DOA: Why the White House HAD TO Muzzle Rather Before the Fall 2004 Election

[McCamy Taylor]

Remember the old film noir classic about the man who was poisoned but he lived long enough to solve his own murder? We are witnessing a variation of that. Dan Rather’s reputation as the nation’s premiere investigative television reporter was poisoned three years ago, and now he is using his skills as a journalist to solve the mystery.

Great theater, but it is so much more. The conspiracy to muzzle Dan Rather prior to the 2004 Presidential Election touches on several of the issues that are most dangerous to our democracy. The take over of the free press by a greedy corporate media more concerned about money and mergers than the truth. The ability of journalists to report the news in an accurate and unbiased manner, without fear of reprisal from their bosses or the government. And perhaps most important of all, the integrity of our election system.

There are several components to the mystery of why Dan Rather’s Reputation was attacked in fall of 2004 by his own employer, Republicans and compliant members of the mainstream media. We know why his employers took part---they needed administration and FCC favors to protect their media empire, since they owned too many TV stations and were out of compliance with federal media ownership laws. But why did the Republicans help? What persuaded an Atlanta attorney and GOP activist to risk his reputation by going on line at the Free Republic as “Buckhead” where he pretended to have expert type writer knowledge his did not have in order to start the smear?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002039080_buckhead18.html

A lawyer’s reputation for honesty must be spotless. “Buckhead” was taking a terrible risk if he was found out (as he was). What made it so important that Rather be taken down in September 2004 from the GOP’s point of view? Just a little thing called the 2004 Presidential Election and Karl Rove’s “The Math.” All through the late summer and fall, polls has shown Kerry and Bush switching leads in battle ground states like Florida, Ohio and Nevada. There was a good chance that Kerry might unseat Bush if a fair vote count was taken.

In Ohio, Republican Secretary of State and Bush Campaign Chair Ken Blackwell was doing everything he could to suppress the Democratic Vote and to keep it from being counted. The classic Rolling Stone article describes his efforts:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

There was just one problem. Bush’s ace in hole, vote tabulation fraud, would be easy to detect if it rose above the margin of error of the exit polls. Those polls---which are so accurate that the United States has used them to cry foul in foreign elections---would be an early smoking gun in the key battle ground state of Ohio.

Therefore, Blackwell attempted to make exit polls meaningless in Ohio, by keeping pollsters more than 100 feet from the polls. The TV news networks got an injunction.

http://equalvote.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_archive.html

Media Lawsuit Against Ohio Secretary of State
Media organizations ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, the A.P. and CNN have filed a First Amendment lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, challenging Ohio's rule that keeps them from conducting exit polls within 100 feet of polling places (ABC v. Blackwell, No. 1:04CV750). The case has been assigned to Judge Watson. Details to come soon and the complaint will be posted on the Election Law @ Moritz site. ]

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/ABC%20v.%20Blackwell%20affidavit%20with%20exhibits.pdf


I noted this action on election morning 2004. It roused my suspicions. Though I did not understand what the 100 foot exclusion meant, I told my husband that something was up in Ohio. Later that day, my doubts were confirmed when leaked exit polls failed to match the official tabulated results---and then the mainstream media, acting in unison, refused to release their exit poll results.

Here is why the assassination of Dan Rather’s Reputation as an Investigative Reporter becomes important. The fact that Blackwell attempted without success to interfere with exit polls in Ohio 2004 stayed in the back of my mind for years. It become one of the smoking guns, and I included it when I wrote a summary of Grand Theft Election Ohio a year later in Salon.

http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?[e-mail]9tx.20@.773a529d/2857

Jan 18, 2006

To recap, we all knew that Selection 2004 was underway before the first vote was cast, because SOS Blackwell tried to keep exit pollsters away from the polls in his state and news people had to go to the courts early on election day to get a court order. With this knowledge, I kept my eye on the exit polls and noticed that no one wanted to release them, except for one spunky hacker. This confirmed a big time conspiracy. Therefore, I was not surprised, though I was mightily pissed when the vote count in Ohio showed a flip from the exit poll results…

Only later, long after November 2004, did it occur to me to read up in the scholarly literature about exit polls to find out what effect distance between polling location and the exit from the polls has on the accuracy of a survey. Guess what? The more you increase the distance between your poll taker and the exit from the polls, the less reliable the survey becomes. By 100 feet, you might as well not bother.

