Posted on 11/01/2005 2:48:57 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
In the upcoming December issue of Vanity Fair, Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer who lost her job after the disputed "60 Minutes II" Bush/National Guard report, writes, "I must answer the bloggers, the babblers and blabbers, and the true believers who have called me everything from 'feminazi' to an 'elitist liberal' to an 'idiot.'
"If I was an idiot, it was for believing in a free press that is able to do its job without fear or favor. ...I didn't know that the attack on our story was going to be as effective as a brilliantly run national political campaign, because that is what it was: a political campaign."
The December article, not yet generally available, is an excerpt from Mapes' soon-to-be-publihsed book, "Truth and Duty" (St. Martin's) on her career and the episode often called Rathergate. Vanity Fair says Mapes sets out to "answer her critics."
Mapes writes that she had felt the Guard segment was a big success after airing on Sept. 8, 2004, until the following morning at 11 a.m. when she learned that a bunch of "far-right" Web sites were claiming that documents were forged.
That same day about 3 p.m. she recalls staring at the Drudge Report and seeing a big picture of Rather at the top and a headline saying that he was "shaken" and hiding in his office. The phone rang and it was Rather, telling her he'd just heard about the Drudge deadline and he wanted to assure her that he was not "shaken" and was not even in his office.
He signed off with a favorite expression of his: "FEA" for "---- them all."
She writes that what she didn't know at the time was that the attack on the "60 Minutes" piece was just part of the Bushites "sliming" of those who raised questions about the president.
Aftdr detailing the unraveling of the Guard segment, Mapes describes crying her eyes out at an airport bathroom after Rather tells her by phone that CBS was going to apologize for the report and appoint a commitee to investigate what went wrong. Rather also told her to get a lawyer.
Finally, she details how in that probe the question of how "liberal" she was became paramount. She likens it to the days of Sen. Joe McCarthy and charges that it was ironic that the same network that stood up to McCarthy with the Edward R. Murrow broadcasts was now caving in to similar tactics now: "Suspected liberals had become the new 'Communists...What in the world would Edward R. Murrow think of his network now?"
In the end she observes that the outside panel that probed the report and found correct procedures were lacking did not investigate the legitimacy of the documents. She claims that a researcher has since shown her typography on other documents from the period Bush was in the Guard that suggest that the memos she obtained can not be easily dismissed "as being forgeries."
She also calls one of the co-leaders of that probe, Dick Thornburgh, worse than an "empty suit...He was completely full if it."
Throughout the article, Vanity Fair frequently cuts away for bracketed response from others involved in the episode who answer or rebut some of her charges.
At one point, for example, she asserts that CBS News chief Andrew Heyward said that if the bloggers could come up with "lousy analysts" to attack the authenticity of the memos CBS could find its own "lousy analysts." In an e-mail to Vanity Fair, Heyward denied this.
They just announced on Fox and Friends that they are going to discuss Mapes' book coming up soon this morning. Not clear if Mapes herself is going to be there, but they're going to cover her claims sometime this hour.
Perhaps Mary can get a job in some Goebbel's propaganda machine. Oops, she already did that.
"Suspected liberals had become the new 'Communists"
Two peas in a pod. New Communists or old Communists, what is the difference?
Ann Coulter wrote quite a bit about Venona in her devastating book, "Treason". Prior to that, very few people were aware of it. In her book [heavilly footnoted of course], she wrote that Venona discovered that Algar Hiss was a Soviet spy. Hiss was a top advisor for FDR. They warned FDR and he said, "Go F yourself." They were able to intercept and decode Soviet cables. That's what it was all about.
FDR later ordered Venona shut down. I guess he didn't want to hear anything bad about 'Uncle Joe' Stalin. [FDR actually called Stalin 'Uncle Joe'.] They kept it running behind his back. Then Truman put Hiss in charge of founding the United Nations. They warned Truman as well. He ignored him.
Later it was Nixon if I recall correctly, who proved Hiss was a spy. Key word for search would be 'pumpkin papers'. Coulter wrote about the smear campaign to protect Hiss. Yes, the left wing media was very dominant during the fifties.
