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Thirty years ago, Americans were transfixed by the chaotic images flickering across their TV screens. Hordes of frantic South Vietnamese men, women and children desperately clinging to the U.S. Embassy fence in Saigon, pleading for escape. Chinook helicopters teetering precariously on the Embassy roof, evacuating the last Americans even as North Vietnamese Communist Army tanks rolled into the outskirts of the city. Huey gunships, the very symbol of American combat power in Vietnam, commandeered by fleeing South Vietnamese Army pilots, either ditched into the sea or pushed overboard from the decks of crowded American aircraft carriers. If the film footage...

Friends of retiring anchorman Dan Rather are firing back at some of his CBS News critics - and among the targets is the elder statesman-anchorman once known as "the most trusted man in America," Walter Cronkite. Speaking anonymously, one Rather loyalist tells the Washington Post's Tom Shales that Cronkite is "a codgerly old ass . . . He stayed alive just so he could see this moment." Story Continues Below Last week Cronkite blasted Rather, saying of his interim replacement Bob Schieffer: "I would like to have seen him there a long time ago." Rather "gave the impression of playing...

Emptying out his cubbyhole office in the CBS News building on West 57th Street in New York, wading through stacks and boxes of memorabilia accumulated over the years, Dan Rather came upon a piece of framed embroidery made and sent to him a couple decades ago by a nun who was, one might say, among the faithful -- a regular and loyal viewer.

NEW YORK (AP) - Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather's predecessor at the "CBS Evening News," said Monday that Rather's replacement by Bob Schieffer was overdue. Rather, 73, ends his run as evening news anchor Wednesday, exactly 24 years after replacing Cronkite. Schieffer, the "Face the Nation" host, will be a temporary fill-in until CBS decides on a permanent replacement. Cronkite called Schieffer "one of the great television journalists of our time." "Although Dan did a fine job, I would have liked to have seen (Schieffer) there a long time ago," Cronkite said during an interview on CNN. "He would have given...

Embattled CBS anchorman Dan Rather is set to finally bow out on Wednesday. For a bunch of folks---that can't get here soon enough. In the last couple of weeks, even CBS people have turned on him, claiming they don't even watch the CBS Evening News. --"He's not as easy to watch as [Peter] Jennings or [Tom] Brokaw," said "60 Minutes" correspondent Mike Wallace in this week's The New Yorker magazine. -- Legendary anchor Walter Cronkite, who recommended Rather for a job years ago, told the magazine he preferred watching Brokaw - who retired last year - because Rather looked like...

Andy Rooney indicated Thursday that CBS may once again be considering airing a one-hour nightly newscast. Appearing on Larry King's CNN program, Rooney said: ‘Most of the American public gets their news from television. And if we're going to have an informed electorate, we have to have good television news. I think it's vital that we have it. I keep waiting for some hero to come in and say, look, I'm going to give them the money. We're going to run this network, we're going to make all our money off programming and we can make plenty of it that...

Rather deserves respect By Ray Richmond There was a telling moment in a telephone interview I conducted with Dan Rather a little more than a year ago in conjunction with the 75th anniversary of CBS. "I'm not a large part of the legacy (of CBS)," Rather offered. "But whatever part of it that I am and have been, I'm very proud of. At the same time, I'm humbled by the fact that I know that I'm undeserving. I know that I'm still working to be worthy of it." Anyone who knew Rather will tell you this wasn't false modesty. He...

"If Walter Cronkite was around today," USA Today founder Al Neuharth proclaimed in a speech in South Dakota last week, "I think John Kerry would be President" because of "the trust the people in Middle America had in Cronkite, when he returned from Vietnam opposed to the war, public opposition soon followed." As recounted by the Daily Republic in Mitchell, South Dakota, in addition to boasting of the influence of Cronkite's bias, Neuharth "said he thought if McGovern had won the presidency in 1972, U.S. troops would have pulled out from Vietnam a lot sooner with a lot fewer casualties,...

Walter Cronkite, who once remarked that Dan Rather, his successor as anchor of the CBS Evening News, should have been fired after he walked off the set in 1987 when his newscast was delayed by a tennis broadcast, has enlarged upon his previous criticism of Rather's discredited report on George W. Bush's National Guard service. Asked in an interview in the upcoming edition of Details whether he had ever come close to making a mistake like Rather's, Cronkite responded: "Fortunately, I don't know about the close times, and I'm sure there must have been some. But I never had a...

Former CBSNEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape. Cronkite made the startling comments late Friday during an interview on CNN. Cronkite said he is "inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing." Interviewer Larry King did not ask Cronkite to elaborate on the provocative election eve accusation. Developing...

