CBS News’ Boss Hired Private Eye To Source Memos

[NVMojo]

This is priceless, spending money like that to hire a former FBI agent and still not find out if those memos were a perpetrated fraud on CBS and the public in the first place...

February 24, 2005

On Sept. 20 of last year, CBS announced that it was employing an independent panel to investigate how 60 Minutes Wednesday had ended up relying on shaky-looking memos in its segment about President Bush’s past service in the Texas Air National Guard. The investigators, CBS said, would "determine what errors occurred in the preparation of the report and what actions need to be taken."

Five days later, CBS launched another inquiry into the memo scandal. The network hired a private investigator named Erik T. Rigler, a former F.B.I. agent and Navy aviator, to track down the source of the troublesome documents.

Mr. Rigler’s sleuthing was not mentioned in the list of interviews and other pursuits in the independent panel’s final report on Jan. 10. Though CBS had promised transparency in investigating the memo scandal, of a half-dozen CBS News producers who spoke to The Observer, only one had even heard a rumor that the network had hired the private investigator.

more....

http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage3.asp

[2diagnosis]

1. Probably a private investigator

on Rove's payroll.

[Fridays Child]

2. Was there ever a serious probe of the rumor that a Florida GOP...

...operative and his wife were in on this? I don't remember their names but I do remember that they had been in disgrace with the party because they got caught advertising for sex partners.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Yep, that's Roger Stone.

From the Daily Kos

Dr. Watson and I, the greatest detective in all of England, have called you all into the parlor this evening to announce that I have cracked "The Strange Case of the TANG Forgeries". We all now know that Bill Burkett says he was told about the documents by a certain "Lucy Ramirez" and that he was given the forgeries by "an unknown man with an envelope" who turned and left after making the hand-off in Houston.

Here with us tonight are Roger Stone, the famous, or should I say infamous, dirty trickster of the Nixon, Reagan and Bush eras. Also joining us tonight is Mr. Stone's lovely wife Nydia Bertran-Stone, a fiery Cuban rightwinger, who incidentally helped him arrange for Cuban righties to come down to the Miami courthouse, riot, and steal the election for George W. Bush in 2000. Stone was personally asked by James Baker to come down and oversee the illegal tactic.
(snip/...)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/10/20595/9309

What a creep.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Roger and Nadia Stone

Somehow I doubt if CBS bothered.

[saracat]

3. I wish people would stop bashing the media that was on our side.

"The final assessment of the report was that it could not conclude "with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents are authentic or forgeries"

Those documents were never proven forgeries.All that was ever proven was that the secretary didn't type those particular ones. The signature was verified and the Secretary vouched for the content. I am sick of people bashing CBS. CBS took it in the neck for reporting the "truth" and all some DUer's can do is join the GOP bastards that tried to bring them down. CBS will be in the forefront when Pretezel Boy trips up. They are waiting because they don't have anything to lose. It was a CBS producer who was the first MSM person to publicize a possible relationship between Rove and Gannon. Watch and see. The GOP will regret they tackled CBS.

[TomClash]

6. I hope you are right

but I'll beleive it when I see it.

These people will use any means to achieve their objectives, legal or not.

Every nonprofit, corporation and individual who is a threat to the regime is subject to retaliation and punishment. I've already witnessed it a few times. Mary Mapes has a lot of company.

[theHandpuppet]

7. Glad you said that!

I've never understood the hostility towards CBS with regard to this story. Why are some DUers attacking the targets of a Bushreich setup? I for one admire CBS for sticking their necks out when the rest of the media had theirs stuck in the sand.

[Disturbed]

8. Seems to me that the CBS competitors ..

piled on the discredit CBS. The facts in the document were totally ignored and no reporter mentioned anything about where they came from. I suspect that they came from Rove or that he set the whole thing up. Any connection between Buckhead who posted that the doc was a forgery and Roger Stone?

[2diagnosis]

26. yeah, Buckhead, Stone

and Gannon were a threesome that got together at McClellan's house on Sundays.

[NVMojo]

10. I wasn't bashing CBS. Please don't put words in my mouth. I can do that

just fine on my own. My point is what a waste of money to hire a former FBI agent who gets nowhere with this. You and I and Henchey know those memos were propoganda!

Thanks!

:pals:

[saracat]

24. I wasn't referring to you! Sorry!

:pals:

[Toots]

22. If you were right CBS would never have fired those it did.

The executives are on the GOP side. They will continue to squelch the real news and just repeat what the other whores are telling us. Don't get your hopes up. If they had any real spine we would hear a lot more about bush* and his background which can easily be authenticated. I would be willing to bet not one in ten people in America has ever heard of Bush*'s business past. Arbusto, Harkin, his dealings with the Bin Laden family, etc. etc. There is so much information out there and no Media outlet to air it.

