Bush's Air National Guard Records
WaPo
Michael Dobbs: Thank you for joining me for this on-line chat. I have been getting lots of mail about the Bush records and the Dan Rather business, which I haven't been able to reply to individually. So, fire away, and I'll do my best to respond to whatever is on your mind.
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Harrisburg, Pa.: I would like to know what the other two memos received by CBS and not aired said. The content of these memos may provide insight as to the validity of the four that were aired.
Michael Dobbs: All six memos have been posted on the USA today website. Today, USA Today also named Lt Col Burkett as their source, and said they too had been misled by him.
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Mission Viejo, Calif.: With reports that CBS served as liaison between Burkett and the Kerry campaign, and CBS expected to name an independent panel to investigate its own reporting, do you think this story has legs, or do you think Rather's apology is enough to move it to the back pages?
Michael Dobbs: The question now, as you suggest, is how does CBS restore its credibility, its most precious assett as a news organization. I think that it will be some time before we get the answer to that question, so I expect this story to rumble on, even if it does not make the front page every week.
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San Diego, Calif.: Mr. Dobbs,
The media, the pundits and the White House are all doing their best to impeach the integrity of the CBS News organization and that of Mr. Dan Rather for their good faith efforts to report a news story.
The question I have for you is why aren’t organizations like the Post pointing out that the CBS story has far more credibility and basis in fact than the presentations made at the UN in 2002 by George W. Bush and Colin Powell in the days leading up to the Iraq war and Mr. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address?
In the case of CBS, they did not fabricate the evidence they presented. They were duped by one of Mr. Bush’s fellow Texans. The same cannot be said the Bush administrations UN and State of the Union presentations.
In the end, CBS News and Dan Rather have a much higher standard for truth, honesty and integrity than the very low bar for such set by the Bush administration.
Michael Dobbs: This may shock you, but I expect a higher standard of integrity from news organizations than from politicians. As Dan Rather has said, journalists are "truthtellers." Politicians may claim to be speaking the truth at all times, but we all know this is not the case. Of course that does not absolve the White House, and the Bush administration, from providing misleading and in some cases totally erroneous information to make the case for the war in Iraq.
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Austin, Tex.: What are the prospects for any heads to roll at CBS? Will they wait until they see a negative reaction from advertisers?
Michael Dobbs: News organizations have reacted differently in the way they respond to scandal. Two decades ago, the Post launched a full investigation when it discovered that one of its reporters, Janet Cooke, had won the Pulitzer prize with a fraudulent story. The editor at the time, Ben Bradlee, survived with his credibility intact, in large measure because he was open and honest about the paper's mistakes immediately. Contrast that with what happened more recently at the New York Times and USA Today, and the subsequent resignations of their top management.
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Parker, Colo.: Why has there been no coverage on Killian's former secretary's comment that although the memo's did not seem genuine to her, the substance was correct. She vouched for the sentiment, stating that she was aware that Killian felt exactly what the memos reflected. It seems the real story is that the statements in the memos is correct. Is the media now chasing the wrong story, ignoring the truth because the vessel it came in is suspect?
Michael Dobbs: There has been quite a bit of coverage of this remark. We are continuing to look at unanswered questions about President Bush's national guard service.
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Washington, D.C.: From your colleague Howard Kurtz's report today:
"I deeply regret I wasn't as good on this story as I should have been," Rather said. Asked whether he felt tarnished, he replied: "I have confidence that those people who don't have a specific partisan political or ideological agenda will understand what happened, how it happened, and I think they have confidence in CBS's credibility and my own. I do have a lifetime of reporting."
Does Rather truly believe that all those who are disappointed by the -- at best -- questionable manner in which this whole situation was handled are partisans (repsumably Republican)? I've often found that those who trivialize detractors as partisans think that way because they are partisans themselves.
Michael Dobbs: You will have to ask Dan Rather this question. In general, I have tried to avoid ad hominem attacks in my reporting. If a reader or a blogger raises a pertinent question about a story, we should look into it, regardless of the blogger's political persuasion. That doesn't mean we have to agree with it, or even report it, if we find it to be baseless.
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Fairfax, Va.: Dan Rather has asked that people look at the "gist" of his overall story, and not focus on a specific mistake with the documents.
But that is exactly what he does to Bush in the story. We have all known the "gist" of Bush's guard story for a long time -- son of congressman enters the Guard during Vietnam era, peters out early to pursue other interests. But Rather wanted to find a specific documented mistake, such as a disobeyed order, that he could focus on and embarass Bush with.
Michael Dobbs: I agree with you there are two separate issues here: the issue of Bush and the national guard, and the issue of whether CBS aired fraudulent documents without properly checking them out. I would like to keep the two issues separate.
