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(photo: Michael Foley Photography/flickr)
Remember how the right wing ginned up the “Rathergate” hoo-ha to take down Dan Rather and pave the way for George W. Bush’s coronation?
Guess what — in 2008, eight years after the fact, the key guy behind the political hit admitted the argument used to do it was bogus:
The first person to publicly question the memos was an Air Force officer in Montgomery named Paul Boley, who posted on the conservative online forum Free Republic under the handle TankerKC. Boley’s comment popped up while the program was still going on.
But the man officially credited with inspiring a fusillade of blog attacks was Harry MacDougald, known on message boards as Buckhead, a GOP lawyer in Atlanta who missed the segment but downloaded the Killian documents from the CBS website later that night. He specifically claimed that the memos used proportional spacing and superscripts that didn’t exist on typewriters of the early seventies.
[...]
In any case, MacDougald’s arguments about the documents turned out to be inaccurate. He acknowledged as much in an interview with me in 2008. And in a speech given that same year, Mike Missal, a lawyer for the firm that CBS hired to investigate its own report, said, “It’s ironic that the blogs were actually wrong. . . . We actually did find typewriters that did have the superscript, did have proportional spacing. And on the fonts, given that these are copies, it’s really hard to say, but there were some typewriters that looked like they could have some similar fonts there. So the initial concerns didn’t seem as though they would hold up.”
In other words, the Killian memos can’t be debunked using the “fonts” argument.
Shout the lie, whisper the correction. And Dan Rather’s career is still in ashes.
124 Comments
hmm
I always assumed Rather was set up.
Oh it wasn’t just the repugs that wanted him gone. CBS Brass wanted him gone as well. He was becoming just a little too inconvenient.
Rather’s career took off when he decided to be very convenient:
Dan Rather Starts Career With Huge Error
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXi0usMq30E&feature=related
He may well have been — Killian’s secretary herself said that in her opinion the memos were not the originals, those likely having been lost, but were accurate and truthful reconstructions created by someone familiar with the originals. But if they are debunkable (and if Rather was set up), it’s not because of the fonts argument, and that’s the one the Freepers relied on the most.
The secretary said the memos were what she remembered to be the essence of the information/facts. Rather got sold down the river (this was before people were being thrown under the bus.) Bush was a sham pilot/sham president. And it all amounts, nowadays, to a big whatever. Too much, too long, too far gone. We are forever f**ked. …… Carry on.
Waaaaaaaaaaay after the fact.
I always thought Rather was pretty much railroaded on that one. CBS could not take the heat from the all fronts wingnut assault.
Bury it in two lines at the bottom of page E-22.
Well, they could have researched to find out the fonts were not a problem, but they didn’t. Just like Obama could have researched to find out if Shirley Sherrod was a racist, but he didn’t. Easier to just fold like a cheap lawn chair. Idiots.
Pretty much.
Exactly.
Lazy idiots, scaredy-cat, run for the hills, chicken shit idiots. But, forgive me, I do go on.
Color me unsurprised.
And spineless, too, also….in case I forgot to mention that.
Suspected at the time that Rather was warned not to delve deeper.
As he was already old, fading from the scene prolly seemed like an attractive out.
Yeah, it’s hard (not) to imagine this kind of bullshit going down almost daily on Karl Rove’s planet.
CBS folded like a cheap suit. I haven’t watched any CBS News since then.
I doubt that Rather wanted to go out in that way. Anymore than Donohue wanted to be shoved out. Anymore than Moyers enjoys being taken down periodically. I think Rather got blindsided. I think he believed what his producer gave him to report on. And, of course, in retrospect, he was correct. Bush the Lesser is not laying so low for nothing. There are still potential witnesses out there that may out him as they age out of this lovely experience.
That would be The Daily Planet?
Nah, that would be Perry White’s Planet.
