Posted on 12/27/2004 3:28:56 AM PST by Osama Is My DNC Chairman
LAMB: Somebody out there in the ether told me that you have documents from the Carter transition time as part of your collection.
WILLIAMS: I do.
LAMB: What is that?
WILLIAMS: They were in a desk drawer and I found them. I was assigned a desk in the Old Executive Office Building. This is one of the great quirks of the history of the last 40 years and I know who this is, you’ve been talking to and it makes perfect sense. And I have the original list of potential vice presidents, the original IBM Selectric with corrections, something that’s been in the news of late, the original list of potential vice presidential choices for the new president. I have the kind of, how do we get started memorandum where Carter’s handwriting is visible saying, transfer all calls to Plains. Here’s how to answer the phone. Carter transition office, Governor Carter is not in, but may I take a message?
The president, who was later so famous for his love of and immersion in the minutiae of office, is clearing seen doing the same before he is even in office. And I’m very lucky to have these. I guess it’s squatter’s rights. I will probably hand them over to their rightful owners. I’ll keep only a Xerox and I’ll give the papers to the Carter library. Truth be told, my wife and I live in a converted barn. These were missing for a period of about 10 years during which time I shared the story with no one and was perspiring heavily about it until recently when, in trying to track down a mouse, I moved a wall panel. Lo and behold, they were in the same red manila folder that they were in in the Carter White House
(Excerpt) Read more at q-and-a.org ...
Now, NBC's new anchor has admitted that he STOLE documents from the Carter White House, and held on to them for more than 25 years. Even if he gives them back to the White House, doesn't this act of long-term dishonesty pretty much disqualify him as a serious and ethical journalist worthy of the anchor's chair?
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What I want to know is why Sandy Berger isn't yet in leg-irons busting rocks.
Hounded? Surely you exagerate.
"Dan Rather was hounded from his anchor's chair for mishandling documents, even though no laws were broken."
I am sure that using forged military documents to try to unseat a President is against the law.
Legal question for all: Can a U.S. citizen claim "standing" and file charges against these document thieves? Could we get a FR class action going? Other angles? Getting them served on camera would be a good start...sure to be a hit on Drudge and Rush and other shows....
900 FBI files are still out there and tend to make people cautious.
Semper Fi,
"...the original list of potential vice presidential choices for the new president."
Huh? How did he get elected without already having picked a VP?
"NBC's new anchor has admitted that he STOLE documents from the Carter White House"
Doesn't the statute of limitations for prosecution start with our discovery of the crime? Let's clamor. What are the most important pressure points we can come up with...yes, the advertisers, the execs,--but how about FReeping his neighborhood...ProtestWarrior style? Real local shame and derision, "just in case" we can't get our other bureaucracies off their butts to do the job....
Rather manipulated documents in an effort to push a story designed to affect a presidential election. Such an effort should have led to Rather's downfall. Williams was a college kid who got no pay as an intern. He probably thought of them as a momento at the end of his internship. While he shouldn't have taken the papers, they don't appear to compromise national security nor would they compromise any kind of investigation or election. So, I'm not going to try to draw any kind of equivalency.
A private citizen can report a crime to the authorities and even arrest perpetrators. A citizen can be asked if they wish to file charges against an individual. However, a private citizen, ultimately,does not have the authority to initiate the prosectution of a crime. That authority rests in a district/county attorney or US attorney. The prosecutor has broad discretion in criminal matters.
The only person/entity with the authority to prosecute would be the US attorney's office or an office associated with the WH or national archives. If these guys were not willing to prosecute Berger, I seriously doubt that they are going to go after Williams for what happened 25 years ago. A class action lawsuit is an action taken in civil court.
How do you figure Williams "stole" these items? Isn't that for the original owner to say whether or not they were stolen?
If they were considered trash, they could hardly be stolen could they?
As much as I dislike Williams, this is pretty weak and in no way disqualifies him for anything.
You're not alone.
If these were national security files, personnel files or dossiers, it would be problematic. This is just a list of VP nominees. On a moral level, this is equivalent to sticking a Ritz-Carlton towel or ashtray in your suitcase. It's theft, but not nearly on the level with what Sandy Berger did.
Interesting that they were hidden behind a panel, which is odd, and that he was "perspiring heavily" about having taken out the trash after all these years. Sounds like he thought he stole them, and was worried about the consequences if word got out.