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Brookline, Mass.: Ok, CBS erred seriously on this. But why is that story getting more play than the real story here -- no one can prove that President Bush fullfilled his Guard service?
Michael Dobbs: The CBS story was certainly a distraction from what you consider the "real story": whether President Bush fulfilled his obligations to the national guard. That story has been rumbling on for some time now, and journalists have covered it extensively. If we can find new things to say about it, we will certainly do so.
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Phoenix, Ariz.: Mr. Dobbs:
In your professional opinion, will CBS's lapses of judgment effectively discredit any further revelations that may come to light concerning President Bush's National Guard service (or lack thereof)? If so, would the "taint" associated with CBS's conduct also extend to any disclosures of alleged misadventures during what is now being referred to by the media as Mr. Bush's "lost year" (1972) regardless of whether such misadventures are or are not related to his Guard service?
Michael Dobbs: I personally don't feel any inhibition about reporting fully and fairly on President Bush's national guard service. CBS has made a mistake, but the Post has nothing to apologize for. That's not to say we don't mistakes too, of course....
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Fairfax, Va.: Doesn't the Post have any backbone left? This continuing focus on "Rathergate" so the so-called liberal press can show our one-party rulers and their more rabid supporters that "it's just Dan and not the rest of us," is completely obscuring the fact that a lot of uncontested documentation has come out showing Bush evaded his service obligation even after using it to evade the draft during wartime.
What you are doing is not even the "pretense of objectivity" Mr. Keefer wrote about in Outlook on 9/12. Instead, you are putting more time and energy into this than you spent in 2000 when the Globe and Senator Inoue first tried to bring up Bush's Guard issue. How do you justify ignoring that all this time while churning out article after article on CBS's journalistic failure?
Michael Dobbs: As I say, "Rathergate" has been a distraction. But you can rest assured that we have plenty of backbone to raise legitimate questions about any politician's past or present record.
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Austin, Tex.: Was Rather simply the 'face' on the story or was he actually deeply involved in the development of it?
Michael Dobbs: Interesting question. He could have adopted the Peter Arnett defense in the CNN Tailwind scandal. If you remember, that was another tarnished story that Arnett presented. When it fell apart, he said in his defense that he contributed "not a comma" to the story. While I have been critical of Dan Rather and the way he has handled this, I admire him for taking the fall personally, and not trying to shove responsibility off on subordinates.
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Pueblo, Colo.: NPR's stance this morning was that they could not understand why this was a big deal.
Can you explain to them why it is?
Michael Dobbs: I didn't hear the NPR commentary, so find it difficult to comment on it. In general, I think that a major and respected news organization airing fraudulent documents attacking a president in the middle of an election campaign, and then taking nearly two weeks to acknowledge that it had made a mistake, is "a big deal".
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Washington, D.C.: Isn't a major part of what's troubling not just the original mistake, but CBS's and Rather's response to critiques -- for example, saying that the burden was on others to conclusively prove the documents forgeries and attacking the motives of the critics?
Michael Dobbs: "It's not the crime, it's the coverup" has almost become an axiom in political and journalistic circles. I agree with you.
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Washington, D.C.: About the link between Joe Lockhart and Burkett: is there any sanction or penalty that the Kerry campaign would have to face if this were confirmed? Do you think the story of connections to the Kerry campaign have gained any traction yet?
Michael Dobbs: This may change, but I don't think that the Kerry campaign connection story is gaining much traction. In order for that to happen, you would have to show that the Kerry campaign acted on Burkett's advice, rather than simply giving him a four or five minute hearing. In fact, Burkett was very unhappy about what he saw as a "brushoff" from the Kerry campaign.
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Orlando, Fla.: As a reporter, would you consider Bill Burkett as "an unimpeachable source"?
Michael Dobbs: No. I think my story this morning made that clear. Legally, of course, he is "unimpeachable," but I don't think that is CBS had in mind when it used the term.
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Groton, Conn.: Earlier you said "I expect a higher standard of integrity from news organizations than from politicians." I'm sorry, but I can not accept that perspective. We have to expect the same high standard of integrity from politicians and news organizations. Without that expectations, politicians make a greater attempt to hide the truth from constituents. How can you expect anything but high standards from both groups?
Michael Dobbs: Of course, we should demand the truth from our politicians. What I meant is that truthtelling is the central mission and purpose of journalists. The central purpose of politicians is to get elected.
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Washington, D.C.: I'm guessing that one likely result of the CBS debacle is that the news media will be far more reluctant to devote resources between now and election day to digging up dirt about the pasts of Bush and Kerry. To me, that is a positive development. Do you think I'm right, or do you think that the reaction of many in the press will be to redouble efforts to do "investigative" journalism to prove to a skeptical public that they know how to do it right.
