TELEVISION COMMENTARY
CBS betrays its blood lust for Bush
Miami Herald
BY GLENN GARVIN
ggarvin@herald.com
The independent panel that investigated CBS News' botched report on President Bush's National Guard service spent an exhaustive four months on the job, interviewing 62 witnesses and reviewing thousands of pages of scripts, notes, e-mails, military records and press releases. Unfortunately, it seems to have neglected to read its own report -- otherwise, it would never have concluded that political bias played no role in the fiasco.
The evidence that reporters and producers working for CBS desperately wanted to land a knockout punch on the president's reelection campaign is right there in the panel's own 224-page review of how the Bush story went so grotesquely wrong.
They wanted it so much that they ignored evidence that their story was wrong, not only in its details but also in its fundamental assumptions. They wanted it so much that they slandered anyone who challenged them and plotted a book deal for a key source. They wanted it so much that they lied on the air and in their press releases. And they wanted it so much that even now, when the story has been disproved as a tissue of fictions and falsehoods, they continue to insist it's true.
The most stunning single disclosure in the report may be that Dan Rather told the panel his on-air apology for the Bush story last September was phony, a sop to his bosses. Rather told the panel that he believes in the story to this very day: ``The facts are right on the money.''
Before Rather is allowed to report another story for CBS, his bosses need to ask him: What facts? The story was based on a lead source who later admitted he lied and documents that are forged. It had no facts -- only the fervent wishes of a bunch of reporters intent on derailing Bush.
As the independent panel's report makes clear, Mary Mapes, the story's producer and one of four CBS staffers fired over the incident, had been trying to nail Bush clear back in the days when he was governor of Texas. For five years she had been chasing a story that he used political influence to bully his way into the Texas Air National Guard back in the 1960s and avoid serving in the Vietnam War.
The very premise of the story was questionable, a fact made clear in Mapes' 1999 e-mail to other CBS producers: The National Guard squad to which Bush applied had 20 vacancies. Her own notes show that the commander told her he was ''hurting for pilots.'' And one former Guardsman Mapes approached told her that during his service Bush actually volunteered for fighter-pilot duty in Vietnam but was turned down because the war was winding down.
But the panel's report indicates that didn't stop Mapes (and Rather, who received similar information in interviews in 1999) from pursuing the story for another five years. Their efforts heated up in 2004 as the election approached.
LONG HISTORY
Mapes, on the advice of the managers of several anti-Bush websites, approached a former Guardsman named Bill Burkett. Burkett, who blamed Bush for blocking his attempt to collect medical disability payments from the National Guard, had a long history of making extravagant accusations against the president to the media, then quickly retracting them when they came under scrutiny. Other CBS reporters who dealt with Burkett called him ''unreliable,'' the report says.
But when Burkett hinted that he had documents questioning Bush's performance in the National Guard and alleging that Bush was protected by political influence, Mapes jumped on it. By now, she had three freelance reporters working on the story, plus Rather when it was time to do on-camera interviews. ''Do NOT underestimate how much I want this story,'' she told one of the reporters in an e-mail.
How much? Enough to consider dangling a book contract in front of Burkett to get the documents. Mapes responded positively to an e-mail from a freelancer on the story, Michael Smith, that described how they could present the parameters of a book deal to Burkett ``to help get us the information.''
Smith said he was going to talk to an editor he knew at a publishing house and ask him: ``What if there was a person who might have some information that could possibly change the momentum of an election but we needed to get an ASAP book deal to help get us the information? What kinds of turnaround payment schedules are possible, keeping in mind the book probably could not make it out until after the election . . . What I am asking is in this best-case hypothetical scenario, can we get a decent-sized advance payment, and get it turned around quickly.''
That way, Smith continued, ``when we get to Burkett's house, I will have at least some scenarios to show Burkett about what could happen if he played ball with the documents. If he shows us what we want, then I can call my friend and tell him the real details and start the process.''
`THAT LOOKS GOOD'
Mapes liked the idea, as she replied in an e-mail: ``That looks good, hypothetically speaking of course.''