This MSNBC article confirms this and also describes attempts to use the same tactic in Florida and Nevada in the 2006 elections:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15226960/

They contend that conducting exit polls farther from voting places breaks down the statistical accuracy of their polls. Data about voter behavior becomes unreliable because voters are more likely to leave the area or blend into a crowd of nonvoters, the lawsuit states.

When Blackwell tried to institute the 100 feet rule, he was trying to make sure that there was no smoking gun exit poll that would show that votes tabulated (primarily in Republican strongholds) did not fall within the margins of errors of the polls. Since then, ballots have been discarded and spoiled, in violation of court orders, making it impossible to recheck the vote, and the networks still have not released those polls.

Now, imagine that this is 2004 again. Imagine that Dan Rather ran his Bush AWOL story and then went down to Florida to do the story on voter suppression which was planned next. Although Ashcroft’s Voting Right’s Act busting DOJ would not have acted upon any infringements that CBS discovered in Florida, voter anger in that state might have affected the election, causing it to become as close as the one in Ohio. (There is nothing like anger to encourage the Democratic base to vote). Two states with election contests would have put Bush’s “mandate” in serious trouble.

And then imagine that Dan Rather was still doing investigative reporting when the long lines appeared in Ohio on election day? What would his team have done when they learned about Blackwell’s attempt to alter the rules of exit polling? Would they have talked to an exit poll expert and discovered what that change was for? Would they have demanded to see CBS’s own exit poll data and had their expert compare it to the official tallies? Even if CBS refused to share it, whistle blowers are inclined to leak things to reporters whom they know will get the truth to the public. Reporters of impeccable reputation. Look at how Rather got all those people to talk in his recent story about election fraud involving Sequoia.

From the exit polls, the story would have moved to the voter suppression which would have been much easier to prove. All some one had to do was spell it out logically---in good old fashioned 60 Minutes style.

Could CBS have put a lid on a story like that with a star reporter like Dan Rather pursuing it?

Now, imagine (this is starting to sound like a John Lennon song I know, but bear with me) Keith Olbermann on Countdown and Dan Rather on 60 Minutes both reporting on funny business in Ohio, KO with his fine rhetorical gift and Rather with his knack for digging up facts. Between them, they might have persuaded Kerry to grow a spine. Or at least revealed Rove to be the liar he is.

This was not a revenge killing. By murdering Dan Rather’s reputation, the White House ensured that the team that dared to cover Abu Ghraib would not be around to cover Selection 2004: Ohio. They also hoped to scare other national journalists who work for the mainstream media into keeping their eyes closed and their traps shut. KO probably took them by surprise. NBC certainly shook them. Their corporate media lockdown was about to come to an end. Too bad it came too late.

I wish Dan Rather luck in his efforts to use his (unfairly tarnished) reputation as an investigative reporter to solve the mystery of the hows and whos and wheres and whys. If anyone can do it, he can. You can not bring a man back from the dead, but a reputation can be resurrected, and his deserves to be.

[AuntPatsy]

1. I hope his efforts to clear his reputation happens soon.

[understandinglife]

2. Recommend and very glad to see this on the DU homepage.

Thank you.

[Richard Steele]

3. K&R

[madokie]

4. thank you for this

rec

[Mme. Defarge]

5. "...they might have persuaded Kerry to grow a spine."

At least it might have made his instant capitualtion more problematic for him.

[catrose]

8. I wish Edwards would say more

about that capitulation. The finest trial lawyer in the country was on the ticket, and the Dems just sat down. $15 million in the bank, and they sat down.

[karynnj]

12. Gee maybe you should ask him what the case he would have used was

The fact is the Edwards said NOTHING about dealing with voter suppression and/or election fraud until 2006. If he thought there was a good case - wasn't it his duty as a citizen to make the case. This was nowhere near the type of case that Edwards ever took on. Kerry's expertise as a prosecutor would likely have been at least as good - and both relied on the Democratic lawyers who were the experts on election law.

I someone does ask Edwards in a high profile MSM event this very question. The Edwards saying things about this only in the blogosphere that do not match with anything from 2005 is one reason that I have ruled him out.

[robinlynne]

16. We do not know why Kerry conceded. We do not know that "democratic lawyers

who were experts on election law" decided.

