Rather sues CBS

[cryptique]

from Salon.com today...

 

Dan Rather stands by his story

 

His lawsuit will attempt to show that CBS tried to suppress the report on Bush's National Guard Service and the Abu Ghraib abuses.

 

By Sidney Blumenthal

 

Sep. 27, 2007 | Dan Rather's complaint against CBS and Viacom, its parent company, filed in New York state court on Sept. 19 and seeking $70 million in damages for his wrongful dismissal as "CBS Evening News" anchor, has aroused hoots of derision from a host of commentators. They've said that the former anchor is "sad," "pathetic," "a loser," on an "ego" trip and engaged in a mad gesture "no sane person" would do, and that "no one in his right mind would keep insisting that those phony documents are real and that the Bush National Guard story is true."

 

If the court accepts his suit, however, launching the adjudication of legal issues such as breach of fiduciary duty and tortious interference with contract, it will set in motion an inexorable mechanism that will grind out answers to other questions as well. Then Rather's suit will become an extraordinary commission of inquiry into a major news organization's intimidation, complicity and corruption under the Bush administration. No congressional committee would be able to penetrate into the sanctum of any news organization to divulge its inner workings. But intent on vindicating his reputation, capable of financing an expensive legal challenge, and armed with the power of subpoena, Rather will charge his attorneys to interrogate news executives and perhaps administration officials under oath on a secret and sordid chapter of the Bush presidency.

 

In making his case, Rather will certainly establish beyond reasonable doubt that George W. Bush never completed his required service in the Texas Air National Guard. Moreover, Rather's suit will seek to demonstrate that the documents used in his "60 Minutes II" piece were not inauthentic and that he and his producers acted responsibly in presenting them and the information they contained -- and that that information is true. Indeed, no credible source has refuted the essential facts of the story.

 

Most cases of this sort are usually settled before discovery. But Rather has made plain that he is uninterested in a cash settlement. He has filed his suit precisely to be able to take depositions.

 

In his effort to demonstrate his mistreatment, Rather will detail how network executives curried favor with the administration, offering him up as a human sacrifice. The panel that CBS appointed and paid millions to in order to investigate Rather's journalism will be exposed as a shoddy kangaroo court.

 

Rather's complaint has already asserted a pattern of network submission to administration pressure, beginning with the Abu Ghraib story. In early 2004, Mary Mapes, a producer for "60 Minutes II" with more than two decades of experience, uncovered the torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Her sources were sound and the evidence incontrovertible, but according to Rather's complaint, "CBS management attempted to bury" the story. In a highly unusual move, then CBS News president Andrew Heyward and then senior vice president Betsy West personally intervened to demand editing changes and ever more "substantiation."

 

Rather's suit states that "for weeks, they refused to grant permission to air the story" and "continued to 'raise the goalposts,' insisting on additional substantiation." Even after Mapes gained possession of some of the now-infamous photographs of the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib (a full set of which was later obtained and posted by Salon), the news executives suppressed the story, "in part," according to Rather's suit, "occasioned by acceding to pressures brought to bear by government officials."

 

Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Rather at his home, sources close to the case told me, telling him that broadcasting the story would endanger "national security." Myers explained to Rather that U.S. soldiers, just then poised for an assault on Fallujah, would be demoralized and suggested that Rather and CBS might threaten the outcome of the battle and the soldiers' safety.

 

Only when Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for the New Yorker, relying on different sources from Mapes', unearthed the Abu Ghraib story and CBS executives learned that the magazine was about to scoop the network did they grudgingly permit it to be aired. "Even then," Rather's suit states, "CBS imposed the unusual restrictions that the story would be aired only once, that it would not be preceded by on-air promotion, and that it would not be referenced on the CBS Evening News." Feeling forced against their will to broadcast a story they knew was accurate, CBS's executives did everything within their power to ensure the public would pay as little attention to it as possible by prohibiting any mention of it. CBS's self-censorship set the stage for its reaction to the Bush National Guard story.

