Neil Boortz on the CBS fiasco

[SquireSCA]

Taken from Boortz's site this morning. Boortz is a nationally syndicated Libertarian talk show host, broadcasting out of Atlanta.
-----------------------------------

WAS SAD MAX THE PART OF THE PHONY DOCUMENTS SCAM?

How long has it been now? Two weeks? Two weeks ---- and Dan Rather is still stonewalling. Even though CBS seems to be ready to admit that it was duped, Rather is holding fast. He still has not admitted that those documents he so proudly flourished on 60 Minutes II the week before last were fakes. Forgeries. Phonies.

This past weekend CBS came up with a rather unusual twist. It was yet another glorious explanation of just why Dan Rather used those documents ... and how he was so terribly, absolutely, completely right to do so. See if you can follow this. Before the ill-fated 60 Minutes II show was aired some CBS reporters showed the documents to the White House and asked for comments. Since the White House didn't charge that the documents were forgeries at that time that must mean that they were real. So, you see, it was all the fault of the White House.

This morning we have the New York Times saying that CBS is preparing an announcement .. possibly for today ... that they were duped; that they had been deceived as to the origin of the documents. Unidentified CBS officials told Times reporters that the report was too flawed to go on the air. This turn-around was apparently prompted by the results of a weekend interview of retired National Guard Lt. Col Bill Burkett by Dan Rather and a CBS executive. Burkett is the man identified as the possible source of the CBS documents.

So .. now CBS is the victim? After two weeks of drinking their own Kool-Aid...insisting that the documents were accurate, and trotting out experts who supported their claims, suddenly CBS is the victim here? CBS wasn't duped - their viewers were. The documents were obvious forgeries, and CBS ignored the warnings from their own experts that they didn't look authentic. In other words, they're acting like they accepted a $100 bill drawn with a green crayon and were deceived. We're going to buy that, aren't we?

The story out today says that Rather still believes that what is in the documents is accurate. Sorry, but there's no logical way to arrive at that conclusion. The man who didn't write the memos died 20 years ago. His surviving kin (son and wife) say there's no way he wrote them. Yet we're supposed to believe Dan Rather and CBS News that the memos might be fake, but hey the contents are accurate! So why would they think that?

Because they want to believe it. Such is their pent-up Bush-bashing hatred that they are willing to broadcast a false story based on forged documents to advance a political cause. Dan Rather wanted revenge...and he smelled blood. This was going to be his big story to go out on....the news story that brought down a sitting president and led to his re-election defeat. Instead, their carefully constructed fantasy collapsed - and with it what was left of a major media institution's integrity. In the end, Rather didn't take down George W. Bush, he took down CBS News and his career.

The mystery has been just why Rather has seemed almost afraid to step forward and admit that the documents are forgeries! At this point virtually everyone else in the media -- and that includes the DC and NYC press corps -- knows the documents are fakes, his CBS bosses are about to capitulate, yet Rather is still using his "the documents may be fake, but they're correct" escape valve?

Dan Rather is perhaps the most partisan of the major broadcast network news anchors. His hatred of all things Bush approaches the pathological. I would submit to you that Dan Rather's burning desire to see John Kerry elected this fall has clouded his news judgment. He was all-too-eager to jump on a story that he thought could wound or possibly cripple Bush. I don't think for a moment that Rather would intentionally present documents he knew to be forged to his audience, even if he thought those documents would help his chosen candidate. Rather's eagerness to hurt George Bush caused him to stumble blindly into the forged documents scandal.

Stand by, folks. This story just might get far more interesting. CBS can't be allowed to get by with a "we were duped" admission. If they admit that the documents were forged, then the documents, who forged them, and how they got to CBS become the story. There should be no pretense at protecting sources. You don't protect sources who feed you bogus documents. To maintain even a sliver of journalistic integrity CBS will have to divulge just where those documents came from.