[karynnj]

41. Actually we do -

They have spoken of it - the people in the room in Boston included the top lawyers Gore had and Deval Patrick, the current governor and previously a civil rights lawyer in the Justice department.

Nothing Edwards did as a trial lawyer is remotely close to this. Nor has he ever explained what he would base a case on or even said that he would have done so in any MSM interview.

[VOX]

54. 11/3/04: Elizabeth Edwards revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer...

The reason why I cut Edwards some slack about not pursuing all the crap in Ohio.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

57. Being diagnosed with cancer would be a reason to cut Edwards some slack...

...But now his wife is dealing with cancer. I'm pretty sure I heard from Elizabeth's own mouth that she could live up to "five years" if she keeps up with her meds.

What will America do if (God forbid) she takes a turn for the worst?

Edwards STILL isn't talking about the stolen elections of '00 and '04.

[karynnj]

62. He was out speaking on many issues in 2005

He never spoke of the need to address election fraud or voter suppression on a going forward basis. It is inconsistent that he believed that the election was PROVABLY stolen and that it was important enough to demand changes so it wouldn't happen a third time. Kerry spoke out in public and in the Senate. Even HRC did something on this in this time frame.

[blm]

10. The second slowest concession in history is not instant capitulation. I guess no one

noticed that the RNC was setting up the election fraud for years and the DNC sat on their asses and LET them do it.

The Dem party nominee TAPS INTO the party infrastructure AS IT EXISTS in each state.

The Dem party knew Florida and Ohio had collapsed party infrastructures in 2000, 2002, and 2004 because they oversaw the weakening of those infrastructures since 1997.

[karynnj]

11. His was the second slowest concession

The problem was he could not contest it without providing that he had the votes. They did not have a whistleblower to prove that the numbers were changed. There is STILL NOT the level of proof that he would have needed by at least January 6, 2005.

Do you honestly think he would have had any support in the media? Do you think he would have had the support of Clinton, who less than 2 weeks after the election was criticizing Kerry - though saying he liked both Bush and Kerry? Do you think Carville who passed information to his wife would have backed Kerry or his wife's boss?

The undeniable result of Rather being gone was that he was not there in the last few weeks to cover Kerry's huge crowds and his on target hits on Bush and the ammo dumps. Rather summarizing the campaign on Monday night - as is typical, would have likely included things Kerry actually did and said and reiterated that the Bush backed SBVT lied. Even in a balanced review, this would be helpful to Kerry. Who else was doing real news?

[pokercat999]

25. I still wonder if Kerry membership in

"skull and crossbones" and his "brotherhood" with Bush had any part to play in his "lay down".

[formercia]

30. You mean like never criticizing a lodge brother in public?

Sure, that goes on and i've wondered that myself. Secret societies need to be outlawed. They are a bane on the democratic process.

[karynnj]

42. That is beyond stupid

He worked his heart out fro 2 years - as did his entire family.

Also, if there were an agreement to throw it - Do you really think that Kerry would agree to having his service that he is rightfully proud of smeared? Do you think he would have agreed to having his lifework in the Senate - where he was a workaholic wonk - described repeatedly as having done nothing? Do you think that he would allow his wife, who he very clearly adores and respects completely trashed. Even here, few people realize that Teresa is an extraordinary person with major accomplishments in her own right.

Stop and think.

Look at Kerry's history -
- Do you think that Bush 1, also S&B, would appreciate Kerryexposing that Bush1 and the CIA looked the other way as the right wing Contra thugs brought drugs into the US. BCCI?

In fact, Kerry presents a problem every time conspiracy theorists try to blame S & B for everything the RW did. No one exposed them more than John Kerry. At minimum, you need to make some assumption that Vietnam changed him. That still would not explain his wonderful 1966 Yale speech on foreign policy that is as far as you can get from RW neo-con.

[pokercat999]

60. Thanks for calling me stupid.....I'll put my IQ up against

yours anytime. $1000,00 a point paid to the winner from the loser, I could retire on my winnings.

Hmmm.. worked his heart out, flying in private jets, staying in the very best of hotels and private homes of the super rich, eating the finest foods and drinking the finest wines...working his heart out...if I could only get such work

Agree to having his service record smeared....no but his response was weak and showed his weakness when the country was looking for someone strong

Workaholic...in the senate...oxymoron

Respect his wife....see his service record...weak response to what should have been a calling out of the parties doing the trashing....America would have loved Kerry had he challenged someone...anyone..his milk toast response cost him dearly with Joe six pack

Kerry exposing Bush 1? Doesn't seem to have hurt him (Bush) much. Again very weak.

