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"Rathergate" Scandal Takes New Turn - Same CBS Source That Pronounced Phony Documents as "Genuine" Was Also Behind Abu Ghraib Prison Story on CBS In a bombshell in the CBS "Rathergate" panel report, it is revealed that Dan Rather personally assured CBS News President Andrew Heyward that the discredited Bush National Guard story was not only true but "very big." At the same time, Rather said it wasn't "as big as Abu Ghraib," the Iraqi prisoner abuse story used by CBS and other media to blacken the reputation and image of the United States around the world. What's more, it...

I am terribly disappointed in the conclusions of the report and its effects on the four of us who will no longer work at CBS News.... I am shocked by the vitriolic scape-goating in Les Moonves’s statement. I am very concerned that his actions are motivated by corporate and political considerations -- ratings rather than journalism. Mr. Moonves’s response to the review panel’s report and the panel’s assessment of the evidence it developed in its investigation combine not only to condemn me, but to put all investigative reporting in the CBS tradition at risk. Much has been made about the...

They also said it was "inappropriate" for Mapes to have helped Burkett get in contact with Joe Lockhart, a political adviser to Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites), in the midst of the presidential campaign. But Boccardi said that to conclude CBS was guilty of anti-Bush bias would be to make the same mistake "60 Minutes Wednesday" made — drawing a conclusion without enough evidence. A little later:As a result of Monday's report, CBS News said it had appointed one of its executives, Linda Mason, to a newly created job of senior vice president of standards and special projects,...

JIM ANGLE, FOX NEWS: The other thing is, today CBS has fired four of its personnel who were involved in the story about the President's service in the National Guard. Any comment on that? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we felt all along that it was important for CBS to get to the bottom of this. CBS has taken steps to hold people accountable, and we appreciate those steps. We also hope that CBS will take steps to prevent something like this from happening again. I think that the report by the panel that investigated the matter makes some recommendations it says...

I would encourage everyone to make sure they read the entire report coming from the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel on the Killian memos. I have read a number of comments on my earlier post, and most of you see the report as a whitewash. I agree in part with this analysis, mostly on the question of motivation. The report gives way too much credence to the notion that the only motivating factor involved in Mapes' and CBS' decision to run a story without ever checking its central "evidence" was competitive pressure to air their exposé first. CBS and Thornburgh-Boccardi never discuss in...

I especially like this tidbit of information. The clear inference from this excerpt is that President Bush was in the TexANG to avoid service in Vietnam. Bush did state in his 1968 TexANG application that he did not volunteer to go overseas. However, Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG, did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want...

On page 56 of the report it is mentioned that Mapes emailed Rather and her superiors that when it came to his military career "George Bush was truly born on third base". That dig is plagarism from Ann Richards's 1988 convention speech in which she claimed about Bush 41 - "He was born on 3rd base and thinks he hit a triple". (Which Richards plagarized from Jim Hightower.) Our friend Lorie Byrd notes that there was still no conclusion the documents were forgeries. Unreal.

Excerpt from CBS press release: ----------------- This brings us to two senior figures at CBS News whose performance is discussed in some depth in the Panel's report. Based on the findings of that report, we believe the following is appropriate: The Panel found that Dan Rather was pushed to the limit in the week before the September 8th broadcast. He was finishing up the anchoring job at the 2004 Republican Convention and was covering Hurricane Frances in Florida. He asked the right questions initially, but then made the same errors of credulity and over-enthusiasm that beset many of his colleagues...

Check out the actual investigatory panel report -- it credits Free Republic (accurately) for first questioning the authenticity of thye documents. The actual investigatory report can be seen

Independent Review Panel Examining CBS News '60 Minutes Wednesday' Broadcast of September 8 Issues Report of Its Findings Leslie Moonves Issues Statement In Response To Panel Report NEW YORK, Jan. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- The Independent Review Panel assigned to examine CBS News' "60 Minutes Wednesday" Broadcast of Sept. 8, 2004 has issued its report. The panel was comprised of the Honorable Dick Thornburgh, former US Attorney General, and Louis D. Boccardi, retired President and Chief Executive Officer of the Associated Press. The 224 page document can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.cbsnews.com. Following is the statement from Leslie Moonves,...

TO: All CBS employees FROM: Leslie Moonves DATE: January 10, 2005 On September ­­22, 2004, we asked an Independent Panel to find out what went wrong in the development, preparation and aftermath of the September 8th broadcast, on 60 Minutes Wednesday, concerning President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Today, those findings have been issued, and may be found on www.cbsnews.com. I would now like to offer CBS's thoughts on the comprehensive report issued today by that Panel and to announce what we at CBS intend to do in response to its findings and recommendations. The...

Colonel David H. Hackworth was interviewed by Rather as an expert to evaluate the documents that Mapes obtained from Lieutenant Colonel Burkett.... Even though Colonel Hackworth was never in the TexANG, did not know Lieutenant Colonel Killian or any of the other releveant individuals, had no personal knowledge of President Bush's service in the TexANG and had no personal knowledge regarding the Killian documents, he reached some high critical conclusions.... First, Colonel Hackworth concluded that the documents were 'genuine.' ... Second, Colonel Hackworth concluded that, by not taking his physical, then-Lieutenant Bush was 'insubordinate' and would have been treated more...

NEW YORK — Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been let go for their role in preparing and reporting the controversial "60 Minutes" story about President Bush’s National Guard service before last year’s elections, according to CBS.

CBS) Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been ousted for their role in preparing and reporting a disputed story about President Bush’s National Guard service. The action was prompted by the report of an independent panel that concluded that CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. The panel also said CBS News had compounded that failure with “rigid and blind” defense of the 60 Minutes Wednesday report. Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard;...

REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW PANEL DICK THORNBURGH AND LOUIS D. BOCCARDI ON THE SEPTEMBER 8, 2004 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY SEGMENT “FOR THE RECORD” CONCERNING PRESIDENT BUSH’S TEXAS AIR NATIONAL GUARD SERVICE JANUARY 5, 2005 KIRKPATRICK & LOCKHART NICHOLSON GRAHAM LLP Michael J. Missal, Esq. Lawrence Coe Lanpher, Esq. 1800 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 778-9000 Counsel to the Independent Review Panel i TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................1 II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...............................................................................................4 A. 60 Minutes Wednesday Background..............................................................................6 B. The Pursuit of a Story on President Bush’s TexANG Service ......................................7 C. Obtaining Documents ....................................................................................................8 D. The Production of...

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Report just issues, mapes finally fired

WITH the CBS News investigation of Memogate almost done, Mary Mapes, the producer who obtained the fake memos used in Dan Rather's George Bush-bashing report, is fighting to save her job and her reputation. The sleuths at ratherbiased.com report Mapes wrote up a 68-page statement in her own defense and has been lobbying to convince the CBS probers that Rather's exposé on Bush's National Guard service was accurate, even if the documents obtained from a crackpot Texas Democrat were bogus. Rather acted preemptively by quitting as the "Evening News" anchor.

<p>News of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode...</p>

September 23, 2004 at 12:13PM MST NBC's Lisa Myers Reports Kerry campaign says timing of 'Fortunate Son' ad campaign, 60 Minutes story a 'coincidence' Having acknowledged that its own standards were violated, CBS News named an independent panel to investigate what went wrong: Former Republican Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and retired chief of the Associated Press Louis Boccardi. The investigation focuses on the process that led to airing possibly fraudulent documents challenging the President's military service and why the CBS Producer put the source of those documents, longtime Bush critic Bill Burkett, in touch with the Kerry Campaign before the...