John Podhoretz:
CBS and Dan Rather now want us to believe they were "misled." And it's likely they were misled in the days and hours before they aired the forged documents claiming, among other things, that George W. Bush disobeyed a direct order from his superior in the National Guard.But when Rather & Co. refused to accept that the documents were forgeries when every rational person on the planet who had spent 10 minutes looking into the matter could see they were the crudest of forgeries, they were no longer "misled."
Nor were Rather & Co. "misled" when they continued to say that nobody had challenged the underlying basis of their story — though in fact every single aspect of their disgraceful pseudo-journalism had been called into powerful question.
They were not "misled" when Rather said the day after his appalling pseudo-story aired that the people challenging the validity of the story and the authenticity of the documents were all "partisan operatives" — when in fact one of his principal challengers is a California jazz musician and Web site designer who has never voted Republican.
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They were not "misled" about anything that happened after the story aired. They were dishonest. They were deceitful. They stonewalled. They trashed the motives of those who were properly outraged by the story. Now that they can no longer stand by their journalistic crime, they are seeking to weasel their way out of even minimal responsibility.
Rather has the gall to put it this way: "We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism."
Rather has no business asserting his "good faith" here. Neither he nor CBS showed good faith in any way. After they checked with several experts who told them the documents were problematic at best, Rather & Co. decided to shop around until they found an expert who would tell them otherwise.
And I think there's reason to believe that their consultation with Dan Bartlett at the White House wasn't in good faith — despite their despicable efforts to claim that Bartlett's refusal to challenge the validity of the documents served as a confirmation of their accuracy.
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Now, you can bet your house on the fact that Rather & Co. would have used the Matley footage if Bartlett had questioned the documents' authenticity in an on-air interview.
If that had happened, the Matley footage would have been the giant "gotcha," the classic "60 Minutes" slam dunk. It would have gone something like this:
Bartlett: These documents are forgeries.
Rather: Oh? Not according to our expert, Marcel Matley . . .
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And what Rather did yesterday was beyond forgiveness. He is continuing to argue that the airing of a patently fraudulent effort whose purpose was to change the results of a presidential election was an act of "good faith."
You know what I hope? I hope Rather doesn't quit. I hope he isn't fired. He is indeed the CBS anchor — and now that the boat is taking on water, his dead weight is going to sink it for good.
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