Divulging the source of those documents would be no problem to Dan Rather if that source was operating independently of the Democratic Party or of the Kerry Campaign. That appeared to be the case last week when Burkett was identified as a probable source. Burkett was known to hold a grudge against George Bush for some perceived wrongs during Burkett's service in the Guard. In some of his writings Burkett had compared Bush to Hitler. So, if Burkett supplied the documents, then we can expect to see CBS finger him sooner rather than later.

But what if CBS didn't get those documents from Burkett? What if there was an intermediary? What if there was a intermediary who commanded enough respect in the CBS newsroom that the authenticity of the documents was merely assumed? After all, if Burkett had been the source of those documents, don't you suppose that the CBS producers might do just a bit of research on Burkett before they used them? Wouldn't that research reveal the "Hitler" remark and other troubling aspects of Burkett's past? Would Rather use documents provided by a relative unknown with a demonstrable grudge without some fairly heavy duty vetting? So ... again; maybe the documents didn't come from Burkett, at least not directly.

Enter the man not named in this morning's New York Times story. Enter Max Cleland.

This weekend we learned that Bill Burkett developed an itchy keyboard finger a few weeks ago and decided to do a bit of bragging to his Texas Democrat friends. On August 21st Burkett wrote an email to a group of Texas Democrats saying that he had passed some information to a former senator who was out there working for John Kerry. Burkett said that he initiated a contact with the Kerry campaign that resulted in him getting a phone call from Max Cleland. Cleland, as you probably know, is the obsessively bitter Vietnam War veteran who lost his first race for reelection to the U.S. Senate representing Georgia. The Georgia voters resented the manner in which Cleland became a lap dog to Tom Daschle and his choice to work to strengthen government employee unions at the expense of a strong Department of Homeland Security. In his email message Burkett said that he gave Max Cleland information that could be used to mount a counterattack against the critics of Kerry's service in Vietnam.

Information? What information? Isn't it perfectly logical to believe that the information that Burkett is talking about is, in fact, the forged documents used by Dan Rather?

Here is where we see a possible reason for Rather's stonewalling.

Is it possible that Max Cleland is actually the source of those documents? Possible, yes. Proven, no. Could Burkett have passed the documents to Cleland who then made them available to CBS News? I'm just saying it's possible, folks. But this scenario would explain why Rather had circled the wagons. Max Cleland is part of the Kerry campaign team. It was Max Cleland that John Kerry sent to the gates of the Bush Ranch in Crawford, Texas for a publicity stunt. Kerry is Cleland's instrument of revenge against the Republican Party that deprived him of his seat in the U.S. Senate, and the Kerry Campaign knows all-to-well how to take advantage of an eager dupe. If ... and I'm saying IF ... the source of the documents was Cleland, then the Kerry Campaign is directly implemented in the scandal. Turn out the lights.

Let me add that I hope that the scenario I put forward here is completely false. I've known Max Cleland for years. I love the man, truly .. though I doubt that he would throw a glass of water on me if I caught fire. I and many other Georgians watched in total despair as he sold his very soul to Tom Daschle and the Democratic Party. Cleland would have been Georgia's Senator for Life if he had simply put the interests of the country and his state above the interests of his party and government employee unions. Some of us hope that one day the kind, gregarious and gentle man that was Max Cleland will come home.

If CBS does, in fact, admit that the documents were fakes, and that the vaunted CBS news team was tricked, we can't let the story end there. It can't end with an apology for airing the memos, a statement that the content of the memos are still believed to be accurate, and a producer thrown to the wolves. If CBS continues to cover up where the documents came from ... the entire chain of possession ... then we'll know that the bigger story hasn't yet seen the light of day.
--------------------------------------

I have to agree with him. CBS should be outraged that they were duped and that their integrity as a news outlet was spanked by these forged documents. But CBS is still trying to push it under the rug, which is odd. You would think that they would use every resource at their disposal to clear their name, that you would see anger and outrage from Dan Rather, that his legacy as a veteran journalist was put on the line by somoene feeding him bad info.

But we don't see that. Why?

Maybe because the real source of the faked document leads back to the Kerry camp, as Boortz implies. Maybe CBS does not want to be the group that takes down their own candidate?