 

The widely accepted account that Mapes and Rather's original piece on Bush and the Guard was unproved and discredited has been based on the notion that the documents revealed were false. But three years after the heated controversy exploded, these premises appear very uncertain in the cold light of day.

 

Upon graduation from Yale in 1968, George W. Bush was accepted into the Texas Air National Guard, known as the "Champagne Unit" for serving as a haven for the privileged sons of the Texas elite seeking to escape duty in Vietnam. Through carefully placed calls made by Bush family friends, Bush was edged ahead of a 500-man waiting list. Then, after failing to complete his required hours of flight, he requested transfer to a unit in Montgomery, Ala. But there is no proof that he ever performed any of his service there; he refused to take a physical and was grounded. Ordered to return to his Houston base, he simply disappeared. Yet he was honorably discharged in 1973, though there is no proof that he had fulfilled his obligation.

 

During the 2000 campaign, the Boston Globe reported a number of discrepancies in Bush's National Guard record. However, the rest of the national press corps virtually ignored the Globe's stories, instead preferring to swarm around fictions about Al Gore helpfully stoked by the Bush campaign. Bush refused to make public his military records, in contrast to his principal primary opponent, Sen. John McCain, who had released his. But the press collectively let the matter pass. Nonetheless, the gaps in Bush's service as reported by the Globe had not been answered and hung in the air, if anyone cared to pursue them.

 

After breaking the Abu Ghraib story, Mapes, who lived in Texas and had reported on Bush when he was governor, began looking into the National Guard episode. By then, Sen. John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War hero who was awarded the Silver and Bronze stars, had emerged as the Democratic candidate. The Bush operation arranged for funding a front group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to mount a smear campaign that Kerry had been dissembling all these years about his medals. Kerry's campaign, like Gore's, chose not to dignify obvious lies by responding, and the press lagged behind the story as it gained traction. Discrediting Kerry's greatest biographical asset was calculated to compensate for Bush's hidden liability. In February 2004, the Washington Post followed on the Boston Globe articles of 2000, and its reporters were unable to find anyone that could corroborate Bush's claim that he had served at an Alabama air base in 1972. To an aggressive journalist like Mapes it seemed logical to examine Bush's National Guard story, which remained a mystery.

 

The opaque story was partly illuminated by a piece in Salon, written by Mary Jacoby, on Sept. 2, 2004. Offering extensive documentation, including photographs and letters, Linda Allison, who had housed Bush during his missing year, explained that his drunken misbehavior was creating havoc for his father's political aspirations and that the elder Bush asked his old friend Jimmy Allison, a political consultant from Midland, Texas, now living in Alabama, to handle the wastrel son. "The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Linda Allison told Salon. During the time the younger Bush was under the watchful eye of the Allisons, he never went to a National Guard base or wore a uniform. "Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way," said Allison. She did, however, remember him drinking, urinating on a car, screaming at police and trashing the apartment he had rented.

 

On Sept. 8, "60 Minutes II" broadcast its story. It featured former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, a Democrat, who disclosed that just before George W. Bush would be eligible for the draft, a mutual friend of then Rep. George H.W. Bush asked him to help procure the younger Bush a spot in the "Champagne Unit." Barnes appeared on camera, saying: "It's been a long time ago, but he said basically would I help young George Bush get in the Air National Guard. I was a young, ambitious politician doing what I thought was acceptable. It was important to make friends. And I recommended a lot of people for the National Guard during the Vietnam era -- as speaker of the House and as lieutenant governor. I would describe it as preferential treatment."

 

Then Rather, acting as correspondent, introduced new material drawn from the files of Col. Jerry Killian, Bush's squadron commander: "'60 Minutes' has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file. Among them, a never-before-seen memorandum from May 1972, where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about 'how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November.' Lt. Bush tells his commander 'he is working on a campaign in Alabama ... and may not have time to take his physical.' Killian adds that he thinks Lt. Bush has gone over his head, and is 'talking to someone upstairs.'"

 

Another Killian memo contained the coup de gr

[borracho]

what's the frequency Kenneth!

