Rather Sues CBS

[Nbadan]

From the, "what took him so long?" files....

Rather Sues CBS, Saying It Made Him a ‘Scapegoat’
By JACQUES STEINBERG
Published: September 20, 2007


Dan Rather, whose career at CBS News ground to an inglorious end 15 months ago over his role in an unsubstantiated report questioning President Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service, filed a lawsuit this afternoon against the network, its corporate parent and three of his former superiors.

Mr. Rather, 75, asserts that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005. He also contends that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” and incomplete investigation of the flawed Guard broadcast and, in the process, “seriously damaged his reputation.”

The suit, which seeks $70 million in damages, names as defendants CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its executive chairman, Sumner Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News.

In the suit, filed this afternoon in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt “to pacify the White House,” though the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect. To buttress this claim, Mr. Rather quotes the executive who oversaw his regular segment on CBS Radio, telling Mr. Rather in November 2004 that he was losing that slot, effective immediately, because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’ ”

He also continues to take vehement issue with the appointment by CBS of Richard Thornburgh, an attorney general in the administration of the elder President Bush, as one of the two outside panelists given the job of reviewing how the disputed broadcast had been prepared.

In a statement CBS said, "These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit." Mr. Heyward said he would not comment beyond the CBS statement. A Viacom spokesman said he had no comment.

For both Mr. Rather and CBS, the filing of the suit threatens to once again focus attention on one of the darker chapters in the history of the network and its storied news division, at a moment when it is already reeling. Mr. Rather’s permanent successor as evening news anchor, Katie Couric, has languished in third place in the network news ratings since taking over the broadcast a year ago, behind not only Charles Gibson of ABC and Brian Williams of NBC, but also the ratings performance of the “CBS Evening News” in Mr. Rather’s final years.

The portrait of Mr. Rather that emerges from the 32-page filing bears little resemblance to the hard-charging, seemingly fearless anchor who for two decades shared the stage with Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings as the most watched and recognizable journalists in America.

By his own rendering, Mr. Rather was little more than a narrator of the disputed broadcast, which was shown on Sept. 8, 2004, on the midweek edition of “60 Minutes” and which purported to offer new evidence of preferential treatment given to Mr. Bush when he was a lieutenant in the Air National Guard.

Instead of directly vetting the script he would read for the Guard segment, Mr. Rather says, he acceded to pressure from Mr. Heyward to focus instead on his reporting from Florida on Hurricane Frances, and on Bill Clinton’s heart surgery.

Mr. Rather says in the filing that he allowed himself to be reduced to little more than a patsy in the furor that followed, after CBS — and later the outside panel it commissioned — concluded that the report was based on documents that could not be authenticated. Under pressure, Mr. Rather says, he delivered a public apology on his newscast on Sept. 20, 2004 — written not by him but by a CBS corporate publicist — “despite his own personal feelings that no public apology from him was warranted.”

He now leads a weekly news program on HDNet — an obscure cable channel in which he is seen by only a small fraction of the millions of viewers who once turned to him in his heyday to receive the news of the day.

In filing his suit now — three years after the now-disputed report was first broadcast, and more than a year after he reluctantly left CBS, as his last contract wound down — Mr. Rather is following, by a matter of weeks, the announcement by CBS that it had settled a similar lawsuit by Don Imus.

Mr. Imus had sued CBS over his firing in the aftermath of derogatory remarks he made about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. While some Imus associates suggested last month that his final payment was at least $20 million, CBS Radio has characterized that figure as too high.

Mr. Rather’s suit seeks $20 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages.

Among the pivotal points of contention in Mr. Rather’s suit are the definitions of the words “full-time” and “regular.” As quoted in the filing, Mr. Rather’s contract — which he signed in 2002, and which called for him to be paid a base salary of $6 million a year as anchor — entitled him to a job as a “full-time correspondent” with “first billing” on the midweek edition of “60 Minutes,” should he leave the anchor chair before March 2006, his 25th anniversary in the job.