Time will tell... But there has to be a damned good reason why CBS is taking this lying down instead of getting to the bottom of it.

[Sazar]

http://www.postgazette.com/pg/04262/381287.stm

It was the first public allegation that CBS News used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's National Guard service -- a highly technical explanation posted within hours of airtime, citing proportional spacing and font styles.

But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history, as some first thought. Instead, the Los Angeles Times has found that it was the work of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes. He helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar then-President Bill Clinton following the Monica Lewinsky scandal.



Last week, MacDougald once again plunged into a politically charged controversy -- but this time his participation was anonymous. Operating as "Buckhead," which is also the name of an upscale Atlanta neighborhood, MacDougald wrote that the memos that CBS's "60 Minutes" presented on the evening of Sept. 8 as being written in the early 1970s by the late Lt. Col Jerry B. Killian were "in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman."

"The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word-processing software and personal computers," MacDougald wrote on the freerepublic Web site. "They were not widespread until the mid- to late '90s. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid-'80s used monospaced fonts.

"I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively."

The Sept. 8 late-night posting -- written fewer than four hours after the CBS report was aired -- resulted in a flurry of sympathetic testimonials from fellow bloggers, spreading within hours to other sites.



While bloggers and some conservative activists hailed Buckhead as a hero in their longtime efforts to paint the mainstream media as politically biased, some Democrats and even some conservative bloggers have marveled at Buckhead's detailed knowledge of the memos and wondered whether that suggested a White House conspiracy.



while on the subject of possible conspiracy theories...

[intercede007]

60 minutes is about as crooked as the nails I dug out of my fence this weekend. And they were borked.

In the scandal to "prove" that Audi's had an unintended acceleration problem, they drilled a hole into the cars transmission case and forced fluid AT HIGH PRESSURES into the casing, overwhelming and destroying the valves, clutches and springs causing the car to move against the parking brake. It's a situation that is impossible in real life, but they managed to destroy Audi's reputation in this country for 10 years.

A study done by the DOT pointed out that, with vehicles that had similar pedal placement and a similar buyer demographic that the reports of "unintended acceleration" were statistically identical. Only vehicles like the Honda Civic and other smaller economy cars showed a lesser degree of claims; the DOT attributed this to the drivers attention level and driving ability.

I challange anyone to try this: go find an empty road and step on your brake pedal with your left foot. Then put your right on the gas and see how far you get. I'm willing to bet that if your brakes are in proper working order, you will hear a loud groaning and the cars suspension will raise a little..but you won't move.

In response, Audi developed, at their own expense, a transmission interlock device that will not allow the car to be shifted out of park without the foot on the brake. They didn't patent the switch and offered it freely to any and all manufacturers willing to try it. To this day, GM, Ford, Toyota and Honda use a mechanism IDENTICAL to the part Audi developed. But 60 minutes didn't have anything to say about it. They had sunk their target and the mission was accomplished.

60 Minutes was hot for a story then, and they are hot for a story now. Hopefully this is the straw that broke the camels back.

The complete story..

Manufacturing the Audi Scare
by Peter Huber



Mr. Huber, a columnist at Forbes magazine, is the author of "Liability: The Legal Revolution and its Consequences," (Basic Books, 1988).

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL MONDAY, DECEMBER 18,1989

If you're the kind of driver who sometimes has trouble finding the brakes in your car, you should be driving an Audi. Last month, in 35mph crash tests of an airbage-quipped Audi 100, the mannequin in the driver's seat suffered the lowest crash force ever recorded by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, in this kind of test.

And yet, according to the Center for Auto Safety--a self-styled public interest organization that sells its research to plaintiffs' lawyers--the Audi 100's predecessor, the Audi 5000, was as deadly as the Audi 100 is safe. It exhibited "sudden acceleration," a fatal propensity to take off at full speed even as the terrified driver rammed the brake pedal to the floor.