I’m not saying that Rather wanted to retire under a cloud. Quite the reverse, i.e. that he was warned if he kept pursuing the case, he’d be taken out in an even worse way. Don’t have any idea whether it was blackmail or something more dire.
Exactly. Doesn’t Karl Rove think he’s Superman?
Oh, fine, eCAHN. You had to put that image in my mind before bed time, Karl in tights.
Eine Ubermensch, anyway.
I saw Moyers recently. He was interviewing another older white guy. It was sad to watch and listen to them trying valiantly to carry the torch of reason. Moyers is close to my father’s age, 85. He must be tired. His producer (wife) must be tired. Shit, I am only 62 and I am tired. Our kids are tired and they have a long way to go.
I hope he leaves us a tape. Sadly, I think you are probably right. We live in a very, very sick place. I keep looking for some other place to be. I also wonder if the Cartagena (no tilde) prostitute scandal is a shiny object for something we’ll learn about months and months from now.
Not a chance in hell.
Any honest person with half a brain knew the accounts were essentially accurate even if the documentation couldn’t be confirmed. It’s not like Dubya was the only congressman’s kid who opted for a no-show NG post instead of going to Nam.
Bush is laying low because:
1) There is a bipartisan consensus that his was the most disastrois presidency in modern history
2) He left office with a lower approval rating than Charles Manson.
Yes, they are wearing us down. What saddens me most (really, the most!) is that I do not see any leadership emerging on the left. Pretty grim out, all in all.
Good point about the SS ‘scandal.’
There’s only one conspiracy theory I’ve devoted time to (never mind for current purposes what it is). But real conspiracies do exist.
Here’s word of mouth about JFK. A good friend’s father was in TX local politics in the 1940s, 50s. Claimed LBJ used assassinations as one of his political tools. On the day of JFK’s assassination, he called his daughter (my fried) at college and the first words out of his mouth were: LBJ figured out how to become prez.
3) there is much more damaging information about Bush the Lesser that he would just as soon no one continues to explore….and Poppi and Barb told him to STFU and lay low.
It saddens me that we can’t even watch a scandal unfold without wondering if it’s this week’s shiney object and worry what story they might be trying to hide.
The lack of leadership is mostly a reflection of the perverse influence on our politics. There simply is not institutional left in America anymore. The Democratic Party is dominated by centrist/center-right DLC types at the institutional level. Anyone else is basically starved for money, marginalized, and given no public exposure.
Righto. That’s why I thought at the time that Rather bugged out for reasons that were threatening to his life. Always thought that the fonts argument could be proven definitively to support Rather, but Rather didn’t even try.
Plus, for some reason it’s a lot harder to herd people who know how to read.
Meh. For the most part, LBJ was a far more liberal president than JFK was.
He tried, but the knives were out for him, big-time.
Or threatened. I wondered what Kucinich got told during the infamous plane ride. Then the redistricting was done (bizarre configuration for sure) and thought, “The damned fool should have stood up…. they were going to take him down anyway.” I wonder what it feels like to sell out and then get crushed anyway. Can’t feel good. Must feel stupid, really. Raped and then fucked…..or something like that.
Gnite all.
As I recall, we all knew the crap about Rather was bullshit. We knew that one way or another, he had been had. Didn’t it have something to do with the person who gave him the goods? That person gave him corrupted material? Or that is what us tidy liberals thought.
I am so tired of being right only to be proved right years later.
Night.
And he could swing a beagle by the ears (and that looks good on any resume).
If only we could ask Paul Wellstone about being raped/fucked/killed.
Yup. The biggest knock on LBJ was that he didn’t get us out of ‘Nam — and that, it turns out, is in large part a result of Nixon’s sending Anna Chan Chennault to sabotage the 1968 Paris Peace Talks.
Sweet dreams.
Gets bonus points from me. Never could stand beagles.
Maybe the beagles liked it.
His domestic policy was the most progressive since FDR and he did far more than Kennedy even tried to do.
