Posted on 09/19/2004 9:40:13 PM PDT by LibWhacker
After days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a "60 Minutes'' report that raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night.
Those officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins, and that it was mounting an intensive news investigation of where they came from.
But these people cautioned that CBS News could still pull back from an announcement. Officials were meeting last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it has collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision.
People at the network said it was now possible that officials would open a formal internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report, which officials now say they are beginning to believe was too flawed to have gone on the air.
The report relied in large part on four memorandums purported to be from the personal file of Mr. Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who died 20 years ago. The memos, dated from the early 1970's, said that Colonel Killian was under pressure to "sugar coat'' the record of the young Lieutenant Bush and that the officer had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical.
Mr. Rather and others at the network are said to still believe that the sentiment in the memos accurately reflected Mr. Killian's feelings, but that the documents' authenticity is now in grave doubt.
The developments last night marked a dramatic turn for CBS News, which for a week stood steadfastly by its Sept. 8 report as various document experts asserted that the typeface of the memos could have been produced only by a modern-day word processor, not Vietnam War-era typewriters.
The seemingly unflappable confidence of Mr. Rather and top news division officials in the documents allayed fears within the network and created doubt among some in the news media at large that those specialists were correct. CBS News officials had said they had reason to be certain that the documents indeed came from the personal file of Colonel Killian.
Sandy Genelius, a network spokeswoman, said last week, "We are confident about the chain of custody; we're confident in how we secured the documents.''
But officials decided yesterday that they would most likely have to declare that they were misled about the records' origin after Mr. Rather and a top network executive, Betsy West, met in Texas with a man who was said to have helped the news division obtain the memos, a former Guard officer named Bill Burkett.
Mr. Rather interviewed Mr. Burkett on camera this weekend, and several people close to the reporting process said his answers to Mr. Rather's questions led officials to conclude that their initial confidence that the memos came from Mr. Killian's own files was not warranted. These people indicated that Mr. Burkett had previously led the producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, to have the utmost confidence in the material.
It was unclear last night whether Mr. Burkett told Mr. Rather that he had been misled about the documents' provenance or that he had been the one who did the misleading.
In an e-mail message yesterday, Mr. Burkett declined to answer any questions about the documents.
Yesterday, Emily J. Will, a document specialist who inspected the records for CBS News and said last week that she had raised concerns about their authenticity with CBS News producers, confirmed a report in Newsweek that a producer had told her that the source of the documents had said they were obtained anonymously and through the mail.
During an interview last night she declined to name the producer who told her this but said that the producer had been in a position to know. CBS News officials have disputed her contention that she warned the network the night before the initial "60 Minutes'' report that it would face questions from documents experts.
In the coming days CBS News officials plan to focus on how the network moved ahead with the report when there were warning signs that the memorandums were not genuine.
Ms. Will is one of two documents experts consulted by the network who said they raised doubts about the material before the segment was broadcast. Another expert, Marcel B. Matley, said in interviews that he had only vouched for Colonel Killian's signatures on the records and not the authenticity of the records themselves. Mr. Matley said he could not rule out that the signatures were cut and pasted from official records pertaining to Colonel Killian.
In examining where the network went wrong, officials at CBS News were turning their attention to Ms. Mapes, one of their most respected producers, who was riding particularly high this year after breaking news about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal for the network.
In a telephone interview this weekend, Josh Howard, the executive producer of the "60 Minutes'' Wednesday edition, said he did not initially know who was Ms. Mapes' primary source for the documents but that he did not see any reason to doubt them. He said he believed Ms. Mapes and her team had appropriately answered all questions about the documents' authenticity and, he noted, no one seemed to be casting doubt upon the essential thrust of the report.
"The editorial story line was still intact, and still is, to this day,'' he said, "and the reporting that was done in it was by a person who has turned in decades of flawless reporting with no challenge to her credibility.''