[dandrhesse]

9. I Googled Rigler, speciality is aviation investigation, reconstruction

of crash sites, etc. also flight instructor. His company GForce Inc. is in Bedford, TX. On list of recent cases in which he was used as an expert he lists:
Safety Audit Team, Irish Air Corps
Consultations involving the World Trade Center Attacks
Airport Security and Safety
FAA Certifications
His Dad Lewis Rigler wrote a book entitled "In the Line of Duty" about his long career as a Texas Ranger. In the review of the article it mentions that his son Erik T. Rigler is a retired FBI agent who now is an investigator for the Texas Lottery Commission and is married to Judyth Rigler the book editor for the San Antonio Express News.

All very interesting but don't see why he would be hired to investigate the authenticity of documents.


His website is connected to a group of expert witness websites that were founded by Patrick O'Leary who is "considered the international guru of online dating" he founded MatchMaker.com which Lycos bought for 45 million dollars, says he has vast experience in computers and programming.

Jerry Crab is the technology Officer, was a co-founder of MatchMaker.com wbere he was the Senior Engineer and Administrator of Network Operations.

In lite of the Gannon/Guckert situation its interesting that this guy in tied in anyway to the "guru of online dating"

[NVMojo]

11. Jeez!! I know a retired FBI agent in Florida who does a damn good

job investigating leaked documents. Worked with him on a whistle blower case over here. They hired the wrong guy!!! Maybe this was also a Rove thang. I feel sorry for us, Kerry and Rather in this entire mess.

[Gin]

12. (IMHO) the information was correct.....the documents were forged

and it was a Rove plant with the help of Jim/Jeff and others. It all happened too fast and the WH did not oppose the memos.

The WH had an ax to grind against Rather and they payed him back royally. It was a set-up pure and simple.

[dandrhesse]

13. agree completely, Rather was set up and he had to have some reason

to believe they were authentic and that his higher ups were going to the mat for him. He has been around too long, not to smell a Rove set-up a mile away. Maybe the top brass told him they didn't care about source the content was verified or whatever, I don't think Dan is stupid and at first they did back him, until...

[Cooley Hurd]

15. The content was verified by the secretary of the NG officer...

...to whom the memo was attributed. She said the actual document didn't appear to have been typed by her, but that the content was consistent to how the NG officer felt about Lt Bush.

[IndianaGreen]

16. The point remains that the document was a forgery

and she verified that the document itself was not legit.

The TANG documents were only believed by people that wanted to believe! Just because we know that Bush was unnaccounted for at TANG, it doesn't necessarily follow that we must automatically accept the legitimacy of a document that confirms what we already know.

This was a set up from the start in order to discredit Dan Rather and CBS News. Rather should have remained skeptical throughout this process. His failure to do so led to his downfall to the delight of his enemies.

[atre]

23. No, it was not, and no, she did not

We don't know whether or not the documents were forgeries. The only light that the secretary could shed on this was that the content was 100% true and that she did not recall typing that particular memo.

[2diagnosis]

27. Then why does Hinchey

say that Rove was behind this obvious setup?

[dandrhesse]

18. exactly and any news person worth their salt would know that the

real story was the content. They had an eyewitness for goodness sakes. She could have come on the show and said that she remembered typing them and that they basically said blah, blah , blah without any documentation whatsoever and she should have been considered a reliable source. So the whole thing was a witch hunt from the get go

[NVMojo]

14. sure and they were trying to distract us from what the former Texas

Lt. Gov. was telling in the same story ...how he got Chimpy into the guards to avoid Viet Nam.

[dandrhesse]

20. yeah, so I guess they didn't really want to find the source of the

documents or whether they were authentic right?

[woosh]

17. I read that differently.

Sounds to me like they hired a PI after the fact:


Five days later, CBS launched another inquiry into the memo scandal. The network hired a private investigator named Erik T. Rigler, a former F.B.I. agent and Navy aviator, to track down the source of the troublesome documents.

[dandrhesse]

19. yeah but check out my post above this Rigler is not just any PI

he is an expert in aviation accidents, FAA regulation, flight instructor etc.

[NVMojo]

29. I catch your drift on this and appreciate your time to look into it

as it brings home the point of what a waste this was in effort when the ex FBI agent should have had better answers ....IMHO...

[Edgewater_Joe]

21. You Assume He Didn't Find Out

Maybe he did but is still too terrified of KKKarl and the Bush Crime Family to spill the beans.

We just don't know.

[grumpy old fart]

25. How hard is this? You just trace it back......

"A" gave the document to Rather, "B" gave the document to "A", "C" gave the document to "B"......at some point up the chain you get to where the document originated, or to someone who got it and can't/won't explain where they got it. It isn't rocket science. But it seems beyond the grasp of CBS. Unless, of course, there's another reason this simple line can't be followed.....

[mdmc]

31. what are we missing?

[PassingFair]

28. Eric T. Rigler ...sounds like a

porn star, don't it?

[paineinthearse]

30. The "investigation" was set-up to fail

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for CBS News said that "CBS News hired a private investigator with the full knowledge and enthusiastic approval of all of those involved in the original Sept. 8 report for one purpose only: to help get to the bottom of the authenticity and origin of the documents."

The problem with this investigation is that Rigler was hired by and worked for CBS; he did not work for the "independent panel".

Duh!