As it turned out, Mr. Rather would leave the anchor chair a year early, and would indeed be reassigned to the midweek edition, known as “60 Minutes II.” When that broadcast was canceled a few months later, Mr. Rather’s contract called for him to be reassigned to the main “60 Minutes” broadcast on Sunday evening, where he would “perform services on a regular basis as a correspondent.”

Over the next year, Mr. Rather would have eight segments broadcast on the main “60 Minutes” — including reports that took him to North Korea, China and Beirut. While that would seem to be a substantial portfolio of work, Mr. Rather notes that other correspondents had more than twice as many reports appear on the program during the same period, and that several of his reports had been effectively buried, broadcast on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day when far fewer people than usual were likely to tune in.

“He was provided with very little staff support, very few of his suggested stories were approved, editing services were denied to him, and the broadcast of the few stories he was permitted to do was delayed and then played on carefully selected evenings, when low viewership was anticipated,” the filing contends.

Among the most egregious indignities he suffered, Mr. Rather says, was the network’s response to his request to be sent as a correspondent to the scene of Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005.

“Mr. Rather is the most experienced reporter in the United States in covering hurricanes,” his lawyers write in the suit. “CBS refused to send him,” thus “furthering its desire to keep Mr. Rather off the air.”

NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/business/media/19cnd-rather.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1190226880-ou+TDELicQBcfWAyZjv0pQ&oref=slogin)

The NY Times has it's facts wrong.... the report for which Mr Rather got swift-boated for was not an unsubstantiated report. Mary Mapes, who was the first broadcast reporter to bring us the news that something was going on at Abu Gharib, was his also producer at Sixty Minutes II. Mapes, Rather's producer at CBS, spent five years researching material related to the story that George W had gone AWOL.

FIVE YEARS

The only reason that the report was found to be unsubstantiated is that insiders from the Rove M$M gang were put in place as a "news team" evaluating the piece. They came up with ten or so reputed "gross mistakes" all of which could be refuted - except of course, in America we do not have the type of investigative reporting that ever uncovers the inner connections that the evaluators have to the Powers that Be on any given matter.

[johnsmith]

except of course, in America we do not have the type of investigative reporting that ever uncovers the inner connections that the evaluators have to the Powers that Be on any given matter.



I thought that's why we had you?

Nbadan - World's first investigative journalist functioning soley through google.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

I thought that's why we had you?

Nbadan - World's first investigative journalist functioning soley through google.

Don't give Dan so much shit, JS.

I'm sure he uses Ask.com, too.

[Wild Cobra]

I saw that in the news today. I guess he now needs to be part of the news?

It won't go anywhere in my opinion. I even think he pissed CBS off so much they won't even settle, but stand their ground to maintain some integrity.

How can he claim the lies were other peoples faults when he stood solidly behind them? If there is an assumed breach in contract, I'll bet it isn't a breach because he never acknowledged he was wrong, and always blamed others. That is normally something in a contract too...

All I can say is I'm glad he was exposed for the liberal pundit he is.

[Nbadan]

It won't go anywhere in my opinion. I even think he pissed CBS off so much they won't even settle, but stand their ground to maintain some integrity.

It's bad enough that CBS turned on Rather, even to the point of hiring their own wing-nut pundits to go after their own anchor, instead of manning up and admitting that they didn't vet the story properly before forcing Rather to run with it...

[Wild Cobra]

It's bad enough that CBS turned on Rather, even to the point of hiring their own wing-nut pundits to go after their own anchor, instead of manning up and admitting that they didn't vet the story properly before forcing Rather to run with it...
Those involved in the vetting were fired too. What sickens me about Rather is that everyone else admitted the story was based on a falsified document. Rather still insisted it was a real document. I believe it was his failure to acknowledge a mistake that put him in this position. He never reversed that position, even as glaring as the truth had become.

[Nbadan]

Those involved in the vetting were fired too. What sickens me about Rather is that everyone else admitted the story was based on a falsified document. Rather still insisted it was a real document. I believe it was his failure to acknowledge a mistake that put him in this position. He never reversed that position, even as glaring as the truth had become.

The document was as real as the mobil-WMD labs Colin Powell pointed in front of the U.N....but it was still up to Rather's producer and CBS to make sure the documents were vetted properly...we've pretty much established that it was likely Linda Sanchez, the wife of Roger Stone, that gave Barlett the fake bush documents....