As it turned out, the book deal wasn't necessary. Instead, Mapes agreed to something that made her political agenda even more obvious: She put a senior official in the John Kerry campaign in touch with Burkett, who wanted to assist the Democratic presidential nominee with strategy. The official, Joe Lockhart, said Mapes told him that Burkett would give her documents only if Lockhart would call him. Lockhart made the call, but decided ''15 seconds into the conversation'' that Burkett couldn't be trusted.
Unfortunately, Mapes was less perceptive. When Burkett did finally turn over the documents, she didn't inquire too closely about where they came from. And there was much to question: Supposedly, they were written by Bush's Air National Guard commander, now dead, for a secret personal file. And, further supposedly, another officer had somehow obtained them and given them to Burkett. That's a long chain of supposedlys, but Mapes made no effort to clear it up by getting in touch with the officer who Burkett said had given him the documents.
By now, any attempt to question the story was ruthlessly turned aside. Mapes called in four experts to authenticate the documents. When two said they suspected forgery, Mapes dismissed them as ''flaky,'' the report says. (Later, when they told other reporters that CBS had dismissed their concerns, Mapes had the network issue a press release denouncing them as liars.) The other two experts said only that they believed the signatures on the documents were authentic -- and they weren't even certain of that, since they were working with photocopies rather than original documents.
TYPOGRAPHY CHARGE
That didn't stop CBS from putting the story on the air. Within hours it was falling apart. Internet diarists noted that the documents used typography that wasn't available in 1972; that they didn't follow the same format as other Texas Air National Guard documents; that they misused military jargon. The wife and son of the National Guard officer who had allegedly signed the documents denounced them as fakes. Another officer who CBS claimed had vouched for the documents said the network had never actually showed them to him -- and now that he'd seen them, he, too, was sure they were phony.
The final blow came when Burkett, the original source for the documents, admitted that he had lied to CBS about where he got them. Rather than coming from another National Guard officer, Burkett said, they were handed to him by a stranger at a Houston livestock show. Twelve days later, CBS retracted the story, told Rather to apologize on-air and commissioned the independent panel to investigate.
The panel's report contains every twisted detail of how the story went off-track, including much more than there's room to describe here. Yet it concludes that no political bias was involved. Why? Because Rather and Mapes solemnly swear it. Rather, asked if he had any political biases, not surprisingly replied: ''Absolutely, unequivocally untrue.'' And Mapes said her pursuit of the story was motivated ''by proximity, not politics'' -- that is, she spent five years on it just because she happened to live in Texas.
So CBS reporters spent five years on a story they had been told from the beginning was shaky; they plotted a book deal for a source to encourage disclosures that ''could possibly change the momentum of an election;'' they got in bed with the Kerry campaign; but political bias doesn't have anything to do with it?
PUBLIC INSULT
That's a conclusion that will play very well at CBS, which has spent three decades burying its head in the sand to avoid being confronted with Rather's political shenanigans. He publicly insulted President Nixon, then got into an on-air shouting match with the first President Bush. Just three years ago he gave a speech at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Texas. If the network had disciplined Rather for any of those things, if it had sent a message that it wouldn't tolerate confusion between its reporters' personal politics and their professional duties, it might have avoided Monday's humiliating mess.
Likewise, the independent panel would have done CBS an immense favor by advising the network to take a hard look at itself. Former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg, in his book Bias, wrote that many newsrooms are locked in a collective groupthink that prevents them from noticing their political leanings any more than a fish notices water.
It's not that there's a morning meeting where reporters and editors sit down to conspire against Bush or Republicans; rather, because they overwhelmingly share the same liberal ideology, what strikes outsiders as political bias simply seems common sense to them. If ''everybody knows'' that Bush is a liar, a coward and a spoiled rich kid, there's no need to spend a lot of time proving it.
The independent panel came tantalizingly close to putting its finger on the problem when it said CBS pursued the Bush story with ''myopic zeal.'' But the panel attributed the myopia to competitive journalistic instincts, the drive to get a story first, rather than politics. After all, everybody knows there's no liberal bias in the news business.
© 2005 Herald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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