Michael Dobbs: I think there is a difference between establishing facts, digging up dirt, and airing fabricated documents. We are committed to the first.
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Johnstown, N.Y.: At what point did CBS news realize the typed documents were not authentic?
Michael Dobbs: I had serious suspicions about the authenticity of the documents on the morning after they were aired. I find it difficult to believe that people in CBS did not develop similar doubts soon afterward.
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Washington, D.C.: If this type of document evidence was put before a judge or jury and later in the trial found to be a forgery – the judge would have to inform the jury to disregard everything that person testified to including the documents. It seems like Dan Rather is attempting to make the American people feel like he is the victim instead of President Bush. I would have much preferred Rather say I made a grave mistake and I’m sorry instead of attempting to prove the story is correct but the documents might not be. I will never trust him again and he should resign or be fired.
Michael Dobbs: He has said he is sorry, and made a mistake. Whether he should be forgiven is another matter.
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Arlington, Va.: As sad and telling as this is for Dan Rather, the widely reported fact that the producer of 60 Minutes (Mapes?) called Lockhart at the Kerry Campaign is what is amazing. How CBS, and more generally the much of the "main stream media," can say that they aren't biased with a straight face is a feat worthy of any politician.
Michael Dobbs: I don't think you can blame the entire "mainstream media" for the mistakes of one of its members, any more than you can blame all American business for what happened at Enron.
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Athens, Ga.: Burkett now claims he received the original documents from a Ms. Ramariz and not from the source he originally claimed. He claims to have received the documents at a livestock show in Texas, but they were delivered by an unknown man. He further claims he burned the original documents for fear of possible forensic evidence on them. No one so far has been able to confirm the existence of this shadowy Ramariz person. He says he lied about the original source of the documents, but he is really telling the truth now. My question to you is how could anyone believe anything this man says? His credibility was shot even before all of the latest info came to light. And how can CBS say with a straight face that the documents were from an "unimpeachable" source? I want to know "what CBS knew and when they knew it!" There is a whole lot more to this story and I hope your paper will continue investigating!
Michael Dobbs: I agree with you. Burkett has no credibility at all at this point.
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San Antonio, Tex.: How serious is forging a memo such as the "failure to obey a direct order" one. Is there an actual legal charge that can be made against the perp? Is there anything "on the books" that can be used against someone trying trying to influence an important federal election via forged documents or is this going to end up as a joke like the Howard Hughes wills that popped up all over the nation.
Michael Dobbs: You would have to ask a legal expert about this. I don't know.
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Mission Viejo, Calif.: Does anyone else see the irony in CBS' White House correspondent during Watergate trying to "stonewall it" for over a week?
Michael Dobbs: As I have said before, organizations that are under siege often behave in similar ways, whether it is the White House, or Enron, or CBS.
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Lyme, Conn.: What is your take on the documents the Boston Globe wrote about? The Globe stands by its documents. If the documents are accurate, isn't it ashame that the story is getting buried in the controversy? The fine work of people at the Boston Globe and the Washington Post is being overlooked by mistakes made at CBS.
My question: how did the bloggers know so quickly that the CBS documents were not originals?
Michael Dobbs: I am not sure exactly which documents you are talking about. I think the Boston Globe had access to the same documents the rest of us did. How you choose to interpret the documents is another matter. You might have missed a story that I wrote about Bush's guard service that appeared the weekend before last,raising many of the same questions.
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Anonymous: Okay, CBS was wrong. But all the other media outlets are acting like they've never made a mistake before. FOX, at one time, went so far as to accuse, with the help of Dan Burton, then sitting President Clinton of murdering Vince Foster. I never saw Bill O'Reilly apologize.
I'm sorry but the media, it seems, has become exteremly egotistical. The big story is that they caught a well-respected rival who got, one could say, "bad intelligence information."
Also, they ignore while the memos were fake, there is other evidence that the story itself, is true. That point is ignored.
So, to those who are screaming for Dan Rather's resignation over this, then they should be screaming for Bush's resignation as well since he got bad intelligence information too.
Finally, it's NOT about what Bush did 30 years ago. Anybody who grew up in that time period knows the rich and powerful (even Democrats) always received special treatment. It's what Bush says about it NOW that matters. If he would just say, "Yes, I got special treatment just like everybody else. Now let's move on," the story would go away.
But I don't think Bush wants the story to go away. The media, in its ever increasingly protective role for Bush will saturate us with MemoGate and draw away the attention from the horrible quagmire in Iraq.
