evidence against them from the blogosphere, competitors in the mainstream media, and CBS’s own hired document experts. Five news executives and producers, including Mapes, lost their jobs in the aftermath, and 60 Minutes Wednesday was canceled.
But these days Rather insists the Killian memos were real. Pop Quiz
“I believe them to be genuine,” he tells The Daily Beast, holding forth in his corner office at his weekly HDNet magazine program, Dan Rather Reports, in a musty old building off Times Square. “I did at the time, I did in the immediate aftermath of it, and yes, I do now ... And I think the longer we go, nobody has ever proven that the documents were not what they purported to be, and after this length of time and given the controversy and high profile of it, my view is that if they were not genuine, by this time somebody would’ve come forward and said here’s the proof that they’re not. Nobody has done that.” (Unfortunately for Rather, nobody has come forward with proof that they are in fact legitimate, and the preponderance of the available evidence continues to cast doubt on their authenticity.)
As an old CBS'er I can tell you the documents were totaly disproved, largly due to work on FR.
#1: The forged documents were typed in Times Roman. Times Roman was a very rare font, not used by typewriers. Tehy used Pica, Courier and Elite, not TR. TR became popular with word processors, not before.
#2: The zip codes for certain addresses for current in 2004, but had never been used until 17 years after the letters were supposedly written.
#3: The abreviations for terms like Squadren, Temporary Duty amd oters were Army, USAR and ARNG, not USAFR.
#4: The superscript in the purpoted memo was not available on ant USAF or USAFR typewriter for decades after the memo date.
Bottom line; it was total BS, and Rather knew if from atleast 24 hours after the story aired. His producer, the hard-leftist Mapes, knew if before ther story ran.
I guess Rather never heard the maxim that you can't prove a negative. But in the case of the TANG documents, we came as close as possible to doing just that.
What about the strawberries, Dan? Tell us about the strawberries!
Lt. Dan is one sick puppy.
One of the biggest was there were animated gifs at the time showing that the space each line took up across the page was identical to the document created in word.
The evidence was legion.
In fact, Dan lost all credibility on the Friday following the 60 minutes broadcast. He actually had the audacity to say they were most likely genuine and even flashed, for just a second, a document from the 70’s that had superscript. Before the internet, that would have been QED. But we were able to vet everything and expose him for the bald face liar that he was.
To this day I call Dan Rather the first well known casualty of the free flow of information afforded by the web.
Here’s the timeline: http://mediamythbusters.com/index.php?title=Rathergate
I cannot believe you people. Of course the document is genuine. He held it up for all to see.
Here is the problem. None of you buy into the liberal mantra about what is genuine and what isn’t. You see, in the liberal world, the document is in fact genuine. However the contents are fake.
What is is??????
That’s right, and much much more.
He's using the Joe Paterno strategy.
We need some freepers to comment here:
http://my.firedoglake.com/phoenix/2012/04/17/remember-rathergate-a-key-instigator-admits-the-killian-memos-cant-be-debunked-via-the-fonts-argument/
Rather is a pathetic old fool.
Fifty years ago, he was pathetic young fool.
Rather has to stand by it. It’s the only way libs will even consider buying the book.
“I have a story to tell from my point of view...”
Is that what a journalist does, Dan?
Make up evidence to support a preexisting agenda, and then refuse to admit the obvious when it’s proven to be forged?
I fondly recall the old days, when objectivity and facts actually meant something to reporters.
What a putz.
Rather used to own a home in my community of Lakeway TX. This was not his main residence, he used it as a “weekender” home. I don’t know how often he came here, but I did see him around town a time or two.
One day, I drove by his house and noted that no one was there at the time. I went home and got a Bush for President sign and put it in his front yard.
I’m sure he never saw it, because it remained there for a long time after the election, but it was a fun thing to do.
Lying liar lying!
FReeper extraordinare ping!
Just pinch me. . .
Hey Dan, you doddering old fool: You and Ms. Mary Mapes are the ones who made the accusation - it’s up to you to prove it, not for President Bush to disprove it.
At first I just thought that Rather was dour because he always looked like he needed a shave. Then when he could not answer a simple question, which is more 10% of $1,000 or 10% of 1,000,000? He seemed like a big dummy, or just another leftist with a disordered mind.
It is amusing that he is a single issue show, boring for sure.
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