Judging from LBJ’s ears I’d guess he was treating his pets to the same sort of attention he received as a child.
They are perverse enough that it could be true.
The secretary said that she didn’t remember typing those pages, or words to that effect, but that the essence was clearly what she remembered from that time. And it made sense and fit the time lines. The type face was a convenient distraction that was not immediately disputed. The left folds, fails, falls on its own sword time and freakin’ time again.
CBS is not and never has been “the Left,” nor was Rather really, though he was further to the left than his masters.
I’m convinced LBJ’s successes (such as the civil rights act) were due in part to climate following the assassination. Squandering that kind of good will by getting the country eyeballs deep in an unnecessary war must be standard operating procedure.
Too lazy to check out the timeline but …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rather#.22Kenneth.2C_what_is_the_frequency.3F.22
They don’t fall on their swords. They are well taken care of and pretend to fall. fuckers. F.u.c.k.e.r.s…………..
Well, of course you are right. Do you think CBS set Dan Rather up to be ruined? I always thought of Rather as kind of a middle-of-the-road kind of reporter. I was kind of surprised, really, when he was so easily taken down. Hadn’t occurred to me that CBS might have done it to him on purpose. Certainly didn’t enhance their reputation. The fact that they didn’t explore the font problem just made them look inept.
Beagles are good dogs, it’s just that some of the traits bred into them for hunting can make them problematic pets. They’re happiest in a pack of their peers and they have a frequent bark that can be heard from a distance.
Yea, we’re constantly right. Kind of annoying because we don’t get the credit
PS sending an email
Thanks for the post, PW. Nice reading along tonight.
Good night, everyone.
The war was a product of the elite consensus of the time. Pretty much everyone in politics or the policy elite was a hawk in those days. Had to stop that evil communism or we would all die or some such horseshit.
You can’t let them off leash. They will follow their noses to hell. Don’t get a beagle if you want a dog that will “behave”.
I don’t think CBS set him up, since, as you say, it damaged their reputation, but they had no stomach for pushing this thing and standing up for Rather. Rather always seemed a mildly leftish centrist who had a passion for the truth (at least as he saw it).
Maybe we’re reading too much into CBS’ possible motives. The trend had already started where businesses force out experienced workers for younger people who earn less.
It is the barking and the frenetic energy that drives me nuts.
A passion for the truth will get most into vial trouble.
Wow, my dogs must have all been beagles…
And a lot of rational people said, “Don’t go into VietNam….this is stupid….we’ll get creamed.” Just as we said, “Don’t mess around in Afghanistan and for god’s sake don’t let the Bush-Boy try to outdo his Daddy by going into Iraq.” Being right is not very satisfying. Where’s that video, “The DFH Were Right”?
Yep. People should make informed pet choices. Not the critter’s fault if the owner didn’t do their homework.
Yes, but those rational people were not part of the elite consensus and JFK, a Harvard graduate, definitely was.
Seriously, they go the fuck away if you let them off leash. disappeared. never to return.
other than that, how are you?
I am much more a cat person. They are much lower maintenance (though all of mine have been quite affectionate and several have been talkers) and quieter.
I need to toddle off. It has been a long time since I got up at 5:30 this morning and those young minds still need corrupting in the morning. Take care all.
My dog got out one night and (we learned later) was picked up a few hours later 14 miles away. He got taken to a place that kept strays for a week before selling them to labs. We got a tip and rescued him on the last day.
Doing okay here. Hope all’s good at your end.
Nighters to you and demi and anyone I might have missed.
I gotta head out too
L8r
How could anyone not love my beagles?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33388783@N08/7089424025/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33388783@N08/7089423925/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33388783@N08/6943353368/
Well, darnit, I just typed an outraged comment about the futility of trying to tell people back at teh time of “Rathergate” that I, among many many office workers, typed (or in my case, attempted to type) on a thing called an IBM Executive typewriter which was known for its proportional spacing as early as 1971. I think it was in offices by the late ’60′s!
but, of course, nobody wanted to hear that from someone like me. As someone said, “investigating” it for real…just talk to somebody at IBM, for chrissake! …was never done, it was just quoting one blogger or another…and all bloggers seemed to be right-wingers.
