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?''
Welcome to reality, Rip Van Winkle!
Old Corps concludes (a long time ago) that Mr. Dan Blather is a commie 5th columnist (not the writing kind) whose agenda driven 'reporting' [newsreading] has no basis in fact.
That's what my middle-school students do! Someone look up Kohlberg's stages of morality! :)
Prove it! you lyin SOS!
What's left of CBS will be split off and sold to Fox and other networks within 5 years...
Dan Rather is a liberal ideologue and NOT a journalist.
When will 'Blockhead' apologize to "Buckhead?"
This is essentially the equivalent of someone buying a "Rolex" watch out of the back of a truck in a WalMart parking lot, being told that the watch is "GenUWine" and insisiting that it is despite the fact that all your friends are laughing at you and the word "Rolex" is misspelled.
.
Ever since during the Vietnam War...
CBS News has bee ruiness to us all.
.
Only took about two weeks.
I guess CBS needs to have pajama attire day at the Central headquarters. Because their currently stupidity and lack of professionalism is glaring.
[ This is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Why is UNCLEAR? If Mr. Burkett 'doctored' FEDERAL MILITARY DOCUMENTS or had someone else do this-there may be a FELONY INVOLVED. Period. If Dan Rather cannot determine this-WHAT RIGHT DOES HE HAVE TO PURSUE the chain of custody of information HE LAID UPON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC in an effort to bring down a sitting USA President?]
"In an e-mail message yesterday, Mr. Burkett declined to answer any questions about the documents. "
[HUH? This needs to be INVESTIGATED as well. Why is this man refusing to answer questions? Did CBS demand this? Did Dan Rather request this? Is this man, who may have committed a FELONY going to be allowed to HIDE OUT? Who is going to do the job DAN RATHER has apparently failed to do?]
We are waiting, impatiently. And we will NOT ALLOW CBS to continue this attempt to smear a United States President to further an agenda to destroy him and to break America's trust in this good man.
Mary Mapes:
Will Gunga Dan give up his fugly daughter, Robin, who was surely involved in this?
"Does this look infected to you?"
CBS News exectives (shown above) leave the CBS Commissary after a hearty breakfast of funnel cakes to plan their next move in the journalisic quagmire known as "Rathergate".
NO! You mean none of it was true? I'm SHOCKED! Shocked I say. (/sarcasm)
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