CBS's "60 Minutes" ran a devastating expose of the Audi 5000. Audi customers fled. Lawyers cashed in. The American public was saved, yet again, from the perils of technology gone awry. Only one little noticed footnote remains at the end: There was nothing wrong with the car.

The Audi story is by now, dismally familiar. "Sudden acceleration" accidents occurred when the transmission was shifted out of "park." The driver always insisted he was standing on the brake, but after the crash the brakes always worked perfectly. A disproportionate number of accidents involved drivers new to the vehicle. When an idiotproof shift was installed so that a driver could not shift out of park if his foot was on the accelerator, reports of sudden acceleration plummeted.

But a story to the effect that cars accelerate when drivers step on the accelerator doesn't boost television ratings or jury verdicts. And driver error is understandably hard to accept for a mother whose errant foot killed her sixyearold son. So with the help of such mothers, CAS and CBS knitted together a tissue of conjecture, insinuation and calumny. The car's cruise control was at fault. Or maybe the electronic idle. Or perhaps the transmission.

"60 Minutes," in one of journalism's most shameful hours, gave air time in November 1986 to a selfstyled expert who drilled a hole in an Audi transmission and pumped in air at high pressure. Viewers didn't see the drill or the pump—just the doctored car blasting off like a rocket.

Junk science of this kind moves fast. Real science takes time to catch up with this kind of intellectual ****roach and squash it. Government agencies in Japan and Canada, as well as in the U.S., conducted painstaking studies. The Canadians who are franker about such things, called it "driver error." In America, where we can't attach blame to anyone whose name doesn't end with Inc., it was called "pedal misapplication." And unsurprisingly, it's not just Audi drivers who commit it.

So, in the long run, the truth does come out. In the short run, the lawyers swoop in. Most soon recognized that they couldn't prove any defect in the Audi's engine or transmission. But our liability system today is a master of the bait and switch—the switch was to "pedal misdesign."

No doubt about it, the original Audi like other European cars, placed brake and accelerator pedals slightly closer together than is usual in many American designs. This allows the good driver to move faster between the pedals in highspeed emergency. Perhaps it also makes it easier for the bad driver to mix up the pedals. Nobody, including NHTSA, is quite sure whether, overall, the old Audi pedal placement was marginally better or marginally worse. End of case? Hardly. With Audi shellshocked and vulnerable from the earlier junkengineering claims, the pedal placement lawyers moved in.

The "60 Minutes" story starred a mother who had run over her sixyearold son. On the air, she insisted that she had had her foot on the brake the whole time. When her $48 million claim came to court in Akron, Ohio, in June 1988 the investigating police officer and witnesses at the scene testified that after the accident the distraught mother had admitted that her foot had slipped off the brake. The jury found no defect in the car.

Trial judges in New Jersey and New York have overturned badpedaldesign verdicts against Audi. Last July a federal court in Pennsylvania issued a summary judgment for Audi. And that should have been the end of Audi's legal troubles.

Except that it wasn't. An appellate court reinstated the New Jersey verdict: an appeal is pending. The New York case was settled before retrial. A California jury returned a $3.5 million verdict against Audi on a pedalplacement theory, after the plaintiff's lawyers abandoned a sudden acceleration claim. Another appeal is pending. Today, Audi is reportedly defending itself in more than 140 different suits, and damage claims are in excess of $5 billion. Not that the aggregate claims have the slightest connection with reality, of course. At one point, a single demented plaintiff in New York filed identical $5 billion claims in both federal and state courts; both have since been thrown out.

How about the U.S. government safety report? In July, 1989, shortly after the report was released, Audi ran a hopeful advertisement titled "Case Closed." "The case is not closed," responded Robert Lisco, a Chicago plaintiffs' attorney. "Those guys must be smoking something." "60 Minutes" never even acknowledged the final U.S. findings, it did grudgingly note identical conclusions of an earlier, blue-ribbon study, and then proceeded to rebroadcast inflammatory videos from the earlier segment. CAS denounced the government study and cheerfully cranked up yet another sudden acceleration smear, this one against Cadillacs. Lawyers for the "Audi Victims Network" brazenly declared that the report strengthened their clients' cases.