Set the pattern right through Acorn and Shirley Sherrod and all the Breitbartian “scandals” ever since, destroying the lives of real people on the basis of nothing. Sigh.
Mary,
You talkin’ about the batshit crazy nutcase repugs or beagles??
I agree but all my favorite people are critters.
Dishes calling me, thanks to PW, splendid evening to all.
All your beagles are belong to us.
I have to believe that the left is just a party to the game. I refuse to believe they are all just stupid. I was furious during Rather-gate because it was never investigated. After all these years, I just accept that it’s all a nasty, nasty game.
At least the beagles are acting rationally in relationship to the information they have. The batshit crazy nutcase repugs, on the other hand, are prismatic assholes.
and so are the dims.
Was Rather such a thorn in the side if CBS that they used Bushes ‘memo’ to fire him?
Mary, You’re on a roll tonight. More power to you! ;>)
One does what one must.
Assholes can refract light? Cool.
Ain’t though. Means you can see right though them. translucent bastards.
Somebody needed/wanted to defuse any commentary on Bush the Lesser’s failures/possible drug history. I just got a whiff of ‘follow the money.’ The Texas mafia is deep and sinister, so it’s unlikely any of them will ever crack……………but one of these days, someone with nothing to lose is going to spill the beans. Bush the Lesser was such a loser and we all lost, big time!
that should read “Ain’t it though.”
It has all been pretend for a long time.
You only need to fool some of the people all of the time. No coincidence that the pols pander to the bible-thumpers, those people can believe just about anything except the truth
There are good reasons for that…
My childhood dog was mostly Beagle…and yes, she did love to bark, and did make the sudden dash out the front door from time to time, leading us (especially me) on a wild and desperate chase to catch her….Sigh.
We are in so much trouble. The mass (not Catholic) media is like really, really bad furniture from Levitz. None of it is real and all of it is junk. pure junk.
You just described my entire interior. Turns out junk is closest to my price bracket (but still too much).
watch/listen to this.
Junk or no, it will make you feel good.
Having watched the take down of Wellstone, Feingold, Grayson, Kucinich, Barney Frank (through redistricting or sad/sad events), I do believe that we need a much more staunch set of operatives on the left. Karl Rove/Dick Cheney/et al. are perhaps darker on the dark side than any of us ever imagined.
I think dogs like beagles can probably smell in 3D. Might be interesting (for a bit) to explore the world with that kind of technology.
Darker still is the capitulation of the left. Sort of like the difference of “Did you kill Jews as a Nazi or did you just turn them in?”
I love Neil. You’d have a hard time finding another entertainer as unaffected by success. In the early ’80s the local paper did a write-up about demands of artists appearing at a local arena. Van Halen (among many preposterous things) wanted 50lbs of M&Ms with NO brown ones. By contrast, Neil’s only request was ready access to a washer and dryer so he could do some laundry.
Sweet. I mean, S.W.E.E.T.
While I do like my naivete, I still find myself sadly shocked at the feckless left. There isn’t a one that I would stand behind. And that’s pretty darned depressing at my age. My dad, who has almost 30 years on me, seems to take it all in stride. Perhaps when I’m in my 90s, I’ll take it all in stride, too. But for now, I do not!
And for something completely different.
He is also the only artist of that stature I’ve ever seen (more than once) perform in a small venue. I detest arena concerts, stopped attending after the last time I saw the Dead in about ’90.
He is a true leader cause he ain’t.
Bob is FREAKING out to the music. I have no idea why.
epu’d.
again.
Like most leadership roles, I think wanting the position should result in automatic disqualification.
yep.