Kerry's campaign was a lay down not a rope a dope. his response to the defeat was exactly like his campaign.

On edit: It wasn't a defeat it was theft, as weak as Kerry was, he won, that's the real shame he bares.

[karynnj]

61. Note that I called your comment stupid - which it is - not you

As to IQ, I have no intention of proving to an anonymous person on a board that my IQ is quite high - as evidenced in various standardized tests when I was in school years ago. Let's just say that composite scores in the 98 or 99 percentile range were a pretty routine experience and that it is nice when you don't have to pay a cent for tuition for college or graduate school.

You also completely missed the point on Kerry's fighting Nixon and Reagan. It is the fact that he did MORE than anyone else in office to counter it against extraordinary forces in government and media. You cavalierly say, "very weak". But no one else did more in any of the 3 matters, much less in the sum of all three. It takes a huge amount of moral strength and integrity to take stands that could (in each case) have destroyed his viability, because they were right. Maybe you should ask why others that we count as being on our side did not support Kerry.

As to having an impact, he did. Without Kerry, we would likely know far less about Reagan's illegal covert wars in Central America and the complicity of powerful Americans in a corrupt bank that bought itself freedom from investigation by buying powerful people in both parties. There were investigative journalists who went after these issues and they show why a free press is essential to democracy. But, they had no subpoena power or any ability to hold anyone to account. In his committee Kerry did. He also had to hold to a higher standard of proof, but when he did, his findings had far more weight and viability.

Kerry exposing the Contras stopped some very bad stuff. Cocaine was being brought into the US and sold with the CIA turning its head and likely keeping local government from stopping it. We were also supporting RW thugs that killed thousands of people, including Jesuit priests and nuns in the area to help people. (Note that a large portion of the Democratic party - including both Gore and Clinton - favored supporting the Contras.)

In 2004, all the establishment forces that Kerry had fought were arrayed against him - in addition to the Republicans. It was not just because of his protesting Vietnam that the RW has hated him. They likely hated him more for everything he did against the Contras. Consider that in the late 1980s, even the "liberal" NYT and WP didn't have the guts to really lay out what the Reagan administration did in Central America. There were (and are) occasional articles (especially in the NYT magazine section), but nothing that really exposed it. Why, people do not want to hear when their country acts in a way that is plainly out of line with stated values.

As to hurting Bush I, it certainly did. Every history book covers Iran/Contra and most blame Bush more than Reagan. Without Kerry, the scandal would very possibly have been Iran/hostage and people would have weighed whether giving arms to Iran to obtain the release of US hostages in Lebanon was was justified. The fact that some money went to the Contras would almost be a side issue. The magnitude would not have been seen. People like Elliott Abrams and Oliver North were indicted for lying to Kerry. No serious evaluation of Bush 1 will ever be done without considering Iran/Contra.

But my point was not his success, but that he did it. In your STUPID comment you are ignore that Kerry, more than any politician, fought the very people you are saying he was in league with since college. Being subject to death threats for more than a decade to right what he saw as wrong is more significant than a college fraternity.

Your comment on campaigning is silly. It was grueling. As to the amenities, Kerry was born with the connections that he could have had all that without any effort at all. He could have used connections to avoid Vietnam. He could have avoided public service and become wealthy using family connections. Even now, if he and Teresa wanted they could stop trying to make a better world and live in all the luxury you described.

Your comment on not fighting back ignores that he responded with far more proof and fact than Bill Clinton ever did on any charge. Did you ever consider how you fight the mass media if it refuses to report your response?

[blm]

59. Yeah - that's why he creamed Bush decisively in the debates and uncovered

IranContra, BCCI and CIA drugrunning of Poppy Bush and his cronies.

Kerry's was the second slowest concession in history and he made it because he had no legal evidence to continue in court.

It was the DNC under McAuliffe that LET the RNC's vote stealing machinations and tactics go uncountered for 2002 and 2004.

