Posted on 09/13/2004 6:12:09 AM PDT by ConservativeMajority
WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Mary Mapes, a Dallas-based producer for CBS, has been identified by Talon News sources as the person who obtained the documents that suggest President George W. Bush did not fulfill his National Guard obligations 30 years ago. The documents, which have been judged to be forgeries by many news services and forensics experts, are at the center of a scandal that threatens the credibility of the network.
Late Friday, CBS spokesperson Kelli Edwards confirmed to Talon News that it was Mapes that obtained the documents but refused to comment on the questions surrounding their authenticity. Mapes did not respond to Talon News requests for comment.
During Friday's network news broadcast, anchor Dan Rather defended the four pages he claims were written by Bush's superior officer at the Texas Air Guard, Lt. Colonel Jerry Killian. Rather talked with handwriting expert Marcel Matley who said that on the basis of his analysis of the signatures, he is pronouncing the documents to be authentic. Not all of the pages carry Killian's signature.
Two others were interviewed for the segment. Robert Strong, an administrative officer for the Texas Air Guard during the Vietnam era, who vouched for the documents.
Author James Moore, a Bush antagonist, said, "They are absolutely consistent with the records as I know it."
Rather dismissed his critics, saying, "Today, on the Internet and elsewhere, some people -- including many who are partisan political operatives -- concentrated not on the key questions the overall story raised but on the documents that were part of the support of the story."
But glaring omissions marred Rather piece. On Friday, Killian's son Gary told nationally syndicated talk-show host Sean Hannity that Mary Mapes had contacted him before CBS ran the story. He said that he warned her that the documents might be forgeries.
Following the broadcast, Talon News asked Edwards why Killian's son and wife weren't mentioned during the broadcast.
She said, "I'm not going to debate every aspect of the story. We stand by the piece."
Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, told ABC Radio News, "The wording in these documents is very suspect to me. ... I just can't believe these are his words."
Connell said that her late husband would be "turning over in his grave to know that a document such as this would be used against a fellow Guardsman," and she is "sick" and "angry" that his name is "being battled back and forth on television."
Connell said that her late husband was a fan of the young Bush.
She stated, "I know for a fact that this young man ... was an excellent aviator, an excellent person to be in the Guard, and he was very happy to have him become a member of the 111th."
Rufus Martin, the personnel chief in Killian's unit at the time told CNN, "They looked to me like forgeries. ... I don't think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years."
Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor, told ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. He said that CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "Well if he wrote them that's what he felt."
Hodges believes the documents are frauds.
Doubts were being openly debated on rival networks. ABC News reported that they contacted more than a half dozen document experts who said they had doubts about the memos' authenticity.
Bill Flynn, one of country's top authorities on document authentication, told ABC, "These documents do not appear to have been the result of technology that was available in 1972 and 1973."
He continued, "The cumulative evidence that's available ... indicates that these documents were produced on a computer, not a typewriter."
CNN contacted independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines who said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word software. Lines is a document expert and fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. She pointed to a superscript -- a smaller, raised "th" in "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" -- as evidence indicating forgery.
After reviewing copies of the documents at her office in Paradise Valley, Arizona, Line said, "I'm virtually certain these were computer generated."
One expert counts at least 50 points that suggest the documents are forgeries.
The White House is remaining neutral on the documents' authenticity.
Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Friday, "We don't know whether the documents were fabricated or are authentic. The media has talked to independent experts who have raised questions about the documents."
He pointed out that CBS has not disclosed the source of the documents.
Newsweek is suggesting that Mapes received the documents from Bill Burkett, who it describes as a disgruntled former Guard officer. The magazine reports that Mapes flew to Texas to interview him.
If the documents are proven to be forgeries, the scandal would go to the highest level of CBS news. Talon News sources say that Jim Murphy, Executive Producer of the CBS Evening News, approves virtually every word that goes on the air. "60 Minutes II" Executive Producer Jeffrey Fager would also be on the endangered list, since his show originated the document story.
