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former CBS broadcaster Dan Rather (Now with AXS-TV) was understandably asked a question about ‘Rathergate’ – the story on George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard that used forged documents in the report. Rather responded brusquely: Number 1 – the facts of case are not in dispute. Number 2 – no one had ever established that the documents were forged

Dan RatherÂ’s Last Big Story Is Himself By Joe Hagan Published Nov 25, 2007 If he werenÂ’t famous, heÂ’d be mistaken for a veteran of a long-ago war: khaki safari shirt on his back, scuffed combat boots on his feet, that wiry crest of a brow, rheumy eyes under heavy lids, lower lip jutting out like an ornery fish resisting a hook. When Dan Rather sits on a bench in Central Park to tell how his 44-year career at CBS News ended in ignominy and humiliation, he is in fact still waging a war, a bitter and personal one. And...

November 09, 2005 Mary Mapes Names Names ("Anonymous" Ones) Posted by Bill An excerpt from page 201 of her new book: Within minutes of Buckhead's original posting, Freepers began to repeat and embellish Buckhead's thoughts. Not surprisingly, they all agreed with him, they all agreed with one another, and they all agreed this should be pursued aggressively. Freethinkers they are not. The Freepers and their lockstep like-minded fellow travelers moved as a group, like a school of sharks sweeping toward an unaware and unarmed victim. CBS was like some sunburned, overweight Florida tourist with a cut foot, floundering and flapping...

RUSH: Okay, gotta hear this. We got a lot more sound bites of this, but this is the money sound bite. Brian Ross today talking to Mary Mapes of CBS says, "After 12 years of defending him, CBS and Dan Rather later admitted they couldn't vouch for the authenticity of the documents, Bill Burkett's documents, and that they should not have been used and the story should not have aired. Do you," Mary Mapes, "still think the story was true?" MAPES: The story? Absolutely. ROSS: This seems remarkable to me that you would sit here now and say you still...

After a year of silence about the biggest scandal in CBS News history, Mary Mapes has plenty to say -- about George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Les Moonves, her father, bloggers, the mainstream press and others who she believes contributed to her downfall. What took her so long? "I was extremely battered," she said in an interview yesterday. "I'd had months and months of having my head kicked around a soccer stadium by much of the Western world. I needed some time to regroup." Mapes is now pushing a book, called "Truth and Duty," about the botched "60 Minutes II"...

If special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald delivers indictments of a few functionaries of the vice president’s office or the White House, we are likely to have on our hands a constitutional crisis. The evidence of widespread wrongdoing and conspiracy is before every American with a cheap laptop and a cable television subscription. And we do not have the same powers of subpoena granted to Fitzgerald. We know, however, based upon what we have read and seen and heard that someone created fake documents related to Niger and Iraq and used them as a false pretense to launch America into an invasion...

Dan Rather still doesn't get it. Rather spoke Monday at Fordham University School of Law in Manhatten and, with lips-a-quivering and eyes-a-watering, said that "there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career." Spare us the phony tears, Dan. The fear in the newsroom is that you guys no longer have a stranglehold on what gets out to the American people. Remember those forged documents, Dan? I played an early role of proving that your unimpeachable source, Bill Burkett, was as loony as Cindy Sheehan after 3 fingers...

Having worked with Bartlett and Rove, I think I can tell you what the strategy and approach is. I'll try to explain briefly. #1. The disaster in all states was a disaster, but the WH lost control of the headlines only in New Orleans because Haley Barbour and his Republican Alabama counterpart have continued to spin the reactions there. The feedback is not all good, but the spin control is in the hands of the Republicans. Already someone leaked the strategy of Rove and Bartlett concerning blaming Louisiana and the local governments. Let me take what the NY Times said...

Crawford, TX Several major liberal groups and mainline news outlets had to retreat from their latest anti-war campaign this week when they lost their latest human shield, grieving Army-mom Cindy Sheehan. Mrs. Sheehan, who lost her son, Casey, in the Iraq war 14 months ago, announced today that she was leaving her makeshift camp here to care for her ailing mother amid loud protests from MoveOn.org, MANBLA and Alec Baldwin.

I may have been too quick and too generous in giving John Kerry the benefit of the doubt about the full and complete release of his military records, as reported by the Boston Globe on Tuesday. As Thomas Lipscomb details in today's Chicago Sun-Times, some questions and confusion remain. The exact details will most likely get sorted out in time, but just for the moment let's consider the one aspect of this story that we know for sure: Kerry released his records exclusively to The Boston Globe. This is an odd decision for someone seeking end speculation regarding the whole...

Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer from 60 Minutes who gave us Rathergate, has won the first journalism award given in memory of two of the worst rogues in the history of the profession, Walter Duranty and Jayson Blair. Duranty and Blair were both reporters for the New York Times, America's most corrupt newspaper. To borrow from NBA commissioner David Stern, on his decision to suspend Ron Artest and the other Indiana Pacers thugs in the recent "basketbrawl," the vote "was unanimous, 1-0." As previously detailed here, Mapes was guilty of no less than three major journalistic offenses -- her...

Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer from 60 Minutes who gave us Rathergate, has won the first journalism award given in memory of two of the worst rogues in the history of the profession, Walter Duranty and Jayson Blair. Duranty and Blair were both reporters for the New York Times, America’s most corrupt newspaper. To borrow from NBA commissioner David Stern, on his decision to suspend Ron Artest and the other Indiana Pacers thugs in the recent “basketbrawl,” the vote “was unanimous, 1-0.” As previously detailed, Mapes was guilty of no less than three major journalistic offenses -- her “Shot...

Well, "Black Rock" isn't the Tower of London, and we no longer behead those who seek to topple the government, as Elizabeth I's executioner did Mary, Queen of Scots, but CBS' corporate headquarters will have to do, as the media world awaits whatever passes for the sentencing and punishment of news fraud Mary Mapes, who gave the world Rathergate, among other infamous episodes. Any day now, possibly even today, the CBS News internal Rathergate report will be completed and read by the "suits" in the suites at Black Rock. When Rathergate became a full-blown scandal, CBS appointed former U.S. Attorney...

A crowd of about 90 people at the state convention for Tejano Democrats stood up Sunday afternoon in a ballroom at the Omni Bayfront Hotel, clinking their glasses with spoons, applauding and chanting, "Kerr-Y, Kerr-Y," for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. David Van Os, a Democratic candidate for the Texas Supreme Court who is running against Justice Scott Brister, had just reminded them of the state's Democratic roots. "Don't believe anybody who tells you this is a rebuilding year for the Democrats of Texas. The hell it is!" Van Os said, reminding listeners that Texas voted for Carter in 1980....

From CBS to the Slammer Prosecute Rathergate masterminds. More than any in recent memory, this year's presidential race has pushed the First Amendment to the breaking point — and beyond. On one side of that fault line are communications that, despite having the sharpest of elbows, deserve full constitutional protection. On the other lies CBS's excellent adventure in forgery. Rathergate merits the prosecution of anyone who knowingly trafficked in phony papers designed to throw a race for the White House. President Bush's critics have said plenty about him that goes well beyond civil discourse. Within the left lobe of the...

What do you say? By Bill Burkett Online Journal Contributing Writer March 19, 2003—I've sat in total grief for the past three years, watching the institutions of America being spent as if they were lottery winnings. I don't want to say it, "But I told you so." In January of 1998 and what seems like a full lifetime ago, I was stricken by a deadly case of meningoencephalitis. I was returning from a short duty trip to Panama as a team chief to inspect the hand over of Ft. Clayton to the Panamanians. I had been 'loaned' from the senior...

Say good night, Dan. Dan Rather's journalism career is surely over. When he got snookered by the forged memos peddled by longtime Bush enemy Bill Burkett, a retired Texas Army National Guard lieutenant colonel, and the fraud was exposed by a 'lousy Internet site,' instead of Rather re-investigating the story, he stonewalled, took the offensive, engaged in a "modified, limited hangout" (the September 21 New York Post) and attacked his critics. Once he admitted that something wasn't quite right about the "documents," he even tried to take credit for determining that a hoax had taken place. Rather acted less like...

In this PM Edition of the DUmmie FUnnies, we have served up a full buffet of DUmmie paranoia. Now normally when a DUmmie goes on an overly long rant, I snip out only a portion of it for your perusal. However, today’s DUmmie feast is so rich in paranoia, that I am quoting in full (in the colored font) the leadoff post of one “Dems Will Win,” a DUmmie whose rantings exceed even the typical delusional visions on that site. So grab yourself a place at the table and dine on roast brain of DUmmie, served with large dollops of...

<p>Former National Guard commander Bill Burkett has become the first player in the CBS forged document scandal to implicate John Kerry's presidential campaign, telling the Fort Worth Star Telegram that top Kerry aide Joe Lockhart pressed him to turn over damaging evidence on George Bush.</p>