Posted on 11/11/2005 6:43:57 AM PST by bilhosty
On Friday, September 3, 2004, I was closing down my office and thinking about the Labor Day Weekend ahead when the phone rang and the caller asked whether I would be willing to work over the weekend on some important, time-sensitive documents. This was the beginning of my involvement in the examination of documents in the Bush National Guard Document/Memo-Gate news story.
This week, the book "Truth and Duty" by Mary Mapes, former CBS producer, was released. The book contains several inaccuracies in the description of my participation. Because the book is a public document, I see it as my duty to publicly state the truth about what I said and did.
Did you read your link?
This woman refutes specifics in Mary Mapes book. She points out how Mapes book is WRONG.
Just doing a story...no whims about affecting the outcome of a Presidential election. These Watergate wannabes are really something. Thats all they dream about.
We don't need no stinkin fact checks.
O'Reilly was way too soft on her, but he did drag out one telling admission. O'Reilly told her where she went wrong was not proving the documents beyond a reasonable doubt. Mapes responded by saying she believed them to be accurate beyond a reasonable doubt.
And that, in a nutshell, is how the modern liberal mind works. Their beliefs trump overwhelming evidence to the contrary, which is why Mapes refuses to admit the evidence is overwhelming that the memos are fakes. She clings to the one-in-a-trillion possibility that an officer with very limited typing skills would use an extremely advanced typewriter requiring advanced training and elaborate setup to create photo-ready quality text - for minor personnel memos destined for his own personal files. THAT is what Mapes believes and demands that others believe.
And Mapes casually restated that she had been pursuing the story for four years. That shows an Ahab-like fixation on getting Bush. Her bosses should have taken that as a warning signal that Mapes was way too personally involved and invested in the story - which led her to reject any feedback that the memos were forgeries.
She certainly does!! I think the original reference to 'CBS lying scum' was to Mapes, not Will.
What ever happened to the investigation into who gave who what?
Oh, and you left out in your analysis of the one in a trillion odds, the fact that you could recreate the document pixel for pixel by using the default settings in M$ Werd.
I wish I had the direct quote but a few days ago when Mapes was asked point blank if it was her responsibility to prove they were accurate instead of others to prove they were false, she said (paraphrasing) "no, I don't think so."
A cup of coffee can be your friend in the morning.
I wasn't even getting to that level in refuting Mapes' defense of the documents. She is addressing it on the typewriter technology issue, and, even not getting down to the pixel level of the characters, her insistences that it was possible absolutely defy rational analysis.
This analyst simply crushes Mapes. Way to go Emily.
follow the link at the top
What is fascinating to me is that Mapes, by her own admission, CONTINUES to "work" this non-story. Presumably, she has commissioned a forger to create a better set of "documents" to implicate Bush.
What will be interesting to see, once she takes receipt of the new forgeries, is if any reputable news organization (a stretch when we include the MSM), will give her the time of day, given her current reputation.
ROSS: Do you, Mary Mapes, still think these stories are true?
MAPES: The story? Absolutely.
ROSS: This seems remarkable to me that you would sit here now and say you still find that story to be up to your standards.
MAPES: I'm perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there's proof that I haven't seen.
ROSS: But isn't it the other way around? Don't you have to prove they're authentic?
MAPES: Well, I think that's what critics of the story would say. I know more now than I did then. And I think -- I think -- they have not been proved to be false yet.
ROSS: Have they proved to be authentic, though? Isn't that really what journalists do?
MAPES: No, I don't think that's the standard.
Page 167: "Emily Will and I had an unusual conversation that Monday [Sept. 6], a talk that raised questions for me about how well-suited she was to be working on this project. I called to see how her analysis was going and she told me she had a problem with the documents."
Apparently to Mapes, "well-suited" means "rubber stamp" the documents. Amazing.
During Mapes' CNN-Blitzer appearance, she appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs. IMO.
This rebuttal by Emily Will is devastating to Mapes, but Mapes seems oblivious to any criticism.
Stunning on two levels. She doesn't think proof is necessary. But, even then, there were SERIOUS doubts raised as to the authenticity of the memos. From what has come out, there were people raising the same issues that we on FR raised. But Mapes pushed them aside in her Ahab-like zeal to run with this story.
"This woman refutes specifics in Mary Mapes book. She points out how Mapes book is WRONG."
She is being polite "WRONG" is a euphemism for lie. Even if it really were a mistake then my statement calling her a liar would be "fake but accurate".
If I tried this with the Editor of The Malden Observer it would be my last day in the paper.
Mary Mapes and Dan Rather both had a personal type vendetta mindset where Bush was concerned. The bad blood between Bush and Rather went back to the Bush 41 presidency. This was all about getting GWB ... their reckless compulsion to do so backfired and both Rather and Mapes have trashed their reputation as journalists.
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