Investigators Blast CBS for Rathergate

Investigators Blast CBS for Rathergate

Phil Brennan
Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005

If you believe CBS’ report it was all producer Mary Mapes fault – Dan Rather was not much more than an innocent bystander in the scandal that now bears his name: "Rathergate."

CBS would also have you believe there was no evidence that politics played a role in CBS airing of a story based on forged documents. CBS, for that matter, still won’t say the documents were forged.

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This last conclusion is convenient for CBS and the “independent” panel they appointed to investigate Rathergate. If the documents are forgeries -- which almost everyone agrees is the case -- there are several felonies involved that could cause some people to go to jail -- including sources used by CBS in creating and airing a fraudulent story.

For sure, the report offered little shelter for Dan Rather and CBS News. The report concluded that CBS failed dismally to meet its own standards that calls for its personnel to adhere to published internal standards based on two core principles: accuracy and fairness.

Most of the panel’s findings focused on the CBS “60 Minutes” staff’s dereliction in failing to verify the charges made in the explosive segment dealing with President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard.

"While the focus of the Panel’s investigation at the outset was on the Killian documents, the investigation quickly identified considerable and fundamental deficiencies relating to the reporting and production of the September 8 Segment and the statements and news reports during the aftermath," the report states.

Myopic Zeal

"These problems were caused primarily by a myopic zeal to be the first news organization to broadcast what was believed to be a new story about President Bush’s TexANG service, and the rigid and blind defense of the segment after it aired despite numerous indications of its shortcomings."

At the heart of the network’s failure to adhere to established journalistic standards of fairness and accuracy was producer Mary Mapes.

Mapes has been described by the Associated Press as a dedicated liberal who has used journalism to push her agenda.

Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz wondered how Dan Rather, Mapes’ boss, and Mapes "had conceived such bottomless trust in the good faith and objectivity of their source, Bill Burkett, (CBS source of the forged documents) a Texan well known for the depths of his active hatred for George W. Bush and the Bush family, as well as a rage at the National Guard for allegedly depriving him of medical benefits."

Rabinowitz added that Mapes "a producer who has worked and waited five years, building a new version of an old charge about George W. Bush's National Guard service, and who stood teetering at the brink of consummation – a chance to deliver the bullet just weeks before the election – isn't going to be inhibited by any such guff about standards."

The Panel report bears this out abundantly, stating that the most serious defects in the reporting and production of the September 8 Segment were:

The failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner;

. The false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents when all he had done was authenticate one signature from one document used in the Segment;

The failure of 60 Minutes Wednesday management to scrutinize the publicly available, and at times controversial, background of the source of the documents, retired Texas Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett;

The failure to find and interview the individual who was understood at the outset to be Lieutenant Colonel Burkett’s source of the Killian documents, and thus to establish the chain of custody. This episode was indicative of Mapes’ utter failure to trace down the source of the alleged documents.

Her story boggles the mind: Mapes told the panel that once she obtained the first two Killian documents, she pressed Burkett for information about his source, claiming she discussed with him the importance of the chain of custody and that she needed to know "whose hands" were last on the documents.

According to Mapes, Burkett eventually told her that Chief Warrant officer George Conn, a former officer in the Texas Army National Guard and a long-time friend, had given him the documents.

Could Not Be Reached

He told Mapes, however, that she should not call Conn because he would deny it. Burkett also said that Conn was on active duty and could not be reached at his Dallas home. Once Mapes obtained this information from Burkett, she did not ask for more details regarding how he got the documents from Conn because she thought she had "pushed Burkett to the wall." Mapes said that it concerned her when Burkett said that Conn would not corroborate his story, and she was also aware that Conn had denied in February 2004 having knowledge of the "scrubbing" incident.

That revelation failed to raise any red flags for this experienced investigative journalist. She simply believed that Conn’s denial was a means to protect his job with the military and she felt comforted that Burkett and his wife spoke well of Conn despite his prior statements undercutting charges Burkett had made.

Nevertheless, Mapes said she placed a call to Conn at a number believed to be his residence in Dallas, but was not able to contact him. Mapes knew that Conn worked in Germany, but she told the Panel that she tried his number in Dallas because it was her understanding that he was sometimes in Dallas.

Mapes said that she also asked former Chief Warrant Officer Harvey Gough, another former Guardsman, for Conn’s number in Germany, but he refused. She does not recall any subsequent attempts to reach Chief Warrant Officer Conn or asking anyone else to find him.

