Free Republic

-snip- Mr. Carlson vividly recalls how Ms. Mapes's social advocacy landed her in trouble in a major story. In the mid- and late 1980s, the Seattle police undertook a series of raids on well-known crack houses. In the winter of 1987, officers announced themselves and knocked on the door of a known Seattle drug den. They then heard some noise and forced themselves in when no one answered the door. A low-level drug dealer named Erdman Bascomb stood up with a dark, shiny object in his hand. An officer fired, Bascomb fell, and officers pounced on the "weapon": a black...

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"...

Reports of French Involvement in Niger-Iraq Uranium Case Not Reliable Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily September 8, 2004 Wednesday September 8, 2004 Wednesday LENGTH: 3171 words HEADLINE: Reports of French Involvement in Niger-Iraq Uranium Case Not Reliable BODY: Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS. Reports in The Sunday Telegraph of London on September 6, 2004, cited Italian sources as having alleged that French Government officials were behind the creation of a dossier of largely forged documents which had highlighted the purchase of uranium by Iran from Niger. The documents were subsequently shown to have included forged material, thus discrediting...

ROME - The head of Italy's military secret services will be questioned by a parliamentary commission next week over allegations that his organization gave the United States and Britain disputed documents suggesting that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa, officials said Tuesday. Nicolo Pollari, director of the SISMI intelligence agency, will be questioned on Nov. 3 by members of the commission overseeing secret services, said Micaela Panella, a commission spokeswoman. She said Pollari asked to be questioned after reports Monday and Tuesday in the Rome daily La Repubblica claiming SISMI passed on to the CIA, U.S. government officials...

As many of you might remember, the DUmmie FUnnies blog began with coverage of the DUmmie reaction to the forged Texas Air National Guard Memos presented on a the CBS 60 Minutes II show hosted by Dan Rather. At the time of the exposure, Dan Rather insisted the memos were really authentic. Rather kept INSISTING on the authenticity of those obviously forged memos even when it was proven beyond a shadow of doubt that they were fake. After Dan Rather retired was fired from CBS News, he changed his tune a bit by saying that even though the memos...

Mary Mapes, the producer fired for her involvement in the flawed a “60 Minutes Wednesday” segment about President Bush’s Air National Guard just refuses to go away.  According to the front page story in the New York Observer (3/2/2005), Mapes is preparing to shop a book proposal offering an inside account of what happened at CBS News during the memo scandal. The book will constitute Ms. Mapes’ defense against charges of journalistic misconduct. According to Wesley Neff, president of the literary and lecture agency that is representing Ms. Mapes, the producer plans to argue for the veracity of the...

Rather party Atlanta-based author, pundit and media consultant Phil Kent, former president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, tells this column that he's hosting a party on the evening of March 9 in the Buckhead section of the city to honor popular Internet blogger "Buckhead" — otherwise known as prominent Atlanta lawyer Harry MacDougald. "Harry is the bathrobe-clad guy — literally — who 'outed' Dan Rather and CBS less than four hours after they broke the phony Bush National Guard papers" story, Mr. Kent says. Mr. Rather, who will relinquish his anchor chair after 24 years next week, is accused by...

RATHER STAYS HOME; EXECUTIVES SPLIT; MOONVES LOOKS TOWARDS FUTURE *Exclusive** CBSNEWS veteran Don Hewitt called Dan Rather's disappearance from Monday's Evening News "really stupid" during a damage control meeting on Monday, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT. One top source inside the CBS Broadcast Center claimed Rather was told to stay off the air on Monday, as a form of punishment! Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer was called in to anchor the damaged ship. CBS staffers were shocked Monday when CBS president Les Moonves suddenly tied Rather's upcoming resignation to the phony document flap, a departure from CBS's official storyline. Moonves...

CBS was conducting an 'internal investigation' into the FORGED DOCUMENTS that Ted Baxter- I mean Dan Rather aired. HOWS IT GOING SeeBS?

As the depth of President Bush's victory became apparent last week, I wondered exactly how the Democratic Party would spin the results. Although the DNC itself has been somewhat reserved, its spinmeisters in the press have been in full throat. Many of these nationally recognized editorialists have become completely unhinged by Bush's victory; some actually accusing those us who voted for the president as being part of an American religious jihad. This broad-brush swipe at conseratives just shows the inability of the media elite to understand not only why they lost this election, but also why they will continue to...