[Nbadan]

Dan Rather should stay off small planes...


Dan Rather said Thursday that the undue influence of the government and large corporations over newsrooms spurred his decision to file a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company.

"Somebody, sometime has got to take a stand and say democracy cannot survive, much less thrive with the level of big corporate and big government interference and intimidation in news," he said on CNN's "Larry King Live."

In the suit, filed a day earlier in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, Rather claimed CBS and Viacom Inc. used him as a "scapegoat" and intentionally botched the aftermath of a discredited story about President Bush's military service to curry favor with the White House. He was removed from his "CBS Evening News" post in March 2005.

"They sacrificed support for independent journalism for corporate financial gain, and in so doing, I think they undermined a lot at CBS News," he told King.

San Francisco Gate (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/09/20/national/a204432D56.DTL)

[Wild Cobra]

The document was as real as the mobil-WMD labs Colin Powell pointed in front of the U.N....

I don't know. The document was so easily shown to be a fake at day one. Even the CBS people who looked at the document questioned it's authenticity before the story was aired. We don't know for fact the Powell was wrong, but it appears so. There could be such a lab buried in the sand somewhere. We just don't know for sure.


but it was still up to Rather's producer and CBS to make sure the documents were vetted properly...

Yes it was. I'm not arguing that point. Rather refused to acknowledge the document was fake when the facts came out. It is him who continued to cause problems because of that.


we've pretty much established that it was likely Linda Sanchez, the wife of Roger Stone, that gave Barlett the fake bush documents....

I don't recall the names. I'll take your word for it. As much as I disagree with you at times, you at least appear to do your homework.

[xrayzebra]

I find it interesting that some folks on this forum still refuse to
acknowledge Iraq had WMD. They will not acknowledge the fact
they not only had it, they used it on both their own people but
Iran. The fact is they had WMD or the capability to manufacture
WMD. The big question is WHAT THEY DID WITH IT! Where did
they dispose of it, if they did, why were they testing dispersal
methods, why did they have the chemical suits. Was it actually
moved to Syria? How bout did they give it to their old enemy,
Iran. Hell they sent their whole Air Force to Iran for safe keeping.
We have stories now of how Syria and Iran suffered major
casualties attempting to put WMD into/on a Scud missile.

About Rather, he is what he has been for years. A washed up
anchor still yearning for VN days again. He wanted to be like
Uncle Walter and take down a President. He failed and now
he is going to pout, kick and scream for attention.

[Oh, Gee!!]

Iraq had WMD.....




















































































......in 1991.

[Viva Las Espuelas]

i guess someone is behind on their mortgage.

[Oh, Gee!!]

......in 1991.





















































given to Saddam by the U.S.

[xrayzebra]

......in 1991.

And where did they destroy the stuff, smart guy? How
come we haven't got people coming out of the woodwork
telling us all that good information.

Come on smart ass......give me the facts.

[Oh, Gee!!]

And where did they destroy the stuff, smart guy? How come we haven't got people coming out of the woodwork telling us all that good information.

Two good questions for the administration, Xray.

[ChumpDumper]

Shouldn't we have asked Saddam about the WMDs?

[ChumpDumper]

Oh right, Yoni says we're still translating the documents.

That's much better than getting the information from the guy who gave the orders. :rolleyes

[Oh, Gee!!]

you'd think he'd be the one guy we shoulda tortured.

[xrayzebra]

I still waiting for you two smart guys to tell me what they did
with the stuff. You are the ones always saying they didnt have
WMD. What did they do with it..........are you googling hard.

[ChumpDumper]

I still waiting for you two smart guys to tell me what they did
with the stuff.I think they destroyed them with contingencies to restart the program sometime in the future if needed. They were never a threat to the US.

[xrayzebra]

I think they destroyed them with contingencies to restart the program sometime in the future if needed. They were never a threat to the US.

Oh, I am so relieved. Why didn't you tell us this sooner.
It would have saved a whole war. And Saddam certainly
wished you had revealed this little kernel of information.
Thank you, thank you, so much.