Nice of you to lay all blame on Kerry - he and ANY Dem nominee had to tap into the party infrastructure that EXISTED in each state - and Ohio's party infrastructure had been collapsed for years. That is why Gore didn't focus on Ohio in the last month before 2000 election. The party there was so weak he didn't want to waste the money.

And McAuliffe made sure it got worse in 2002 and 2004.

He had Hillary2008 on his mind.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

6. Well, even without the 100' limit, the exit polls still had Kerry significantly ahead of Bush.

The bottom line is this: there is a lot within the Republican party willing to do any damn under-handed-taking to TAKE power.

[MasonJar]

7. Dan Rather's reputation has never been higher with me. Thank you, Dan,

for once again standing tall for what is right. Good luck on exposing the criminals once again!!!!!!

[blm]

9. Olbermann was still being suppressed at that time. He didn't let loose till Schiavo

and then after Katrina he never looked back.

Kerry has ALWAYS had a strong spine - what he didn't have was any legal evidence to make a case and he was stuck with a DNC and party chair who wouldn't lift a finger to counter the four year effort to control the election process at every level where the votes are allowed, cast and counted.

Dan Rather gets props for being STUCK in a situation that he had no ultimate control - did he not have a spine? No. He had a complicit media powerstructure controlling the outcome for him the same way Kerry had an unconcerned Dem party powerstructure controlling the outcome for him.

But, other than the unnecessary smear of Kerry, it's a damn fine piece.

[McCamy Taylor]

14. Point taken. Kerry might have had a chance if he had some help from the MSM

but that had been denied him, when Rove and Co. scared :scared: the members of the press into staying out of it (all except KO who does not know the meaning of the word fear) by taking down Dan Rather, a journalist so revered that when he fell it made the rest of them think If Rather is vulnerable, just think what they can do to the rest of us . The most plausible reason I heard why Kerry decided not to contest was because he was warned that the press would savage him---and the networks would refuse to turn over the exit polls.

I was reading something that Greg Palast wrote recently about Dan Rather. He accuses Rather of being the reason Bush got re-elected in 2004. Palast's argument went something like If Rather had used his super-human Rather skills to force America to accept that the Bush AWOL story was TRUE, then the vote for Kerry would have increased enough that Rove could not have stolen the election.

The exact quote is

http://www.gregpalast.com/dan-rather-tased-and-confused/

Had Rather stood up to the Viacommunist thugs and defended his story, President Kerry and our nation could today express gratitude for his public service. Instead, Dan traded the public interest for airtime on 60 Minutes. Yuck.

That sort of blew my mind. Palast, a seasoned journalist, seems to believe that Rather has supernatural (godly?) powers. Single handedly, Rather could have made it alright. In fact, while Rather is an excellent investigative reporter, it would have taken someone skilled at propaganda to wade through the Briar Patch that Rove had set up, and I do not believe that Rather is particularly skilled at rhetoric or battles of public perception. Not like KO. He tends to deal in truth and reason and making things clear to the average American. But that is irrelevant to my point. If someone like Palast believes that Dan Rather is a god among journalists, it is no wonder people like Rove feared him--and made an example of him.

[blm]

33. I believe THAT was the real purpose of the anthrax to the media.

There was alot that happened after election day that many Dems are unaware of.

I learned about some things that no paper will put in print, because their national HQs won't allow it (my husband works in a newsroom). Think about how the Florida recount was handled by national papers in their efforts to completely distort the fact that Gore actually won Florida by over 100,000 votes. Newsmedia had to tear Gore down consistently afterwards to discount his win and they have been doing the same to Kerry - it makes the appearance of a loss more plausible and ACCEPTED - even by the average Dem voters who never even heard of the election fraud.

[bleever]

44. Olbermann did do several reports right after the election

about problems in Ohio (and elsewhere), and had Blackwell and Jesse Jackson on one evening for a memorable exchange.

Here's a link to his blog's entries in the weeks after the election. He was looking at this in deep detail: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6368819/

[blm]

45. Before the election and at the point of concession, there was no strong presence

of a left voice - and Olbermann was reined in at that time - that he was let loose AFTER the election and month by month BECAME a stronger voice is notable.

Your article points to 2 weeks after the election. Was there a strong coalition of left voices who would back Kerry in the media on Nov 3? Nope. Unfortunately, Nov3 and after brought only the 'mainstream media' choices of Dem spokespeople - Carville, Begala, Brazille, Davis, McAuliffe, et al.

