Posted on 09/23/2004 7:05:03 PM PDT by FairOpinion
WASHINGTON – Bill Burkett of Baird, Texas, will have a prominent place in the annals of political trickery. He'll be remembered as the one who aimed at President Bush and felled the mighty Dan Rather and "60 Minutes."
Who could've contrived this hoax? Suspicions settled on Mr. Burkett, himself a former Guard officer with a lively hatred of President Bush. With a sinking feeling, Rather and staff, who'd worked long and hard at developing the "scoop," realized they'd been had.
Rather flew to Texas and strong-armed Burkett into an interview confessing all - almost all. He said he'd worked in league with someone he wouldn't name who was the real perpetrator of the hoax. Later, Burkett admitted that this was a lie, too. So, Rather went on the air with a humble (for him) mea culpa.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
And what role did the Kerry campaign and the DNC play in the forgery and its dissemination.
And the question no one is asking. CBS claims that they initiated contact with Burkett. Who pointed CBS toward Burkett.
I'll give you three guesses, but if you guess the Kerry Campaign on your first try, you won't neet the other two.
Uhh, yeah, to the best of my knowledge Rather has not admitted the memos are forgeries, and still stands by the claims in his report.
If he's changed his story, please let me know.
"...realized they'd been had."
CBS and Dan Blather were perpetrators of this fraud, not victims of it.
How exactly did Shorr come to leave CBS? He was/is wackier than Rather. Was there a catfight between the two? It's been so long that I've forgotten the details.
WHY CBS SHOULD FIRE DAN RATHERThe CBS News assault on Vice President George Bush led by Dan Rather and aired on the CBS Evening News on January 25 was planned, scripted and rehearsed like a secret military operation. CBS worked on it for over a month according to Rather himself. We don't know if it had a code name, but "Bush whacker" would be fitting, since the purpose of the operation was clearly to deliver a damaging blow to the Bush campaign for the Republican presidential nomination "as close to the actual (Iowa) caucus date as possible," to quote from a letter CBS News sent to Bush requesting the interview. CBS employed deception to lure Bush into a trap, surprise to knock him off balance and what The Washington Post in an editorial described as "the journalistic equivalent of a spray of machine-gun fire" to soften up the target. That referred to the six-minute taped report that was aired just before Rather began his live interview of Bush. The report was designed to demonstrate that the vice president was not being truthful and candid in his replies to questions about his involvement in the Iran arms affair.
In introducing this report, Rather said CBS News had spent more than a month preparing it. That meant that they were already well along when on January 5, Richard M. Cohen, senior politics producer for CBS News, sent Bush a letter saying, "Part of our early coverage of the 1988 presidential election has been a series of candidate profiles.... We purposely saved your profile for last, so it could be aired in January, as close to the actual (Iowa) caucus date as possible. Dan Rather is very interested in your profile and has decided to do it him- self. Mr. Rather feels that because you are the incumbent Vice President and a front runner, that your candidacy deserves special attention." He re- quested that Dan Rather be given an interview with Mr. Bush...........snip
The one thing they didn't anticipate was Bush's counterattack, and Rather was unable to cope with that gracefully. The interview ran nine minutes, and Rather not only failed to get the answers he wanted, but he also ended up with egg on his face after spending nine minutes in a heated, rude confrontation with the vice president that angered and offended thou- sands of viewers. At the end, executive producer Tom Bettag was yelling at Rather through his earphone, "Cut! cut! cut! You gotta get out," leading the anchor- man to make this graceless, rude exit: "I gather that your answer is no. Thank you very much for being with me, Mr. Vice President."
In the course of those nine minutes, Rather interrupted the vice president 20 times. At one point Bush was saying, "Let's be careful here because..." and Rather interrupted to say, "Yes sir, I want you to be careful, Mr. Vice President.... "As the vice president was explaining his keen interest in freeing the hostages, especially the CIA station chief in Beirut, William Buckley, who was being tortured to death, Rather interrupted to say, "Mr. Vice President, you've made us hypocrites in the face of the world. How could you, how could you sign on to such a policy? And the question is, what does this tell us about your record?"
End Excerpt
Safire has a good editorial.
William Safire: Duping of CBS journalists was more than a 'dirty trick' (it's a crime)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1225362/posts
If Kerry wins this election, I blame CBS and Dan Rather.
I think the proper terminology is "got caught" versus being had. They have probably gotten away with things like this for years on 60 Minutes. Go Freepers!!! Parley
Rather will be hard pressed to convince anyone he was a victim in his crusade to pin the forgeries on BUSH. He was offered many days to withdraw, investigate, validate, confirm or even suspend further episodes condemning BUSH. He chose instead to aggressively ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK for 10 days (almost a Kerry tour of duty) with information he had not validated. FARCE. Good riddance Rather.
Where is the criminal investigation into the forgeries?
The new spokesman for the Kerry campaign says that Kerry had absolutely nothing to do with forging and disseminating the Killian memos, nor did anyone at his campaign. But Kerry did spend Christmas in Cambodia.
Karl Rove.
I dunno, but you can hear his pious, self-righteous marxist rants daily on NPR, if you've got the stomach.
I hope it was some 25 year old aide that did this. I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone over the age of 35 or 40 could look at those documents and believe that they were from the early '70s.
This is a perfect example of Shorr's work. A numbing rehash of a weeks worth of news. Nothing new, no insights, poor writing. Has this man EVER had an original thought?
The White House didn't "accept" their authenticity, they just said something along the lines that they can't comment, or something like that. It's not the same thing.
But clearly the White House couldn't scream "forgery" without evidence, they would have been massacred.
Since this was not from Bush's official report, they didn't know up front whether such memos may or may not have existed.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the mighty Dan still standing?
I stand corrected. Just replying to what was in the article.
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