I would guess... just Arthur in tinfoil here speaking... that some of that New Deal money got funnelled to prop up a left wing media and a left wing college network. There are simply too many opportunities for mischief when the government has New Deal projects. Too many new, radical projects all at once are perfect for a political machine to exploit. It takes decades to uncover layers of corruption and abuse.
In fact, there is an indication that there was power weilded against the religious right prior to the Roaring Twenties. The Miracle of Fatima was buried by a World Series baseball game. And when the Fatima prophesy about a Soviet Empire proved correct, it was kept quiet. Why? It was big news. It would have generated lots of newspaper sales. Makes not one bit of sense to me, unless one assumes there was a media bias prior to 1920.
That is why the Big 3 have lost their anchors and massive amounts viewers. Their stranglehold on the news is DEAD!
Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead!
Our enemies...Communists, terrorists and CBS News.
Okay, the segment on Fox and Friends is over, they did not have Mapes on. They just talked among themselves about the excerpt in Vanity Fair, and threw in the stuff about Mike Wallace thought Cap'n Dan should have resigned over Memogate, LOL! Main focus of the segment was more on the internal strife at CBS News than the forgeries.
I didn't know that the STORY was going to be as effective as a POORLY run political campaign, because that's what it was: a political campaign.
Amazon.com Sales Rank: None
On Amazon there is only one editorial review...from the inside flap! What a joke.
And 2. FEA stands for "f**k 'em all", not "f**k them all".
uh, actually, they are exactly the OLD Communists...hardcore neo-Stalinist pieces of sh*t each and every one.
She is still in denial. Our president had proven himself as commander in chief, but she hoped this story would do damage and affect the election. The story she should have done is that John Kerry met with the leadership of the VVAW and actually voted on whether to whack US Senators who supported the Vietnam War. He quit his leadership post that day but did not report it to the FBI. That is the military story that should have been reported.
Oh geez let me take it a step further. Ms. Mapes: could you please show us the original copies and we'll take it from there.
She may be the sharpening stone for the ugly stick.
Yes she did, I have the book.
But I heard about Venona prior to that, when the CIA released it to the public under FOI. I had it on my 'puter in .pdf, that is until my wonderful - wonderful, 'award winning' DELL HD crashed -- for the 3rd time.
I also lost the McCarthy Hearing documents which had also been released, that really ticked me off.
The thing is that this story is the archetypical example of the power of the blogosphere. Here is the timeline of how Buckhead et al exposed the documents as frauds: Bloggers Run Rings Around The Partisan, Lazy Old Media. Let's see if I can put this in terms Mapes and the rest of MSM can understand.
Say that Karl Rove told one of his VRWC minions, say maybe NonValueAddded, that one of his deep cover agents codename Judy Miller was in real trouble and that he needed a document produced that showed an editor changed all her copy to be supportive of the war, that Miller really was critical of the administration. I gulp and say "yes, your diabolical geniusship." Having no real experience at a newspaper, I grab an "editing for dummies" book at B&N and proceed to mark up a story that fits the wily Rove's spec. We float that story as breaking news on the Hannity and Colmes show. What would happen?
Mapes would spot my workproduct as a phony almost as fast as TankerKC could say "we need to see that story copy again." The thing is that NVA is not part of the journalism community - well, the old one at least. I wouldn't know the lingo or the mechanics and I certainly wouldn't have access to how things were done a few years ago at Miller's paper. I could fool the general public but for those from the newspaper subculture, my attempt would be transparent and quickly exposed. Well, the military is a subculture too and bureaucratic to boot. There are ways the military operates that are familiar to those within and completely foreign to those outside.
Now consider what is Free Republic. It is a gathering place for like-minded individuals that happen to include a good percentage of military and ex-military. Peruse any live thread such as the one in question and you will see how easily military subject matter experts happen to be present. When something comes up in their area of expertise, BAM! Now consider that Buckhead just happened to have expertise on fonts and the rest is history. Mapes unfortunately blundered into the perfect storm. She didn't know what she didn't know. It is pitiful that she is trying to keep the lie going when it is so crystal clear that the exposure of the documents was no fluke but rather the power of community, of an editorial board thousands strong with dozens it not hundreds reviewing her work product.
lol don't mince words, tell us what you really think :)
Actually the Verona papers predate the Venona papers by a large margin. I think they were written by some guy called Billy Shakespeare. :)
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