Bringing Down a President
Dan Rather’s 60 Minute Flameout
By Sara Pentz

'When you tether yourself to ideology, you necessarily liberate yourself from facts. '
Author Daniel J. Flynn, Townhall.com, September 21, 2004

On Monday evening, September 21, 2004, Dan Rather publicly apologized to his viewers for airing on CBS’s “60 Minutes Wednesday” the anti-Bush story based on partisan sources and forged documents. Up to that point, Rather explained how he was not responsible for the flameout at his network that the report was causing. Instead, for 12 days, he publicly insisted that he was the victim—that he had been lied to—that he was the innocent. He maintained that CBS was promoting truth in the face of the partisan political forces that were ripping into the September 8, 2004 broadcast.

It was a transparent apology—an attempt to shift the blame and portray himself as a lily-white truthsayer. In fact, the report was one of the most blatant examples of TV network news bias perpetrated on the American public. It will go down in history books as a classic case study of non-objective, partisan and fallacious reporting.

No wonder Rather is so publicly defensive. He has blown his television network sky high in his own flameout. Watch for the network’s inevitable implosion as Rather’s ratings continue to plummet, and advertisers try to decide whether they are getting their money’s worth.

Since that on-air apology, Rather has repeatedly turned-coat on his flimsy mea culpa. He has defiantly failed to concede that the documents are forgeries; he has never apologized to the experts and analysts he impugned as partisan; and he has not retracted the discredited story. He has only said he was sorry. That is hardly a confession equal to the enormity of the deceptive scheme perpetrated by him and his co-workers in this report—one dangerously bent on bringing down the President of the United States. It did not, however, do that. In fact, it backfired on CBS, and the fallout has spread throughout the culture at CBS causing considerable discomfort.

Here is a recap of how CBS prepared the report, the sources they relied on and those they ignored.

The original players: Democratic Texas politician Ben Barnes; CBS producer Mary Mapes openly known for proselytizing her Liberal views; and adamant Bush-hater Bill Burkett, an ex-Lt. Col. in the Texas Air National Guard, who provided the faked memos. Barnes and Burkett have been decisively exposed as fabricators, liars and publicity hounds. Mapes has been ‘outed’ as an extreme Liberal with close ties and deeply insidious activity with the Kerry Campaign.

On the other side, the players consist of Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, George W. Bush's squadron commander in the National Guard, now deceased. Others included a number of professional document experts who told CBS, during the preparation of the report, that the memos were fakes—followed by hundreds of documented experts who came forth on the Internet to demonstrate the report’s astonishing bias hardly 60 minutes after it had aired.

The shameful groundwork for the false report: Rather and the CBS producer relied on the testimony of the hyper-partisan Democrat Barnes, whose claims he helped Bush into the Guard has flip-flopped over the years. His daughter has publicly called her father a liar with regard to his statements because, she says, he is a publicity-seeking politico with an upcoming book to hype.

Further, Barnes was involved in a bribery and stock fraud scandal in the early 1970s, and had a sweetheart deal with a Texas lottery company in which he received 3.5 cents for every ticket sold—more than $3 million per year. This was information readily available to anyone interested in checking Barnes’ background.

Rather’s CBS segment producer, Mary Mapes, came up with the four memos from Burkett. If she had been honest about a background check on him she would have found his home replete with anti-Bush propaganda. Further, he had a personal ax to grind against President Bush and had sought out publicity for himself in his rage to damage the president—a fact Mapes rejected out of hand.

Burkett had peddled the same faked documents to various media and political sources—each had flat-out turned him down. He called the Kerry Campaign trying to retail the memos. He tried to pawn off the memos to several major newspapers, but was again rebuffed. He even attempted to find a buyer inside the Al Gore camp, to no avail. And even the blasphemous Michael Moore had rejected him. Burkett’s motives were always blatantly questionable.

Then it was learned that ‘experts’ used by CBS to authenticate the memos were not accredited by the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners. By their own admissions they came forward to say that they were not document experts, and their roles in the report were misleading at best.

Burkett finally made his deal with Mapes, allegedly with the caveat that she pass along the information to the Kerry campaign. She would, of course, have to do this on the sly for fear of retribution by her network. She is said to have called a top Kerry campaign aid, fulfilling her promise to Burkett—ignoring the fact that her job might be at stake. Her behavior represents a blatant disregard for journalistic ethics, a violation of CBS’s own policy of Standards and Practices and a probable cause for dismissal.

Rather intoned on air that these four ‘newly’ discovered memos were from the personal file of Lt. Col. Killian. However, Killian’s wife and son stepped forward immediately after the Rather report to deny that Killian could or would have written such memos. They maintained that Killian had a history of hand writing his memos, a fact later confirmed by Killian’s secretary.

Further, Rather deliberately refused to include information in the aired report from several document experts who had stated that the memos were not authentic. This is of paramount import because it establishes absolute, irrefutable proof that CBS and Rather were aware of, but not willing—in advance of the report—to honestly challenge their agenda. This clearly points to the bias of everyone involved—a fact that could be provable in a court of law if it were a legal issue.

The entire episode began to disintegrate when professional experts came forward on the Internet to document the discrepancies of the forged memos. They demonstrated how the CBS version of the l971 memos was written with a Microsoft program—not yet available in the early 70s. It must have been humiliating to the network that had prized and touted Rather over the years as the consummate professional, to be exposed by bloggers on the Internet.

Far more repugnant, Rather and his production team refused to take responsibility for a politically motivated smear. Saying you’re sorry is not enough. That was the extent of his apology—even through the end of September 2004. This man deliberately rejected the truth and, consequently, abdicated his role as journalist—so much for the principles of fair, accurate, reliable and independent reporting – the ranking motto at CBS News.

It is, frankly, just plain silly to take these people seriously. They consider themselves to be professional journalists with the highest of moral integrity. But they do not care one whit whether they use politically motivated deceit to fool and lie to us. That is obscene and representative of the arrogance demonstrated by the entire gang.

The truth is these people, who tout their credibility, are not to be trusted. They exhibit an elitist media attitude that upholds a deep contempt for the American public. In fact, it would be far better to say that it is the American viewing public that has been betrayed and cheated—rather than Mr. Rather.