[bleever]

47. He was definitely a lone voice in the wilderness

at that point, an anomaly that proves your point about the lack of left voices to support a Kerry challenge.

If you scroll down, you'll find commentaries from as soon as November 7. I just point this out to give credit to Keith, and not to refute your larger point.

[blm]

55. I do give Keith credit - he certainly was a lone voice and THAT is why more Dems flocked

to his program the last two years he has been making his Special Comments. Media DOES matter. Just think if he was unleashed back in 2002.

[Touchdown]

13. They didn't kill him yet. He lives on in high definition

although not as widely available as CBS, NDNet has "Dan Rather Reports" and it's a good show. I watch it every Tuesday. They also have another excellent show, "World Report". Both shows go into subjects largely ignored by th old standby broadcast and cable networks. Best of all, HDNet is NOT owned by any of the big 5.

Yeah, you have to get HiDef programming to see it, but you're going to have to get HD/Digital in 2009 anyway. :hi:

[Truth2Tell]

15. K&R Top-Notch Post! n/t

[robinlynne]

17. k&r. and thank-you for an excellent OP!

[autorank]

18. Superb. This is excellent ! K*R

Thanks for putting the pieces together. What a deal. I knew a number of these facts but had not figured it out.

They'll stop at nothing to save themselves. The minute they're out of power, it's pay back time and they know it. So, what do you do? Anything to say in power, anything and everything. Who cares who gets mowed down.

It will be their turn soon.

[DirtyDawg]

19. Why Buckhead?

...One thing you perhaps don't understand when you ask 'Why would an Atlanta attorney risk his reputation by going online to start the smear?' This is Georgia mister, there is no risk in showing just how much of a rightwing-nut you are - attorney or regular radio jock on what was once one of the most 'respected' stations in the country (all that would be Neal Boortz on WSB) - I guarantee you, if they tried every one of the bush admin members in the World Court...found 'em guilty and through 'em in jail...Georgia would still be saying 'duh...what's up wid' dat?' In fact the attorney in question was at the head of the pack that stormed the vote-counting room in Florida four years earlier. He's a prick of the highest order, but right at home in the most Republican of virtually any region of the country - North of I-20 and West of I-85

[chelaque liberal]

26. It's not so great east of I-85 either, sadly... N/T

[HCE SuiGeneris]

20. Kick

[HowHasItComeToThis]

21. ARE THERE ANY HONEST JUDGES LEFT

TO PUT THESE MANY PLAYERS BEHIND BARS.???????????????????

[bjobotts]

22. Bush was never "elected" president The republicans are trying to get their

candidates in by hook or by crook. After the last 6yrs I'd be suspicious of any republican who wins an election.

[aquart]

40. 72 million of us. 55 million of them.

They cannot win if they do not cheat.

[SeattleGirl]

23. I was just thinking about that movie yesterday.

Interesting that you should post this now (and good post, btw).

[nachoproblem]

24. I wish him the best of luck too

but you can't exactly wonder why nobody else in the mainstream media has any questions about it. (You would be tempted to wonder, but you really can't.)

I think George Orwell used the term "memory hole" to describe where those inquiries go.

EDIT: If Rather is successful, he will find that the trail ends up at Karl Rove. And by that time, hearing of the news, Turd Blossom and his buddies will sit back around the crackling fire in Hell (located conveniently just outside Crawford, TX) and have a hearty chuckle over brandy or cognac or... I dunno, dead Iraqi babies. Whatever those people are into.

[me b zola]

27. k&r

[liberal N proud]

28. Great post

The Republicons plan on stealing the next election by changing the Electoral College in California and we need to stop them before it's too late.

[AzDar]

29. K & R...

[KoKo]

31. Thanks for connecting those dots for us. Getting Dan Rather was

part of their plan. Look who replaced him... and how the Media Coverage (already on it's way to the dark side) was completed by taking out one of the last strong figures who knew history.

[bonito]

32. K&R

[DeanDem10]

34. Great journal

An excellent journal. Thank you!

There was one other story got back-burnered when Rather went public with the Bush National Guard story. That was the Niger ("yellowcake uranium") story, which had finally made it from backpages onto the op-eds and more prominent pages of the so-called MSM.:bounce:

[The Backlash Cometh]

35. I wonder, do you think we can take a media mogul to court over this

deception?

