LAT: How CBS' Big Story Fell Apart

[DeepModem Mom]

How CBS' Big Story Fell Apart
By James Rainey and Scott Gold, Times Staff Writers


Dan Rather was on the run, chasing big stories from New York to Florida to Texas and back to CBS headquarters in Manhattan. In less than a week: The Republican National Convention. A deadly hurricane. An interview for a blockbuster CBS investigation. Former President Clinton's open-heart surgery.

Exhausted and stretched to the limit, the veteran anchorman didn't find time that week to learn much about a news source named Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, he would later explain.

Rather, 73, recalled somewhat vaguely that he had heard from his star producer that Burkett was a "straight-talking West Texan" with a reputation as a "truth teller." Had he turned to Google, though, the CBS anchorman would have found stories painting Burkett as something quite different: a highly controversial and disgruntled retired military man who had led the media astray before.

But Rather relied on the research of that producer, Mary Mapes, as both put their trust in Burkett. That fateful convergence helped produce a terribly flawed report that said President Bush shirked his military duty, a story that would backfire and cost Mapes and three others at CBS their jobs, while tarnishing Rather's storied career.

The segment, titled "For the Record," had another ironic consequence: It aided President Bush. The roar of condemnation aroused by CBS' use of unverified documents drowned out other news accounts that exposed Bush's spotty service as a young pilot....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cbs16jan16,0,6274485.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[aquart]

1. Okay, Karl. Points for this one.

[xxqqqzme]

3. Yea, saurove

set them up w/ this one and reeled them in w/ a big smile on his chubby cheeks. saurove would have been a 'man on the move' in '36 Germany.

[AliciaKeyedUp]

10. The thing about being set up

Is that you have to buy into it. CBS did, so whoever was involved, they still deserve blame.

As for Rove, this is too amateurish for him. He would have hidden a fact bomb in the documents that would have unraveled them. They wouldn't have looked this poor.

[mhr]

2. The Basic Facts Of The CBS Report Are Not Undermined By

The memo.

That is that one young Dubya shirked his National Guard obligations.

To this day Bush has still not explained why he disobeyed a direct order and refused to rake his flight physical.

[truthisfreedom]

4. i'm curious too. why did he really skip his pre-election physical too?

[not fooled]

18. as an aside...

...too lazy to search for threads on the chimp's "bulge"--but your pic made me wonder whether too much coke can fry the nerves serving the heart = need for electrical device???

Maybe consequences of chimpy mcsnort's drug use weren't all washed away by Jebus when born again???

[Eric J in MN]

5. Got the documents from a stranger?

"After the story collapsed, Burkett shifted his account, saying a stranger had passed him the papers in a document drop at a Houston livestock show."

The article also says the White House didn't dispute the documents:

"The president's spokesman, Dan Bartlett, objected strongly to the notion that Bush had not done his duty. He reminded White House correspondent John Roberts of the president's honorable discharge. But he also called CBS a reputable organization and said he would not question the memos' authenticity."

So why isn't everyone demanding White House staffers resign, if they failed to dispute forgeries?

[grasswire]

6. random points

1. The WH refused to challenge the authenticity of the memos. That was the bait. And I recall reading that the WH urged CBS to run the story that night.

2. Do we need to research Michael Smith? He's the one who alerted Mapes to the existence of the memos, and he became her asst. producer on the story. He's a freelancer. (For whom?)

3. Whoever made those documents committed a crime. When will a criminal investigation be opened?

4. Linda Starr is the woman who originally found that Bush and Bath had their Texas driving records scrubbed. Just FYI. She's not one of the bad guys.

Let's not allow this matter to end with the release of the report and the spanking of CBS. A stand must be made against Rove's tricks. Kudos to Joe Lockhart for suspecting a setup.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Very good points, grasswire. n/t

[creeksneakers2]

11. A couple other mysteries easily solved.

For reasons that were never explained, the White House made hundreds of copies of the documents and sent them out to the press. That made no sense with a negative news story. Also, the freeper who first came out with the questions about the documents had no experience in examining documents.

I believe two things few on DU would agree with. First, Bill Burkette fabricates stories. Since he fabricates stories, at least some of his details are wrong. Second, the documents were in fact forgeries.

The White House received the documents at 7AM. They would know if details of the story were false, so they would also know that documents with false details had to be forgeries. Bartlett met with CBS at 11 AM and didn't waive them off the story.

The Bush cabal has always wanted to get CBS. All they had to do was let CBS swallow the hook, hire a document expert to name some flaws, and have a member of the vast right wing conspiracy to shop the story on the net. They even went so far as to mail out hundreds of copies of the documents to reporters to give the story legs.

The White House had nothing to lose with the National Guard story. It had been around for months and never did any serious damage. By getting CBS, they were able to send a message to journalists everywhere that negative stories about the Bush family can end careers.

On top of that, I see the predicament that brave reporters will have if they know what happened here and have a story in the future that is negative about the Bushes. Reporters play one side against the other to get to the truth. If a reporter hears an accusation against the Bushes, he must rely on the Bushes to let him know the story is wrong. Without the assumption that the Bushes will stop false stories about them, the journalist has no way to check the facts from his source. So almost any accusation that a reporter covers could be a career ender.

