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NY Times: CBS News Concludes It Was Misled on National Guard Memos, CBS Officals Say

TC4

By TC4
in The Tailgate

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TC4

TC4

Posted
Posted

Ooops, looks like the :pooh: has offically hit the fan.........

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/campaign/20guard.html?ei=5006&en=42f1be2f0a0efa9d&ex=1096344000&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=

September 20, 2004

THE NEWS MEDIA

CBS News Concludes It Was Misled on National Guard Memos, Network Officials Say

By JIM RUTENBERG

After days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a "60 Minutes'' report that raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air.

But they cautioned that CBS News could still pull back from an announcement. Officials met last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it had collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision. Mr. Rather was not available for comment late last night.

The report relied in large part on four memorandums purported to be from the personal file of Mr. Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who died 20 years ago. The memos, dated from the early 1970's, said that Colonel Killian was under pressure to "sugar coat'' the record of the young Lieutenant Bush and that the officer had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical.

Mr. Rather and others at the network are said to still believe that the sentiment in the memos accurately reflected Mr. Killian's feelings but that the documents' authenticity was now in grave doubt.

The developments last night marked a dramatic turn for CBS News, which for a week stood steadfastly by its Sept. 8 report as various document experts asserted that the typeface of the memos could have been produced only by a modern-day word processor, not Vietnam War-era typewriters.

The seemingly unflappable confidence of Mr. Rather and top news division officials in the documents allayed fears within the network and created doubt among some in the news media at large that those specialists were correct. CBS News officials had said they had reason to be certain that the documents indeed had come from the personal file of Colonel Killian.

Sandy Genelius, a network spokeswoman, said last week, "We are confident about the chain of custody; we're confident in how we secured the documents.''

But officials decided yesterday that they would most likely have to declare that they had been misled about the records' origin after Mr. Rather and a top network executive, Betsy West, met in Texas with a man who was said to have helped the news division obtain the memos, a former Guard officer named Bill Burkett.

Mr. Rather interviewed Mr. Burkett on camera this weekend, and several people close to the reporting process said his answers to Mr. Rather's questions led officials to conclude that their initial confidence that the memos had come from Mr. Killian's own files was not warranted. These people indicated that Mr. Burkett had previously led the producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, to have the utmost confidence in the material.

It was unclear last night if Mr. Burkett had told Mr. Rather that he had been misled about the documents' provenance or that he had been the one who did the misleading.

In an e-mail message yesterday, Mr. Burkett declined to answer any questions about the documents.

Yesterday, Emily J. Will, a document specialist who inspected the records for CBS News and said last week that she had raised concerns about their authenticity with CBS News producers, confirmed a report in Newsweek that a producer had told her that the source of the documents said they had been obtained anonymously and through the mail.

In an interview last night she declined to name the producer who told her this but said the producer was in a position to know. CBS News officials have disputed her contention that she warned the network the night before the initial "60 Minutes'' report that it would face questions from documents experts.

In the coming days CBS News officials plan to focus on how the network moved ahead with the report when there were warning signs that the memorandums were not genuine.

Ms. Will is one of two documents experts consulted by the network who said they raised doubts about the material before the segment was broadcast. Another expert, Marcel B. Matley, said in interviews that he had vouched only for Colonel Killian's signatures on the records and not the authenticity of the records themselves. Mr. Matley said he could not rule out that the signatures had been cut and pasted from official records pertaining to Colonel Killian.

In examining where the network had gone wrong, officials at CBS News turning their attention to Ms. Mapes, one of their most respected producers, who was riding particularly high this year after breaking news about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal for the network.

In a telephone interview this weekend, Josh Howard, the executive producer of the "60 Minutes'' Wednesday edition, said that he did not initially know who was Ms. Mapes' primary source for the documents but that he did not see any reason to doubt them. He said he believed Ms. Mapes and her team had appropriately answered all questions about the documents' authenticity and, he noted, no one seemed to be casting doubt upon the essential thrust of the report.

"The editorial story line was still intact, and still is, to this day,'' he said, "and the reporting that was done in it was by a person who has turned in decades of flawless reporting with no challenge to her credibility.''

He added, "We in management had no sense that the producing team wasn't completely comfortable with the results of the document analysis.''

Ms. Mapes has not responded to requests for comment.

