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Monday, Sept. 20, 2004

Chief anchorman Dan Rather apologized for "a mistake in judgment."

The network said it was wrong to go on the air with a story that it could not substantiate.

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  "We should not have used them," CBS News President Andrew Heyward said. "That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."

CBS said it was commissioning an independent review of the incident, and would shortly announce the names of the people conducting the review.

The announcement was a major blow to the credibility of CBS News and its chief anchor, Dan Rather, who reported the story and also apologized Monday.

Almost immediately after the Sept. 8 story aired, document experts questioned memos purportedly written by Bush's late squadron leader, saying they appeared to have been created on a computer and not a typewriter that was in use during the 1970s.

CBS strongly defended its story, and it wasn't until a week later, after the military leader's former secretary said she believed the memos were fake, did the news division admit they were questionable.

Even then, Rather said no one had disputed the story's premise: that the future president had pulled strings to get a relatively cushy National Guard assignment and failed to satisfy the requirements of his service.

Rather this weekend interviewed Bill Burkett, a retired Texas National Guard officials who has been mentioned as a possible source for the documents. His interview will be on "CBS Evening News" this evening.

CBS said Burkett acknowledged he provided the documents and said he intentionally misled a CBS producer, giving her a false account of their origin to protect a promise of confidentiality to a source.

The Associated Press could not immediately reach Burkett for comment.

'A CBS News Tradition'

Rather said if he knew then what he knew now, he would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired.

"We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry," he said. "It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism."

The documents were said to be written by Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, indicating he was being pressured to "sugarcoat" the performance ratings of a young Bush, then the son of a U.S. congressman from Texas, and that Bush failed to follow orders to take a physical. Killian died in 1984.

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