The failure to establish a basis for the statement in the Segment that the documents "were taken from Colonel Killian’s personal files";

The failure to develop adequate corroboration to support the statements in the Killian documents and to carefully compare the Killian documents to official TexANG records, which would have identified, at a minimum, notable inconsistencies in content and format;

The failure to interview a range of former National Guardsmen who served with Lieutenant Colonel Killian and who had different perspectives about the documents;

The misleading impression conveyed in the Segment that Lieutenant Strong had authenticated the content of the documents when he did not have the personal knowledge to do so;

The failure to have a vetting process capable of dealing effectively with the production speed, significance and sensitivity of the Segment. The telephone call prior to the Segment’s airing by Mary Mapes, the producer of the Segment to a senior campaign official of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry - a clear conflict of interest - that created the appearance of a political bias.

Mishandled

Once questions were raised about the September 8 Segment, the reporting thereafter was mishandled and compounded the damage done.

Among the more egregious shortcomings during the Aftermath were:

The strident defense of the September 8 Segment by CBS News without adequately probing whether any of the questions raised had merit;

Allowing many of the same individuals who produced and vetted the by-then controversial September 8 Segment to also produce the follow-up news reports defending the Segment;

The inaccurate press statements issued by CBS News after the broadcast of the Segment that the source of the documents was "unimpeachable" and that experts had vouched for their authenticity;

The misleading stories defending the Segment that aired on the CBS Evening News after September 8 despite strong and multiple indications of serious flaws;

The efforts by 60 Minutes Wednesday to find additional document examiners who would vouch for the authenticity of the documents instead of identifying the best examiners available regardless of whether they would support this position; and

Preparing news stories that sought to support the Segment, instead of providing accurate and balanced coverage of a raging controversy."

Early on, for all intents and purposes the Panel lets Rather gently off the hook while hanging Mapes out to dry, stating that:"Rather and Mapes had worked together for more than five years, and Rather gave Mapes significant responsibility to produce stories, in part due to the great confidence and respect that he had for her work, and in part due to the demands of Rather’s other duties at CBS News.

In late August and early September 2004, as the September 8 Segment was being developed, Rather had even greater demands on his time than usual as he was covering the Republican Convention in New York City and then a hurricane in Florida. Thus, he was not able to spend extensive time on the development of the September 8 Segment."

The report goes further in exonerating Rather: "The Panel finds that the vetting process for the September 8 Segment was seriously flawed. The Panel believes that this was caused in large part by the speed with which this Segment was produced. The Panel also believes that the vetting process was not sufficient because too much deference was given to Mapes because of her experience and much admired history at CBS News and 60 Minutes Wednesday, as well as her association with Rather.

Rather does not appear to have participated in any of the vetting sessions or to have even seen the Segment before it was aired."

Mapes, however, was her own worst enemy, consistently misleading the panel by contradicting the testimony of a number of witnesses who refused to back her recollections of her dealings with them.

Moreover, she insisted that the Killian documents had been declared authentic by experts when in fact none of those retained by CBS would verify their authenticity.

Diligent

The panel was diligent in digging into the facts and pulls no punches in meticulously documenting the shoddiness of the 60 Minutes segment dealing with the Bush National Guard story.

But they go out of their way to avoid any admissions that the subject documents were forgeries, that there was any political motive behind airing an anti-Bush story weeks before election day, and downplays Rather’s complicity in the fraudulent broadcast.

The panel asked how it all happened and found that it happened primarily because of a rush to air a program that rode roughshod over CBS own published News Standards and the people who are supposed to prevent the problems described in their Report.

"Those responsible for the Segment believed firmly that it was true (and some still do). In particular, the producer, Mary Mapes, had fervent faith in what she was reporting and the correspondent, Dan Rather, had great confidence in Mapes’ work," the report claimed. "Everyone involved wanted the Segment to be right. But in journalism, no less than in other fields, wanting is not enough."

As Bernard Goldberg told Fox News Monday, the story ran without being properly investigated because Rather and Mapes as a result of their liberal political leanings wanted it to air to hurt the President weeks before the election.

The Panel described the "missteps that led to the scandal:

A sometimes controversial source, Lt. Col. Burkett with a partisan point of view gave 60 Minutes Wednesday the documents. Only the most cursory effort – one unsuccessful attempt to contact the original source by telephone – was made to establish the chain of custody.

Efforts at authentication failed miserably. Hired document examiners whose views went against the rush to air were cast aside. The four original document examiners became two and ultimately one, who opined only on one signature in one document. Nevertheless, the Segment contained an unsupported declaration of authenticity.

Competitive zeal – the desire to be the first to break what was seen as a significant story – fed the rush to air to the point where holding the story to vet it more thoroughly became unthinkable because some other news organization might surely break the story.

The person relied on as the so-called "trump card" to confirm the content of the Killian documents was not shown any documents before the Segment aired. He was merely read some or all of the content of the documents over the telephone. The Panel finds this unacceptable as a basis for provenance of a story that turned on the authenticity of pieces of paper. In the rush to air, basic reporting suffered.

Mapes has now been fired. Dan Rather has a cushy new job waiting for him at “60 Minutes” when he steps down from his anchor post. Go Wonder.

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