The ABB crowd at their finest......
Should CBS fire Rather and cohorts over forged memo incident?
South Bend Tribune
Rather should be forgiven for falling prey to dirty trick
By WAYNE MADSEN
WASHINGTON
One can forgive CBS News and "60 Minutes" for falling prey to yet another political dirty trick by the master trickster himself, Karl Rove.
The only thing for which CBS News anchor Dan Rather, producer Mary Mapes, and the "60 Minutes" crew can be faulted is not being aware of the keen ability of Rove and his associates to turn an unfavorable story on George W. Bush's Air National Guard service into a career-damaging attack on "60 Minutes" and CBS News.
We've been through similar machinations in the past with Rove and his henchmen. Just before the 2002 elections, a compact disk containing a "confidential" Power Point brief by Rove and his assistant Ken Mehlman -- now the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign manager -- was mysteriously "found" on a park bench in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House.
The briefing suggested that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was in political trouble in his re-election bid, which, of course, was untrue. But it resulted in Jeb Bush reaping a windfall in new political contributions.
It was the typical Rove modus operandi: plant a story based on false innuendo in the media to achieve a pre-planned political goal. Rove's antics are Machiavellian at best and criminal at worst.
Moments after questionable Texas Air National Guard documents on Bush's National Guard service were shown on "60 Minutes," bloggers began pointing to the use of the superscript in a font that wasn't readily available on IBM Selectric typewriters used during the 1960s and '70s.
Soon, a cacophony of radio and TV demagogues all weighed in against CBS and Rather.
Retired Texas Air Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, who has been questioning Bush's service and the misuse of his National Guard records ever since the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election, was also cited as a "60 Minutes" source. He's been in Rove's political gun sights ever since. And Dan Rather has been a Rove target since his on-the-air challenges of Rove's two heroes: Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush.
Others have confirmed Bush's spotty Guard service, including former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, Bush's squadron secretary Marian Carr Knox, and retired Brig. Gen. William Turnipseed. They have also earned the wrath of the Rove/Republican National Committee political propaganda machine. It is that putrid triangle of prevaricators that should be under investigation right now, not CBS and "60 Minutes."
Burkett claimed the questionable documents were passed to him by an unknown go-between last March and that he was originally informed about the documents by a woman who has since disappeared. This should have alerted all concerned -- Burkett, Mapes, Rather and others -- to the distinct possibility of a dirty tricks operation. The targeting of "60 Minutes" was almost a forgone conclusion after Mapes helped expose the Abu Ghraib prison torture story last April.
Whenever bogus documents are involved, the media should immediately look at Rove and his minions and not shoot the messenger -- even if the messenger is sloppy.
Bogus documents helped get this nation into a protracted quagmire in Iraq. The Rove machine has unfairly tarnished Paul O'Neill, Sandy Berger, John McCain, John Kerry, Max Cleland, Joseph Wilson and others. It's clearly time to stop harassing CBS and "60 Minutes" and shine the bright light of disinfectant on Karl Rove and his dirty tricks operatives.
Wayne Madsen is a senior fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (www.epic.org).
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