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.
Rather and CBS 0WNED.
exactly..CBS is sabotaging the War Effort in Iraq and trying to control the outcome of the Presidential Election.
Dan Rather is a pathetic fool. He so reminds me of Bagdad Bob it's not funny.
OK. GW drunk driving?
Smoking gun. Burn them all.
Good find, MistyCA. There it is.
No .. that was Chris Lehane
It's probably going to come out that Burkett shopped around the forged documents, that other media (like USAToday), didn't bite. And I bet CBS will burn Burkett's butt in a heartbeat if need be, to try and salvage their own reputation. The momentum of this story continues to grow. Each add-on I've seen so far, just adds more stink to CBS.
OK. Abu Garaib? (I need more coffee.)
Mary Mapes is not even listed on CBS or in the CBS bios.
Well, if you want to know whose idea it was......you might start by asking who Kerry spent 90 minutes talking to on the phone in his hospital room, who suggested Kerry take on Begala and Carville and the other ex-Clinton political reptiles in the first place.
Ooops, I guess I gave it away.
I think we've got to cut CBS a break here.
Think of it like this. Suppose you're a producer at C.B.S. news, and you get a source who says that, say, Jim Jones (of the Peoples' Temple) was responsible for causing the death of a few more people than the he 900 or so he's already responsible for.
How much scrutiny do you subject this story to? I mean, really, is it that hard to believe?
As far as C.B.S. is concerned, George Bush, Republicans, and conservatives in general are every bit as reprehensible as was Jim Jones. Information that reflects badly on them is as beliveable as information stating that the sun will rise tomorrow. Does that statement need to be fact checked?
If you look at it that way it makes a lot more sense.
(steely)
Like it was up there with Bali and Beslan.
and I can't find it.
My guess is that these forgeries are a part of a conspiracy that was born in Texas -- Texas Democrats authored these doc's. Barnes came forward & changed his story at the same time. It wouldn't surprise me if Dan Rather's daughter is also mixed up in this as a conduit to CBS News.
Concur. Rather is trying to replicate Cronkite's takeout of the Johnson Administration, and throwing the Vietnamese War even as Westmoreland's people and the ARVN were defeating the Viet Cong in detail and disarticulating their formations and their cadres by the simple expedient of killing them in the field.
At some level it's about social competition, but when our foreign policy is on the line, I don't care what the self-appointed New Class mugwumps like Rather think.
Notice how the media are closing ranks on this one? "We should be talking about the economy." "We should be talking about the war." "Why are we spending time on photocopies and commas and what someone did 35 years ago?" "What does it really matter?"
Fog so thick you could cut it with a knife. They apparently resent getting told to go to work.
Limbaugh mentioned last week that Barnes is a big wig in the Dem Party in the same county in TX where Rather's daughter lives. Remember when Rather spoke at that Dem fund raiser a few years ago? It was for the Dem Party in this same TX county. Not only that, but Barnes reportedly has a house in Nanatucket not too far from Rather. Coincidence? i think not!
bump
Oh, look........NO doubt they'll (CBS brass) find a few sacrificial lambs to gut for this. Rather will survive; he's an "icon", donchaknow. To fire Rather would be a HUGE and VERY public admission of their complicity in this plot (no other way to describe it), and they cannot allow that to happen.
A producer here, an exectutive producer there, chest-thumping about how they must "maintain their integrity and have taken appropriate steps", yada yada......you see it coming. Then the rest of us will be told to just shut up, move along, case closed.
CBS needs to take heed, though. It won't work. We are NOT going to let it go. When a major broadcast network decides to go after a sitting President in an election year in the shabbiest, most obviously partisan way imaginable, then they must know that this is WAR.
We have 'em by the short 'n' curlies, and we aren't letting this one slide, CBS.
That describes Dan Rather. For decades.
When Rather was in Jasper during the Byrd trials he was followed around by a young woman with a big case of make-up and powdered his nose during the commercial breaks. It was really comical to watch.
Dan Rather defines "false pride."
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