Pat Buchanan:
Something remains puzzling about the Rathergate scandal.
Where is the outrage? Where is the righteous rage of Dan Rather at the forgers of faked military records of George W. Bush, who played him for a fool?Something is fishy here. And, indeed, the inexplicable absence of outrage suggests that there is more, much more, to this story.
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And so it is with Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, the producer of "60 Minutes." Both are today material witnesses to a felony, the enablers of a criminal conspiracy to bring down a president through the creation and dissemination of forged U.S. government documents.
Yet, rather than acting like innocent parties of a vicious plot to destroy a president, Rather and Mapes are acting like a pair of co-conspirators, with grudging admissions and insincere apologies.
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Consider what Rather left out of this "60 Minutes" story.
He did not tell his audience that family members of Col. Jerry Killian and CBS' own document examiners had raised questions about the authenticity of the memos he was using to indict the president. He did not tell his audience that the source of the memos was an eccentric and an inveterate Bush-basher. He did not tell the CBS audience that Ben Barnes, the ex-lieutenant governor of Texas who claimed to have used his influence to get Bush into the Air National Guard, had earlier denied under oath that he had done any such thing.
Had Rather done an honest piece of journalism and let the CBS audience know there were questions about both the witnesses he had brought in to accuse Bush and the documentary evidence he had put forward to convict Bush, CBS' audience could have made an informed judgment. But Rather did not want that. For Rather was conducting a show trial. He was a prosecutor hiding from the defense all the exculpatory evidence in his briefcase. And prosecutors who engage in such unethical behavior usually end up being disbarred.
Another reason Rather and CBS are stonewalling may be that there was collusion and orchestration between CBS' source Bill Burkett, the "60 Minutes" staff, the Kerry campaign and the DNC's Terry MacAuliffe -- collusion that could make it appear that CBS News has become the clandestine TV production arm of MoveOn.org.
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Yes, indeed, there is much more to this story. We are going to find out whether Dan Rather and CBS have been hauling contraband for the Kerry campaign, while flying under a false flag of neutrality.
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