The left is right that the real story is not the forged documents. It isn't Bushes guard record either. It the plot on a free press that the White House pulled off. As always, nobody is going after the real story.

[DeepModem Mom]

12. Excellent post, cs2. n/t

[TahitiNut]

13. NOTHING has been proven about the documents. Nothing.

1. They have NOT been proven to be copies of actual documents or of drafts of actual documents.
2. They have NOT been proven to be forgeries.
3. They have NOT been proven to be reproductions of actual documents or reproductions of drafts of actual documents.

Absolutely NOTHING can be stated regarding those documents ...

EXCEPT...

The content of the documents is consistent with the facts at the time they were purportedly written. This was clearly and repeatedly stated by the retired former secretary of the guard unit commander, a person in the best position to know.

Let's be very clear.

There is a good reason for being concerned with the authenticity of any document. That reason is one of being assured that it's authoritative: that its content reflects the truth. Absolutely nothing indicates that the content of those documents is other than the truth ... and everything indicates that the content DOES reflect the truth.

[creeksneakers2]

14. The factual content of the documents was in dispute

even before the story aired. Three officers involved Killan said they never heard of anybody ordering Bush to take a physical. Hodges said such orders aren't given. One of the officers who was said to be applying pressure was actually retired at the time. The story is very flawed.

The facts about the White House did with the story are consistent with the story not being true. The story itself has many flaws.

[louis-t]

19. THANK YOU!

Not enough attention has been paid to these facts, and they are facts.
MSM portrays this as 'monumental failure' by CBS but never mentions the statements from the secretary re: Killian's thoughts at the time. He DID feel pressured to give shrub a glowing report. The secretary has stated that she saw and typed documents similar to the one in question, however, she COULD NOT AUTHENTICATE that particular one. Sorry for shouting.

[grasswire]

17. all good points

Rove took care of many troubles with this one play.

Rather. CBS. Burkett. Kerry by extension. And intimidated the press yet again.

Kinda reminds ya of the debate tape that was mailed to Gore HQ, eh?

If only we could turn this one around on Rove and prove dirty tricks.

[xchrom]

8. bush = awol

those are the facts that count.
and they are not disputed.

[UL_Approved]

9. One more example of a fact finder run through the pundit mill...

Yet again, FOX style news-bashing ensues. The media will not rest until it completely destroys Dan Rather.

Or until he destroys it...

[brentspeak]

15. It was a setup, and CBS bought it hook, line, and sinker

The fact that a Freeper "discovered" the tell-tale signs of forgery immediately after the broadcast -- after only getting a brief glimpse of the memo on the tube -- confirms in my mind that the documents were a set-up and are not genuine. The Freeper announced his "discovery" as if on cue, like an actor in a play dutifully speaking his lines at the appropriate time.

[struggle4progress]

16. Media Should Probe Bigger Questions About Bush's Record (FAIR 9/14/04)

<snip> Though each of these stories has been accompanied by significant official documentation, developments in the investigations by AP, U.S. News and the Boston Globe have been largely sidetracked by the fixation on questions about the authenticity of documents aired on CBS on September 8. <snip>

A review of some of the information uncovered in recent news reports:

* The September 7 Associated Press story, based on new records the White House had long maintained didn't exist, debunked a Bush assertion that he'd skipped his flight physical because the jet he was trained on was becoming obsolete. According to AP, Bush's unit continued to fly the same jets for two years after the missed physical.
* The September 8 Boston Globe expose concluded that Bush failed in his military obligations by missing months of duty in Alabama and in Boston. As the Globe revealed, Bush had signed contracts on two separate occasions swearing to meet minimum Guard requirements on penalty of being called up to active duty. According to the military experts consulted by the Globe, Bush's Guard attendance was so bad "his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973 or 1974."
* U.S News & World Report (9/20/04) reviewed National Guard regulations and reported that the White House has been using "an inappropriate-- and less stringent-- Air Force standard in determining that he had fulfilled his duty." The magazine noted that Bush committed to attend at least "44 inactive-duty training drills each fiscal year" when he signed up for the Guard, but that Bush's own records "show that he fell short of that requirement, attending only 36 drills in the 1972-73 period, and only 12 in the 1973-74 period." The magazine explains that even by using the White House's preferred methodology for measuring Bush's service, he still fell short of those minimum requirements.
* An NBC Nightly News segment (9/9/04) played a clip of Bush being interviewed in 1988, acknowledging that favoritism sometimes played a part in getting into the National Guard. While he had said that he didn't think that happened in his case, he did voice his approval of the practice: "If you want to go in the National Guard, I guess sometimes people made calls. I don't see anything wrong with it." (He continued with a remark that could be taken as an insult to the men and women who did face combat during the war: ''They probably should have called the National Guard up in those days. Maybe we'd have done better in Vietnam.")

Even CBS's September 8 broadcasts, the subject of so much scrutiny, included important information beyond what is contained in the disputed memos. <snip>

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/cbs-bush-documents.html