They may be right. The largest suit now pending against Audi is an Illinois class action, ostensibly representing 300,000 or so Audi 5000 owners. The charge? That because of the sudden acceleration controversy, Audis have lost resale value.

Yes, sudden acceleration is real. A powerful engine kicks into gear without warning or reason. It crashes through a respected business, ruins the livelihood of hundreds of innocent dealers, and devalues the property of hundreds of thousands of bewildered car owners. The windfall goes to those who destroy and then successfully blame others for the wreckage. For heaven's sake, where are the brakes?


http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cjm_18.htm

I hope 60 Minutes dissapears.

[intercede007]

while on the subject of possible conspiracy theories...

Dr. Phillip Bouffard is a lawyer from Atlanta named MacDougald?

There are real experts out there questioning the validity of the works.

[Sazar]

cbs jumped the gun on this... I was surprised the white house also released the same documents... I spose they were a little worried about the scrutiny coz documents they say didn't exist kept popping up...

the good news is the last week or so discussion has been mainly about the topics by both parties so there is a silver lining to all this crap by both sides...

[UDawg]

they were borked.

No they were trying to Bork the president. ;)

[SquireSCA]

http://www.postgazette.com/pg/04262/381287.stm







while on the subject of possible conspiracy theories...

Conspiracy theory?

CBS and Dan Rather admitted that the memos were forgeries about 3 hours ago, after defending them for 2 weeks.

To make it worse, even though their "source" duped them and tarnished their name, they continue to keep the source anonymous, which is very odd.

Another thing, is that while CNS is busy attacking and blaming all of this on "partisan Republican alternative media outlets" and all that crap, what they are actually saying is that were it not for these blog sites, Newsmax, Fox News and people like Rush Limbaugh, they would still be touting the memos.

They are not sorry here, they are sorry that they got caught trying to influence an election by attempting to take down a sitting President with forged documents. Were it not for these other media outlets calling them on it, CBS would still be lying to you about it.

Shame on them, and shame on Rather. I hope he gets fired in disgrace over this, because abusing his network's power to further a personal political agenda borders on the criminal...

[saturnotaku]

To make it worse, even though their "source" duped them and tarnished their name, they continue to keep the source anonymous, which is very odd.

I was sort of half-paying attention to this information so I didn't catch the guy's name, but the source was revealed as someone in the Texas National Guard. If I heard correctly, the guy's family (or someone people who know him) leaked this information to other media outlets.

[Riptide]

Rather should resign. He's a disgrace.

[SquireSCA]

I was sort of half-paying attention to this information so I didn't catch the guy's name, but the source was revealed as someone in the Texas National Guard. If I heard correctly, the guy's family (or someone people who know him) leaked this information to other media outlets.

The guy that came forward said that he was presenting the information but that he was not the original source.

I am betting that the true source is gonna be found somewhere in the DNC connected to the Kerry camp. There is no other reason that CBS would not be angry about this and calling for the person's head. If someone had actually duped them like this, they would release the source's identity in a heartbeat.

[Sazar]

they have an interview apparently with burkett...

some of the connections suggested in the media link him purpotedly with cleland...

remember what happened post tailwind? cnn demoted or got rid of a few people... I suspect many who did the work in getting the news to rather will be dealt with and rather himself will experience some repurcussions...

[UDawg]

This is the same as water gate now. If the DNC spread these out namely anyone in the Democratic party then this is exactly the same level of corruption as the water gate hotel break in, in fact it is worse.

[SquireSCA]

I was sort of half-paying attention to this information so I didn't catch the guy's name, but the source was revealed as someone in the Texas National Guard. If I heard correctly, the guy's family (or someone people who know him) leaked this information to other media outlets.

No.

The guy came forward claiming to have the documents, while his family members denied it, that their father(the deceased man alleged to have made the document in 1972), had never made that document.

The family, and some other sources cast some serious doubt on the man's claims of having valid documents, but CBS and Dan Rather ignored them all, blind in their zeal to take down Bush.