But more likely it would be Mapes who would take the fall along with Janet Leissner, the Washington Bureau Chief for CBS News. Leissner orchestrated the interview with White House communications director Dan Bartlett during which he was confronted with the suspect documents. Dan Rather was originally scheduled to do the interview, but White House correspondent John Roberts was substituted at the last minute for an unknown reason.
Mapes is no stranger to controversy as she also obtained the photographs of inmate abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The source of the photographs as well as the documents now in question has never been revealed.
In 1999 Mapes was threatened with imprisonment if she failed to turn over the transcript of an interview that Dan Rather conducted with the third defendant being tried for murder in the dragging death of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas. CBS ultimately complied with the court's demand for the information.
Copyright © 2004 Talon News -- All rights reserved.
Whodunnit was the first question out of my fingers when this broke last week.
I was thinking Beg Allah / Car Wheel (just hired on), or maybe ABC news - they were the first MSM to point the finger.
Freepers nailed her last week when the story broke.
Yes, but right after this letter came out days ago they switched gears and started to deny the memos came through the DNC or the Kerry Campaign. I heard about Mary Mapes on the first day and suddenly the stuff gets buried so they can float a new version of where it came from. And Rather apparently comes out to say they had had the documents for 6 weeks. I suppose that is right since no doubt Rather considers himself synomous with the Kerry campaign.
I thought the forgeries had been shopped to all sorts of people and outlets? Why does it matter about this chick? The only important thing is to learn who shopped the docs and where that person got them.
Well, yes Dan because if the documents are false then your whole story is predicated on a total lie. Even we simple minded "partisan political operatives" understand that. You are starting to make people gag with your obvious partisanship. Any slight belief you might be impartial is gone forever. If you haven't been fired by next week I am going to assume you have photographs of your boss in conjugal bliss with a 9 year old boy. You are going down and you are taking that has been network with you.
That's a lot different than what SeeBS reported on Hodges. According to SeeBS, Hodges said, concurringly, that, "that's what Killian said." They really know how to spin reality.
CBS News producer Mary Mapes avoided being sent to jail last week when the network agreed to publish on the Internet the transcript of an interview done by anchor Dan Rather for 60 Minutes II with a man now on trial for a racially charged dragging death in Jasper, Texas. Releasing the information fulfilled the court's demand for the transcripts; which was made with the threat of putting Mapes in jail. Explaining the move, CBS President Andrew He...
Broadcasting & Cable; 11/15/1999
http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?docid=1G1:57821134&refid=ink_pub_s3&skeyword=&teaser=
Judge orders producer jailed in dragging-death case
By C. BRYSON HULL
The Associated Press
JASPER - A judge again ordered a CBS News producer jailed Tuesday after finding her in contempt for failing to hand over videotape outtakes of an interview with dragging-death defendant Shawn Allen Berry.
State District Judge Joe Bob Golden postponed the effective date of his ruling, however, until after Thursday, when an appellate court considers an earlier contempt ruling against CBS producer Mary Mapes.
It was the second time in five days that Golden ordered the producer jailed for not turning over materials related to the Berry interview.
Mapes' attorneys argued unsuccessfully that she never had possession or control of the videotapes of an interview between anchor Dan Rather and Berry, which aired Sept. 28 on "60 Minutes II."
"You could relieve yourself of ever having to come back to Jasper if your employers would let go of what they seem to have some kind of grip on," Golden told Mapes.
On Friday, Golden held Mapes in contempt for failing to produce a transcript of the complete interview, which she testified she had at her Dallas home. The 9th Texas Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay to that order, pending arguments from both sides Thursday.
It is not clear if the appellate court also will consider the latest contempt finding Thursday.
Charles Babcock, Mapes' attorney, said he was considering a second appeal to the Beaumont appeals court on the videotape issue.
"The issue today was whether or not . . . under Texas law she can be held in contempt for failing to produce something she does not have and has never had. I think the law is clear," Babcock said.
Jasper County District Attorney Guy James Gray characterized Mapes' testimony Tuesday and last week as "evasive."
