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Dan RatherÂ’s Last Big Story Is Himself By Joe Hagan Published Nov 25, 2007 If he werenÂ’t famous, heÂ’d be mistaken for a veteran of a long-ago war: khaki safari shirt on his back, scuffed combat boots on his feet, that wiry crest of a brow, rheumy eyes under heavy lids, lower lip jutting out like an ornery fish resisting a hook. When Dan Rather sits on a bench in Central Park to tell how his 44-year career at CBS News ended in ignominy and humiliation, he is in fact still waging a war, a bitter and personal one. And...

November 09, 2005 Mary Mapes Names Names ("Anonymous" Ones) Posted by Bill An excerpt from page 201 of her new book: Within minutes of Buckhead's original posting, Freepers began to repeat and embellish Buckhead's thoughts. Not surprisingly, they all agreed with him, they all agreed with one another, and they all agreed this should be pursued aggressively. Freethinkers they are not. The Freepers and their lockstep like-minded fellow travelers moved as a group, like a school of sharks sweeping toward an unaware and unarmed victim. CBS was like some sunburned, overweight Florida tourist with a cut foot, floundering and flapping...

RUSH: Okay, gotta hear this. We got a lot more sound bites of this, but this is the money sound bite. Brian Ross today talking to Mary Mapes of CBS says, "After 12 years of defending him, CBS and Dan Rather later admitted they couldn't vouch for the authenticity of the documents, Bill Burkett's documents, and that they should not have been used and the story should not have aired. Do you," Mary Mapes, "still think the story was true?" MAPES: The story? Absolutely. ROSS: This seems remarkable to me that you would sit here now and say you still...

After a year of silence about the biggest scandal in CBS News history, Mary Mapes has plenty to say -- about George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Les Moonves, her father, bloggers, the mainstream press and others who she believes contributed to her downfall. What took her so long? "I was extremely battered," she said in an interview yesterday. "I'd had months and months of having my head kicked around a soccer stadium by much of the Western world. I needed some time to regroup." Mapes is now pushing a book, called "Truth and Duty," about the botched "60 Minutes II"...

If special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald delivers indictments of a few functionaries of the vice president’s office or the White House, we are likely to have on our hands a constitutional crisis. The evidence of widespread wrongdoing and conspiracy is before every American with a cheap laptop and a cable television subscription. And we do not have the same powers of subpoena granted to Fitzgerald. We know, however, based upon what we have read and seen and heard that someone created fake documents related to Niger and Iraq and used them as a false pretense to launch America into an invasion...

Dan Rather still doesn't get it. Rather spoke Monday at Fordham University School of Law in Manhatten and, with lips-a-quivering and eyes-a-watering, said that "there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career." Spare us the phony tears, Dan. The fear in the newsroom is that you guys no longer have a stranglehold on what gets out to the American people. Remember those forged documents, Dan? I played an early role of proving that your unimpeachable source, Bill Burkett, was as loony as Cindy Sheehan after 3 fingers...

Having worked with Bartlett and Rove, I think I can tell you what the strategy and approach is. I'll try to explain briefly. #1. The disaster in all states was a disaster, but the WH lost control of the headlines only in New Orleans because Haley Barbour and his Republican Alabama counterpart have continued to spin the reactions there. The feedback is not all good, but the spin control is in the hands of the Republicans. Already someone leaked the strategy of Rove and Bartlett concerning blaming Louisiana and the local governments. Let me take what the NY Times said...

Crawford, TX Several major liberal groups and mainline news outlets had to retreat from their latest anti-war campaign this week when they lost their latest human shield, grieving Army-mom Cindy Sheehan. Mrs. Sheehan, who lost her son, Casey, in the Iraq war 14 months ago, announced today that she was leaving her makeshift camp here to care for her ailing mother amid loud protests from MoveOn.org, MANBLA and Alec Baldwin.

I may have been too quick and too generous in giving John Kerry the benefit of the doubt about the full and complete release of his military records, as reported by the Boston Globe on Tuesday. As Thomas Lipscomb details in today's Chicago Sun-Times, some questions and confusion remain. The exact details will most likely get sorted out in time, but just for the moment let's consider the one aspect of this story that we know for sure: Kerry released his records exclusively to The Boston Globe. This is an odd decision for someone seeking end speculation regarding the whole...

Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer from 60 Minutes who gave us Rathergate, has won the first journalism award given in memory of two of the worst rogues in the history of the profession, Walter Duranty and Jayson Blair. Duranty and Blair were both reporters for the New York Times, America's most corrupt newspaper. To borrow from NBA commissioner David Stern, on his decision to suspend Ron Artest and the other Indiana Pacers thugs in the recent "basketbrawl," the vote "was unanimous, 1-0." As previously detailed here, Mapes was guilty of no less than three major journalistic offenses -- her...

Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer from 60 Minutes who gave us Rathergate, has won the first journalism award given in memory of two of the worst rogues in the history of the profession, Walter Duranty and Jayson Blair. Duranty and Blair were both reporters for the New York Times, America’s most corrupt newspaper. To borrow from NBA commissioner David Stern, on his decision to suspend Ron Artest and the other Indiana Pacers thugs in the recent “basketbrawl,” the vote “was unanimous, 1-0.” As previously detailed, Mapes was guilty of no less than three major journalistic offenses -- her “Shot...

Well, "Black Rock" isn't the Tower of London, and we no longer behead those who seek to topple the government, as Elizabeth I's executioner did Mary, Queen of Scots, but CBS' corporate headquarters will have to do, as the media world awaits whatever passes for the sentencing and punishment of news fraud Mary Mapes, who gave the world Rathergate, among other infamous episodes. Any day now, possibly even today, the CBS News internal Rathergate report will be completed and read by the "suits" in the suites at Black Rock. When Rathergate became a full-blown scandal, CBS appointed former U.S. Attorney...

A crowd of about 90 people at the state convention for Tejano Democrats stood up Sunday afternoon in a ballroom at the Omni Bayfront Hotel, clinking their glasses with spoons, applauding and chanting, "Kerr-Y, Kerr-Y," for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. David Van Os, a Democratic candidate for the Texas Supreme Court who is running against Justice Scott Brister, had just reminded them of the state's Democratic roots. "Don't believe anybody who tells you this is a rebuilding year for the Democrats of Texas. The hell it is!" Van Os said, reminding listeners that Texas voted for Carter in 1980....

From CBS to the Slammer Prosecute Rathergate masterminds. More than any in recent memory, this year's presidential race has pushed the First Amendment to the breaking point — and beyond. On one side of that fault line are communications that, despite having the sharpest of elbows, deserve full constitutional protection. On the other lies CBS's excellent adventure in forgery. Rathergate merits the prosecution of anyone who knowingly trafficked in phony papers designed to throw a race for the White House. President Bush's critics have said plenty about him that goes well beyond civil discourse. Within the left lobe of the...

What do you say? By Bill Burkett Online Journal Contributing Writer March 19, 2003—I've sat in total grief for the past three years, watching the institutions of America being spent as if they were lottery winnings. I don't want to say it, "But I told you so." In January of 1998 and what seems like a full lifetime ago, I was stricken by a deadly case of meningoencephalitis. I was returning from a short duty trip to Panama as a team chief to inspect the hand over of Ft. Clayton to the Panamanians. I had been 'loaned' from the senior...

Say good night, Dan. Dan Rather's journalism career is surely over. When he got snookered by the forged memos peddled by longtime Bush enemy Bill Burkett, a retired Texas Army National Guard lieutenant colonel, and the fraud was exposed by a 'lousy Internet site,' instead of Rather re-investigating the story, he stonewalled, took the offensive, engaged in a "modified, limited hangout" (the September 21 New York Post) and attacked his critics. Once he admitted that something wasn't quite right about the "documents," he even tried to take credit for determining that a hoax had taken place. Rather acted less like...

In this PM Edition of the DUmmie FUnnies, we have served up a full buffet of DUmmie paranoia. Now normally when a DUmmie goes on an overly long rant, I snip out only a portion of it for your perusal. However, today’s DUmmie feast is so rich in paranoia, that I am quoting in full (in the colored font) the leadoff post of one “Dems Will Win,” a DUmmie whose rantings exceed even the typical delusional visions on that site. So grab yourself a place at the table and dine on roast brain of DUmmie, served with large dollops of...

<p>Former National Guard commander Bill Burkett has become the first player in the CBS forged document scandal to implicate John Kerry's presidential campaign, telling the Fort Worth Star Telegram that top Kerry aide Joe Lockhart pressed him to turn over damaging evidence on George Bush.</p>

Just reported on Fox News, Fox and Friends, that Burkett is quoted in an article as stating that Joe Lockhart of the Kerry campaign pressured Burkett to release the documents to him!