[xrayzebra]

^^Yeah it is sarcasm.

[ChumpDumper]

Oh, I am so relieved. Why didn't you tell us this sooner.I did.
And Saddam certainly
wished you had revealed this little kernel of information.I don't give a fuck about him. He was a regional dictator that was completely under our thumb already. We had more pressing issues than him but we ignored them to fight an unnecessary war and disastrous occupation.
Thank you, thank you, so much.You're welcome. Listen to me next time.

[Nbadan]

Eric Boehlert rips into all the Dan Rather critics....

The facts are with DAN RATHER!

Dan Rather is right
by Eric Boehlert
The story was true. -- Dan Rather, September 20


At first, I was wondering whose blood was boiling hotter last week when former CBS news anchor Dan Rather announced he had filed a $70 million lawsuit against his former employer in response to Rather's unceremonious CBS exit following the botched 60 Minutes II story about President Bush and his military service.

Was it executives at CBS News who now face the prospect of reliving one of the network's darkest chapters via endless depositions from a plaintiff who says he won't accept a cash settlement?

Or was it right-wing bloggers, some of whom likely punched their TV sets in frustration watching Rather go on national television and claim, correctly, that nobody has ever proven that the memos he used in his report were fake, and pointing out that the basic facts of the Texas Air National Guard story -- that Bush walked away from his military commitment during the Vietnam War for months at a time--are still not in dispute.

After all, for lots of Bush bloggers, two absolute truths that must never be questioned in public are that the CBS memos were proven forgeries (they weren't), and that the whole Bush-skipped-out-on-his-National-Guard-duty story was bogus (it wasn't).

Turns out, though, it wasn't the suits at CBS or the right-wing bloggers who busted the biggest vein over Rather's lawsuit. It was mainstream journalists who rushed in to denounce the former anchorman as dishonest, arrogant, bitter, and delusional, all the while making sure not to take up Rather's challenge of addressing the underlying facts of the story surrounding Bush's no-show military service.

Right-wing bloggers may have sparked the so-called Memogate story in 2004 by raising doubts about the military memos, but three years later it is the mainstream press that is adamant in condemning Rather, forcefully declaring the Guard story to be bogus because CBS was caught using memos that it could not authenticate.

That's why last week we got muddled recaps about how "CBS made allegations about Bush's Air National Guard Service during the Vietnam War. Problem was, the report wasn't based on authenticated documents." And it's why the Los Angeles Times referred to "a wholly unsubstantiated '60 Minutes II' segment alleging that a young George W. Bush used family connections to obtain favorable treatment that allowed him to evade service in the Texas Air National Guard." [Emphasis added.]

The simple, yet apparently elusive, truth is that CBS' report on Bush and the National Guard could have (and should have) been broadcast without the controversial memos. And if it had been, the results would have been exactly the same. Meaning, the documents were irrelevant because they provided texture (the supposed frustration of Bush's commander), not new facts about Bush's service. Yet journalists pretend the memos are the National Guard story and that without them, questions about Bush's military dodge disappear. Why do they think that? Based on the coverage last week, it's clear that journalists who mocked Rather still don't have the slightest clue what the established facts of the Guard story are.

That's not so surprising considering they spent two entire presidential campaign cycles doing their best to avoid the Guard story. (The primary exception was Walter Robinson at The Boston Globe, who nailed the story in 2000, only to watch his mainstream colleagues collectively ignore it.) The CBS controversy in 2004 simply provided the cover journalists needed to walk away from the story, and it's the same cover they cling to today.

Now, I realize the accepted Beltway media takeaway from CBS' National Guard controversy is supposed to be that the network was guilty of a colossal, historic newsroom blunder from which there is no possible defense or redemption. (Personally, I'll leave that category to the Judy Millers of the world.) But the dirty little secret that bloggers and mainstream journalists don't want to discuss is that Rather is right -- the National Guard story was true.

