And in other news, Dan Rather…
Rather tried making his case in a 2007 lawsuit against his former bosses, but it was thrown out of court two years later. Nonetheless, he remains convinced that he did nothing wrong. “I believed at the time that the [Rathergate] documents were genuine,” Rather says, “and I’ve never ceased believing that they are genuine.
…as well as lying:
“The story we reported has never been denied by George W. Bush, by anyone in his close circles, including his family,” says Rather. “They have never denied the bulwark of the story, the spine of the story, the thrust of the story.” (In fact, Bush officials have indeed denied it, repeatedly. In a conversation I [the author] had with former White House director of communications Dan Bartlett in 2007, he told me, “We believe the story is inaccurate, both the general thrust of it and the questionable sources they used.”)
Rather is now 81, so maybe I should just let him be. On the other hand, 81 is not so very old (and it’s getting younger all the time, from my perspective).
[NOTE: The linked article is very long, and purports to go into the real story of Bush’s national guard service, if anybody cares anymore at this point. I haven’t read it—just the initial part about Rather’s new statements concerning the Rathergate documents—although I plan to try to plow through it some time.]
I got as far into the “real” story as “champagne”. It was not uncommon to hear one or another unit called such. I was in the “champagne ninth” battalion in OCS. Nobody could ever figure out what made our life so cushy compared to the other OCS bats. Handy to the Airborne tower field, so we could watch the guys going up and down, I suppose.
Point is, using that label (presuming this is even true) as if it means something means either the guy doesn’t have a clue, or does and hopes we don’t.
I don’t recall anything from forty-five years ago about influence and getting into Guard or Reserve units. I wasn’t going that way and I was interested in other things, anyway. I suppose if a guy wanted to be a finance clerk in a Guard unit, a little pull upstairs might keep him from being drafted. But it’s been reported that you didn’t need pull to be a Guard pilot because there was no overstock of qualified guys. You didn’t need to get in front of the less-connected by virtue of daddy’s money or whatever.
And all flying is fighting with gravity and, a certain percentage of the time, gravity wins.
People have done the math for fatalities flying F102s versus fatalities for being in Viet Nam. Deaths per 100,000 flight hours and so forth. Something like 2.5 million guys served in Viet Nam–no correction for guys who did multiple tours–and there were about 58,000 deaths.
But that’s wrong. It should be fatalities for being on active duty for two years in the Army. Bush, if drafted, might have ended up in Europe or Korea, or never left the US.
All in all a really stupid story and a really stupid issue, but with the potential to throw an election in war time.
What is telling, however, is that Kerry, who actually made being a war hero part of his campaign persona, did not release his records and no journo challenged him on it.
The bottom line, quoted from the linked Texas Monthly story:
a longer excerpt:
re the Texas Monthly story
Always keep in mind that Texas Monthly is generally to the left of the NYT.
The story is copious, yet many details are not nailed down. Thus, the story amounts to gossip. Much of the gossip is fun, and I would be prepared to believe it, yet it is not nailed down by solid enough research and reporting.
An example: the story cites an assertion that GWB was arrested, in 1972, on cocaine possession, and that the arrest aftermath played a part in GWB’s early exit from the TX Air Nat’l Guard. I am totally prepared to believe this. The story fits very well, and explains and ties together several seeming loose ends. But, the problem is, the writers does not have any evidence. The Texas Monthly writer gives no indication of having personally researched this detail, but, rather, merely repeats what another writer asserted.
I think the next generation fighter , if you’re looking for pure interceptor, was the F106. The F101 Voodoo had been around for quite a while. The actual next generation–which wasn’t “next”, either–was the F4 Phantom.
They didn’t need Bush to transition to the F4, since the Air Force, Marines, and Navy were loaded with F4 pilots already. It would have been a waste of money to put Bush through it since he would be getting out before he was operational on the Phantom and there were plenty of pilots who didn’t need it.
And it wasn’t Bush’s political persona as a badass fighter pilot. It was Kerry the genyoowine war hero–just ask him, but not too much, Christmas in Cambodia–who played the military card.
Bush flew to a carrier, and, due to his qualifications, they let him drive when they were flying straight and level. He wore a flight suit and had a helmet. Good picture, btw. But he wasn’t waving his honorable discharge around as Kerry was–which some have said was a bit smelly.
