"Therefore.... I shall resign the anchorship effective at noon tomorrow. Vice-Anchor Williams will be sworn in as anchor at that hour in this studio."
(Oh, wait.... he didn't say that? Damn.)
-Dan
EXCLUSIVE
STATEMENT FROM DAN RATHER:
Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.
Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.
But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.
Now is Rather going to make a retraction on both the programs this cr@p aired on?
He STILL doesn't say they're bogus!!!
Ah shucks, it was an oversight.
Hey! So do I!
But I was misled by an arm of the main stream media.
Guess we both should have known better.
What a phony!!!
WHERE is the apology to President Bush??
What the heck does that mean???
Okay, so don't give us this crap. If the memos are forged (which is now stipulated), then there is no reason to protect the source. Whoever gave these memos to CBS is running naked now and must be outed.
Let the feeding frenzy begin. We'll see to whom the trail leads.
If CBS continues to protect this source, then they are overtly engaging in a conspiracy (as opposed to the covert smear job they had hoped to do).
Translation: We were told by numerous experts that the documents were probably forgeries. If we had know we were going to be caught, we wouldn't have used them.
CBS News executives (shown above) return to the Commissary for a hearty lunch of funnel cakes after making Dan Rather come to his senses. Insiders report that Mr. Rather was repeatedly subjected to dousings of buckets-full of ice-cold confetti until he signed the statement.
Whenever you put a caveat to your "apology", you aren't apologizing, you're justifying.