"There is absolutely no doubt there has been a clear pattern of contempt for this trial, for Jasper County and for this particular court," Gray said.
The Mapes issue has taken center stage in the Berry trial. Jury selection continued Tuesday, and testimony is expected to begin next week.
Prosecutors want to compare Berry's statements to Rather with others he gave during the investigation into the June 7, 1998, death of James Byrd Jr.
Mapes' attorneys argued that compelling the network to provide unaired material violates First Amendment protections for the media and could compromise journalists' ability to report the news. They also accused the prosecution of "fishing" for evidence.
Gray countered that jurors should he able to hear the interviews when deciding between life and death for Berry.
"This is a question of character, of what's right and wrong. This is a capital murder case. It's as serious as a heart attack, and everybody ought to try and do what is right," Gray said.
Mapes said the last time she saw the videotapes was when Rather left Jasper for New York after the Sept. 18 interview at the Jasper County Sheriff's Department.
Asked why the prosecution did not make its own tape of the interview, Gray responded, "We weren't smart enough. We should have been right there."
Prosecutors moved to have Rather and a custodian of records at CBS News subpoenaed. A hearing is scheduled Thursday before a New York judge who must decide whether to issue the subpoenas, which CBS has vowed to fight.
What effect a New York ruling will have on Mapes' situation is not yet known, Babcock said.
"I would hope that if the New York court rules that the tapes are protected and that CBS does not have to produce them, that Mary Mapes, who does not have possession of these tapes, would not be committed to jail as some sort of ransom for the tapes," Babcock said.
Berry is the third and final defendant charged with Byrd's murder. Berry's co-defendants, John W. King and Lawrence Brewer, were convicted and sentenced to death in separate trials earlier this year. All three are white, and Byrd, 49, was black.
If convicted, Berry faces either a life sentence or death by injection.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22+producer+mary+mapes++++%22+&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-img-t&n=20&fl=0&x=wrt
Actually, I did listen, and the guy I heard out Mapes, was the son....
Rather then went on to say: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."
On April 28, 60 II was first with the shocking photographs of Americans abusing Iraqi prisoners. The scoop was the result of more than two months' legwork by 60 II producer Mary Mapes, Fager says.
"We knew we were sitting on a bombshell," he says. "None of us could have predicted the kind of impact it would have on the direction of the war, or that it would become a kind of symbol."
http://www.thestate.com/mld/philly/entertainment/columnists/gail_shister/8822876.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
What goes around......
Man, I don't know the exact equities with regard to the rest of the story about who gave what National Guard documents to whom and why, but this piece just falls into place with a click. This is divine retribution for that tremendous stab-in-the-back that Rather, Mapes, and CBS delivered to America by going worldwide with the Abu Ghraib photos.
No mere story about bad conduct by young reservists, about poor or no supervision, or about prisoners having been maltreated. No, Mapes and Rather had to go worldwide with the actual photos, the one course of action guaranteed to infuriate many Arabs and the one most likely to destroy American policy in Iraq, and the Administration that formulated it. This is exactly what I think Rather and CBS intended to do with Abu Ghraib.
So now, to see them take it in the ear, hard, is just sweet justice dished up the way they earned it.
When caught in a lie.... Keep lying. No reason to come clean now.
"We knew we were sitting on a bombshell," he says. "None of us could have predicted the kind of impact it would have on the direction of the war, or that it would become a kind of symbol."
Oh, bull. They knew exactly what they were doing. They were trying to destroy the foreign policy of the People of the United States and bring down an Administration.
They knew exactly what they were doing, and why.
So, "See B.S."
Mary Mapes is the courier for Karl Rove? Or just a sucker?
el-sicko.
There is the excuse for using forged documents. We had higher standards when I worked on my high school newspaper. How did Dan react when we got the memos and found out that the RATS were using the Intelligence Committee for partisan political purposes? Did the action of the RATS matter, or was the story all about the memos?
Post doesn't parse/I don't understand what you mean.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.