My take on The Rather incident revolves around the documents themselves, and one detail in particular. Yes the documents appear typed rather than printed and some of the days(e.g., April 16) have a “th” superscript which is diminished in size.
Dan Rather grew up in the era of manual typewriters just as I did. At that time, in the ’70s there was only one typewriter that I know of that could type a diminished superscript “th.” That was the IBM Executive model. It was a particularly troublesome machine to use, but the point is that it was a new generation of typewriter that used a plastic ribbon rather than an inked ribbon and “pasted” a print-out of the individual letter on the paper, unlike most typewriters of the day which simply left an inked impression. The combination of the appearance of an inked ribbon with a diminished superscript “th” was not possible with the technology of the time.
My point: Dan Rather “cut his teeth” in his profession knowing this. When he says that he honestly believed that the documents were valid it permits only two possible interpretations. 1) that Rather was so blinded by his hatred for Geo W Bush that he simply blocked out the facts he knew to be true, or 2) he’s simply lying. If he failed or lied about this, what other reportage did he do this with in his long career?
Update for milgeeks.
The F101 had been developed in the Fifties, with many different mods for different uses. One was interceptor. When the Air Force retired them, some went to the Guard units.
Thing about active-duty pilots is that many of them went to Guard and Reserve units so that they could keep flying, once they left active duty. That way they could have fun, be useful, and get in their twenty years plus for pension. There was so little turnover that some of the units could beat active duty units, their pilots having actually more time in type than the active duty units.
When I was in Air Defense, it was a big deal when a regular, active-duty unit beat a Guard unit in exercises.
Point is, if the Guard got the planes, it would probably not need to train up many pilots, since there’d be a steady supply of qualified pilots getting off active duty.
But, in any case, Bush would not have been needed, and it would have been a waste of time to train him, and, indeed, to keep him around.
My take is how this whole story makes Rather today seem just sad.
He needs to grow a beard and take up a Lefty cause to redeem himself to losing to Bush, Jr. a la Al Gore.
Quite apart from the authenticity or otherwise of the “documents,” or whether or not Rather believed them to be genuine, Rather is nevertheless a straight-up liar. He solemnly intoned into the camera that the documents came from an “unimpeachable source.”
In fact, they came from about as “peachable” a source as one can imagine: an anonymous source who mysteriously pressed documents anonymously faxed from a Kinko’s into the hand of a Dem operative at a county fair, IIRC.
Clearly, Rather was trying to bluff his way through the scandal, and later was incensed that anyone doubted his word. Makes you wonder how many times he’d gotten away with it in the past.
“Rather is now 81, so maybe I should just let him be.”
Nah, badger him with glee. ‘Journalists’ like Rather are a blight on society.
Occam’s Beard: well, we know of at least one time Rather got away with it in the past.
There’s this show and its denouement.
Good point, neo.
Poor Little Dan. GWB hasn’t given that gnat 2-minutes of rent-free space in his head since 2004. But, man-o-man, Little Dan is still consumed. I luv it. As my Sicilian spouse says,”Time wounds all heels.”
If you read the official “rathergate” investigation, you’ll see that Rather had almost nothing to do with the original story. Rather, he was brought in at the last minute as a talking head. I find it astonishing that he chose to identify with, and essentially own, the story afterwards.
“Rather is now 81, so maybe I should just let him be. On the other hand, 81 is not so very old (and it’s getting younger all the time, from my perspective).”
I’ll second that last part of your sentence Neo.
81 isn’t really that old any more; and there is nothing to really suggest that Dan Rather has some sort of mental illness that isn’t just political-bias ignorance.
So, no, I won’t be giving him a pass.
Nor do I give a pass to the Mike Nefongs, or the Al Sharptons, or any other idiots who are given a public spotlight and use it to spread lies and do more harm than good. They need to be called out on their nonsense every time.
LTEC, interesting, regardless of whether the official investigation is valid or a whitewash. If it’s a whitewash, it’s surprising that Rather is so bitter toward CBS. If it’s valid, it proves the longheld contention that the news “anchors” are in fact merely newsreaders, nothing more.
This is so old news. Some of us watched the fraud of the story evolve on the internet. It occurred overnight. Demonstrated the citizen power of the net, which is why both nominal free countries (USA, inter alia) and totalitarian ones want kill- switch power.
Rather sticks to his lies. Whaddaya expect otherwise, and why?
Occam’s Beard
Makes you wonder how many times he’d gotten away with it in the past.
