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As published in The New York Review of Books of April 7, 2005Report of the Independent Review Panel on the September 8, 200460 Minutes Wednesday Segment “For the Record” Concerning President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard Service by Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi. January 5, 2005, 224 pp.A few weeks ago former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, former head of the Associated Press, released their report on Dan Rather’s use of allegedly forged Texas Air National Guard (ANG) documents covering President George W. Bush’s military service. The report, as is well known, excoriated CBS for the use...

More than a week after CBS News released its ostensibly final, tortured, novella-length report on the suspicious-document scandal at 60 Minutes Wednesday, some basic matters in the case are even less settled than before—starting with the fate of the four employees the network singled out for dismissal on Jan. 10. Producer Mary Mapes, who was fired, has released a statement saying that she had done nothing wrong in preparing the Sept. 8, 2004, report or in the aftermath. And the three staffers who CBS asked to resign—executive producer Josh Howard, his top deputy Mary Murphy, and CBS News senior vice...

The Rathergate Report is a watershed event in American journalism not because it changes things on its own but because it makes unavoidably clear a change that has already occurred. And that is that the mainstream media's monopoly on information is over. That is, the monopoly enjoyed by three big networks, a half dozen big newspapers and a handful of weekly magazines from roughly 1950 to 2000 is done and gone, and something else is taking its place. That would be a media cacophony. But a cacophony in which the truth has a greater chance of making itself clearly heard....

Dan Rather: 'I have read the report, I take it seriously, and I shall keep its lessons well in mind.' Tue Jan 11 2005 14:56:11 ET **Exclusive** The panel report is part of a process -- a necessary process to deal with a difficult issue -- at the end of which four good people have lost their jobs. My strongest reaction is one of sadness and concern for those individuals whom I know and with whom I have worked. It would be a shame if we let this matter, troubling as it is, obscure their dedication and good work over...

THE THORNBURGH-BOCCARDI PANEL makes a great show of its agnosticism about the question at the heart of the CBS scandal: Are the memos CBS presented authentic? On this score, the CBS Report is certain in its uncertainty: "The Panel was not able to reach a definitive conclusion as to the authenticity of the Killian documents." This statement was surely news-worthy. Before Monday, the forgery of the documents had been settled. Settled, that is, by a large cohort of experts, a bevy of testimony from the blogosphere, and, most definitively, by Dr. Joseph Newcomer. On September 12, 2004, Newcomer, one of...

I am terribly disappointed in the conclusions of the report and its effects on the four of us who will no longer work at CBS News.... I am shocked by the vitriolic scape-goating in Les Moonves’s statement. I am very concerned that his actions are motivated by corporate and political considerations -- ratings rather than journalism. Mr. Moonves’s response to the review panel’s report and the panel’s assessment of the evidence it developed in its investigation combine not only to condemn me, but to put all investigative reporting in the CBS tradition at risk. Much has been made about the...

Dan Rather: 'I have read the report, I take it seriously, and I shall keep its lessons well in mind.' Tue Jan 11 2004 14:56:11 ET The panel report is part of a process -- a necessary process to deal with a difficult issue -- at the end of which four good people have lost their jobs. My strongest reaction is one of sadness and concern for those individuals whom I know and with whom I have worked. It would be a shame if we let this matter, troubling as it is, obscure their dedication and good work over the...

Anyone else hear it?

If you believe CBS’ report it was all producer Mary Mapes fault – Dan Rather was not much more than an innocent bystander in the scandal that now bears his name: "Rathergate." CBS would also have you believe there was no evidence that politics played a role in CBS airing of a story based on forged documents. CBS, for that matter, still won’t say the documents were forged. This last conclusion is convenient for CBS and the “independent” panel they appointed to investigate Rathergate. If the documents are forgeries -- which almost everyone agrees is the case -- there are...