As the Memogate scandal continues to evolve, the DUmmies have begun to turn on their former hero, Bill Burkett. Was Burkett a shill for KARL ROVE? In the world of the DUmmies he probably was. So put on your tinfoil hats, break out the popcorn, and watch as the DUmmies put on another entertaining show for us in this PM edition of the DUmmie FUnnies. The comments of your humble correspondent are in [brackets]: Im getting pretty fed up with Burkett HE faxed the sh*t to CBS, now he blames CBS? How the f**k did THEY dupe HIM? Is there...

David Van Os said that it was CBS’ intention from the outset to cast Bill Burkett in an unfavorable light. “Dan Rather and CBS were intending all along to use the interview to dump on (Burkett),” Van Os said. “What we got was a bunch of mealy-mouthed bull****.” Van Os said that Burkett had to think long and hard about what to do with the documents in his possession. “Bill was very reluctant to give CBS the documents; because he did not want to become caught up in what he knew would be created if he did,” Van Os said....

Now we know what Bill Burkett (aka Lucy Ramirez) used to create his obvious forgeries for Dan Rather's "sugar coat" smear campaign. Hint: it wasn't a typewriter. But it wasn't Microsoft Word either! See the truth revealed . . .

<p>Bill Burkett, the man identified yesterday by CBS as the source of the controversial documents used in its September 8 “60 Minutes II” report questioning President Bush’s Air National Guard service, plans to sue the network, the NY SUN reports.</p>

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Memo lawyer is party activistBy Rowan ScarboroughTHE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished September 22, 2004 The attorney for the man who leaked discredited memos to CBS News' Dan Rather is a Democratic Party activist in Texas who has vowed to defeat what he says is a White House "master plan" for "a one-party America."     David Van Os, a San Antonio lawyer and defender of retired Texas Air National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett's role in supplying forged memos detrimental to President Bush, has held a number of local party posts, including chairman of the Travis County Democratic Party.     Mr. Van...

Embattled former National Guardsman Bill Burkett, the source of CBS's forged documents has more ties to the Kerry for Senate campaign, RatherBiased.com has learned. In a message posted on the Texas Democrats message board that everyone has been looking through of late, RatherBiased.com discovered that Burkett was an official "City Captain" for an event sponsored by the Kerry campaign. Shades of Ben Ginsberg and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? We're not sure how much of a connection there is between the CBS memos and Texas and national Democrats, this latest development is interesting. Certainly, those media orgs who reported Ginsberg's...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - CBS News faced new charges of journalistic impropriety on Tuesday, a day after the network said it regretted using questionable documents in a report challenging President Bush (news - web sites)'s military service. At issue was a report in USA Today that the source of the documents gave them to CBS only after the network agreed to arrange a conversation between the source and the presidential campaign of Bush's opponent, Democratic Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites). Experts in media ethics said if the report were true, CBS may have overstepped the boundary between journalism...

ABC News' Beth Loyd reports: "When the news broke that Joe Lockhart had talked to Bill Burkett, the troops huddled at the front of the plane for almost the duration of the 40-minute flight from Cincinnati to Cleveland, and they all looked very serious. When asked about the story, a spokesman honestly seemed to have no idea about it and after having read the story said, 'this is nothing. They already knew that Cleland talked to Burkett.'" But his face did not show indifference."

"I want to say, personally and directly, I'm sorry," a subdued Rather said Monday on the CBS Evening News."CBS To Probe Memo Story

Bill Burkett, the man identified yesterday by CBS as the source of the controversial documents used in its September 8 "60 Minutes II" report questioning President Bush's Air National Guard service, plans to sue the network, according to Mr. Burkett's former lawyer, David Van Os. -snip- The CBS statement said: "Burkett ... admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source." -snip- Mr. Rather attached a statement to the CBS News release, saying, "I find we have...