[mountain bed]

$70 million seems like alot of money. But there's no question in my mind that Rather was given a raw deal. It's painfully obvious that in the lead up to the war (and actually during all of Bush's first term) that the networks were so caught up in some sort of patriotic fervor that they really missed the boat in regards to reporting what was really going on.

 

Shame on Dan for not dotting his i's & crossing his t's with the Texas Air National Guard story. But I still think he got screwed over. And who could argue that the Abu Grahib incident isn't the biggest foriegn policy black eye of our lifetime?

[cryptique]

Shame on Dan for not dotting his i's & crossing his t's with the Texas Air National Guard story. But I still think he got screwed over.

I think part of the point of this is that he did dot his i's and cross his t's, but the administration and CBS railroaded him for it anyway, abetted by the right-wing echo chamber.

[mountain bed]

You could very well be right. I watched an interview with Marvin Kalb talking with Couric last night & they discussed this thing at length. Very interesting. They seemed to intimate that Dan was so busy with the hoopla of the campaign that certain parts were left trusted to other people to check.

 

Seeing how Katie now heads up the news division of CBS she was probably just spouting the corporate "party line".

[Gobias Industries]

ZING!!!!!!!!

[Guest Jules]

Rather is a pickle. I think he's making himself look stupid with this whole thing.

[cryptique]

Rather is a pickle. I think he's making himself look stupid with this whole thing.

So, you'd rather have a totally submissive media eagerly spreading the talking points distributed the administration and helping them to stifle dissent, and no one trying to push back against that?

[Spawn's dad]

gee whiz dude, the media is liberal. fact check much?

[Guest Jules]

So, you'd rather have a totally submissive media eagerly spreading the talking points distributed the administration and helping them to stifle dissent, and no one trying to push back against that?

No, I just don't like Dan Rather.

[Gobias Industries]

No, I just don't like Dan Rather.

 

Your personal feelings about Dan Rather have no purpose in determining the usefulness of exposing the truth about our softy media.

[Analogman]

He should give some cash to these guys.

[Spawn's dad]

you could have posted that here

[Analogman]

Oh - was there about it already? Sorry, I did not catch it.

[Spawn's dad]

LOL no, but it seems everything has been argued in that thread so why not one more thing.

[Analogman]

That is a good point. Free Erl.

[Sir Stewart]

FREE ERL!

I am going to miss all the premieres tonight, thanks to my POS tv conking out.

 

Back on track: Right on Dan.

[Analogman]

I think they run them on the NBC website - and as you know, TV Links or I am sure they will be up on some BT site by tommorrow.

[Sir Stewart]

Yeah, it'd be fun to see them "live" though.

[Analogman]

That's the only way I like to watch things - really.

[Sir Stewart]

Maybe I'll watch them on the site synched up with broadcast time and make up my own commercials.

[Atticus]

He should give some cash to these guys.

 

profanity is the last goddamn refuge of the fucking inarticulate. asshole.

[Analogman]

You don't have to tell me that - here, we can be fired for swearing. It creates a hostile work environment.

[JerseyMike]

It's painfully obvious that in the lead up to the war (and actually during all of Bush's first term) that the networks were so caught up in some sort of patriotic fervor that they really missed the boat in regards to reporting what was really going on.

 

That's exactly what is going on with all of this Iran hoopla. Scary, ain't it?

 

As far as Rather goes, well he should have taken a stand when this first happened, so I don't think he deserves any money.

 

There was some speculation that the "false documents" that were obtained by Rather were circulated by Karl Rove, which would go right along with his style. Does anybody know if any light has been shed on this rumor?

[cryptique]

As far as Rather goes, well he should have taken a stand when this first happened, so I don't think he deserves any money.

I strongly doubt Rather is seeking that money for himself. That figure likely accomplishes two things: one, it's large enough to make CBS take notice, and two, it could cover a lot of expenses for whatever Dan's favorite charities might be.

 

I could be wrong, but Rather's a millionaire many times over already, and I don't see this as an attempt to further enrich himself. Even if it is, I say, stick it to 'em, Dan!