CBS News in Heap Big Trouble

RUSH: Go ahead. What were you going to say?
CALLER: Well, I’m working hard out here. I don’t get a chance to blog or blob on the Internet. I don’t get a lot of information streams, a story like this pops up, Tom Harkin <a target=new href=”/home/daily/site_091004/content/stop_the_tape.html”>(exposed)</a> across the border in Iowa pounced on it. My uncle comes rushing in with this story and just beats me over the head with it, and then all of a sudden it disappears over the weekend. And I wonder where do these stories go? I mean, they stonewall, and a guy like me doesn’t get any more information out there.
RUSH: Well, sit tight. Let me take a commercial break. Keep your radio on for the next 15 minutes, and I’ll bring you up to speed on this, okay?
CALLER: Well, I’ll give you 15 minutes, Rush.
RUSH: All right, thanks. I appreciate that, Ed.
CALLER: (Laughing.)
RUSH: I’m just saying, it may take me that long to get through all this, maybe a little longer.
CALLER: I’m listening.
RUSH: We’ll bring you up to speed. Tell your uncle to, you know, stuff it.
CALLER: (Laughing.)
RUSH: Tell him not to be so excited. It isn’t what he thinks it is.
CALLER: Hey, Rush?

RUSH: Tell him his buddy Harkin may be in some trouble on this, too. Yes? What were you going to say?
CALLER: I’m typing up some old papers now and the memo says that Kerry has stopped beating his wife. I think someone should ask him about that.
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: (Laughing.)
RUSH: Well, go ahead and send those off to CBS. We’ll see if they report on it.
CALLER: I’ll send them to CBS.
RUSH: Why don’t you do that. In fact, it would be fun if we all just started typing up some memos from some fake people in Vietnam that saw Kerry do this or do that or didn’t see Kerry do this or do that. Dateline them Cambodia and send them over to Dan Rather and see if he uses any of them. Hell, you never know how they’re doing news over there these days. Good idea, Ed.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, Ed in Columbus, Nebraska. I know you’re still out there because you promised that you would be. I think the bottom line is you probably wouldn’t have heard anything about this, but I think this weekend probably an awful weekend internally for CBS, and I think that this is just a continuation of the glory that is ascending to those of us here in the new media. Here’s some details. This is from the American Spectator, The Prowler.
“While CBS news anchor Dan Rather can say there is no internal investigation under way over the alleged forged documents used as the foundation for an investigation into President George W. Bush’s National Guard service, you wouldn’t have been able to tell from the 15 or so 60 Minutes and CBS News’ staffers working away feverishly on Friday and Saturday to try to nail down their story.
“On Friday, according to CBS News sources, Rather spent the day on the phone and dealing with CBS suits who were nervous about the fall out from the story. ‘All Dan could say was that this was an attack from the right-wing nuts, and that we should have expected this, given the stakes,’ says a CBS News producer. ‘He was terribly defensive and nervous. You could tell.’ All day Friday, Rather, his producer on the story, Mary Mapes, and other 60 Minutes staffers were scrambling to shore up support from their sources on the story. That effort didn’t go so well. By Saturday, one of their key sources, retired Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, had said that CBS misled him, and that he had never been shown the memos in question.” He was told about them and he was misled in what he was told about them. He said what he said and then he saw the report and said (paraphrasing) “This is crazy, I never saw these,” and then he recanted, in essense, saying CBS misled him. And here’s the CBS producer, the same one being quoted by the American Spectator:
“‘We pulled the trick of only calling some sources at the last minute to reconfirm… Someone called Hodges, I think, on Monday night and read him parts of the document. The late contacts are a standard practice so we don’t tip off the competition or our sources.'” Is CBS’s excuse. (Prowler:) “Hodges is a critical loss for CBS News’ credibility. He was the superior officer of the man CBS claims wrote the memo, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984. Meanwhile, over the weekend journalists from around the country were attempting to track down the original source of the documents. ‘We’re having a hard time tracking how we got the documents,’ says the CBS News producer.”

