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| Howard Cosell voice NYT: Down Goes Rather! Down Goes Rather! | |
| 2004-09-20 | |
| 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. Those 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, and that it was mounting an intensive news investigation of where they came from. But these people cautioned that CBS News could still pull back from an announcement. Officials were meeting last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it has collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision. People at the network said it was now possible that officials would open a formal internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report, which officials now say they are beginning to believe was too flawed to have gone on the air. 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 is now in grave doubt.
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| Posted by:OldSpook |
| #8 Mike even my (now 86 year old) mom has a shredder, we had one in the 1990 for our home. The obvious questions are not answered or even pursued in this whole fandango. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-09-20 4:15:28 PM |
| #7 Sock Puppet, There's one other thing that strikes me as odd about the 'trash can' thing. Literally every military office that I know of has had a shredder since the mid-90s. So if I understand this right: *People are disocvering 30 y/o records involving a sitting POTUS; *Nobody takes them to higher authority (especially whether or not to ask why these memos are still there in the first place), and *They were 'thrown away' and not shredded with the individual's SSN still on them - a blatant violation of Privacy Act procedures and a guaranteed way to have one's career tossed in behind the documents. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2004-09-20 12:07:02 PM |
| #6 Try This gromky |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-09-20 11:53:51 AM |
| #5 Link is borked, please fix it |
| Posted by: gromky 2004-09-20 4:30:10 AM |
| #4 Aside from killing Operation Fortunate Son & helping to run out the clock on the election, this has applied a thick layer of teflon to W's past record (albeit a record that very few sane swing voters cared about in the first place). It has also allowed the President an opportunity to stay above the fray by making only a single mild comment about it while the Dems continue to howl and bark at the moon. The contrast couldn't be more clear and is just as clearly reflected in recent polls. Thank you Dan Rather! |
| Posted by: AzCat 2004-09-20 2:56:10 AM |
| #3 Yep - but the swirl aroud this sucks all the air out of the room for yet another week, and the Kerry cmapaign was laready sucking wiind a bit. Operation Foot-Bullet by CBS, MoveON and Soros has been a crashing success - but for the "wrong" side. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-09-20 2:34:36 AM |
| #2 OldSpook last week I thought that the MSM would devour it own over this. Now I have my doubts. Rather Still has a job. This freeking flake Butler continues to garner media attention. No apperent questioning of why a Army national guard member would be having any interaction with the Air national guard on an administrative level in respeccts to personel records. How he would have access to Air national guard records from the 1970's even if they "were in a trash can". Even questioning if those records would be avaiable to anyone but the DOD and Air Force and Air National guard personal currently. They ain't looking for answers. They have circled the wagons instead. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-09-20 2:23:40 AM |
| #1 Get out the popcorn folks - its going to be fun to watch CBS try to tapdance out of this minefield. And will they REALLY go hard to get to the source- even if it leads them to Soros, MoveOn and the Kerry Campaign? |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-09-20 2:11:46 AM |