DO NOT SPAM MAIL THIS REPORT The "CBS 60 Minutes Document Forgery Project Working Group" has worked long and hard on what we believe is a valuable and constructive Report. If you feel some agency, media, or CBS affiliate, etc. should have a copy, please download it and print it out. Then simply mail or hand deliver it. That way, your delivery will be far more appreciated than filling the recipient's computer with 600K of "spam", which we all know and love. Any kind of unsolicited "spamming" degrades the value of our effort and we ask that you respect our...

JIM ANGLE, FOX NEWS: The other thing is, today CBS has fired four of its personnel who were involved in the story about the President's service in the National Guard. Any comment on that? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we felt all along that it was important for CBS to get to the bottom of this. CBS has taken steps to hold people accountable, and we appreciate those steps. We also hope that CBS will take steps to prevent something like this from happening again. I think that the report by the panel that investigated the matter makes some recommendations it says...

Hugh Hewitt takes Rathergate CBS Memo apart piece by piece and with every blogger that played any important role in the story. LISTEN LIVE HERE. Hugh is offering wall to wall analysis of the CBS Report.

I would encourage everyone to make sure they read the entire report coming from the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel on the Killian memos. I have read a number of comments on my earlier post, and most of you see the report as a whitewash. I agree in part with this analysis, mostly on the question of motivation. The report gives way too much credence to the notion that the only motivating factor involved in Mapes' and CBS' decision to run a story without ever checking its central "evidence" was competitive pressure to air their exposé first. CBS and Thornburgh-Boccardi never discuss in...

Check out the actual investigatory panel report -- it credits Free Republic (accurately) for first questioning the authenticity of thye documents. The actual investigatory report can be seen

Independent Review Panel Examining CBS News '60 Minutes Wednesday' Broadcast of September 8 Issues Report of Its Findings Leslie Moonves Issues Statement In Response To Panel Report NEW YORK, Jan. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- The Independent Review Panel assigned to examine CBS News' "60 Minutes Wednesday" Broadcast of Sept. 8, 2004 has issued its report. The panel was comprised of the Honorable Dick Thornburgh, former US Attorney General, and Louis D. Boccardi, retired President and Chief Executive Officer of the Associated Press. The 224 page document can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.cbsnews.com. Following is the statement from Leslie Moonves,...

NEW YORK — Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been let go for their role in preparing and reporting the controversial "60 Minutes" story about President Bush’s National Guard service before last year’s elections, according to CBS.

CBS) Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been ousted for their role in preparing and reporting a disputed story about President Bush’s National Guard service. The action was prompted by the report of an independent panel that concluded that CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. The panel also said CBS News had compounded that failure with “rigid and blind” defense of the 60 Minutes Wednesday report. Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard;...

You heard it here first///////////stay tuned

REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW PANEL DICK THORNBURGH AND LOUIS D. BOCCARDI ON THE SEPTEMBER 8, 2004 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY SEGMENT “FOR THE RECORD” CONCERNING PRESIDENT BUSH’S TEXAS AIR NATIONAL GUARD SERVICE JANUARY 5, 2005 KIRKPATRICK & LOCKHART NICHOLSON GRAHAM LLP Michael J. Missal, Esq. Lawrence Coe Lanpher, Esq. 1800 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 778-9000 Counsel to the Independent Review Panel i TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................1 II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...............................................................................................4 A. 60 Minutes Wednesday Background..............................................................................6 B. The Pursuit of a Story on President Bush’s TexANG Service ......................................7 C. Obtaining Documents ....................................................................................................8 D. The Production of...

My little bird that is familiar with discussions within CBS News tells me that the long, long, long-awaited report on the infamous CBS memo by former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and retired A.P. president Louis Boccardi may be coming out Friday. Hmmm... would this be a Friday at 5 pm release? Also, you'll recall this little birdie told me that CBS was considering naming Rather's replacement the same day they release the report. UPDATE: Scylla & Charybdis adds speculation that also points to Friday: The MSM has geared up to run Abu Ghraib-type headlines over the Alberto R. Gonzales...