The Guard story is true because in the spring of 1972, with 770 days left of required duty, then-Lt. Bush unilaterally decided that he was done fulfilling his military obligation and walked away from the Guard. For the next two years it was as if Air Force and Guard regulations simply did not apply to Bush, who became a ghost-like figure, doing -- or not doing -- whatever he pleased, unsupervised and unrated by his commanders. In the military, there is a simple personnel rule: All duty is supervised and rated. Except when it came to Bush, the son of a congressman. That's all obvious from Bush's own military records, or lack thereof. (More on that later.)

Moreover, Rather was also right last week in claiming that CBS News management panicked in the wake of the Memogate scandal and quickly tossed aside its journalism standards in desperate, blatant attempts to mend fences with the Bush White House. The examples were numerous, yet the press pretends Rather's a conspiracy nut for making the suggestions.

Keep in mind, I'm not defending CBS' work here. Years ago I detailed the many mistakes producer Mary Mapes and her team made in needlessly rushing their Texas Air National Guard story onto the air, and how holes in the story were not communicated up the CBS chain of command before the report aired. In fact, as somebody who in 2004 wrote extensively about Bush's missing years in the Guard, and who tried to lay out the facts in hopes that the mainstream media would take more interest in the story, I was furious when Memogate broke. Furious because I knew that the press, spooked by the right-wing pitchfork mob that had assembled online, was going to run -- not walk -- away from the story for fear of raising the same ire.

The same political press corps that had spent the month of August 2004 endlessly dissecting Sen. John Kerry's war record in search of evidence to support the bogus claims of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, those same journalists became obsessed in September 2004, with detailing the CBS scandal while willfully ignoring the larger National Guard story. "Everyone in the media wanted to cover CBS, not the National Guard story," wrote Mapes.

And now it's déjà vu all over again: In the wake of last week's lawsuit, everyone in the media wants to cover Rather, not the National Guard story.

That's why media chatterers glossed over the facts surrounding Bush's Guard service in order to rush out onto the playground to be among the first cool kids to make fun of Dan Rather -- he's just like disgraced novelist James Frey! Ha-ha.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported that in the wake of the lawsuit "many" of Rather's friends think he's "lost it," although Kurtz didn't bother to identify any of Rather's "friends" who think that. Hosting CNN's Reliable Sources, Kurtz stacked the show's panel with invited guests who all mocked and belittled Rather ("sad," "pathetic," "arrogant"). Kurtz also wondered out loud how Rather could possibly claim the National Guard story was true if CBS "could not authenticate those 30-year-old National Guard memos?" See, for Kurtz, the memos are the Guard story. (He and right-wing bloggers think alike.)

Washington Post editorial page staff writer Charles Lane typed up a humor-free Rather parody for the newspaper and then, dutifully hitting all the agreed-upon Beltway media talking points, insisted that "no one in his right mind would keep insisting that those phony documents are real and that the Bush National Guard story is true."

See, it's impossible that the memos could be unreliable but the Guard story itself be true. Think of it as a trial: Everybody knows that if one piece of evidence is discredited, that means the whole case is flawed. I mean, c'mon, people.

Similarly, a report at Newsweek.com focused on whether Rather looked like a "pathetic" "loser" for filing his lawsuit. (The nasty quotes were made anonymously, of course.) The Newsweek article never bothered to address the larger facts of the National Guard story. The same was true of the Los Angeles Times piece, headlined, "Dan Rather's lawsuit is an act of ego." The paper thundered on and on about how awful Rather is and demeaned his lawsuit as a "pathetic and contradictory exercise in self-justification."

In fact, the Times was obsessed with Rather last week, printing not one, not two, but three bitter condemnations of him. And no, none of them shed any serious light on Rather's suggestion that his National Guard story was true.

CBS News tried to make nice with Bush White House

Meanwhile, Rather is also correct in his claim that amidst the so-called Memogate scandal, nervous CBS executives capitulated in order to "pacify the [Bush] White House," "appease angry government officials," and "curry favor with the Bush administration."

For instance, there was CBS' shameful decision in September 2004 not to run a previously scheduled, and factually solid, story done by the late Ed Bradley that chronicled how the Bush administration had misled the country into war. Bradley's in-depth investigation, had it aired in 2004, would have been the first by a major network news outlet to devote serious time and energy to investigating the baffling case of the forged Niger documents that were used as a pivotal propaganda tool in the administration's push for war.

