patterico
September 20, 2004
My, How Things Have Changed
The New York Times is reporting that a retraction of sorts may be in the works at CBS:<font color=blue>
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.
The 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. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air.<font color=black>
Welcome to the party, guys.
For humor purposes, this may be a good time to recall Kevin Drum's post from the day after the infamous initial broadcast of the documents:<font color=blue>
For what it's worth, I spoke to someone a few minutes ago who's familiar with how the documents were vetted, and the bottom line is that CBS is very, very confident that the memos are genuine. They believe that (a) their sources are rock solid, (b) the provenance of the documents is well established, and (c) the appearance of the documents matches the appearance of other documents created at the same place and time. In addition, people who knew Killian well have confirmed that the memos are genuine.
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Now that makes for some good readin'.
P.S. Former CBS executive Jonathan Klein was actually right when he said: <font color=blue>"You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at "60 Minutes"] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."<font color=black>
The contrast is indeed looking starker with each passing day.
UPDATE: Tom Maguire recalls Rather's quote:
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I'm confident we worked longer, dug deeper and worked harder than almost anybody in American journalism does.
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and Tom responds:
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You've already dug deeply enough, Dan. Just lie back, and we'll shovel the dirt on you.
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I think the document experts already did that for us, Tom.
UPDATE x2: Scrappleface says Rather is going to break the forgery story and force his own resignation.
Posted by Patterico at 06:34 AM
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