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.
Hey CBS:
Depending on CBS and Rather for unbiased news is "A 'Mistake"
Guess that means Burkett never served in the plane with George W - and isn't that the criteria the press uses?
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.
It wasn't a "mistake" that they regretted, it was a blatant lie that they propagated that they thought they could squeeze in without notice.
It would have worked in the pre-blog era. Not so now SEE-BS.
blessings, Bobo
Jon Klein at about 7:15 is on CNBC talking about the lack of checks & balances w/ us ignorant bloggers. Guy from Powerline explaining why what Klein says is not so. Buckhead id'd as a lawyer, Name mentioned (can't remember) "very conservative" from Atlanta. Oh, wait, maybe they weren't calling Buckhead "very conservative" but only calling FR "very conservative. Yep, that's us, a bunch of far-right pajama-clad loonies. ROFLMAO!
How's this for a war cry: CAN DAN.
CBS is still refusing to admit the obvious: the documents are fake.
But does the media want to catch the lies? I haven't heard this mentioned. Why fax memos to someone who is there in person to receive them?
I caught the "Air Guard" quote, and I thought he was still trying to deceive listeners into to believing that Burkett actually might be familiar with Bush's Air National Guard service.
I think Carl said that this has been going on for a couple of weeks.
Collusion? Of course. Stupidity? Well, it doesn't nuance too well.
I don't think Burkett made them up himself because the doc's used some non TANG lingo. Wouldn't Burkett at least be able to use the correct wording since he was a Lt. Col? Someone, ever so clever, drafted up the documents and passed them on to Burkett is my guess. However, I think Burkett is the designated scape goat and is going to take the bullet on this.
No they don't....however, as we've seen thanks to Buckhead and several others including FR....we here in cyber space are becoming the new media. What can we do...to continue to expose this Bull Sh*t.
Burkett wasn't TANG. He was Army National Guard. Ain't the same, and he wouldn't have known the Air National Guard lingo.
A mistake is when you have a little oopsie... not when you pursue something for 5 years and then folow a lead with forged documents and ignore worries that they could be fake and then ignore thousands of internet users who know better than you do...
That would journalistic incompetance beyond belief- but because it is simply not believable it is more than that..
It is total bias and blindly pursuing an agenda- THE worst sin
Ted Baxter- I mean Dan Rathe should be fired
The thing to focus on is what he first said to CNN in a "man on the street interveie" which was "We intend to get to the bottom of this, end of story." Then 86 year-old Mary Carr Knox seemingly went from "I don't quite remember how it happend", to "I remember vividly about LT Bush" a week later. I'd like to know what her cure is for dementia!
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