But spooked by the unfolding Memogate controversy, CBS abdicated its news responsibility and announced that Bradley's story would not be broadcast. "We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election," a CBS flack announced. So close? The election was six weeks away. And since when was it journalism's job to stay out of the way of current events?

Around the same time, the first presidential debate between Bush and Kerry took place. Immediately following Bush's dreadful, petulant performance, every flash poll taken showed that by overwhelming margins Americans thought Kerry had clearly bested Bush. Yet CBS News viewers were told the debate had been a tie. Even after CBS' instant poll showed Kerry winning the debate in a blowout, by 44 percent-to-26 percent, CBS' John Roberts announced that the televised face-off had been "as close to a draw as you could possibly come."

Just days after the debate, CBS owner and Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone announced he was voting for Bush, insisting that from a Viacom standpoint, "the election of a Republican administration is a better deal."

And keep in mind that in the wake of CBS' Memogate scandal, Bob Schieffer replaced Dan Rather as CBS Nightly News anchorman. CBS boss Les Moonves quickly breathed a sigh of relief, telling reporters, "The White House doesn't hate CBS anymore with Schieffer in the [anchor] chair." Moonves noted Schieffer was looked upon favorably by 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And why not -- Schieffer's brother is a longtime friend and former business partner of Bush's.

And, oh yeah, how do I know the story about Bush evading his military service is true even though bloggers and the mainstream media declared, in the wake of Memogate, that it was not? It's easy. Using Bush's own military records, I'll list 10 glaring discrepancies regarding his fraudulent military service, none of which is based on the disputed memos that were aired by CBS News in 2004. And yes, I'm pretty sure all 10 discrepancies will come as news flashes to the same journalists who mocked Rather last week for having the temerity to suggest his National Guard report was true. (Most of the discrepancies were unearthed over the years by online researchers Marty Heldt, Paul Lukasiak, and Robert Rogers.)

The quick back story: Following his graduation from Yale University in 1968, at a time when nearly 350 U.S. troops were dying each week in Vietnam, Bush managed to vault to the top of a 500-person waiting list to land a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard. On his application where the form asked for "background qualifications of value to the Air Force," Bush wrote, "None." Despite a complete lack of aviation or ROTC experience, despite scoring in the 25th percentile on his pilot aptitude section -- the lowest allowed score for aspiring fliers -- and despite having been arrested twice for college pranks, as well as having four driving infractions, Bush was approved for an automatic commission as a second lieutenant and assigned to flight school.

In spring 1972, after receiving $1 million worth of taxpayer-funded flight training, Bush unilaterally decided he was going to stop flying and attempted to transfer from his Houston base to a non-flying, paper-pushing postal unit in Alabama. The request was denied. While Bush searched for a new unit, he took the summer off, never bothering to show up for his mandatory monthly drills. Bush was eventually ordered to report to a flying unit in Montgomery, Alabama. There is no evidence Bush ever showed up there, which means he missed more weekend training sessions. In July of that summer, Bush also failed to take his mandatory annual physical and was grounded by the Guard. In 1973 Bush was supposed to return to his base in Houston but again he was a no-show; his commanders in May 1973 claimed they had no idea where he was. Then between the summer of 1973 to the time he was discharged in 1974, there's little evidence that Bush ever attended training sessions, which means for nearly two years Bush snubbed his Guard duty.

Here are the 10 discrepancies that would have gotten any other Air National Guard member severely reprimanded, and certainly would have, later in life, derailed any presidential aspirations:

1. Upon entering the Guard, Bush agreed that flying was his "lifetime pursuit" and that he would fly for the military for at least 60 months. After his training was complete, he owed 53 more months of flying.

Bush flew for only 22 of those 53 months.

2. In May 1972, Bush left the Houston Guard base for Alabama. According to Air Force regulations, Bush was supposed to obtain prior authorization before leaving Texas to join a new Guard unit in Alabama.

Bush failed to get the authorization.

