Posted on 09/20/2004 3:42:40 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
CBS/AP) CBS News said Monday it cannot prove the authenticity of documents used in a 60 Minutes story about President Bush's National Guard service and that airing the story was a "mistake" that CBS regretted.
CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, the reporter of the original story, apologized.
CBS News claimed a source had misled the network on the documents' origins. The network 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 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."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush had seen the CBS statement. "We appreciate that they (CBS) deeply regrets ... but there are serious questions still to be answered,'' McClellan told CBS News' Jeff Goldblum.
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 the 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.
(C)BS spins for Kerry again. Burkett didn't initially get a response, but after plowing through the "flunkies", he finally got in touch with Max Cleland.
It's obvious the Kerry campaign knew about this. Even to the point of generating its "Fortunate Son" message around it.
What did Kerry know? And when did he know it?
Even though the admit the documents are wrong, they're still repeating the allegations from the memos!
I gotta give credit to these people -- they never give up!
Threat of Boycott to CBS' advertisers is working.
Dan says he's sorry, everybody forgives him?
Dan keeps job.
Now Bill O'Reilly might even get a little tougher.
No job opening for O'Reilly.
To forgive is to tolerate!!!
Dan must go.
Question.......Why did CBS and DAN goto to HIM?!?!?!?!?!?
Did he say WHO he was sorry to? Or just sorry for himself and CBS and stock holders losing money.
blather said he was sorry he got caught using these docs, NOT that he was apologizing to President Bush for slandering him or to the American people that he tried to con with these faked and foged memos...he NEVER admitted they were FAKED or FORGED, only that there was not concrete proof that they were real. Ya, can't proove photo copies are real with out scientific forensic testing with lab and microscopic testing.
"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."
Andrew Heyward
CBS News President
Burkett did not go to CBS to give them the documents. CBS went to him to get them. Now, who told CBS to dig up Burkett??? Puhlease, Burkett went to the Kerry campaign via Max Cleland (and who knows who after that) and told them he had these documents. But according to Gunga Dan tonight, Burkett didn't come to them, THEY went to him.
The plot thickens...
What about the part where Rather claimed "Right Wing zealots" were discrediting the memo??? That was no mistake. That was partisan politics.
Another question raised by Dan Rather's statement on tonight's news. Rather said that Burkett didn't come to him, but that CBS went to Burkett for the documents. How did CBS know that Burkett had the documents. This puts further weight that the Kerry campaign or the DNC was involved. Who else would have tipped off CBS that Burkett had some potentially damaging documents?
Most excellent !!!!
To an audience of none?
Rather and Burkett were almost as good as Clinton, "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinskey." They colluded to defray the potential damage and I don't believe a darn word they said. There are bigger fish to fry and these two bumbling idiots tried to deflect the obvious. Both needs to be in jail. I will not listen to his next apology because there's a whole line of them coming up. I'm done with anything to do with CBS.
And don't forget Dan's ugly daughter, she may be involved at some point??
Yeah, I think that's the obvious conclusion from what we know so far. It would be nice if he could be prosecuted, either under military or civilian law. That kind of trial is probably the only way we'll get past the media spin and find out what really happened.
And what's all this BS about "unimpeachable sources" that Rather was spewing last week? Even if that epithet would apply to Burkett (which it DOESN'T) he is at best an unimpeachable source for the source, but not for the story itself.
Of course now that Burkett is a proven liar, why should one trust what he says about ANYTHING? And now that Rather is a proven liar for what he reported about his sources, what he should he be trusted either?
Documents could not be "authenicated". Next step - if the documents cannot be authenicated, then the information contained in them is sheer speculation, based on hearsay at best, and an outright fabrication otherwise. Hearsay is not admissible, and repetition of fabrications is tantamount to perjury.
There were no "original documents" that contained such perjorative statements by Lt. Colonel Killian concerning Lt. George W. Bush. In the official files, in his private files, or anywhere in the known universe. At any time. Ever.
Cuffing liars.
This one leads straight back to the Dems- take your pick as to which one(s).
"I hope the feeding frenzy over the TANG documents was worth possibly costing us the election. "
Bush = Roadrunner
MSM/DNC/Kerry = Wile E Coyote
I think Bush was going to win anyway, but this way of defeating both the MSM *and* the Democrats, by doing *nothing* while they managed to implode based on their own paranoid delusions/hate of Bush is so apropos the whole election cycle. Kerry/DNC/MSM lied and lied, and in the end it amounts to nothing because Kerry offers nothing but negative lies about Bush.
Bush: BEEP BEEP
...ooh, how sweet it is!!
"Max Cleland is the triple amputee former Senator from Georgia who is working for the DNC now. It is being reported that Bill Burkett told a group of Texas Democrats in a mailing list that he had given Max documents to counter-attack the Swift Liars. It is implied that he is the "unimpeachable" source from CBS. CBS then simply got the documents from Burkett for sure, but it was Cleland who gave it credibility for CBS to run with it...so the story goes "
If even DUmmies are admiting a Burkett/DNC connection, there is way more than meets the (CBS) eye, even now!!!
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