Posted on 09/20/2004 4:54:00 PM PDT by Nepalis
NEW YORK (AFP) Sep 21, 2004
CBS presenter Dan Rather on Monday apologised on the network's main evening news programme for the use of dubious documents to back a report casting doubt on President George W. Bush's military record.
"I want to say personally and directly, I'm sorry," Rather said after highlighting the network's regrets for using the documents which alleged that Bush had received preferential treatment to get into the Texas Air National Guard.
"We can no long vouch for their authenticity," Rather said.
"It was a mistake. CBS News deeply regrets it."
CBS had issued a statement earlier in the day apologising for using the documents without fully checking their veracity.
And just like the questions we poised when first this story broke by See-BS, there are questions: who created the documents? Who knew about the authenticity of the documents? Did Kerry know about the existence of these documents? Were the Dems or the Kerry campaign in any way involved?
It was a fake apology...he is still digging for dirt on the President and is bragging about it.
Rather kept spinnning - he claimed that his phony source, Burkett, was in the "Air Guard", instead of the National Guard, probably to mislead viewers who weren't in the know.
Ping!
Dan Rather has hemmorhoids.
This is such BS! CBS had FOUR doc examiners ALL say there were problems with those docs yet CBS IGNORED ALL THE EXAMINERS THEY HIRED.
CBS did not CARE if the docs were forgeries or not! Dan Rather and Mary Mares,(sp) thought they could get away with a fraudulent story.
I challenge anyone to provide the evidence that Dan Rather didn't know the docs were forgeries.
Anybody watching the Bloviator? I think Laura Ingraham kicked him hard enough where it counts, that he now remembers who brought him to the dance. NOOOOOOWWWW, suddenly he notices the elite media bias against the swift vets - and hits Rather with the forgeries, albeit with a heavily cushioned boxing glove. Anybody else see this?
Do you recognize the significance of this????
Oh how the mighty are fallen!
Dan Rather, poor and pitiful on national news because of the folks at Free Republic.
VIVA LA REVOLUTION !!!!!
NEW YORK (AFP) Sep 21, 2004
The CBS television network apologised Monday, saying it had erred in using dubious documents in a report that cast doubts on President George W. Bush's Vietnam era military service.
"I want to say personally and directly, I'm sorry," an emotional anchorman Dan Rather said after highlighting the network's regrets for using the documents which alleged that Bush had received preferential treatment to get into the Texas Air National Guard.
"We can no long vouch for their authenticity," Rather said. "It was a mistake. CBS News deeply regrets it."
CBS had issued a statement earlier in the day apologising for using the documents without fully checking their veracity.
The acknowledgement is a major embarrassment for the network, which for the past week had sought to stand by the report, despite growing pressure to admit it may have been misled as to the documents' provenance.
The memos -- allegedly written by late lieutenant colonel Jerry Killian, Bush's commanding officer in the Texas National Guard in the 1970s -- suggested political pressure was exerted to "sugar coat" the future president's service record.
The "60 Minutes" report also charged that Bush's family connections had secured his assignment to the National Guard unit -- a posting that effectively spared him active duty in Vietnam.
Soon after the report aired, questions were raised over the authenticity of the memos, with numerous experts arguing the typeface could have been produced only by a modern-day word processor, not Vietnam War-era typewriters.
Heyward insisted that "60 Minutes" had "full confidence" in the original report at the time of its broadcast.
However, further forensic investigation, as well as interviews with Killian's former secretary Marian Carr Knox and retired National Guard lieutenant Bill Burkett, who provided the documents, had challenged those earlier assumptions, he said.
In his interview to be broadcast Monday evening, Burkett 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.
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," CBS said.
The network said it was commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine "what actions need to be taken."
The White House said it appreciated CBS's expression of regret, but added there was still the issue of who the real source of the documents was.
"There are a number of serious questions that remain unanswered and they need to be answered," said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan.
McClellan also charged that Burkett had been "discredited in the past" and suggested he might have been working with the campaign of Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry.
"It is clear that there's been an orchestrated effort by Democrats and the Kerry campaign to tear down the president and use old recycled attacks," he said.
The top Democratic Party official, Terry McAuliffe, still accused Bush of lying to the American people about his service.
"We know that George Bush was a fortunate son, a child of privilege, who refuses to admit that he used his connections to avoid fulfilling his requirements," he continued.
The "60 Minutes" controversy is a personal blow to the credibility of Rather, who presented the original report and was combative in its defence when questions were first raised. He is now facing growing calls for his resignation. Link
>>Anybody watching the Bloviator?<<
Yep... I have been getting more and more disgusted with this guy... he makes it all about him. Laura exposed him to his face and he still has no humility. His treatment of the swiftboat vets was the most outrageous. But at least he can't brag about breaking the story!
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