Mr. Howard also said in the interview that the White House did not dispute the veracity of the documents when it was presented to them on the morning of the report. That reaction, he said, was "the icing on the cake'' of the other reporting the network was conducting on the documents. White House officials have said they saw no reason to challenge documents being presented by a credible news organization.

Several people familiar with the situation said they were girding for a particularly tough week for Mr. Rather and the news division should the network announce its new doubts.

One person close to the situation said the critical question would be, "Where was everybody's judgment on that last day?''

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aREDSKIN

aREDSKIN

Posted
Posted

It's not just Rather it's the entire Viacom family of properties that hate bush. Anyone with an ounce of reasonablness would have concluded these were "fake" documents. But NOOOOO SEEBS and the lefties yet again try and present a facade to the american people. Disgusting but all so predictible and typical MO for those sucmbags.

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Thiebear

Thiebear

Posted
Posted

It's Bush's fault that CBS "Fell" for this.

He kept them from listening to the 2 experts that told them, don't do this.

He kept them from contacting "HIM" and asking him if its true.

He kept them from asking the family and finding out its not what the dad would do..

You can DUPE a call in show..

You can NOT dupe a show that has a research division...

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December90

December90

Posted
Posted

I just hope that another news source does an "in depth" report on the personal life of Dan Rather and is as "fair" to him as he is to his victims... er. I mean subjects.

What will Mr. Rather do when it is reported that he is living a double life as a gay male prostitute who kills kittens and puppies for fun and freely worships sperm whales?

It must be true I have a memo that says so and the ink has been dry for a least a 60 minutes.

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ross3909

ross3909

Posted
Posted

SHOCKER!!! Seriously though, I am really looking forward to Rather eating crow and giving up the biased scorce that will even further expose the poor judgement excersized in rushing this bogus story to air. Bush should send Rather a thank you note. He just all but locked the election for him.

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SnyderShrugged

SnyderShrugged

Posted
Posted

My prediction is that within 7 days from today, we will see clear collaboration between the DNc and these docs.

Rationale: (all my opinion and speculation)

1. The Cleland connection already established

2. The timing as it broke with the "fortunate son" ads released by DNC last week.

3. The glee with which McCauliff and the rest of the DNC big whigs exhibited over these "facts"

4. CBS not disputing the info contained within nor acknowledging their "unimpeachable" source.

5. The past history of Barnes, Rather, and MSM in general of attacking Bush at every turn.

This will bite the Dems in a bad way regardless.:2cents:

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SnyderShrugged

SnyderShrugged

Posted
Posted

internal CBS memo (acknowledges Burkett as their source, yet affirms that Burkett had an unnamed source as well.

DU is claiming the evil Karl as the source! I love the desperation!!

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash5.htm

Andrew Heyward Internal E-Mail to CBS News Employees

Mon Sep 20 2004 13:25:11 ET

Dear CBS News Colleagues,

Many of you have expressed understandable concern about the disputed documents used in the 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY report on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

Obviously, 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY had full confidence in the original report or it would not have aired. However, in the wake of serious and disturbing questions that came up after the broadcast, CBS News has done extensive additional reporting in an effort to confirm the documents' authenticity. That included interviews with Marian Carr Knox, secretary to the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the officer named as the author of the documents; an interview with Bill Burkett, the former Guard officer who provided the memos to 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY; and a further review of the forensic evidence on both sides of the debate.

Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.

CBS News and CBS management are commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken. The names of the people conducting the review will be announced shortly, and their findings will be made public.

Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting. I know all of you work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust. I hope today's public statements about the documents are an important first step in restoring YOUR confidence in the standards and systems we have in place to ensure that we live up to our obligations to our viewers, listeners, and readers -- and to one another.

Thanks

Andrew

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Thiebear

Thiebear

Posted
Posted

Obviously, 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY had full confidence in the original report or it would not have aired.

So the whole "expert" saying there are 5 things wrong with the signature all by itself didnt set off any alarms????

Way to sidestep the whole issue.

No audience member is going to accept anything short of just coming out and saying.

60 minutes did the proper research on the forged documents.

They then chose to ignore the results of the expert and go with a "feeling".

We are not about "feelings" and will cancel 60 minutes and put them all in Sunset Valley Retirement Home...

;)

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