CRONKITE: KARL ROVE BEHIND BIN LADEN TAPE Sat Oct 30 2004 16:31:19 ET Former CBSNEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape. Cronkite made the startling comments late Friday during an interview on CNN. Cronkite said he is "inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing." Interviewer Larry King did not ask Cronkite to elaborate on the provocative election eve accusation. Developing...

THE LEFT’S CIVILITY SCAM By Don Feder Last week, the inimitable Ann Coulter was on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” to discuss her new book, “How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must)”. Co-host Charles Gibson – a media cheerleader for the Kerry campaign, who once expressed disbelief that anyone could question the Democratic nominee’s “distinguished war record” -- used the interview as an occasion to deliver another unctuous homily on the need for civility in politics. For the left, civility is a one-way street, running toward them – but never in the opposite direction. Gibson, who hosted the second...

by Jeff "Mario" Smith, Guerilla Reporter October 8, 2004 Email: jeffsmith@qx.net Gene Kuentzler, Vietnam Veteran, 19th Combat Engineer Battalion, S-3 Operations 1966-1967, tells it like it is in this following internet rant. This factual description of what really happened during TET of '68, when my 173rd Airborne Infantry brother was fighting Communists in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, proves, beyond any shadow of doubt, that our beloved liberal mainstream media are Communist sympathizers. CBS stands for Communist Broadcast System. Hanoi John Fonda Kerry, Tom Hayden, Hanoi Jane, and all the rest of the spoiled naive hippies who assisted the Communists...

I grew up watching CBS News. Whether the story of the day was moon shots, elections, or war coverage, my family tuned to CBS for the best, most reliable coverage. Walter Cronkite was the network’s most recognizable reporter, and he was supplemented by a strong team: Mike Wallace, Roger Mudd, Bob Schieffer. Dan Rather was part of that team. He aggressively pursued stories that needed pursuing, and through hard work became part of network news’s gold standard. He, and CBS, were trustworthy. No longer. If Dan Rather announced today that the sky was blue, I would check with the nearest...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lamenting the lack of depth in television news, the man considered the most trusted person on TV, Walter Cronkite, ends his current job this coming Tuesday right back where he started, as a newspaperman. In his final column in a year-long stint writing for the King Features Syndicate, Cronkite, 87, calls his decades as the nightly news anchor for broadcast network CBS "rewarding," but "not entirely satisfactory" due to time limitations that prevented deep reporting of any one story. "We're talking about covering one of the most complicated and important nations of the world ... and...

With this nation embroiled in what threatens to be an interminable "War on Terrorism," an idea put forward last year by Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich has considerable appeal. Kucinich, who was the one candidate in the Democratic primaries to unfailingly promote the party's traditional Franklin Roosevelt liberalism, proposed the establishment of a Department of Peace. Now he has introduced in the House HR 2459, a bill that would establish a Peace Department, adding a new Cabinet post to the executive branch of government. The Department of Peace would "advise the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State on all...

"Das Geheimnis Pattons ist die Vergangenheit," says a captain in the German high command. "Patton's secret is the past." The secret of the man and the movie. I rented the 1970 film, Patton, last week, and saw it three times with my son. A fellow’s got to get his money’s worth. It made quite an impression on yours truly, though I’m not so sure about Richard, who is three-and-a-half years old, and is currently much more passionate about James and the Giant Peach. The moment Patton opens, you know this will be like no other war movie. General George S....

Walter Cronkite: U.S. battles terror with a touch of the Spanish Inquisition Walter Cronkite, King Features Syndicate Published September 19, 2003 President Bush's televised answer to the growing concerns of many -- including some Republicans -- about the powers granted to him in the USA Patriot Act was to ask for even stronger measures, particularly the expanded use of "nonjudicial subpoenas." That means a federal agency such as the FBI can write its own subpoenas to conduct a search -- no judges needed. Unfortunately, security and liberty form a zero-sum equation. The inevitable trade-off: To increase security is to decrease...

Not the least of the Democratic Party's problems in the presidential election ahead is the electorate's confusion as to just what the party stands for. In the last presidential and congressional elections, many voters and perhaps even more nonvoters complained that they found no political philosophy, no idealistic glue that held the Democratic Party together. If the Democratic Party is to have hope of recapturing the White House, it will be helpful if its candidates for the presidential nomination agree on some basic objectives that will clearly define the principal policies and goals of their party. Those basic goals still...

Walter Cronkite to many Americans was the voice of all Americans. We would listen to his words and understand everything that was important to know. Walter even told us why it was important. Wally was an American icon at a time when most of us could be easily duped. There was no conservative talk radio; there was no Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarborough or Sean Hannity. There was just Wally and his ideas which for better or worse, we all bought hook line and sinker when he was anchor for the CBS Evening News, Wally snookered us all.