It’s too late to mention that 2008 was only four years after Rather’s reportage on the Killian memos, huh?
Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather. I never watch CBS News.
Speaking of Bush here is an article from the Texas Monthly: http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature.php Verry interesting Clyde verry interesting….
ratfood,
I’d love to have beagle ears.
I imagine they smell their surroundings like we see ours. We take in a lot, but ignore a lot of that. Too much info to process. Dogs are probably the same with their olfactory sense. They take in a lot of smells, but are able to ignore most and concentrate on what interests them. Like what some other dog had for dinner last night!…
I heard several times that the Rather 60 Minutes docs originated from Roger Stone, an ugly Rove operative. Me thinks the setup was proved by Harry MacDougald aka Buckhead who posted the kerning bs later the same night the report aired, you cannot do accurate forensic document analysis from photo copies. Plus this info has been on the web awhile – http://www.glcq.com/
But remember, this Republican-manufactured dispute over documents and witnesses indicating that GW Bush had skipped out (gone AWOL) from his TANG duty was followed shortly afterward in late 2004 by another Republican-manufactured dispute over documents and witnesses, with the latter involving Republicans (Swift Boat Liars) claiming that official U.S. Navy Department documents from the early 1970s (when GW Bush was
“successfully” completing his tour of duty in TANG) were false, a fabrication. Republicans said that Lt. John Kerry’s Vietnam War records were doctored, that witnesses serving beside him in Vietnam were lying on Navy records about Kerry’s bravery, that now Sen. John Kerry didn’t deserve or earn his medals for valor, that his service in Vietnam was a lie. And all of this was done by Republicans (just as the earlier right-wing smear campaign against Dan Rather was done) to get GW Bush re-elected.
IOW, to divert attention away from documentation and witnesses proving Lt. GW Bush was a drunken coward in the early 1970s who got into the TANG to avoid Vietnam and then went AWOL from his TANG commitment, Republicans went after Sen. John Kerry’s actual, verified, attested to U.S. Navy records showing that he DID serve with valor over in Vietnam, not cowering like Lt. GW Bush back here in the States.
In mid-October 2004 just weeks before the November presidential election, the U.S. Navy Department issued an official statement (I saw it on-line, but nowhere else) stating unequivocally that it stood behind it’s awards of medals for valor to Lt. John Kerry, just as it stood behind all the awards of medals for valor to all U.S. Navy personnel. Get it? The Swift Boat Liars in attacking Lt. John Kerry’s Navy records also attacked their own Navy records and the veracity of any of the medals for valor they may have received while serving over in Vietnam. Simply, if the U.S. Navy Department’s medal awards process was so screwed up that it got Kerry’s records and medals wrong, committing a fraud, then the medals awarded the Swift Boat Liars attacking Kerry must have also been bogus. The Swift Boat Liars didn’t like this when I pointed this out in an email to them.
(note: I served in the USAFSS between 1971 and 1975. They even attacked any medals awarded me, as well as any medals awarded by any branch of the Pentagon, all by attacking Sen. John Kerry’s war record, which required first their attacking the Pentagon’s medal awards process. I thought the Kerry campaign would jump all over this, running ads with Vietnam War hero John Kerry standing up for the Pentagon’s medal awards process, and thus his medals, those the Swift Boat Liars were awarded, those stateside medals even GW Bush received, as well as the medals ever awarded anyone who’s ever honorably served in the U.S. military. Crickets.)
Finally, there was another manufactured document dispute during GW Bush’s first term, one manufactured by Republican operatives or someone close to Republicans. Remember the forged Niger embassy documents that were planted with the CIA station chief in Rome, ones purporting to show Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime was seeking yellow-cake uranium from Niger, presumably for Iraq’s ongoing nuclear weapons program?