3. On his transfer request to Alabama Bush was asked to list his "permanent address."

He wrote down a post office box number for the campaign where he was working on a temporary basis.

4. According to Air Force regulations, "[a] member whose attendance record is poor must be closely monitored. When the unexcused absences reach one less than the maximum permitted [sic] he must be counseled and a record made of the counseling. If the member is unavailable he must be advised by personal letter."

There is no record that Bush ever received such counseling, despite the fact that he missed drills for months on end.

5. Bush's unit was obligated to report to the Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base whenever a monthly review of records showed unsatisfactory participation for an officer.

Bush's unit never reported his absenteeism to Randolph Air Force Base.

6. In July 1972, Bush failed to take a mandatory Guard physical exam, which is a serious offense for a Guard pilot. The move should have prompted the formation of a Flying Evaluation Board to investigate the circumstances surrounding Bush's failure.

No such Flying Evaluation Board was convened.

7. On Sept. 29, 1972, Bush was formally grounded for failing to take a flight physical. The letter, written by the chief of the National Guard Bureau, ordered Bush to acknowledge in writing that he had received word of his grounding.

No such written acknowledgment exists.

8. Each time Bush missed a monthly training session he was supposed to schedule a make-up session, or file substitute service requests. Bush's numerous substitute service requests should have formed a lengthy paper trail with the name of the officer who authorized the training in advance, the signature of the officer who supervised the training and Bush's own signature.

No such documents exist.

9. During his last year with the Texas Air National Guard, Bush missed a majority of his mandatory monthly training sessions and supposedly made them up with substitute service. Guard regulations allowed substitute service only in circumstances that were "beyond the control" of the Guard member.

Neither Bush nor the Texas Air National Guard ever explained what the uncontrollable circumstances were that forced him to miss so many of his assigned drills during his last year.

10. On June 29, 1973, the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver instructed Bush's commanders to get additional information from his Alabama unit, where he had supposedly trained, in order to better evaluate Bush's duty.

Bush's commanders ignored the request.

But why do I bother with these silly facts? Everybody knows the Guard story is bogus. And everybody knows Dan Rather is crazy for suggesting otherwise.

Media Matters (http://mediamatters.org/columns/200709250005)

[Wild Cobra]

OMG Dan, why do you bring in such a story? OK, so the document(s) were never taken to a court to be shown as a forgery. There is absolutely no doubt that they are a forgery however!

All the equipment was available during the period to make such a document if it was passed from equipment to equipment, but nothing the military had in it's inventory could have created it. The best equipment the military was using was the IBM Selectric Typewriters. Now it would be common to see forms made up ahead of time and 'zeroxed' saving time, to already have the unit, commanders signature block, etc. filled out, but nothing the military used had the separate features and fonts all together.

Sure, it's impossible to prove such a document could not have originated in that time period, but how many different typewriters would it have gone through?

It can be said beyond a reasonable doubt that it is a forgery.

Nobody denies several aspects of the Bush story. Yes, he missed much of the training time. Yes, he was released early. So fucking what?

The documents Dan Rather stood by were obvious fakes. He refused to acknowledge the truth and is blaming others. If he could have sincerely acknowledged a mistake, I'll bet he would not have been let go. H was the one that made t hard on everyone after the mistakes were uncovered.

What a pathetic asshole.

Now Dan, everything in your posted link has been clearly addressed. There are no questions remaining except to those who refuse to accept the truth. The author is one who is in disbelief of the truth, and is making a senseless story.

I'll address a few things from memory (memory, don't fail me now):


The Guard story is true because in the spring of 1972, with 770 days left of required duty, then-Lt. Bush unilaterally decided that he was done fulfilling his military obligation and walked away from the Guard. For the next two years it was as if Air Force and Guard regulations simply did not apply to Bush, who became a ghost-like figure, doing -- or not doing -- whatever he pleased, unsupervised and unrated by his commanders. In the military, there is a simple personnel rule: All duty is supervised and rated. Except when it came to Bush, the son of a congressman. That's all obvious from Bush's own military records, or lack thereof. (More on that later.)