He added, "We in management had no sense that the producing team wasn't completely comfortable with the results of the document analysis.''
Ms. Mapes has not responded to requests for comment.
Mr. Howard also said in the interview that the White House did not dispute the veracity of the documents when it was presented them on the morning of the report. That reaction, he said, was "the icing on the cake'' of the other reporting the network was conducting on the documents. White House officials have said they saw no reason to challenge documents that had been presented by a credible news organization.
Several people familiar with the situation said that they were girding for a particularly tough week for Mr. Rather and the news division should the network announce its new doubts.
One person close to the situation said the critical question would be, "Where was everybody's judgment on that last day?''
BINGO! That is exactly what this past week of foot-dragging and stone-walling by CBS and the Democrats has been all about - - damage control. Look for that unstable simpleton Burkett to take the fall for all of them.
"Officials were meeting last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it has collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision. "
According to this sentence, Dan Rather is an "it".
Could one of our secret agents please drop this on that other "website" so we can watch the implosion before we put our jammies on and go to bed please?
Burkett unstable already, being exposed this way, he might go off the deep end...but no matter what, he's radioactive now. But no matter how the left and the right attack Burkett, or try to claim he had emotional problems, he was slick enough to fool Mary Mapes, now wasnt' he?
And don't forget, the last remaining "document expert" James Pierce
said he has stack of other documents from CBS he had yet to
go through.
I'd bet that the pus from this boil contaminates them all.
Mr. Pierce could make a tidy fortune unpeeling each one as another CBS fake.
Oh my god, that is too funny
1. The widow and son were IGNORED
2. Document experts were IGNORED
3. Hodges was MISLED
4. The old secretary was NOT INTERVIEWED until afterward
5. The opinions of the experts were MISREPRESENTED
6. The swift boat veterans were MALIGNED
7. George Bush's roomate DURING HIS GUARD YEARS, who AGREED TO SPEAK TO THEM WAS TURNED DOWN BECAUSE HE WAS TOO "PRO BUSH"...
And the list goes on. Fact is, this was a HIT PIECE ON BUSH. And just because dnCBS owns up to fake documents does NOT CLEAR THEIR PROPAGANDA / DNC REPORTING!!
If the documents were the ONLY ISSUE in this, without all of the other plainly propaganda driven results, it wouldn't be such an issue.
THE DOCUMENTS ARE JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG! THE ICEBERG IS THE MANIPULATION AND DECEPTION OF THE PUBLIC!!
But, but... Dan Rather and Mary Mapes knew President Bush was guilty of something...
They still believe it reflected Mr. Killian's feelings? Based on what? Wishful thinking or the slipping memory of an elderly pool typist? The information was MADE UP by a mental patient. They just can't give up the idea that they had a scoop of info that they all wish was true. CBS is finished as a credible news source (although we've known it for years!).
Got a URL for Dobbs' story?
Good stuff, keep it up....this is what WAPO or WSJ or someone should print
"Lone nut theory is not going to fly. Michael Dobbs has already tied the information to the DNC and the Kerry campaign.
Operation Fortunate Son using the forged documents was no coincidence."
It may not fly but that doesn't mean they won't try it Who would have thought they were dumb enough to try forged documents..
Let's not forget a famous quote, "The cover-up is worse than the crime".
From your keyboard to God's eyes!
And the sweating, and the squirming, and the new lame excuse of the day..... LOL
They seem to be putting full responsibility on Mapes, not only for researching the story for the past five years, but for vetting the documents with experts.
I smell ozone
The Turds weren't deceived, they are part of the scam. Phoney window dressing is all this. they hope/hoped to keep this going thru Oct. to counter the swiftboat guys, blunt any Oct. move by the swiftboat guys. Totally in lock-step with the DNC.
"You can't cheat an honest (man/woman)?"
The rest of it is "never give a sucker an even break"
Rather/Sucker
"Sorry for the duplicates!"
No worries. It was worth repeating. ;o)
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