[SquireSCA]

they have an interview apparently with burkett...

some of the connections suggested in the media link him purpotedly with cleland...

remember what happened post tailwind? cnn demoted or got rid of a few people... I suspect many who did the work in getting the news to rather will be dealt with and rather himself will experience some repurcussions...

If it came from Cleland, then Kerry is going down hard. CLeland works directly for Kerry. It was Cleland that Kerry sent to Bush's ranch delivering a letter a few weeks ago.

That is probably why CBS is riding the fence here. They want to clear their name, but at the same time, if they come clean and finger Cleland, they know that Kerry is finished.

[SquireSCA]

This is the same as water gate now. If the DNC spread these out namely anyone in the Democratic party then this is exactly the same level of corruption as the water gate hotel break in, in fact it is worse.

True.

Can you imagine the hysteria and crying if this was reversed? Imagine if a high ranking RNC official working for Bush had provided false documents to a media outlet and got caught. Imagine if Fox News had spent two weeks defending the document.

They would be calling for some heads to roll. Fox would be under assualt, as well as Senate hearings dragging Bush under the microscope, asking him what he knew and when did he know it.

But because it is a Democrat involved, the story will likely be buried... LOL

[Riptide]

I think you guys (UDawg/SquiresSCA) make good points. It seems to me that if the tables were turned more would be done about this.

[SquireSCA]

I think you guys (UDawg/SquiresSCA) make good points. It seems to me that if the tables were turned more would be done about this.

Oh, you have no idea.

If this were a Republican fiasco involving Fox News Channel, there would be Congressional hearings and calls for impeachment, the works...

We have a clear case here of a major news network presenting false data in an attempt to influence an election, possibly with involvement from the Kerry camp.

This is HUGE, far bigger than Watergate ever was, if true.

Let's see if the media gives it 1/10th the attention of Watergate though...

[Drumphil]

Let's see if the media gives it 1/10th the attention of Watergate though...

er, last time I checked practically everyone was talking about this.. Its even in the Australian news now. Of course, given the recent events, you'd think everyone would be smart enough to wait till someone gets to the bottom of this before making further claims that are as yet un-verified.

[zakelwe]

I'd rather Rather was in a lather than in some lava.

And that's all I have to say on the matter.

Regards

Andy

[SquireSCA]

er, last time I checked practically everyone was talking about this.. Its even in the Australian news now. Of course, given the recent events, you'd think everyone would be smart enough to wait till someone gets to the bottom of this before making further claims that are as yet un-verified.

So far, things look to be pointing at Max Cleland, who works for Kerry. But CBS is stalling so that they can find a way to close this issue without implicating the Kerry campaign.

CBS even went so far yesterday as to try and spin this into a "right wing partisan media" attack, in an attempt to divert attention from the fact that they got caught lying in an attempt to undermine the President.

Their press conferance was little more than the Scooby-Doo defense... "We would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling Republicans!"... LOL

[SquireSCA]

today's update from Boortz:

"SORRY DIDN'T DO IT, DAN DID

So last night on the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather finally sucked it up and apologized for the disastrous forged Bush National Guard documents story. It's about time, but now the probe into just what happened begins, and that's where it could really get interesting. So what about Dan's "apology" last night? Let's take a look.

Said his Ratherness: "Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically." Notice that he simply did not say that they have concluded the documents are forgeries. He didn't say what is overwhelmingly obvious, and that is the documents are fake. They're not real Dan, somebody made them up. The best we're apparently going to get is that they can't vouch for them anymore. The underlying premise being that they don't want to say they're forgeries....they're just saying they don't have any confidence. Figures.

He went on: " I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where if I knew then what I know now I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." Oh really? This is a bit of a stretch, isn't it? We know that CBS' own experts questioned the authenticity of the documents before they were even aired. Why didn't Rather and company listen to those people? He didn't listen to those people, or he ignored them completely because he wanted the contents of those memos to be true so badly that he wasn't ready to listen to anybody who was trying to throw on the brakes. So in essence, Dan did know then what he knows now: there are questions about the authenticity of the documents. Then again, any first-grader could've helped CBS with that.