Regarding the fake documents concerning President Bush's National Guard service, I can't help but wonder why the fake was so obvious, and why it was discovered so quickly? My conclusion is not so far-fetched if you give it some thought. The Republicans, not the Democrats, produced the documents and had their people get them to CBS. If the documents were immediately recognized as fakes by the network, nothing ventured, nothing gained. But if they slipped by the network bigwigs and were aired (as was the case) the Republicans could reveal them as "fakes" and only the Democrats would be blamed....

OK, we shouldn't be surprised by now that Burkett is exposed as a fraud, but I found this contradiction so glaring I can't believe the press hasn't picked up on it: Burkett is claiming that he was given the documents by someone named Lucy Ramirez (or her shadowy courier). From USA Today: "Burkett said he arranged to get the documents during a trip to Houston for a livestock show in March. But instead of being met at the show by Ramirez, he was approached by a man who asked for Burkett, handed him an envelope and quickly left, Burkett recounted."...

Guys, I rarely post anything on this site although I read it a lot. Normally people see the important issues here long before the old press sees them. But I think the Democrats and old press are getting by with something and nobody seems to care. If you look at the forged memos they paint a picture of Bush being treated a little different because his father is the local congressmen. That's OK I am sure Amy Carter and Moon Unit Zappa were treated differently because of their fathers, Sometimes its a good thing and sometimes it stinks. A son...

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...

As the Memogate story gets continues to get bigger CBS has said that it will NOT reveal its source. Of course one of the biggest rules of journalism is that you do not reveal a source who wants to remain anonymous. The difference here is that it is not a legitimate source. The documents are FAKE. Considering the fact that a felony has occured--in which the perpetrator has tried to subvert a United States Presidential election--CBS should be forced to name its source or be indicted as a part of the conspiracy. One would think that CBS would not want...

This is a call to action for all Patriotic Americans. Representative Chris Cox has stated that if enough Americans call for hearings on the CBS/Rathergate matter that there is a good possibility that hearings can be made to happen before the election. I have done the following and urge each of you to do so: Please call this number: 202-225-3121 When the operator answers politely ask for the office of Congressman Joe Barton. He is the Chair of the committee that held hearings on the broadcast industry in the wake of CBS trying to call florida early in 2000 and...

Political intrigue, presidential campaign dirty tricks and carrying the DNC’s water are nothing new to CBS, Dan Rather and 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes. In 1999, during the build-up to the 2000 presidential campaign, Mapes, Rather and 60 Minutes produced an interview with Shawn Allen Berry, the white supremacist, who along with two others was convicted of chaining James Byrd Jr. to a pickup truck and dragging him along a remote road until his body was torn apart. Rather‘s clear purpose was to paint Berry as a crazed, right-wing fanatic who had been influenced by fundamentalist Christians into believing in...

I just got an e-mail from someone calling himself "JFH" which raises an intriguing question about an acronym used in one of the Killian docs. Jeff Goldstein wrote a post yesterday about a reference in the August 18, 1973 memo to something called an "OETR". Two people familiar with military terminology e-mailed Jeff to say that the acronym the author of the memo meant to use was "OER" -- an abbreviation for "Officer Effectiveness Report". Read Jeff's post and you'll see that his contacts are quite adamant that "OER" is a commonly used term and that no one familiar...

A former National Guard commander who CBS News said had helped convince it of the authenticity of documents raising new questions about President Bush's military service said Saturday that he did not believe they were genuine. The commander, Bobby Hodges, said in a telephone interview that network producers had never shown him the documents but had only read them to him over the phone days before they were featured Wednesday in a 60 Minutes broadcast. After seeing the documents Friday, Hodges said, he concluded that they were falsified. Hodges, a former general who spoke to several news organizations this weekend,...

<p>For a couple of days now we've been talking about whether the CBS memos could have been produced using the technology available in 1972 and 1973. We've talked about two typewriters mainly, both widely used at that time: the IBM Executive series and the IBM Selectric series.</p>