[AikidoSoul]

36. Good post! Am hoping Rather will have his revenge on these crooks N/T

[ailsagirl]

37. Rather says to challenge bushco is painted "unpatriotic"

“You didn’t want to run the risk of having unpatriotic hung around (your neck),” said Rather.
“There was a tendency of many journalists to move with the herd because it was less easy to
get hurt.”

http://www.dailycolonial.com/go.dc?p=3&s=4722

I saw this last weekend on CPSAN (I think) and Rather actually said more than that. I wish
I had the quote but, to paraphrase, he said that "Bush doesn't like to be
challenged. And what they'd do is start saying you were unpatriotic if you challenged anything
they did. So a lot of journalists were reluctant to ask the tough questions."

== I liked the fact that he said, "Bush" and not "the President" :)

[mod mom]

38. and when an investigative reporter from MSM did look into it, this is what we got:

The silent scream of numbers
The 2004 election was stolen — will someone please tell the media?

By ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Tribune Media Services

As they slowly hack democracy to death, we’re as alone — we citizens — as we’ve ever been, protected only by the dust-covered clichés of the nation’s founding: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

It’s time to blow off the dust and start paying the price.

The media are not on our side. The politicians are not on our side. It’s just us, connecting the dots, fitting the fragments together, crunching the numbers, wanting to know why there were so many irregularities in the last election and why these glitches and dirty tricks and wacko numbers had not just an anti-Kerry but a racist tinge. This is not about partisan politics. It’s more like: “Oh no, this can’t be true.”

I just got back from what was officially called the National Election Reform Conference, in Nashville, Tenn., an extraordinary pulling together of disparate voting-rights activists — 30 states were represented, 15 red and 15 blue — sponsored by a Nashville group called Gathering To Save Our Democracy. It had the feel of 1775: citizen patriots taking matters into their own hands to reclaim the republic. This was the level of its urgency.

Was the election of 2004 stolen? Thus is the question framed by those who don’t want to know the answer. Anyone who says yes is immediately a conspiracy nut, and the listener’s eyeballs roll. So let’s not ask that question.

-snip

http://www.commonwonders.com/archives/col290.htm

and don't forget those legal lightweights :sarcasm: Bobby Kennedy Jr and Mike Papantonio who also looked into it and filed a qui tam lawsuit afterward.

BTW..I still don't understand why KO stopped the initial coverage, despite the new evidence that kept surfacing with the passage of time.

Thanks for the post. Us in Ohio won't forget it and I'm glad my friends at DU keep this issue alive.

[DeeDeeNY]

39. I never understood why Blackwell never suffered consequences

His actions went far beyond illegal.

[mod mom]

43. especially after he was so disrespectful to John Conyers and Stephanie Tubbs Jones, I

would have thought his sorry ass would have been called up to testify beofre congress.

[McCamy Taylor]

48. 4 Reasons. 1.Ashcroft. 2.Gonzo, 3.GOP Congress, 4. GOPs in Ohio

The DOJ only prosecutes minorities for infringing the voting rights of Whites. There have been essentially no meaningful prosecutions for infringements of the voting rights of minorities in the last 7 years. The GOP Congress refused to act after Selection 2004, calling Conyers a crackpot, forcing him to meet in a basement. Bill Frist's attorney concocted a big fat lie (he latter admitted as much) about how the NAACP gave crack to Blacks in Ohio so they would vote for Kerry and that was supposed to justify anything Blackwell did. Meanwhile, Rep. Bob "I'm in federal pen. now" Ney promised to hold hearings after Bush was sworn in, but the hearings which the GOP government in power in Ohio held in early 2005 included people like Bill Frist's attorney (see above) and nothing about Blackwell and the exit polls, and the result was Voting Rights Act busting election laws that Gonzo's DOJ did not protest.

Congress has done the country a great service in taking out Gonzo, the most important single man (more important even than Rove) when it comes to stealing elections
See my journal from Summer 2006 It Only Takes One Man to Steal An Election (And It Isn't Who You Think) http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/12 Let's hope they hold Mukasey's feet to the fire.

[hughee99]

46. A quick question about the documents themselves...

After the initial story and the defense of their authenticity, I have since heard various reports that either the documents are definitely not real, or at the very least, cannot be authenticated. Has any of this changed?

