CBS Discredits Rathergate film ‘Truth,’ Won’t Air Ads

CBS Discredits Rathergate film ‘Truth,’ Won’t Air Ads

I don't blame them. The film ought to be called "Lies." It is based on the portion of the Mary Mapes memoir that detailed her involvement with the 2004 Rathergate story. She was Rather's producer.

The problem is that she still feels that the documents were genuine and that she was treated unfairly by being shamed and fired.

Not a bit of that is true. For example, the documents expert that CBS hired after the fact, you know, the one Mapes should have hired BEFORE the fact, concluded that the documents used by CBS were produced using current word processing technology, and "therefore were not authentic."

The additional elements of the actual truth are even more embarrassing.

First of all, all of that scientific evidence about the Microsoft Word default setting versus the typewriters available in 1973 was not a bunch of bullshit. The documents were forgeries. Everyone seems to accept that except Mapes, who doesn't cotton to any of that fancy-schmancy science stuff, preferring instead her good old gut instincts.

Secondly, the documents came to CBS from a totally unreliable anti-Bush nutcase, an officer named Bill Burkett, who had already been discredited four years earlier, after making a claim that he had been transferred to Panama for refusing to falsify Bush's personnel records. Making the claim didn't automatically brand him as a nutburger, but the fact that he subsequently retracted the claim might have been a bit of an indicator to CBS that he occasionally liked to spin some yarns about Dubya.

Third, Burkett made all sort of conflicting claims about how he came to be in possession of the documents. After each of them was proved ridiculous, he switched to another. He finally ended up claiming that they came from someone named Lucy Ramirez, although he didn't seem to know who she was or how she could have come upon such treasures. Lucy turned out to be a fictional person. Burkett also claimed that he burned the original documents after faxing them, because, gosh, what would be the point in retaining them? You might conclude that Burkett was not a very bright man to concoct such obvious lies, but that might not be fair, given that he fooled Mapes and Rather!

Fourth, Rather's report indicated that pressure was applied on Bush's behalf by General Buck Staudt, "the man in charge of the Texas National Guard." A military record showed that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972, while the memo cited by CBS as showing that Staudt was interfering with evaluations of Bush was dated August 18, 1973. The memo was, therefore, obviously concocted years later from memory by someone who got some of the dates and people confused.

Rather and Mapes continue to make claims that the documents have never conclusively been proven to be forgeries. I suppose that stands on your standard of "conclusive." They could not have been written in 1973, and they were produced with technology that didn't exist until the 90s, so that seems pretty darned conclusive, either by the "preponderance of evidence" standard, or even by the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. All of the Burkett falsehoods are just icing on that cake.

In fact, the entire story is so self-evidently bogus that many die-hard liberals believe that it was actually planted by Karl Rove's secret band of GOP dirty tricksters.

The remaining question is this, "Ignoring these specific documents, is the basic story of Bush's service record true?" In that matter, there is no certain conclusion, and the weight of the evidence is not conclusively lowering either end of the scale. We run into conflicting accounts from the people who remember him from those days. Bush's commanding officer, Killian, the man who would have written the reports, had passed by then, but Killian's son and his commanding officer both expressed some skepticism about the truth of the story, while Killian's secretary felt the story was probably accurate. Bush did apparently fail to meet some attendance and physical exam requirements, but he also received excellent reviews, a promotion, and an honorable discharge.

The one thing that seems to be true is that Bush may have received some preferential treatment to get into the guard in the first place, but that would be no surprise to anyone. Bush had a powerful group of friends and family. By definition, the powerful exert more power than the powerless.