LOL! What a perfect card to explain "Jimmay" Carter.
Chill, dude.
I listened to last night's Q&A, and while I believe Brian Williams does not know how to take a breath, the following excerpt, to me, was more newsworthy than the subject of this thread:
LAMB: I mean, how do you – so much the conservative media criticize anchors living in New York City and in Connecticut for being isolated and never paying attention to their thought. How do you – do you ever listen to the Limbaugh show or any of that stuff?
WILLIAMS: Oh, often, often, and I’m one of the few in a very select group that Rush has allowed on when I’ve called in from the car. I do listen to Rush. I listen to it from a radio in my office or depending on my day, if I’m in the car, I will listen to Rush and he will tell you I’ve been listening for years. I think it’s my duty to listen to Rush. I think Rush has actually yet to get the credit he is due because his audience for so many years felt they were in the wilderness of this country. No one was talking to them. They would look at mainstream media and they’d hear sentences like the following: Conservative firebrand Newt Gingrich today accused Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy….
Well, what’s wrong with that sentence? My friend Brit Hume – we covered the White House together, always would call reporters on this. Where’s the appellation for Ted Kennedy in that sentence, you remembers of the perhaps unintentionally liberal media? Why aren’t you calling Kennedy something if you’re going to label Newt Gingrich a conservative firebrand? That’s what Rush did. Rush said to millions of Americans, you have a home. Come with me. For three hours a day you can listen and hear the like minded calling in from across the country and I’ll read to you things perhaps you didn’t see that are out there. I think Rush gave birth to the FOX news channel. I think Rush helped to give birth to a movement. I think he played his part in the contract with America. So I hope he gets his due as a broadcaster.
That is an answer that is meant to be absent ideology. But if you’re anchoring a blue state broadcast that is headquartered in a blue state, it’s incumbent on you to know as much as you can. I like to feel I grew up in a red spot in a blue state. Elmira, New York, the Elmira of my youth, was classic small town America. My wife and I vacation in Yellowstone National Park every year out in the west. I feel I know that area intimately. I go down to the house where I was born, where my sister now lives in New Jersey. I visit my old fire house.
I feel I have a good, almost again to use the word tactile feel for America. Because of my roots and certainly nothing fancy, an education that was just middle of the road, I had to start out at a community college locally because that’s all my guidance counselor in high school thought I’d be up for. I feel I have a pretty good idea of what the message was in this last election and what real Americans eat, sleep, breathe, what they do, what they are and what they’re passionate about. And to make sure we know, we’re going to take this broadcast on the air, on the road rather. We’re going to get out. It’s one thing to guess about what’s important in Ohio and Las Vegas and Alamagordo (ph). It’s another thing to go there, put a microphone in front of someone and say, tell us about your life. How do you see the country right now?
What?
Oh, c'mon! I left the Air Force with a souvenir aeronautical chart and this is the same sort of thing. The only possible response to treating it as a serious failing is "get a life!"
What?
Hey, it's all about his personal life, leave him alone /clintonoid mode
Count the number of times he used the word "feel" in that short conversation.. People who "feel" instead of "think" make me nervous.
I really had a tough time listening to Williams. Lamb should play poker because he never let on that he was annoyed.
My favorite thing about Brian Williams is the size of the shoulder pads in many of the suits he wears.
I reminds me of the old shoulder pads that the chamionship Oklahoma Sooners wore in the 50s and 60s. They were enormous.
If you look, the shoulder seams are 2 to 3 inches beyond his shoulders. I always wonder who the hell is making those suits for him?
But elsewhere in his interview, Williams talks about how he's just an ordinary red-state, Rush Limbaugh-listening regular guy, who buys his suits off the rack at the same places everybody else does.
Are you suggesting that he is lying -- that he has his suits custom-made?
He couldn't POSSIBLY be lying about that... nor could he cynically be mentioning Rush in the hope of de-fanging potential conservative critics, could he?
wrong.
rather and his assistant mary mapes knew that the documents were forgeries. mapes' father even spoke to the issue.
rather's been doing this kind of stuff his whole career.
rather deliberately used the forged documents for the purpose of unseating a president of the united states.
