Per Drudge, Dan Rather has released a statement:
Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush’s time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.
That is close to what they said but there are some key differences. Here is the actual statement (from 9/15):
"We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television. There was a great deal of corroborating evidence from people in a position to know. Having said that, given all the questions about them, we believe we should redouble our efforts to answer those questions, so that’s what we are doing."
Translation:
"The memos are legitimate. We believe they are legitimate. We believe the story is legitimate. Some people who do not agree are raising questions which we cannot answer. After ignoring these questions for 5 days, they did not go away as we had hoped. Therefore, we find ourselves needing to look into whether they have any merit (which they do not) to preserve what little credibility we have left."
Here we are, 12 days after the original 60 Minutes II broadcast and 11 days into the firestorm now known as memogate and it appears that CBS is still trying to spin their way out of it instead of coming clean.
Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically.
...only personalistically and ideologically…
I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press,
...which they found themselves unable to shout down…
leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.
..."the documents in question” meaning “the questionable documents”...
But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. 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.
Now that, my friends is a warm, steaming load of crap. The story was a hit piece on a Republican presidential candidate from Dan Rather (a Democrat) using information from Bill Burkett (another Democrat). The lack of authenticity of the documents is obvious enough that amateurs easily identified and cataloged a long list of flaws both in form and content. We now know that some of the experts used by CBS raised questions but were ignored. CBS had to run through a series of red lights to get into this train wreck.
Please know that nothing is more important to us than people’s trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.
It is a bummer when you sacrifice what you identify as your most important goal in order to take a shot at someone you would rather not see re-elected. The initial report was both unfair and untruthful, and the irony of the entire mess is that it could have been cleaned up so easily with a simple retraction and apology on September 10th.
Here is the retraction - 10 days too late, but do not mistake this for an apology. He apologizes for a “lack of judgment” immediately after whining that they were misled on how their source came to posses the documents; yet there was ample evidence within the documents alone to kill this story.
The true lack of judgment was to ignore the evidence before their eyes and the opinions of several of their hired experts. Admitting that will be almost as devastating to their credibility as not admitting it.