These forged Niger documents led to 1) smoking gun and a mushroom cloud allusions by top Bush officials and the lie-based Iraq invasion in March 2003 and 2) several months later the treasonous outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson by top Bush administration officials, because you see, her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joe Wilson, was the one who went over to Niger to check out, for VP Dick Cheney and the CIA, if what these forged Niger documents said was true. Joe Wilson reported back to the CIA (and Cheney) that he found no evidence in Niger of Iraqis trying to get more uranium from there. Curiously, just weeks before the Iraqi invasion started, the U.N.’s IAEA got their hands on these Niger embassy documents, analyzed them and within hours determined they were forgeries, ones obviously planted in Italy to discredit Saddam Hussein, ones meant to prove Iraq was violating U.N. sanctions, ones meant to justify the starting of a war against Iraq. Hmmmm, I wonder who might have done the planting of these forged documents and who wanted to start a war with Iraq? Any guesses? For some reason, no one has yet stepped forward to claim the prize, another Bush administration mystery, just like the mystery of the vanishing after-incident CIA damage-assessment report following the criminal outing of a top covert CIA officer, Valerie Plame Wilson. Hmmm, I wonder where that CIA report is, maybe alongside all the Zelikow “torture is illegal” memos ash heap, except for the one “torture is illegal” memo that Bush Republicans couldn’t find and destroy?
It’s maddening and exhausting. We all know the truth of this, and many bloggers here and elsewhere have worked tirelessly to uncover the endless mounds of propaganda, and censorship.
I keep waiting for someone to bring up the documentary about the Iraqi students. It was a project where schools wrote letters and send video back and forth before the war in Iraq. All these students talking to one another about the fear of invasion in Iraq. They tried to air the documentary on pbs, on moyers show, hbo, and finally abc. I think it was aired once (or I just saw clips) but i followed the story back in 2002. I wanted to see the whole thing (and either I was busy and missed it or they only had shown the clips). But this documentary was not allowed to air more than once. People were fired over this documentary.
I wonder where it is today, and what became of all those students talking to american students…and I wonder if the american students ever feel guilt and shame over what we did, or not being able to save those kids.
The stories of censorship, propaganda and lies just continue like human waste…it is inevitable. Our job is to learn to identify it, for what is is, and our culture is dying because fewer and fewer people have the analytical skills to do this.
There was a story that Rather was pursuing about Iraq the same day. The producers decided to go with the TANG story. The Iraq story got buried by the controversy.
I forget right now what exactly the story was–the missing $6 Billion, evidence that torture was ordered from the top of the chain of command, secret prisons — something on that order.
When you consider how corruption and dishonesty rule the world, then it’s foolish to be anything other than a psychopath. It’s hard not to be a fool, however.
I done writ it as a pome:
There are two types of persons:
The psychopath and the fool.
The fools are the greater number,
But the psychopaths rule.
A week after playing the game or role he was told to play, Rather was promoted to White House Correspondent for CBS…He was hardly alone in selling out our “democracy” in the JFK bushwhacking. Walter Cronkikte knew damn well it was a coup d’etat, but followed orders too. D. Rather tried to do the right thing many other times in his career, and was spot on and courageous by pushing the GW Bush Texas Air National story. However, the bigger boys controlled the propaganda show.
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Moonves rewarded for CBS success with $70m
By David Gelles in New York
©Getty
Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, received $70m in total compensation in 2011, making him one of the highest paid executives in corporate America.
His pay package is nearly six times the $12m that Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs chief executive, made last year,
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE!
Rather covering Vietnam was not afraid to get out with the troops. That was before the days of embedded journalists and soldiers instructed not to talk to reporters unless the PR guy is around. Watching his coverage in 1966 is what caused this South Carolina guy to question the Vietnam War and led me to read Bernard Fall’s and Marcus Raskin’s Vietnam Reader.
Reporters have bosses. If they don’t do what the boss wants, the boss finds another reporter. Think that might have a chilling effect on one’s journalism?