Text 2449, 167 rader
Skriven 2004-09-20 20:57:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: CBS
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml

CBS: Bush Memo Story A 'Mistake'

NEW YORK, Sept. 20, 2004



CBS Document Controversy 

 
(CBS/AP) CBS News said Monday it cannot prove the authenticity of 
documents used in a 60 Minutes story about President Bush's National 
Guard service and that airing the story was a "mistake" that CBS 
regretted. 

CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, the reporter of the original story, 
apologized. 

CBS News claimed a source had misled the network on the documents' 
origins. The network pledged "an independent review of the process by 
which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what 
actions need to be taken." 

In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett "has 
acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "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." 

Rather spoke with Burkett about the deception: 

Dan Rather: "Why did you mislead us?" 
Bill Burkett: "Well, I didn't totally mislead you. I misled you on the 
one individual. You know your staff pressured me to a point to reveal 
that source. 
Rather: "Well, we were trying to get the chain of possession." 
Burkett: "I understand that." 
More of Rather questioning Burkett. 

The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of 
Mr. Bush's National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network 
did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not 
have reported them. 

"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," said the statement by CBS News President 
Andrew Heyward. "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," Heyward continued. "We will 
continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust." 

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush had seen the 
CBS statement. "We appreciate that they (CBS) deeply regrets ... but 
there are serious questions still to be answered,'' McClellan told CBS 
News' Jeff Goldman. 

Additional reporting on the documents will air on Monday's CBS Evening 
News, including the interview of Burkett by Rather. CBS News pledged "an 
independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and 
broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken." 

In a separate statement, Rather said that "after extensive additional 
interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that 
would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. 

"I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for 
the documents came into possession of these papers," he said. 

"We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry," Rather added. 

The authenticity of the documents — four memoranda attributed to Guard 
commander Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — has been under fire since they were 
described in the Sept. 8 broadcast of 60 Minutes. 

CBS had not previously revealed who provided the documents or how they 
were obtained. 

Burkett has previously alleged that in 1997 he witnessed allies of then-
Gov. Bush discussing the destruction of Guard files that might embarrass 
Mr. Bush, who was considering a run for the presidency. Bush aides have 
denied the charge. 

In the statement, CBS said: "Burkett originally said he obtained the 
documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a 
different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News 
has been unable to verify to this point." 

Questions about the president's National Guard service have lingered for 
years. Some critics question how Mr. Bush got into the Guard when there 
were waiting lists of young men hoping to join it to escape the draft 
and possible service in Vietnam. 

In the Sept. 8 60 Minutes report, former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes — a 
Democrat — claimed that, at the behest of a friend of the Bush family, 
he pulled strings to get young George W. Bush into the Guard. 

Other questions concern why Mr. Bush missed a physical in 1972, and why 
there are scant records of any service by Mr. Bush during the latter 
part of 1972, a period during which he transferred to an Alabama guard 
unit so he could work on a campaign there. 

The CBS documents suggested that Mr. Bush had disobeyed a direct order 
to attend the physical, and that there were other lapses in his 
performance. One memo also indicated that powerful allies of the Bush 
family were pressuring the guard to "sugar coat" any investigation of 
Lt. Bush's service. 

Skeptics immediately seized on the typing in the memos, which included a 
superscripted "th" not found on all 1970s-era typewriters. As the 
controversy raged, CBS broadcast interviews with experts who said that 
some typewriters from that period could have produced the markings in 
question. 

Other critics saw factual errors in the documents, stylistic differences 
with other writing by Killian and incorrect military lingo. 

Some relatives of Col. Killian disputed that the memos were real. His 
former secretary said the sentiments regarding Mr. Bush's failures as an 
officer were genuine, but the documents were not. 

Some document experts whom CBS consulted for the story told newspapers 
they had raised doubts before the broadcast and were ignored. CBS 
disputed their accounts, pointing to the main document expert the 
network consulted, Marcel Matley. 

Matley insisted he had vouched for the authenticity of the signatures on 
the memos, but had not determined whether the documents themselves were 
genuine. 

Last week, CBS News stood by its reporting while vowing to continue 
working the story. The network acknowledged there were questions about 
the documents and pledged to try to answer them. 

Mr. Bush maintains that he did not get special treatment in getting into 
the Guard, and that he fulfilled all duties. He was honorably 
discharged. 

On Saturday, a White House official said Mr. Bush has reviewed the 
disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a 
physical examination in 1972, and did not recall having seen them 
previously. 

In his first public comment on the documents controversy, the president 
told The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., "There are a lot of questions 
about the documents, and they need to be answered." 

The Bush campaign has alleged that their Democratic rivals were somehow 
involved in the story. John Kerry's campaign denies it. In an email 
revealed last week, Burkett said he had contacted the Kerry campaign but 
received no response. 

Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to find and make 
public by next week any unreleased files about Mr. Bush's Vietnam-era 
Air National Guard service to resolve a Freedom of Information Act 
lawsuit filed by the Associated Press. 

The White House and Defense Department have on several occasions claimed 
that they had released all the documents only to make additional records 
available later on.

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