Nobody is disagreeing that there was a large timeframe that Lt. Bush didn't have a NG function. He moved and the new NG base he was assigned to not only didn't have the jets he was qualified to fly, but to do so would displace the assigned pilots. He was there and remained accountable as needed should he need to be sent into action.

My God man, this is the NG. Not active duty!


The same political press corps that had spent the month of August 2004 endlessly dissecting Sen. John Kerry's war record in search of evidence to support the bogus claims of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, those same journalists became obsessed in September 2004, with detailing the CBS scandal while willfully ignoring the larger National Guard story. "Everyone in the media wanted to cover CBS, not the National Guard story," wrote Mapes.

OK, this guy is claiming the Swift Boat veterans story bogus, yet has no proof either. Funny how so many Swift Boat veterans came together, far more than the 5 or 6 buddies Kerry had. Then there is the Standard Form 190! President Bush released every last record. There is still about 100 documents the Kerry hasn't released! Who's story is more credible? What is Kerry afraid of? Release the records and get it over with, or... is there something to hide.... The Swift Boat veterans must be right!


See, it's impossible that the memos could be unreliable but the Guard story itself be true. Think of it as a trial: Everybody knows that if one piece of evidence is discredited, that means the whole case is flawed. I mean, c'mon, people.

That is not the point, or is it? The basic story is true, but the fake memo reflected a few aspects that were false. For anyone wanting to discredit president Bush, this was a serious setback. It showed the world the internal structure of CBS was in fact out to get president Bush! Rather and his team let the cat out of the bag!


For instance, there was CBS' shameful decision in September 2004 not to run a previously scheduled, and factually solid, story done by the late Ed Bradley that chronicled how the Bush administration had misled the country into war.

Yep. Look at what Rather and his team accomplished. Sticking by an obviously flawed story, would people believe the next Bush hit piece out? Turns out this story failed some credibility issues too. Maybe CBS went over it more thoroughly and cut it for a single part that could be disputed?

Wow... the list... I am not going to try to answer those as the simple mistakes I'm sure to make won't help. I'm not going to look these thing up like I did three years ago either. Note however that some of the points are made in the fake document pages! No wonder there's no record!

All items have been asked and answered in the past. This stuff is annoying to see again. I don't recall enough of the details intact, but there was nothing wrong, and some are misstatements in themselves.

Thing is, everyone had better things to do than try to make a pilot fly that didn't have a plane to fly. Within the list I see:



Neither Bush nor the Texas Air National Guard ever explained what the uncontrollable circumstances were that forced him to miss so many of his assigned drills during his last year.


Let's not forget that after three document experts told Mapes that the documents could not be authenticated, the fourth person said the same thing, about the went ahead anyway. His initial exposure to the documents was the signature which he was confident was real. He said the four pages he was later shown could not be authenticated because of their poor quality.

I though this was explained. What was he suppose to do? Go in and sit on top of the jet while another pilot flew it?

He made his points.

Could be reached if needed.

They didn't need him.

Let's face it. Old story. It is not the Bush Memo to debate here anyway, but rather, it's Rather's integrity. He has none where this story is involved.

Before someone tries to suggest the documents were real, check out the wiki link, and the Bush records below also. Also notice that none of the below pages in Lt. Bush's personal records have the problems with the forges documents!

Read the real Bush below. The facts ARE NOT with Dan Rather!

wiki: Killian documents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathergate)

Rather's lawsuit (http://www.aolcdn.com/tmz_documents/0919_don_rather_wm_01.pdf)

President Bush's records, pt.1 (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/personnel_pt1.pdf)

President Bush's records, pt.2 (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/personnel_pt2.pdf)

President Bush's records, pt.3 (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/personnel_pt3.pdf)

President Bush's records, pt.4 (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/personnel_pt4.pdf)

President Bush's records, pt.5 (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/personnel_pt5.pdf)

President Bush's records, pt.6 (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/personnel_pt6.pdf)

President Bush's records, pt.7 (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/personnel_pt7.pdf)

President Bush's records, pt.8 (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/personnel_pt8.pdf)

President Bush's records, pt.9 (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/personnel_pt9.pdf)