Yes, if the aeronautical chart were a unique and irreplaceable document, which you knew would be of value to a Presidential (or war?) library, then indeed it is the same sort of thing. But if it were merely a cool item, readily replaceable, then it's not the same thing at all.
Remember, Williams acknowledged that he was "perspiring heavily" upon realizing that he might have lost this valuable document. He knew the gravity of what he had done.
Of course, compared to what Berger, Billary and others have done, Williams' theft is "small potatoes." But it is still serious, especially for a supposedly ethical journalist.
I wonder how many conservatives will read (or listen to) the Williams interview, and upon noting his positive assessment of Rush will "give him a pass" for his unethical activities. You just KNOW that if Jennings or Rather had taken a Reagan administration document, the conservative movement would be ALL OVER them.
Please, if Karl Rove or Newt Gingrich were "accused" of something like this I (and you) would shrug it off. If his account is accurate, what he took was a souvenir, of more interest to an antiquarian or a collector than an historian.
In this world, you gotta know which battles to fight and which to take a pass on. The Rather fiasco had implications on the presidential election. This admission has no such implications other than an opportunity to put a stain on a media guy. Bottom line: this is not a big enough deal to warrant expending resources on.
Un-Freaking-Believeable Ping
That's an almost-oxymoron.
I really don'tn see this a stealing and given they are from a President who will not be highly regarded in history, I see little value in them. Someone left some old documents in a desk drawer and he was assigned that desk. He could have just thrown them away.
Williams was a young guy at the time .. though it's not right that he took them .. there is no big scandal
But let me put on my conspiracy hat on for a moment
An IBM Selectric huh??
Hmmmmmm
Gee this conspiracy stuff can be fun *L*
How come these guys are not prosecuted??????
"Somebody out there in the ether told me that you have documents ..."
I wonder who threw Williams under the bus? Probably somebody who wants his job. Or perhaps it was a parting gift from Brokaw.
No big scandal. Just a revelation of the man's character. He took documents that he recognized were of historical importance, whether or not you consider that they were. He considered them important enough that he was "perspiring heavily" at the prospect of being discovered as the one who took, and lost, the documents. Yet in spite of such concern, he didn't find a way to give them back. He very easily could have returned them anonymously, or in some other way done the right thing. But he didn't.
This doesn't rise to the level of what Berger, or Ellsberg, or any number of others have done. But neither Berger nor Ellsberg tried to pass themselves off as ethical journalists.
I wonder how many documents are lying around the offices of NBC or General Electric, waiting for someone with Williams' ethics to "discover" them and take them home? Was it "no big deal" for Williams to steal documents pertaining to the Ford/Carter transition? If so, I trust he will acknowledge that it will be even less of a big deal if NBC/GE employees steal any interesting documents pertaining to the Brokaw/Williams transition.
Don't you see? Yes, the documents may indeed be trivial, unless you are a presidential historian or the curator of the Carter library.
But Williams admits that he is not one of the "rightful owners" of the document.
Where I come from, if you take something when you know you are not its rightful owner, that is called stealing. And it was a significant enough theft, in Williams' own mind, that by his own admission he was "perspiring heavily" at the prospect of being caught.
Yep, this particular case is no big scandal .. I already said it was wrong that he took them .. but he also didn't lie about having the document
If he took more documents then this ... then it's a problem for him
As for Williams character? ... I think most of us know what kind of reporter he is
I was wondering that myself
"Hounded"?, "Mishandling documents"?
Are you insane?
Earth to OIMDC: Rather aired FAKE documents that were intended to bring down a sitting president.
Go cry about it somewhere discreetly and stop embarrassing yourself in public.
What a disgrace.
He works for NBC, that already disqualifies him in my opionion.
Of course it was stealing, but there are a whole lot of ways people steal that we are not going to prosecute. Padding an expense account or a mileage report a single bit, taking an extra fifteen minutes for lunch, coming home with a highlighter or ballpoint pen and it winds up in your desk drawer. Strolling through FR, when your boss is paying you to put in a full day's work. All of these would be a form of stealing.
Do you want to continue to freak out over something like this? If so, OIMC, your behavior is hysterical. You need heavy medication. Stop and VERY SLOWLY step away from your keyboard.
Well cut Mr. Williams some slack. At least he didn't forge them..........
;-)
BTTT
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