{"id":155,"date":"2004-09-20T12:57:41","date_gmt":"2004-09-20T17:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=155"},"modified":"2004-09-20T12:57:41","modified_gmt":"2004-09-20T17:57:41","slug":"what-did-dan-rather-know-and-when-did-he-know-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=155","title":{"rendered":"What Did Dan Rather Know, And When Did He Know It?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Rather&#8217;s just-released statement just begs to be fisked:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nLast week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of<br \/>\ndocuments used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about<br \/>\nPresident Bush&#8217;s time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed<br \/>\nto re-examine the documents in question\u2014and their<br \/>\nsource\u2014vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American<br \/>\npublic know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Where was your skepticism about the four documents you ran with<br \/>\nwhen your own experts told you two of the original six were bogus, Dan?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nNow, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the<br \/>\nconfidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching<br \/>\nfor them journalistically.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And why did you ever &#8220;have confidence&#8221; in those four when you withheld them<br \/>\nfrom your own experts, Dan?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nI find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for<br \/>\nthe documents came into possession of these papers.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, you&#8217;re still not admitting that your &#8220;source&#8221; passed you crude<br \/>\nforgeries that anyone with the nerve to call himself an investigative<br \/>\njournalist should have spotted in thirty seconds flat?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThat, combined with some of the questions that have been<br \/>\nraised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where\u2014if I knew<br \/>\nthen what I know now\u2014I would not have gone ahead with the story as it<br \/>\nwas aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in<br \/>\nquestion.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Do you know that the memos were forged?  Are you prepared to state for<br \/>\nthe record that your source was not a Kerry partisan engaged in a fraudulent<br \/>\nattempt to manipulate a presidential election?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nBut we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for<br \/>\nthat I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith<br \/>\nand in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of<br \/>\ninvestigative reporting without fear or favoritism.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ah, the nebulous &#8220;we&#8221; &mdash; favorite weasel-word of<br \/>\nresponsibility-evaders.  Will you take responsibility for that<br \/>\ndecision, Dan?  If you won&#8217;t, whose decision was it?  If you will,<br \/>\nwhere is your resignation?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nPlease know that nothing is more important to us than people&#8217;s trust<br \/>\nin our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh, we believe <em>that<\/em> all right.  After all, if you don&#8217;t<br \/>\nhave peoples&#8217; trust, how can you manipulate them?<\/p>\n<p>No admission that the documents are forgeries.  No disclosure of<br \/>\nthe source.  Dan, given your history of appearing at Democratic<br \/>\nfund-raisers and donating to left-wing causes, can you give us any<br \/>\nreason at all to believe you are not shielding John Kerry&#8217;s oppo<br \/>\nresearchers?<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: CBS <a href='http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2004\/09\/06\/politics\/main641481.shtml'>claims<\/a><br \/>\nthat disgruntled ex-Guardsman Bill Burkett was the source of the<br \/>\ndocuments, and misled CBS about them to protect the actual source.<br \/>\nWho is the &#8220;actual source&#8221; of this fraud against the American<br \/>\nelectorate?  Why didn&#8217;t CBS validate the documents before broadcasting<br \/>\nan unfounded attack on the President of the United States during a<br \/>\ntime of war?  Inquiring minds want to know!<\/p>\n<p>AND MORE: This just keeps getting better!   Burkett has not only<br \/>\nadmitted that the forged memos passed through him to CBS, he says<br \/>\nhe <a href='http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,132906,00.html'>gave them<br \/>\nto Max Cleland<\/a>, John Kerry&#8217;s triple-amputee token Vietvet.  Burkett<br \/>\nhas already changed his story at least once about who his source was.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t be the only person thinking Burkett has been set up as the<br \/>\nfall guy in order to make politically-motivated collusion between CBS<br \/>\nand the Kerry campaign deniable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Rather&#8217;s just-released statement just begs to be fisked: Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush&#8217;s time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question\u2014and their source\u2014vigorously. And we promised that we would&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=155\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What Did Dan Rather Know, And When Did He Know It?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}