Posted on 09/20/2004 9:34:42 AM PDT by SmithPatterson
CBS Regrets Bush Memos Story
NEW YORK, Sept. 20, 2004
(CBS/AP) CBS News on Monday said it regretted broadcasting a story about President Bush's military service based on documents whose authenticity is in doubt, saying the source of the material had misled the network.
CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, the reporter of the original story, apologized.
In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett "has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source."
The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush's National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them.
"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. "We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."
"Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting," Heyward continued. "We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust."
Additional reporting on the documents will air on Monday's CBS Evening News, including the interview of Burkett by Rather. CBS News pledged "an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken."
In a separate statement, Rather said that "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," he said.
"We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry," Rather added.
The authenticity of the documents — four memoranda attributed to Guard commander Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — has been under fire since they were described in a Sept. 8 broadcast of 60 Minutes.
CBS had not previously revealed who provided the documents or how they were obtained.
Burkett has previously alleged that in 1997 he witnessed allies of then-Gov. Bush discussing the destruction of Guard files that might embarrass Mr. Bush, who was considering a run for the presidency. Bush aides have denied the charge.
In the statement, CBS said: "Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point."
Questions about the president's National Guard service have lingered for years. Some critics question how Mr. Bush got into the Guard when there were waiting lists of young men hoping to join it to escape the draft and possible service in Vietnam.
In the Sept. 8 60 Minutes report, former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes — a Democrat — claimed that, at the behest of a friend of the Bush family, he pulled strings to get young George W. Bush into the Guard.
Other questions concern why Mr. Bush missed a physical in 1972, and why there are scant records of any service by Mr. Bush during the latter part of 1972, a period during which he transferred to an Alabama guard unit so he could work on a campaign there.
The CBS documents suggested that Mr. Bush had disobeyed a direct order to attend the physical, and that there were other lapses in his performance. One memo also indicated that powerful allies of the Bush family were pressuring the guard to "sugar coat" any investigation of Lt. Bush's service.
Skeptics immediately seized on the typing in the memos, which included a superscripted "th" not found on all 1970s-era typewriters. As the controversy raged, CBS broadcast interviews with experts who said that some typewriters from that period could have produced the markings in question.
Other critics saw factual errors in the documents, stylistic differences with other writing by Killian and incorrect military lingo.
Some relatives of Col. Killian disputed that the memos were real. His former secretary said the sentiments regarding Mr. Bush's failures as an officer were genuine, but the documents were not.
Some document experts whom CBS consulted for the story told newspapers they had raised doubts before the broadcast and were ignored. CBS disputed their accounts, pointing to the main document expert the network consulted, Marcel Matley.
Matley insisted he had vouched for the authenticity of the signatures on the memos, but had not determined whether the documents themselves were genuine.
Last week, CBS News stood by its reporting while vowing to continue working the story. The network acknowledged there were questions about the documents and pledged to try to answer them.
Mr. Bush maintains that he did not get special treatment in getting into the Guard, and that he fulfilled all duties. He was honorably discharged.
On Saturday, a White House official said Mr. Bush has reviewed the disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972, and did not recall having seen them previously.
In his first public comment on the documents controversy, the president told The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., "There are a lot of questions about the documents, and they need to be answered."
The Bush campaign has alleged that their Democratic rivals were somehow involved in the story. John Kerry's campaign denies it. In an email revealed last week, Burkett said he had contacted the Kerry campaign but received no response.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to find and make public by next week any unreleased files about Mr. Bush's Vietnam-era Air National Guard service to resolve a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Associated Press.
The White House and Defense Department have on several occasions claimed that they had released all the documents only to make additional records available later on.
©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Well, I think it's high time I thank you for all the pings.
CBS is not claiming they are forgeries, they are merely claiming to have been misled as to who the orginal source was. In their hearts, they still want to believe that these memos are real. Either that, or they deliberately misled the public and are trying to cover up their tracks, which I think is the more plausible scenario. Even their own experts were warning them before airtime and they chose to ignore those warnings. That leads me to believe CBS, or at least Dan Rather, was more interested in smearing President Bush than in reporting the truth.
And CBS is STILL misrepresenting the doucments and the experts claims.
Just for comic relief, over at DU they are suggesting "Buckhead" was the source of these fascinating "memos". Kind of fun, in a twisted way, to pop over there every so often........
We have thousands of journalists willing to ignore their own bias. These "journalists" are so convinced that their political preferences are superior that they are ignoring their traditional responsibility and redefining journalism as political marketing, no matter how inaccurate.
marker
Ditto.
But as much as I don't admire Cleland, I don't think Cleland would knowingly pass along documents he knew to be forged. Max has never been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he wouldn't put himself at risk. But, he could be easily fooled, especially since becoming so obsessively bitter, and so anxious to be of use to Kerry, for revenge, and for a cushy Kerry appointment.
I think somehow Cleland is involved, I'm just not able to figure out how.
"I loathe Max Cleland. He's mean, nasty, and he was thrown out of the Senate because he was a lousy senator! Georgians did it and we're proud! "
I saw a special on him once titled 'Lobster Boy'! Fascinating....
I just got home, and haven't had a chance to read all the threads yet. Has anyone gotten a transcript of the first and second 60 mins airings, and Rather's statements on the documents then, and put them right next to his and CBS' statements today?
I was wondering when one of you wags were gonna think of this one.
I don't think for one minute that CBS will somehow change their stripes. Yesterday, I tuned into CBS radio while in the car and they were giving Eleanor Cliff access, as if it were news. She stated all kinds of lies, including that "all of the Swift Boat accusations had been proven false".
They don't comment back, of course, as this is the easy way to get their lies out there.
Thanks for the ping, Howlin. They still have not owned up to the fact that the documents are forgeries. Both the statement by CBS and the one by Rather leave a lot to be desired.
That's exactly what it is.
Yeah, those of us who are continually derided and slandered by the so-called mainstream media, and who were derisively dismissed by CBS as kooks in pajamas.
"Libs on the DU site are apoplectic. Here is one poster (giving their analysis of our strategy). I say we take the jerk up on his advice, and do precisely what he is afraid we will do between now and Election Day:
"...almost from the very minute his (Rush's) show started today. And I know Borrtz has brought up the Max Cleland angle. Any further investigations as to whether Bush43 disobeyed a direct order to take a physical are now, IMNSHO, permanently tainted by this fiasco. If anyone else trys to bring it up, all the opposition will have to do is scream "RATHER LIED" at the top of their lungs. Sheesh! Later, " "
ABSOLUTELY correct. Anything that comes from CBS News from now to election day is suspect. Any anti-Bush document that mysteriously shows up from a source other than the Pentagon is suspect. Any article on the "Fortunate Son" angle is suspect, and its source considered hostile.
sorry, we put up with Slick Willie way too long and learned way too much ....what does "AS IT WAS AIRED" mean? If we'd known (wink, wink) they were forgeries, we would have put the story out another way?
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