[McCamy Taylor]

49. There are experts on both sides of the issue. No consensus opinion.

No one has proved them fake. And there are several compelling questions including

1. Thornburg committee did not conclude documents were fake. They just said Rather rushed the story and didn't get enough proof that they were real (how is that for a bind?). In essence, they did not like the date he chose to air the story.

2. It is a crime to forge official government documents. The FBI should have opened a case to investigate the forging of these documents if they were indeed forged. The fact that they did not suggests that the FBI does not believe that there is sufficient evidence to call them forgeries.

3. Recall that the initial stories about them being forgeries were started by a lying GOP operative claiming to have expert knowledge he did not have and that he was examining faxes, not the originals and that faxing changes the characteristics of the type.

4. Both sides have found expert witnesses willing to assert that the document are or are not genuine.

5. The CO's secretary has said that the content of the documents is accurate, meaning that Bush was AWOL and we are all chasing some butterfly that Buckhead and his bosses want us to chase. (The NYT called it an "unsubstantiated" story recently. This is such a joke. Their own ex-Judy Miller and their current Michael Gordon, the human voice activated tape recorder can tell them a thing or two about unsubstantiated stories. Rather had an abundance of substantiation for the Bush AWOL story.)

Salon has a good write up

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/27/dan_rather_suit/index1.html

Various handwriting and typewriter experts weighed in, some challenging the documents' authenticity. The press almost uniformly took the absence of a universal opinion of experts as proof of the documents' falsity. Because they could not be proved with complete certainty to be authentic, they must be counterfeit.

Now, that makes no sense, does it?

The thing about proving them real in a absolute sense is you would have to go back in time, watch the CO dictate them, watch the secretary type them, watch her file them away and then install a camera to make sure that there was never anyone allowed to touch them forever until they ended up in CBS's hands. There is no way to do that. Therefore, you can never prove that any document is "real" . Not the Declaration of Independence. Not a Guttenberg Bible. You can only show that it meets certain criteria of authenticity.

Saying that because Rather can not prove them "real", then they must be false is totally false logic.

This is what happened with Bush AWOL. And it happened because people like Buckhead made it happen, and they were ready to make it happen even before the story aired. Howard Kurtz of the WaPo helped a bunch. No wonder he is so desperate to see this whole law suit fizzle and die. His role in the history of this sorry tale will not be a pretty one. Buckhead did it for his Party. Kurtz stabbed one of his own in the back.

Keep in mind that truth is just a fiction that we call reality. We label it true because it seems to always conform to what we ourselves experience under certain circumstances. Dan Rather has his 80% recognizability and 80% favorability, because he has always been the best at distilling the essence of the truth, making it clear so that everyone can understand it, cutting away the lies which politicians and corporations use to cloud it. People trust him and they understand him when he explains the "truth" to them. Rove decided to call Rather a liar, in an effort to kill what was most important about Rather. Note that Rather's personal approval ratings did not go down, even though the corporate media whores attacked him as per their masters' orders. America still trusted him more than they trusted other journalists and politicians and corporations--more even than CBS. What happened to CBS is America lost faith in that network for calling the most respected truth teller in the country a liar. America looked at the Bush AWOL story, they summed up the evidence and they knew that Bush was AWOL. Unfortunately, they didn't much care, just as they didn't care about his cocaine use, his DWI or Clinton's adultery. CBS knew what it was doing when it killed Bradley's WMD lies story. America would have cared about that.

[hughee99]

52. Thank you. n/t

[Elspeth]

50. And 100

Remember Putin telling Bush how he had Rather "fired"?

[SavageDem]

51. Good stuff

Except that it just raises my blood pressure again! It's just infuriating that all the evidence is there - including virtually incontrovertible mathematical evidence - of a stolen election, and yet all you get from 99% of the people you know is rolled eyes and, "Whatever."

Not one, but two elections stolen, and people just go on about their lives as if everything is just fine.

[lovuian]

53. It shows the manipulation of our Elections

and Polls

2000 and 2004 our elections stolen

[alstephenson]

56. Wow. Just Wow. Thanks for putting this all together.

An important reminder for vigilance in '08.

[madfloridian]

58. Was the buckhead aka billbuckhead here?

Just wondering.

Thanks for this post.

[a kennedy]

63. D*mn.

Thanks for connecting all the d*mn dots, and wow.