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A veteran CBS News producer filed a lawsuit against the network in State Supreme Court in Manhattan yesterday, asserting that she should not have been removed from her position on the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes" over her role in a segment that purported to raise new questions about President Bush's National Guard service in the Vietnam era. The producer, Esther Kartiganer, who has worked at the network for four decades, was among those responsible for vetting portions of the report, which was broadcast on Sept. 8 and was based on documents that the network has since acknowledged it cannot...

happy warrior MARK STEYNDaffier ’n’ Daffier . . . One of the problems with the concept of “spin” is that it turns media analysis into a full-fledged James Jesus Angleton Cold War wilderness of mirrors. At Berlin station in the good old days, if the guy’s telling the truth, that could mean he’s a real defector. If what he’s saying isn’t true, that could mean he’s a KGB-planted fake defector. On the other hand, if the guy’s telling the truth, that could mean he’s a fake defector feeding some true stuff so we won’t spot he’s a fake defector. And,...

George Bush knew Vladimir Putin would be defensive when Bush brought up the pace of democratic reform in Russia in their private meeting at the end of Bush's four-day, three-city tour of Europe. But when Bush talked about the Kremlin's crackdown on the media and explained that democracies require a free press, the Russian leader gave a rebuttal that left the President nonplussed, TIME magazine will report on Monday. If the press was so free in the U.S., Putin asked, then why had those reporters at CBS lost their jobs? Bush was openmouthed. "Putin thought we'd fired Dan Rather," says...

When opinion is accepted as fact, perception soon becomes reality, at least for those who share these opinions and cling to the resulting perceptions. Herein lies the reason for the division in America today and unless we make a concerted effort to separate perception from reality, opinion from fact, fiction from truth, that division will continue. How is it that an individual can read the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and see the word “of” as relates freedom of press, speech, or redress, yet the word “from” as relates only to religion? How does one reason that we can...

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...

Report just issues, mapes finally fired

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...

Lest everyone forget, we still have to hear the results of the internal CBS memogate investigation. I want Dan Blather, Mapes and cBS 60 minutes II castigated to high heavens!

Sinclair...No Guts, No Glory! Written by JB Williams ©2004-10-23 The much anticipated broadcast of Stolen Honor turned out to be a non-report. By the time Sinclair Broadcasting Company finished editing to suit the Kerry camp and the DNC, almost all of the story ended up on the cutting room floor… The most important questions surrounding Senator John Kerry’s fitness for office of Commander-in-Chief remain unasked and unanswered, even after the Sinclair broadcast. Why has Senator John Kerry refused to confront his accusers personally, even after being chased across the country by Sinclair? If he is right, and has nothing 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....

Drudge has posted a link to a USA Today article claiming it was after an appearance on Hardball that Burkett was contacted by a mystery woman, Lucy Ramirez, whom he claims was the source of the fake documents passed to CBS.

Unprecedented Evil Within… Written by JB Williams ©2004-09-13 It has been clear for some years that the Democratic Party has no pension for truth, and a visibly growing desperation for power. But the American people are witnessing an unbridled Evil within that Party today that is unprecedented, and that’s what makes the blood boil in good old America loving Democrats like Zell Miller. The DNC thought they could get away with running our nations most liberal senator as a war time Presidential candidate on the basis of his four months in Vietnam, until his fellow soldiers came out of the...

"UPDATE: Jeff Harrell forwards a link to USA Today's collection of the recently discovered Bush/TANG documents. Funny thing, though: There are six documents here, not four. USA Today has all four of the memos listed in the sidebar for the CBSNews.com article plus two additional documents dated February 2, 1972 and June 24, 1973, respectively. The two new docs have the same font as the other four, and that pesky little raised superscript makes yet another cameo in the June 24th document." This links to http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-09-09bushdocs.pdf

When I first heard back from Gerry, I felt a little bad for having bothered him. He'd been fielding calls and letters all day, he told me, including an inquiry from CNN. But he was a trouper, willing — enthusiastic even — to help out. I asked Gerry, in a fit of hubris, if he wouldn't mind trying to reproduce a sample from one of the CBS memos on his Selectric Composer. Just over an hour later, he emailed me back a sample, typed up on his Composer using the 11-point Press Roman type ball and scanned into his computer....

The video available from the CBS News web site suggests that the "th" superscript proof of forgery is debunked by the fact that other documents in Bush's military records contained superscript examples. THE ONLY PROBLEM IS THE EXAMPLE THEY SHOW IS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, AND DOESN'T EVEN LOOK TO BE SUPERSCRIPT The reference example they show at around 1:25 into the video is a closeup a "111th" where the "th" has an underline integral to the glyph, but it is not superscript. It does not get elevated above the normal level of the text. It just sits beside the "111". I...

I was in the Air Force and now am in the Air National Guard. Looking back at official documents from the late 1980s that I have from the Air Force, I can conclude that the font is definitely different in that period. It appears that Arial was the font of choice. "Tongue and Quill" is book that is used by the Air Force to prescribe formats and methods for producing official documents. I would expect that Lt. Col. Killian would have ascribed to this book. Most telling on these documents, save the superscript, is the date format. 01 August 1972...

Excerpts.... The Kerry end is near? At this precise time every four years, the most media-savvy members of the Gang of 500 begin to think about their roles in the premiere post-election forum that revisits the actions and players of the presidential race. But if nothing changes in the race as it now stands — with President Bush winning a decent-sized victory — much of the talk will be about the greater technical proficiency of the Bush-Cheney effort.Democrats, who deny up and down that they had anything to do with the documents, tell ABC News that they plan to continue...