<font size=4>RATHER MYSTERIOUS
<font size=3>The New York Post (Hat tip to Gina Vener)
September 11, 2004 -- <font size=4>What are CBS — and anchor Dan Rather — trying to hide?
The network ignited a firestorm Wednesday when its news show "60 Minutes" reported on memos related to President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.
Rather went on the air last night to defend the report.
At issue: the authenticity of memos that alleged Bush got favored treatment.
* Multiple experts say that characteristics of the typing — the appearance of a "th," as in "187th," in raised superscript, aspects of the spacing and the use of a recent typeface — make it unlikely the documents were written in the early '70s, as their dates state.
Rather asserted that such typescript was available as early as 1968, but provided no details — such as the make of the typewriter that could produce it.
* The widow of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the memos' supposed author, found the wording <font color=green>"very suspect,"<font color=black> and Killian's son said his father would never have written or kept such memos.
Rather did produce a contemporary of Killian's who said the documents described behavior typical of the times — but who, when asked, declined to say whether he believed them to be genuine.
* The personnel chief in Killian's unit called the papers <font color=purple>"forgeries"<font color=black> and said Killian, whom he knew for 17 years, would never have written such memos.
Rather did interview a handwriting specialist, Marcel Matley — who asserted the signatures were real, but who never addressed the possibility that a genuine signature could have been scanned into a computer to produce a forgery.
Nor did Rather ask him about that.
Matley was, however, the sole <font color=blue>"expert"<font color=black> to appear last night. Nobody else lent a name — or reputation — to substantiate the original CBS report.
This was consistent with CBS' steadfast refusal since Wednesday to disclose the names of experts it said had verified the documents' authenticity.
<font color=blue>
"The documents in the '60 Minutes' report were thoroughly examined and their authenticity vouched for by independent experts,"<font color=black> CBS had said.
That's experts — plural.
But called in CBS's defense last night: one handwriting guy; nobody else.
Pretty thin gruel.
Sure, news organizations sometimes need to protect sources.
But it's one thing for CBS to withhold information about the documents' origin — and quite another for it to refuse to disclose the names of those who (it claims) authenticated them.
Why, after all, would folks who make their living doing such analyses want to remain anonymous?
By continuing to <font color=blue>"shield"<font color=black> their experts after two days of mounting controversy, Rather and CBS left folks to wonder how they authenticated the documents.
More to the point, by airing last night's segment at all, CBS and Rather were admitting something extraordinary had happened — that serious challenges to their original reporting had been mounted.
But no challenger was brought on the show.
<font color=blue>
Rather defined the terms of the discussion, asked the
questions, picked the individuals who responded,
presumably screened their answers — and basically declared
himself innocent. <font color=black>
That is, he stuck in his thumb, pulled out a plum — and said: <font color=blue>"What a fine anchor am I." <font color=black>
That probably won't cut it. In the age of the Internet, the truth will out.
Dan Rather can count on that. |
