# CBS and Kerry goin down in a ball of fire



## racer66 (Oct 6, 2003)

The man who gave CBS (search) documents that have fueled a firestorm of controversy over President Bush's Vietnam-era Texas Air National Guard (search) service has admitted that he deliberately misled the television network, CBS said Monday in a statement.

Over the weekend, CBS' veteran news anchor Dan Rather (search) flew to Texas to interview Bill Burkett (search), a man who was believed by some to be the source of the memos.

CBS said Monday that Burkett did in fact mislead a CBS News producer about the documents. The network acknowledged that, based upon subsequent reporting on questions about the documents, it cannot prove they are authentic and therefore, they should not have been used in its "60 Minutes" report on Sept. 8.

Click Here to Read the CBS Documents

"Burkett, a retired National Guard lieutenant colonel, also admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source," network spokeswoman Kelli Edwards said in the statement.

Burkett's full interview will be aired on Monday night's edition of "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather," from 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. EDT.

"'60 Minutes Wednesday' had full confidence in the original report or it would not have aired," CBS News President Andrew Heyward said in a statement.

"However, in the wake of serious and disturbing questions that came up after the broadcast, CBS News has done extensive additional reporting in an effort to confirm the documents' authenticity &#8230; Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret. Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting. We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust."

The Tiffany network and its management are commissioning an independent review.

Rather himself also issued a statement, saying, "I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically," adding that airing the documents was an "error in judgment."

"I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers," Rather continued. "That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where - if I knew then what I know now - I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question."

The original CBS report mainly relied on four memos purportedly written by the deceased Lt. Jerry B. Killian (search). Dated in the early 1970s, the papers say that Killian was pressured to "sugarcoat" the young Lt. Bush's record and that he ignored a direct order to take a physical.

'Someone Needs to Pay the Price'

"It's about time. I think CBS is the last group in America that doesn't understand these are forgeries - and really abusive forgeries," former Republican National Committee Chairman Bill Brock told FOX News after the statement was released. "Hallelujah they are finally admitted they were wrong and I hope they will be very forthcoming about their source and that they were duped."

The president was told about the CBS statement while aboard Air Force One.

"We appreciate that they deeply regret this, but there are still questions to be answered," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with the president, adding that Burkett has in the past been discredited and has had senior-level contacts with the Kerry campaign, which raise serious questions.

"Were I come from, if you make a mistake or spread lies or allegations, you damn well better apologize to the guy you're offending. In my opinion, they owe the president of the United States an apology directly," Joe Allbaugh, who served as chief of staff for then-Gov. George Bush, told FOX News Monday after CBS released its statement.

"They [CBS] were trying to directly, with false information, affect the outcome of this presidential election. Someone needs to pay the price," Allbaugh added.

Since the imbroglio began three weeks ago, the network has expressed confidence in the unidentified sources of the documents and the memos themselves, which suggest that Bush received special treatment to get into the Texas Air National Guard and may not have fulfilled his obligations to the Guard.

After a myriad of document experts and others came forward questioning the authenticity of the papers, CBS said last week it would further investigate the authenticity of the memos.

"We've said we are trying very hard to get to the bottom of these questions," Heyward said over the weekend.

Top network executives huddled throughout the weekend and refined the wording of its correction and apology throughout Monday morning.

"This is a fact of CBS being used by a wide wrap of Democratic operatives," Terry Holt, a senior RNC adviser, told FOX News.

"I think that [Democratic Party Chairman] Terry McAuliffe, John Kerry - they've been at the heart of a wide range of groups over the past several months designed to attack the president and take him down and I think that's unfortunate."

Holt opined that the Kerry camp was "desperate to find any way they could to change the subject" from the Vietnam swift boat tangle it found itself in after some Vietnam vets charged that Kerry exaggerated some stories of valor from the war and that he didn't deserve all his war medals.

"They had motive, they had opportunity and they definitely had desperation," Holt added.

CBS went into a "defensive crouch" and should have acknowledged sooner the possibility they were duped, Richard Cohen, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post, told FOX News on Monday.

But "I essentially think it's a tempest in the teapot - it was a mistake &#8230; all news organizations make mistakes &#8230; if they're aggressive and really care about covering the news &#8230; it's part of the business."

Some Democratic insiders, however, point out that despite the source of the documents, CBS is standing by its contents and the fact that few are disputing the inconsistencies described in Bush's military record.

"There's still a ton of unanswered questions by this president about his military service," such as whether he got enough points for an honorable discharge, as questioned by The New York Times in a Monday article, said Democratic consultant Jenny Backus.

"I think the thing that we need to look at &#8230; is the pattern inside this White house and this president in terms of their credibility &#8230; and how they're talking about this Guard story and how they're talking about the war in Iraq today &#8230; he has not answered any questions about where he was that year" or in Iraq today, she added.