I'm sorry to have so long; but if this is printed, thank you for allowing my hyper ventilation.
Michael Dobbs: Don't let any journalist tell you that they don't make mistakes. We all make mistakes, sometimes small ones, sometimes big ones. The issue for me is not making mistakes, but correcting them quickly and openly.
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San Antonio, Tex.: In his interview with Dan Rather last night, Bill Burkett said that he lied to CBS (and other media apparently) to protect the true source of the documents. Is there any effort by the media to try to determine the secret source of these documents or is that line of inquiry all but dead journalistically? How much effort is the Washington Post expending to get more info about Bush's Texas Air National Guard service or lack thereof?
Michael Dobbs: Since Burkett has been discredited, and has changed his story several times, I don't see much purpose in investing a lot of energy tracking down his latest "source." I would prefer to take a look at his own hard drive.
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Marshfield, Mass.: Why is it that the main story being broadcast is that the documents are not authentic -- why is so little attention paid to Killian's secretary, who has attested that while the documents may not be authentic, the story is indeed authentic. And why is this being characterized as Democrat dirty tricks? If the press does the bidding of the White House, then what differentiates the U.S. from the former Soviet Union with its state-controlled media? Before exporting democracy, we should shore up our own democracy -- a free press is essential to a free society.
Michael Dobbs: I dispute your contention that we do the bidding of the White House. Having spent five years in the Soviet Union, I can assure you that the American press, for all its faults, bears little in common with the old Soviet press, but that is too long a debate to go into here.
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Bethesda, Md.: At what point does a news organization stop investigating a story like the Bush- National Guard story? After nearly 5 years of reporting on this issue and no clear answer to the the questions first raised, isn't it time to move on? Does a story like this become a distraction from the more important questions that need to be asked about the War on Terror, the deteriorating situation in Iraq, or the economy? It seems like 5 years of investigating this story has yielded more questions and few answers, and it appears as though the questions may never be answered. Why continue to follow it?
Michael Dobbs: It's a little like Whitewater, I agree with you, but who knows, perhaps some new angle will pop up...
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Abilene, Tex.: Does the Washington Post stand by its story that Burkett was "a Well-Respected Texan?" Was it a mistake to only interview Democratic Party operatives in Texas for that story?
Michael Dobbs: Sometimes, there are a limited number of people you can reach before your deadline. The words "well-respected" were in quotes, describing what some of his fellow Democrats had said about him, i believe. In general, I think we have given readers a pretty rounded account of Burkett.
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Gatlinburg, Tenn.: "Michael Dobbs: It's a little like Whitewater, I agree with you, but who knows, perhaps some new angle will pop up... "
Isn't it that vain hope that some smoking gun will come up to verify our contentions the kind of journalistic approach that invites these kinds of forgeries?
Michael Dobbs: Journalists are not always just looking for "smoking guns." Sometimes we want to explain a complicated and topical subject to our readers, giving them enough information on which to draw their own conclusions. Even if there are no "smoking guns" in Bush's national guard records, there are still perfectly valid explanatory stories to be written.
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St. Louis, Mo.: What would qualify as an "Unimpeachable source" at the Post?
Michael Dobbs: I am suspicious of anonymous sources in historical stories like this. Anonymous sources may have a place when you are trying to write about a current news event, and an administration official refuses to go on the record because he fears retaliation from his superiors. I don't think that anonymous sources have much place in a story about events that took place in the 70s, and particularly as a source of explosive documents.
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Anonymous: "...bears little in common with the old Soviet press"
Fair enough. But what has AM radio and FOX News done to the business? Why isn't Fox held to the same standard?
Michael Dobbs: Fox will have to speak for itself.
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Washington, D.C.: One question, why didn't the Washington Post (or any other papers except the Chicago Sun-Tribune), credit the bloggers that broke the story on the front page editions that appeared in your paper?
I noticed that most dailies even used some of the same expert sources cited by the bloggers ...
Michael Dobbs: Actually we did credit the bloggers. In the first story that I wrote on Sept. 9 raising doubts about the CBS piece, I said that doubts were first raised on the Internet, or some such expression.
But you raise a good question about the role of the bloggers in breaking this story. My view is that the bloggers helped to accelerate the story, by making the doubts very public immediately, but the rest of us would have gotten there eventually. In the end, much of the heavy lifting on this story was done by "old media." Personally, I welcome the competition from the new media, as I think it helps to keep us on our toes, but I don't think they can supplant the old media. The main reason for that is that they lack credibility and authority--which is also the reason that we in the old media have to do everything we can to protect our credibility. That means openness to criticism and admitting mistakes. Credibility is our most important assett. Without it, we are lost. |
