Posted on 09/15/2004 1:11:05 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
CBS and "60 Minutes II" are sitting in an odd chair, in front of strange media lights, answering questions they are used to asking.
Network anchor Dan Rather is not making an interview subject squirm on national television.
He is making his CBS colleagues sweat behind the scenes.
One veteran correspondent told the New York Times, "I'm distressed." Another described the mood of the staff as one of "deep concern."
The distress and concern at CBS centers on "exclusive" information the network aired last week about President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.
The information, based on four documents from a deceased squadron commander, purported to show that, among other things, the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian was pressured to "sugar coat" Bush's performance rating.
Since the report aired, evidence has emerged suggesting the documents were forged. Family members and some document experts say the memos are fake. Piece by piece, the story is falling apart.
A retired investigative editor friend of mine is not surprised. Almost immediately after the story broke, Jim Savage recognized warning signs that CBS producers ignored.
"Right now, it's still very fuzzy," says Savage, 65, who retired from the Miami Herald earlier this year. "But if I had to bet, I'd say the story won't hold up."
Before I allow Savage to explain, let me tell you something about him.
He edited investigative projects at the Herald for approximately 20 years. Two of those projects — one on Iran-Contra, another on Hurricane Andrew — won Pulitzer Prizes.
He is best known, though, as the editor who helped expose the extramarital affair between former Sen. Gary Hart and Donna Rice.
Acting on an anonymous tip 17 years ago, Savage, current Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler and another reporter confronted Hart outside his Washington townhouse, which Rice was visiting.
That meeting led to a scandalous story, and Hart withdrew from the 1988 presidential race.
Now back to the current race.
After CBS reported that Killian wrote memos to himself about a discussion with Bush on how the future president could avoid "coming to drill," supporters of Sen. John Kerry accepted the report as gospel.
Not Savage. He sensed trouble.
"It's clear that CBS did a lot of work on this," Savage says, "but you have to start off with a basic question: Would a person commit something like this to writing? People don't normally do that.
"I don't write notes to myself and say, 'Gee, I did something wrong the other day.' You might write something like that to your wife."
As it turned out, Killian's widow later said that her husband did not write memos to himself.
There was something else that made Savage uneasy. Killian's son, Gary, said he had warned CBS that the memos were fake.
"If I was the editor and I had this family member telling me this," Savage says, "that would stop me right in my tracks.
"This guy is going to come out after the fact and say he warned us. That's a big red light flashing."
Another problem: CBS relied on a retired major general to authenticate the contents of the memos by telephone. Then the major general recanted. He says the documents are fake.
"When you talk about something like this on a phone, you create a weak witness," Savage says. "And weak witnesses tend to disappear."
Savage feels for Rather's distressed colleagues. I do, too. Investigative reporting is a little like jumping off one of those cliffs in Acapulco — thrilling and terrifying at the same time. One mistake and you're dead.
Savage and I have gone over the cliff together. We collaborated on investigative stories about vice and fraud in sports. Thanks to careful editing and Savage's exceptional instincts, we survived our many jumps.
But CBS looks like it has hit a rock below.
Obviously, they are STILL ignoring the warning signs. They are in denial.
Another site has "cBS says docs frauds but content is correct.."
This just gets worse and worse.
I have documents that state Dan Rather rapes chimpanzees at the Bronx Zoo at midnight. So if the docs I have are false, I can claim the content is true?
What are these liberals drinking?
CBS has also said its story about Mr. Bush's guard service relied on much more than documents. Featured in the segment was former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, a Democrat who claims he pulled strings to get Mr. Bush into the Guard in 1968.
CBS News on Tuesday said the report by Dan Rather did not rely on assessments made by the two examiners quoted in the ABC report, and found it notable the secretary affirmed the content of the documents.
"We continue to believe in this story," said CBS News senior vice president Betsy West.
Even worse, people they hired to examine the documents had serious concerns about the documents and warned them not to use them for their story before it aired.
CBS addresses that. See #4 above.
They are wishing it away with those statements.
Not gonna happen.
But Dan wanted to be the hero of the democrats and the leftwing media.....Dan alone would have made Kerry president...He would be in the history books...Best laid plans etc etc...
You mean to tell me that the FCC has not thrown CBS off of the air yet.The FEC should fine CBS NEWS for not registering for a 527.
LOL, she affirmed the documents were fakes. What she said was she thought that was what Killian was thinking. I guess she knew him better than his wife and kids....
And this comes from a lamestream newspaper.
The sad thing is that this will all blow over and eventually CBS will recover unless we force them to admit the forgeries and name their sources for this fraud.
Nobody else can or will do this. We must attack their sponsors. There is no other way to bring CBS to their knees. We must make them radioactive to commercial sponsorship.
And this comes from a lamestream newspaper.
The sad thing is that this will all blow over and eventually CBS will recover unless we force them to admit the forgeries and name their sources for this fraud.
Nobody else can or will do this. We must attack their sponsors. There is no other way to bring CBS to their knees. We must make them radioactive to commercial sponsorship.
Yes, because it is important to focus on the underlying story. Under... lying...
"Another site has "cBS says docs frauds but content is correct.."
That's a good one.... That's like saying, "my research shows that coffee ground enemas cure colon cancer, but so far all the patients have died."
nick
Hey, could I at least get a courtesy ping? :)
Nacho Guarache http://www2.mysanantonio.com/opinion/cartoonarchive/leo_nacho.cfm?show=month
They were not gulled, not duped, not taken in. They were pointedly warned by at least 2 of their own document experts that these memos were highly questionable. CBS knew very well that they were perpetrating fraud on their viewers. When Rather first reported on the memos, he said CBS had "thoroughly investigated" and cited the document experts to buttress his claims. He lied and that's obvious.
Nobody at CBS was deceived, hoaxed, tricked, duped, gulled, spoofed, hoodwinked, hornswoggled, flimflamed, diddled or suckered.
CBS tried to pull a fast one and got caught. Period.
CBS and other Bush bashers will play up that comment bigtime, even though the only actual evidence, the only authentic records, of Killian's thinking shows positive commentary on Bush.
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