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?''
> ... CBS News would most likely make an announcement
> as early as today that it had been deceived about
> the documents' origins, ...
BS - they didn't want to know.
> ... CBS News could still pull back from an announcement.
They haven't settled on a suicide journalist to take the
fall for Grima Rathertongue.
> "We are confident about the chain of custody; we're
> confident in how we secured the documents.''
And we'll fight to the death to avoiding bringing the
Kerry campaign and the DNC into this.
> Mr. Rather interviewed Mr. Burkett on camera this weekend ...
And decided he didn't play convincingly on TV, it seems.
> ... officials at CBS News were turning their attention to Ms. Mapes ...
A scapegoat will be named soon.
> ... 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'' ...
"Unimpeachable" is the word.
> "Where was everybody's judgment on that last day?''
The same place it's been for the last 40 years.
"The Wall Within", anyone?
Unfortunately for Dan, we have already passed this portion of the story and are on to how Kinkos, Cleland and Burkett connect with the DNC and the Kerry campaign. But hey, we'll be glad to have you "break that news" in a few weeks, Dan. ROTFLOL
not=now
Let me add, I hope you people at CBS have told rather of your intentions. The Cap'n still seems intent to salvage those duds you paraded on national TV.
I've just commented on a couple of other threads about how Rather should distance himself from the story, and now here's this.
They can proclaim to be investigating internally until the cows come home, but it'll change nothing. Not only should Rather have stayed away from Texas, but he also was able to reveal himself by his dissing of Fox News to a reporter on camera.
The Tiffany Network is tarnished beyond repair.
Rather is not merely stupid. He is resolutely and courageously stupid.
LOL! You mean Buckhead?
The only way CBS News sees to get its credibility back is to toss Burkett overboard. They are in the process of doing that. If Burkett has to face felony charges, I wonder if he'll go down quietly or start singing about his DNC/Kerry contacts?
Sounds like CBS News execs aren't too happy with the Burkett interview Rather just taped. If Burkett comes across as a wacko, people will wonder how CBS News was dumb enough to fall for his story. FReepers know why. Rather wanted his last hurrah and was prepared to try to bring down a sitting President in time of war as part of DNC's 'Operation Fortunate Son'.
"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".
Main Entry: sen·ti·ment
Pronunciation: 'sen-t&-m&nt
Function: noun
Etymology: French or Medieval Latin; French, from Medieval Latin sentimentum, from Latin sentire
1 a : an attitude, thought, or judgment prompted by feeling : PREDILECTION b : a specific view or notion : OPINION
2 a : EMOTION b : refined feeling : delicate sensibility especially as expressed in a work of art c : emotional idealism d : a romantic or nostalgic feeling verging on sentimentality
3 a : an idea colored by emotion b : the emotional significance of a passage or expression as distinguished from its verbal context
synonym see FEELING, OPINION
Mr Burkitt will be their Oswald. The lone nut theory rides again.
oops, thinking of Rather I guess.
Sorry, Buckhead
God only knows how many forged memos and unreliable witnesses CBS (and the rest of the liberal "mainstream media" for that matter) used over the years to support and embellish their hit pieces. I can barely contain my disgust at all of them.
Part of my job requires me to work with fairly tightly controlled chains of custody. I'd get laughed out of a job if I tried some crap like this.
There is only one way CBS can come out of this: drop the "content is true although memos are false" b.s. and hang their source out to dry. Once they admit publicly that the documents are frauds, it's going to be harder and harder NOT to do that.
My hunch is, with this much blood in the water, they won't be able to hide anything.
His contract runs out in 2006.
Will he apologize to the President for trying to destroy him?
I can't wait to hear CBS & Dan Rather reveal their "unimpeachable" source.
Ha ha ha ha ha....
now don't go casting your pearls before swine....
and like blair, ALL SeeBS stories are now suspect!!!
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.