by Marilyn M. Brannan, Associate Editor

Unravelling The New World Order

September 20, 2004

On September 8, 2004, CBS anchor Dan Rather proudly hosted one of his “hard-hitting” exposés on “60 Minutes.”  This one strongly disparaged President Bush’s service thirty-some years ago in the Texas Air National Guard.  The entire program was constructed to present George W. Bush as a “favored son” of wealth and privilege who got into the National Guard only through the help of powerful individuals, shirked his duty while in the Guard, refused a direct order to take his physical exam, then managed to opt out before he had fulfilled his obligations.  To buttress his carefully constructed exposé, Rather used several typed memoranda, purportedly written in 1972 by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian of the Texas Air National Guard. (Killian has been dead for many years, and his first-hand testimony was conveniently not available.)

But the expected political fall-out for President Bush (which Rather was doubtless expecting to savor) did not materialize.  Instead, Rather’s “5,000-pound bomb” blew a hole right through CBS and shot the anchorman right out into the “blogosphere.” 

“60 Minutes” had hardly signed off that evening before the web loggers were at work discrediting the aging icon of left-wing journalism by demonstrating in numerous, incontrovertible ways that the documents purportedly written by Lt. Col. Killian could not possibly be authentic.

Syndicated columnist Jay Bryant wrote, “Within a few hours, the bloggers had found the document experts who could authoritatively show the likelihood of Col. Killian's having typed those memos in 1972 was approximately equal to the likelihood that Plato wore a wristwatch.” (“What Did Rather Know and When Did He Know It?”  9-11-04)

In Tony’s Blankley’s words, they “ picked him [Rather] as clean as a school of piranhas would pick clean some poor water buffalo that wandered into their river.” (“A Revolution in News,” NewsMax.com, Sept. 15, 2004)

At this appalling turn of events, Rather spluttered that the bloggers who broke the story are disciplined, “partisan political operatives,” presumably affiliated with the Bush campaign.  But to the more rational observer, it was nothing that complicated.  Rather had been had, and the bloggers simply moved in to make sure the public knew the “evidence” supporting the CBS story was a fraud.

“Old Media” and the News Revolution

The arrogant among the old establishment media just can’t stand it:  bloggers are now a strategic component of national politics that must be reckoned with.  They are reaching not only millions of their own readers—they are reaching the masses of media consumers.

Michelle Malkin (“The Death Cry of Snob Journalism,” 9/15/04) quotes an arrogant but disgruntled Jonathan Klein, former CBS news executive, complaining to Fox News that a [typical] blogger is “a loose cannon and amateur yahoo. . . . a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing without any journalistic credentials or genuine commitment to checks and balances.”  (Our emphasis. We wonder, by the way: do the names Jayson Blair, Steven Glass, and Janet Cook ring any bells with Klein?--Editors)

When the CBS “exposé” had virtually unraveled, Rather had the unmitigated audacity to challenge the President to “answer the questions” raised in his widely discredited report. White House spokesman Scott McClellan fired back at Rather, “It’s always best for journalists to stick to reporting the facts and not try to dispense campaign advice.”

“Way Out There”

At this point, the “Rathergate” debacle has progressed from outrageous to surreal.

After days of dogged denials, Rather finally acknowledged (more or less) to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post that the memos he and CBS producers had used in their September 8 attack on President Bush were fakes.  Nevertheless, the discredited CBS anchor plowed stubbornly ahead, oblivious to the thick fog of his own reality disconnect and insisted to Kurtz, "I try to look people in the eye and tell them the truth.  I don't back up. I don't back down. I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces." (Jonah Goldberg, “The Perils of Dan-nial,” TownHall.com, 9/17/04)

Dan Rather’s consistent position since he was caught with his journalistic pants down has been, “We can't prove the source is true, but you can't prove it's not.”

To that, Goldberg replies, “Well, since this is the new standard, I would like to announce my next column topic right now: Dan Rather has eaten fifteen German Shepherds in the last year alone and he considers himself the Warrior King of the planet Blarnack. I have just printed out documents that back up my story. It is for CBS to prove me wrong.” (Jonah Goldberg, “Rather Be Wrong,” Sept. 15, 2004)

The following bit of Lunacy on the Left would come under the heading, “Scammed by the White House.”  The Houston Chronicle reported on Sept. 17 that a Dallas restaurant owner by the name of Harvey Gough had, like Bill Burkett (the man suspected by the Washington Post and the New York Times of being Rather’s “source”) fought a legal battle against the National Guard.  Gough claimed Bush aides such as Karl Rove could have “cooked the [memos] up” to trap CBS with a bogus story.

Another one fits in the category of “Facts Too Good to Check.”   On the second night of the Republican convention, Rather, no doubt determined to use some canned ad libs but equally determined not to let facts get in the way, declared that Arnold Schwarzenegger's speech had “slapped (Bush's) opponent, Sen. John Kerry, around like a hockey puck.”  The number of times Schwarzenegger mentioned Kerry: zero.

Another Rathergate

Knowing that intentional fraud was involved in the preparation of the documents attributed to Lt. Col. Killian, one has to wonder—and with good reason—whether Dan Rather was a party to it.

Sixteen years ago, there was another “Rathergate.”  On June 2, 1988, CBS aired an hour-long special hosted by Dan Rather entitled, The Wall Within.  In that piece, CBS purports to tell the real story of Vietnam through the eyes of six men who claimed to have fought there.  They tell stories of unbelievably brutal activities while under military orders in Vietnam and then recount the problems of drug abuse, alcoholism, joblessness, and suicidal thoughts once they returned home. Critics hailed the documentary as “extraordinarily powerful.”  But there was one problem:  Most of it was untrue.

B.G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran and author of current best seller, Stolen Valor, discovered that only one of the veterans featured in the CBS documentary had served in combat, and that individual had served as an equipment repairman stationed far from combat.  The false accounts of the remaining five are revealed in Stolen Valor, and in a short piece entitled, “The First Rathergate,” written by Anne Morse and published at National Review Online, September 15, 2004.

Burkett has noted that the records of all these vets were checkable through Freedom of Information Act requests of their military records.  But Rather and his producers simply didn’t bother to do it.  Apparently, the “facts” they were hearing from these veterans were “just too good to check.”  When angry Vietnam veterans called CBS to complain about the factual inaccuracies of The Wall Within, the executive producer who wrote the documentary brushed them off, claiming (with the arrogance that seems to be characteristic of CBS), “No one has attacked us on the facts.” 

Despite growing evidence that he’d been had, Rather continued to defend the documentary, and it is now part of CBS’s video history series on the Vietnam War. 

A Fraud—or a Fool?

It is our observation that two characteristics seem to drive Dan Rather. 

For one thing, his political agenda has clearly been more important to him than the truth. As NewsMax columnist Geoff Metcalf put it, he picked “factoids” to support a preconceived prejudice and in the end (no pun intended) he got “bit in the butt.”

The other problem is his huge ego.  He escaped from the first fraud relatively unscathed (there was no blogosphere in those days), and in time it was largely forgotten.  He apparently believes he is invincible.

Even if Rather is not guilty of deliberate fraud, this latest venture into the art of the “doctored documentary” provides more evidence of character flaws and ethical failures that may finally thrust him from the echelons of media power into the humiliating realm of public scorn.  Time will tell.