A spit-take scoop from USA Today: CBS arranged for a confidential source to talk with Joe Lockhart, a top aide to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, after the source provided the network with the now-disputed documents about President Bush's service in the Texas National Guard. Lockhart, the former press secretary to President Clinton, said a female producer talked to him about the 60 Minutes program a few days before it aired on Sept. 8. She gave Lockhart a telephone number and asked him to call Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard officer who gave CBS the documents. Lockhart couldn't...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Monday, Sept. 20, 2004 10:13 p.m. EDTBurkett: I Warned CBS to Authenticate Documents Former National Guard commander Bill Burkett said Monday night that he warned producers at CBS that they needed to authenticate documents he gave them that were critical of President Bush's National Guard record - because he couldn't guarantee they were real. "Before I gave up any documents I wanted to know what you were going to do with them," Burkett told CBS anchorman Dan Rather. "And I insisted that they be authenticated." Rather admitted that CBS had failed to heed their primary source's warning....

Heard on Joe Scarborough--talking about it now.

From MSNBC.com: CBS said Burkett, a retired National Guard lieutenant colonel, had provided the documents. In a press release accompanying Heyward's statement, CBS said that Burkett "also admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source." What an unbelievable journalistic scandal. Is it even imagineable that "60 Minutes" would have taken documents from a "Clinton hater" with a similar background and then, in a rush to smear him, short-circuit all of the normal rules to get to...

On August 11, Bob Tuke, the Tennessee state chair of Veterans for Kerry, told a Nashville radio station that, soon, "We may also know why Bush failed to show up for his medical exam that caused him to lose his flight status." A few weeks later, on September 1, liberal blogger Joshua Micah Marshall reported that Dan Rather was working on a 60 Minutes story about Bush and the Guard. On September 2, the day Bush accepted his party's nomination in New York, the online magazine Salon published an exhaustive investigation into the "unanswered questions" surrounding the president's service. On...

It's fairly clear to me that the media is about ready to name former Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett as the source of the forged memos in the "Danron Affair" and hope that things end there. CBS is, I'm quite sure, ready to pounce upon this line. They probably won't fire Dan Rather. Instead, they'll fire producer Mary Mapes (the apparent driving force behind the story) and then plead they were duped by a man who, it just happens, has spent time in mental institutions and can therefore be depicted as a crazy fraudster. However, it is equally...

Much has been made in this election year of the bias demonstrated by the mainstream media for the Liberal ideals of the Democratic party. Finally, the Liberal attack dog they've created has turned back to bite it's owner. In the rush to out-"Bush"Whack the rest, CBS has, at the least, failed to properly investigate a story that has now cast a hurricane cloudbank over there journalistic credibility. At most, many think Dan Rather knew these documents were forgeries and committed fraud by reporting them as genuine. It was bad enough that they didn't back down and apologize when Dan Rather's...

CBS Talks With Suspected Source of Documents Network to Air Interview in Effort to Resolve Dispute Over Bush Guard Memos' Authenticity By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A14 CBS News anchor Dan Rather has interviewed the retired lieutenant colonel widely believed to have helped provide "60 Minutes" with the disputed National Guard documents about President Bush that have created a credibility crisis for the network, and CBS plans to air the interview in the coming days. The on-camera sit-down with Bill Burkett, who has urged Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks,"...

<p>CBS Rather has interviewed retired lieutenant colonel Bill Burkett widely believed to have provided disputed National Guard documents. CBS plans to air interview in coming days, WASH POST reports Monday, sources tell DRUDGE. Rather was in Texas over the weekend for the interview with Burkett... Developing...</p>

RatherBiased.com has obtained every message typed by former National Guardsman Bill Burkett in the past year before Memogate on the the Yahoo Texas Democratic message groups. One of the lists is comprised of 62 messages and 43 Word pages. Fortunately, here they are easily searchable on the same HTML page and numbered. They are contained here and here. We provide some of the highlights from the TexasDemocrat2 group, but there are many, many more notable "red flags" that can be searched out. Rather's Memogate broke on Sep. 8. Message # 1 (Sep 4): I believe that Bush knows that there...

Ex-guardsman gave Bush records to Cleland AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A retired Texas National Guard officer mentioned as a source of disputed documents on President Bush's service in the Guard said he passed along information to a former senator working with Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry's campaign. In an Aug. 21 e-mail to a list of Texas Democrats, Bill Burkett said after getting through "seven layers of bureaucratic kids" in the Kerry campaign, he talked with former Sen. Max Cleland, Georgia Democrat, about information that would counter criticism of Mr. Kerry's Vietnam War service.