Then he really laid it on thick...and this is off the charts: "It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism." Good faith? Good faith my glutes. If that was good faith, I'd hate to see their bad faith. How does knowingly broadcasting marginal (at best) evidence in an effort to destroy the reputation of the president of the United States amount to "good faith?" Then there's this nonsense about the CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism...what a load. The CBS News tradition is one of extreme liberal bias and Bush-bashing, and they certainly carried on with that tradition.

CBS affiliates around the country have stopped defending the network as they continue to take calls from angry viewers. At the end of the day, CBS and Dan Rather were done in by their own blind hatred for George Bush and nothing else.

But hey..Dan did say he was sorry. Interestingly, he did not apologize directly to the president.

KERRY CAMPAIGN BEHIND THE MEMOS?

Now the plot thickens. It turns out that CBS arranged for their "confidential source" (bitter Bush-basher extraordinaire Bill Burkett) to speak with Joe Lockhart, who is a top aide to The Poodle's campaign. Lockhart says a producer talked to him a few days before the piece aired on 60 Minutes and asked him to call Burkett, who gave CBS the documents. No surprise here....CBS running interference for the Kerry campaign behind the scenes. Hardly shocking.

According to Burkett (who is an admitted liar, so who knows,) he wouldn't turn the documents over to CBS unless they arranged a conversation with the Kerry campaign. This, my friends, is the point where CBS could have showed a shred of integrity and turned him down. Didn't happen. I am sure this producer...Mary Mapes...said 'no problem, I've got the Kerry campaign on speed dial right here!' Burkett also says he talked to Max Cleland and Howard Dean. So that's two people on The Poodle's campaign....Lockhart and Cleland. And the Kerry campaign says they had nothing to do with the documents?

CBS says they're going to investigate. I don't know about you, but I have a tremendous amount of confidence in a CBS investigation at this point. Suuuuuure I do. I wonder if that investigation will wind up and be made public prior to the November 2nd election? Probably not, because despite this all blowing up in their faces, they still want to do everything possible to elect The Poodle. Our best hope is that other news organizations are continuing to investigate this story thoroughly. Just what was the role of Joe Lockhart? What about Max Cleland's call to Bill Burkett? Did Dan Rather and CBS believe in those documents because someone who occupies a much more prominent public position vouched for them? What that person working for the DNC or the Kerry campaign? CBS knows. How long will it take them to fess up?

By the way .. could you imagine the outrage if FoxNews had fallen for forged documents about John Kerry?"

[Riptide]

Yeah he's sorry alright. Sorry his story of a lifetime turned out to be a bunch of crap and now he's got egg on his face. He should apologize to Bush IMO. And then he should resign. But he won't do either.

Rather is a boob.

[SquireSCA]

Yeah he's sorry alright. Sorry his story of a lifetime turned out to be a bunch of crap and now he's got egg on his face. He should apologize to Bush IMO. And then he should resign. But he won't do either.

Rather is a boob.

What appals me is the double-standard at work here. Democrats can get away with so much more than Republicans could ever think of doing...

[Riptide]

What appals me is the double-standard at work here. Democrats can get away with so much more than Republicans could ever think of doing...
Definitely does seem that way doesn't it. Where are the calls for an inquiry/investigation? Why isn't Dan Rather's job on the line here? I would love to see Dan Rather go, I think he's a twit.

[SquireSCA]

Definitely does seem that way doesn't it. Where are the calls for an inquiry/investigation? Why isn't Dan Rather's job on the line here? I would love to see Dan Rather go, I think he's a twit.

Seriously.

We have Congressional hearings because some member of the White House staff told Robert Novak that some guy's wife used to be a CIA operative in the Middle East, even though it was common knowledge among the press on Capital Hill.

But on this issue, I think that CBS will get a free pass, as will the Kerry camp.