Adding more fuel to the fire, Burkett, who lives in Abilene, Texas, has now also said that he passed the documents on to former Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat and triple amputee from Vietnam, who is working with the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry (search). Burkett also has urged Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks."

Burkett's had a long-running feud with Bush over health benefits and the Texas National Guard. Bob Hunter, a Republican legislator who investigated Burkett's charges, told FOX News he found them to be groundless.

Over the weekend, Bush commented publicly on the issue for the first time.

"There are a lot of questions about the documents, and they need to be answered," he told The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H. The president has continued to maintain that he is proud to have served in the Guard.

The Bush-Cheney campaign has maintained that Kerry campaign staffers Kerry are behind the memo snafu.

"The timing is not a question and the coordinated effort by the Democrats and the Kerry campaign to use these old recycled attacks is not in question," McClellan said


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## Militant_Tiger (Feb 23, 2004)

and yet at the same time Bush had nothing to do with the swift boat vets? Talk about double standards!


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## racer66 (Oct 6, 2003)

No he didn't, read the book Unfit for Command and you will hear how they all got back together. Because Kerry was feeding us a bunch of bull, the have the FACTS in the book.


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## racer66 (Oct 6, 2003)

I am only on page 60 roughly, and as of right now I don't know how the man dares to show his face in public, the have hard FACTS in the book on how Kerry as lied to us all. Oh by the way, which one of the candidates has signed form 180?


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## Bowhuntinfool (Aug 31, 2004)

What is form 180?


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

It is the military form that allows the records to be made public. Kerry will not send one for 33 pages of his records related to his "purple hearts". It doesn't take a brainsurgeon to figure out why.


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## BigDaddy (Mar 4, 2002)

Most folks know my political leanings, but even I have to say that going ahead with this story without validating the information and source of information was irresponsible on CBS's part and poor journalism. They hurt their credibility with this one.


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## mr.trooper (Aug 3, 2004)

Why are people suprised that Democratic Corporate entities are willing twist facts to support the democratic canidate?


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## Militant_Tiger (Feb 23, 2004)

You know it has been stated that these were released by the republicans to trip up CBS and make their reporting on the election not reputable from here on out.


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## Ron Gilmore (Jan 7, 2003)

It was not reputable before so they had nothing to lose! :rollin:


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## racer66 (Oct 6, 2003)

Yep, it was the Repubs, you guys caught us, bunch a whackos, I pray to God that we don't, end up with you dingalings in power. Besides it is up to them to check there sources and make sure that the info is right. WOW
this is a new low.


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

It's CBS News again. Seriously, these people have not a shred of journalistic integrity left.

For the last week or so there has been an email racing through millions of computers claiming that George Bush is ready to crank up the military draft as soon as the election is over. CBS found some woman named Beverly Cocco who said that she was petrified that her sons would be forced into the service after she got the email saying that the draft was pending. CBS identified Ms. Cocco as an "ordinary housewife."

OK ... what didn't CBS tell you?

CBS didn't mention in the story that Ms. Cocco was not, in fact, an ordinary housewife. She was the president of an organization called "Parents Against the Draft." 
CBS didn't mention in the story that the Selective Service had declared that there was no plan to reinstitute the Draft and that the emails were proven to be bogus. 
Now you would think that if you're going to do a story about parent's fears that the draft may be reinstituted, you would want to identify a person profiled in the story as an anti-draft activist, and you would want to give the Selective Service side of the story. But noooooooooo.

Now ... listen to this. CBS is defending the story and the way they reported it. The CBS reporter, Richard Schlesinger, said that whether or not the emails were true was "almost beside the point." The CBS producer for the story told a writer that *"the truth of the emails was absolutely irrelevant"*  :eyeroll: to the story.

Folks ... I really don't know where to go from here. CBS learns of some bogus email circulating which warns of the resumption of the draft. They decide to do a story. They contact an anti-draft activist who expresses her fears. But never ... never in the story do they identify the story as being debunked or the activist status of the Beverly Cocco. Then they making statements saying "what the hell, it doesn't really matter whether or not the story is true."

*Why did CBS run the story anyway*? One reason. The template. Because they felt that the story would harm George Bush. Now the standard seems to be if the story would hurt Bush, but is provably false ... go with it. *The end justifies the means.*
:eyeroll:


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## sevendogs (Sep 19, 2003)

Yes, we heard all from CBS. Nevertheless, Bush did receive a special treatment at that time and he did not serve well during National Guards service.


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## sdeprie (May 1, 2004)

Let's see, who are the soldiers serving in Iraq, now? Oh, that's right, they are National Guard. Give it a rest. Bush never said his military record was important. It was Kerry that said it was. Actually, Bush freely admitted those were his wild days. Check out the voting records if you want a picture of character. Leave out the military records and Kerry still loses on a strong America. The latest warning by the Democrats is that the Republicans have some surprise success planned for late October. I hope so.


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