CBS News producer again: “We’re having a hard time tracking how we got them.” CBS is admitting they don’t know how they got these documents! They’re having a hard time? How can this be? Here’s the suggestion, CBS. I really don’t know how you all are doing news over there, but let me give you a suggestion. You should ask your source, whoever gave you these documents. This is real simple. It’s just easy as pie. You just ask your source to provide the originals of these documents to an independent expert for evaluation or a panel of independent experts. That way, everybody will know if these documents actually exist in original form or whether or not they’re forgeries. That’s all you had to do. It’s that simple.
Now, it’s because it’s that simple and because they haven’t done it that’s leading everybody to continue to look into this and wonder what the hell is going on. So you got a CBS producer: “We don’t know where we got the original. We don’t know where we got these.” How can that possibly be? How do you go on the air with this size a story without being able to tell people or ID internally where you got these, if you’re telling the truth about that. You know, that’s another thing. But it’s real simple: Whoever gave these, show up with the originals. That’s it. You want to solve this problem overnight, you can do it, and that isn’t going to happen, which is going to continue to lead people to speculate on this.
So the CBS producer says, “Yeah, we’re having a hard time tracking how we got the documents. There are at least two people in this building who have insisted we got copies of those memos from the Kerry campaign by way of an additional source. We don’t have the originals and our sources have indicated to us that we’ll not be getting the originals. How that’s possible, I don’t know.” Well, I just told you what they need to do to fix this, and CBS has just said their source won’t give them the originals. So CBS hasn’t seen the originals. They don’t even know if originals exist? Rather admitted on this telecast Sunday, Friday night, that CBS only had photocopies. You can’t do genuine, legitimate document analysis on photocopies, for crying out loud! Even a signature which is what the expert — you could scan a signature on a computer and paste it in there and photocopy it. So this is… I mean, to me they’re in trouble over there and they don’t see a way out of it and they don’t see the way out of it because they’re in the midst of an agenda. They’re not in the middle of producing news here.
This is not about getting to the truth. You know, this is the thing. This is why I think that CBS is in some trouble. The facade has long been weak, but the basis on which all these news organizations operate is that they are interested in the truth, that the truth is what you as a viewer, reader, consumer can count on. Not here. It’s clear that they’re not interested in the truth. They’re trying to cover up the truth. This is Nixonian. I told you last week: They have become what they hated.” They hated Nixon. The cover-up is worse than the crime here. This could have actually been an accident. This could have actually been just a little over-eagerness or whatever and if they would have just explained it and apologized for it. It would have done maybe some damage, but not like this is going to cause. Now they’re going to cover up their own shortcomings and why are there shortcomings, their shortcomings because they’re so eager to finally get the goods on this story that’s been out there for ten years.

Ann Richards first tried this story running against W for governor down in Texas. She found nothing with it. The Democratic Party has tried this three or four previous times in this election season alone. Nothing came of it. All of a sudden the mother lode lands in CBS’ lap. “Bammo! Here it is!” Fine, they run with it, so eager to have it. Now they’re going to cover up how they did this because this is like making sausage: You don’t want to see it happen. Except the sausage, you don’t want to eat this, either, because this is spoiled. This is just spoiled. I mean, when you have a producer who says they don’t even know (where the documents came from), there’s a question over who provided these documents in the first place? Two people at CBS think they got ’em from the Kerry campaign via an additional source? We don’t have the originals? Our sources have indicated to us we will not be getting the originals? If you don’t have the originals and if you’re not going to go get the originals, how can you file the story in the first place?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Just so you know, folks, the whole modus operandi of CBS now is not to evaluate the merits of the story. They’re not going to do that. They’re just going to defend it, especially if they tonight have any originals. “Ah, we’ll stand by our story.” They’re in a total defend-the-story mode right now. There has to be a lot of pressure that is brought to bear to get this changed. But make no mistake: they’re sweating bullets over there, because they’re not sure they can succeed in the defend-the-story mode.
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