WHAT'S NEW ========== Burkett Calls for 'Blood,' Says He Contacted Dem. Sen. Cleland --RatherBiased.com has obtained every message typed by former National Guardsman Bill Burkett in the past year before Memogate on the the Yahoo Texas Democratic message groups. One of the lists is comprised of 62 messages and 43 Word pages. Fortunately, here they are easily searchable on the same HTML page and numbered. They are contained here and here . We provide some of the highlights from the TexasDemocrat2 group, but there are many, many more notable "red flags" that can be searched out. Rather's Memogate broke on...

Sept. 27 issue - CBS insiders are increasingly worried that the credibility of the network's news division has been grievously damaged by anchor Dan Rather's persistent defense of a story which relied on questionable documents about George W. Bush's National Guard service. "This has clearly hurt us," one veteran correspondent told NEWSWEEK. Network sources describe finger-pointing within the news division, with concerns greatest among "60 Minutes" producers, who fear the issue has tainted their entire program. While CBS News president Andrew Heyward has publicly backed Rather, the network has quietly assembled a team of additional producers to work the case....

Bill Burkett - Crazy. Isolated. A nut-case. The press would like us to think that Bill Burkett is an alienated lone wolf, a disabled former member of the National Guard working independent of all power bases. Nothing is further from the truth. Far from being a wacked-out loner, Bill Burkett is powerful and influential figure in TX Democrat Circles... http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Texas-Democrats/message/7278From: "Stan Merriman" Date: Fri Sep 17, 2004 2:11 pm Subject: Bill Burkett and David Van Os vs. Karl Rove Fellow Progressive Populist Caucus Members: Our brother, Bill Burkett is under siege by the Carl Rove smear machine. Bill is a...

Mitch and all Democrats, This is long - but I urge you to read it. I'm sorry but the whole strategy on this has been poor, slow of foot and anemic. It accents that Kerry is actually "flip flopping" in that he is slow to act, and then doesn't seem to have a single plan, but instead seems to have two plans. First, we all knew the swift boat book and attack ads were coming. I knew about them in May, for God's sake. I saw postings on this site in Early July. There didn't seem to be a clear...

AUSTIN, Texas - A retired Texas National Guard official mentioned as a possible source for disputed documents about President Bush (news - web sites)'s service in the Guard said he passed along information to a former senator working with John Kerry (news - web sites)'s campaign. Also Saturday, a White House official said Bush has reviewed disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972 and did not recall having seen them previously. The long-running story on Bush's Texas Air National Guard service took an unusual twist when CBS broadcast a report on...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Saturday, Sept. 18, 2004 9:10 p.m. EDTForged Doc 'Source': I Contacted Kerry Campaign AUSTIN - A retired Texas National Guard official mentioned as a possible source for disputed documents about President Bush's service in the Guard said he passed along information to a former senator working with John Kerry's campaign. Also Saturday, a White House official said Bush has reviewed disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972 and did not recall having seen them previously. The long-running story on Bush's Texas Air National Guard service took an unusual...

WASHINGTON — Bill Burkett, who has emerged as a possible CBS source for disputed memos about President Bush's Guard service, has a long history of making charges against Bush and the Texas National Guard. But Burkett's allegations have changed over the years and have been dismissed as baseless by former Guard colleagues, state legislators and others. Even Burkett has admitted some of his allegations are false. Burkett wrote a long indictment against Bush for a Web site in 2003 in which he said he personally was ordered to "alter personnel records of George W. Bush." In that article, Burkett said...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A retired Texas National Guard official mentioned as a possible source for disputed documents about President Bush's service in the Guard said he passed along information to a former senator working with John Kerry's campaign.In an Aug. 21 e-mail to a list of Texas Democrats, Bill Burkett said after getting through "seven layers of bureaucratic kids" in the Democrat's campaign, he talked with former Georgia senator Max Cleland about information that would counter criticism of Kerry's Vietnam War service. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the e-mail Saturday."I asked if they wanted to counterattack or...

AUSTIN, Texas - A retired Texas National Guard official mentioned as a possible source for disputed documents about President Bush (news - web sites)'s service in the Guard said he passed along information to a former senator working with John Kerry (news - web sites)'s campaign. Also Saturday, a White House official said Bush has reviewed disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972 and did not recall having seen them previously. The long-running story on Bush's Texas Air National Guard service took an unusual twist when CBS broadcast a report on...