ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JANUARY 14, 2005
WASHINGTON - - There is a journalistic adage that goes: "Nobody remembers who gets it first; everybody remembers who gets it wrong."
Nobody at CBS News has ever heard this adage apparently.
I have just finished slogging through all 224 pages of the Independent Review Panel report that investigated what went wrong with the Sept. 8, 2004 "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment on President Bush and his service in the Texas Air National Guard.
The slogging was worth it, because the best stuff comes at the end.
To summarize very briefly, the explosive part of the CBS segment centered on documents, allegedly from the files of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who was Bush's commander, complaining about how Bush was seeking special treatment and ducking a physical, and how Killian had "ordered Lieutenant Bush suspended from flight status…."
The independent review panel investigating CBS was very lawyerly and very low-key and says though it cannot "conclude with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents are authentic or forgeries", the panel discovered "a number of issues that raise serious questions about the authenticity of the documents and their content."
CBS defended the segment after it aired, but Dan Rather eventually went on the air on Sept. 20, and said CBS could no longer vouch for the authenticity of the documents and he apologized for airing the segment.
But Rather didn't mean it.
On page 208 of the report, the panel says that Rather did not believe "an apology was appropriate" and that he made the apology only because CBS management wanted him to and because he is a "team player."
"Rather informed the Panel that he still believes the content of the documents is true because 'the facts are right on the money,' and that no one has provided persuasive evidence that the documents were not authentic," the report states.
The panel - - understated as always - - says it "finds (Rather's) comments disavowing the apology to be troubling…."
No kidding. Here is the path of the documents, whose contents Rather still believes in:
1. Bill Burkett, a former lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army Guard, and an outspoken critic of George W. Bush, gives photocopies of the documents to CBS producer Mary Mapes and tells her he got them from another former Texas Army Guardsman, Chief Warrant Officer George Conn.
According to the panel report, "Mapes and her team of associate producers did virtually nothing to attempt to contact Chief Warrant Officer Conn to confirm this story and further trace the chain of custody of the documents."
2. After Mapes gets some of the documents on Sept. 2, she proceeds to "crash" the segment and get it on the air by Sept. 8, a very short amount of time in the world of TV. Mapes tries to get the documents authenticated, but, according to the report, two of the experts who examined the documents tell Mapes they have "various concerns" about the documents and all four examiners contacted by CBS inform Mapes that "they could not authenticate the documents, primarily because they were copies." But CBS goes forward anyway.
3. After the story airs and various individuals and media question its accuracy, Burkett admits he did not get the documents from Conn. Where did he get them? Well, he says they came from a woman named Lucy Ramirez - - whom nobody can locate - - who gave them to an "unidentified man" who gave them to Burkett at a livestock show in Houston.
On the way home from the show, according to USA Today, Burkett says he stopped at a Kinko's in Waco, copied the memos, and then, in the Kinko's parking lot "burned the memos he had been given and the envelope they were in."
Burkett admits that the story sounds "fantastic" and tells USA Today, "This is going to sound like some damn sci-fi movie."
Which, perhaps, is why Dan Rather, who did not even bother to watch the segment before it aired, finds the contents of the documents so believable. Perhaps little green men told him the memos were true. Rather and the fantastic seem to have a relationship. What is the frequency, Kenneth!
Maybe some tiny part of this fiasco would be understandable if CBS had been going after some deputy county sheriff in downstate Illinois. But CBS was going after the President of the United States. During the closing months of a re-election campaign!
The panel blames the CBS errors on "myopic zeal" and not on any political bias and I accept that.
CBS fired four people after the report came out - - though not Rather - - and announced Friday that the future of "60 Minutes Wednesday" is in doubt.
I am not sure many people care. But the little green men might be very, very angry.