The Kennedy assassination showed Rather’s lack of integrity, for two reasons. First, he wrongly claimed to have been the reporter who scooped President Kennedy’s death. Second, he stated that schoolchildren in Dallas cheered the assassination of President Kennedy, when the children hadn’t been informed of his death. The children were cheering getting out of school early. From the Weekly Standard: Wrong from the Beginning.
The National Guard story is not the first time that Dan Rather has been the model for how not to conduct journalism.
Here is the official Rathergate report:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report.pdf
I don’t think there is any reason to think that the authors wanted to “whitewash” Rather. He really appears to have had very little to do with the original report:
Then, instead of distancing himself from the mess, he adopted it.
Then, instead of distancing himself from the mess, he adopted it.
So he’s stupid as well as corrupt and biased. Beautiful.
Anent Occam’s point about the Texas schoolchildren: the fact that this despicable person would smear little children — from his home state, no less — with a terrible lie just to advance his “career” really tells you all you need to know about his “character.”
Just despicable.
Beverly: I was making the point (10:25 p.m.), not Occam. I was replying to Occam’s wanting additional examples of Rather’s perfidy- which are not difficult to find.
T –
While I don’t know the exact evolutionary history of the electric typewriter (or was it intelligent design?) I remember the era well enough to know that if superscripted electrics existed at all they were confined to the executive suites of Fortune 100 corporations, and a National Guard outpost in Texas likely was banging out memos on an old manual Royal or Underwood.
Gary Rosen,
I’m sure your correct about that, hence the name IBM Executive. The only reason I know anything about it is that I used one for a while. It was a particularly unpleasant machine as opposed to its siblings, the IBM Selectric with the type ball–now they were great machines.
It was a particularly unpleasant machine as opposed to its siblings, the IBM Selectric with the type ball—now they were great machines.
But even they were a pain re sub- and superscripts, and italics, because one had to change the type ball to get them. I typed my dissertation, which was full of equations requiring the above, on one. One equation might necessitate a dozen or more ball changes. At times I thought I’d be collecting Social Security by the time I finished.
OB,
I can appreciate that. I, too, typed my dissertaion on a Selectric, but in the humanities, sub- and super-scripts were not much of an issue.
I mentioned the IBM Executive above because it was the only machine I know of that had a diminshed supserscript “th” key. It also had a correcting tape which lifted an errant letter from the paper.
What I hated about it was that it was a mechanical attempt at proportional spacing. It broke every symbol and letter into horizontal units; a period or comma was 1 unit wide, letters such as “i” or “t” were 2 units, “a, b, c, d, p” etc. were 3 units and wide letters such as “w” and “m” were 4 units wide (As I remember, upper case had it’s own expanded assignation of units).
The back-space, however, only backspaced in single units. To erase a letter, one had to remember how many units to back-space. Even worse, if one only saw a typo after moving on the the next sentence (or paragraph!!) aligning the letter die with an incorrect unwanted letter was a real penance and test of patience. Probably not unlike the drudgery of changing type-balls for matehmatical equations.
It was probably no big deal for touch typists like executive secretaries, but for a Columbus method typists (“seek and find”) like myself, it was absolute agony.
(I realize this is more than anyone ever wanted to know about IBM Executive typewriters.)
The back-space, however, only backspaced in single units. To erase a letter, one had to remember how many units to back-space. Even worse, if one only saw a typo after moving on the the next sentence (or paragraph!!) aligning the letter die with an incorrect unwanted letter was a real penance and test of patience.
Stop! You’re making my scars throb. I didn’t mention it, but the equations were generally centered. Much Anglo-Saxon commentary was in evidence.
“Much Anglo-Saxon commentary . . . .”
Yepper . . . and more than a few crumpled pages in the circular file.
Did not mean to incite pain. Sorry about those scars!
In the 1970s I was the administrative officer in a Navy Reserve unit. Scheduling of physicals was a routine administrative procedure, the commanding officer was not involved and no orders were cut for physicals. The idea of issuing orders for a physical is just bizarre. Also keep in mind that after Vietnam the military services were rifting people. If you didn’t want to stay in the reserves we simply let you go. We had too many people for the available billets. In the 1970s the naval reserve was reduced from about 250,000 to 135,000 personnel. It was almost a 50% reduction.
You know, if the people pushing this had thought for an instant that either CBS or NBC would look at the documents are report on attempted fraud, they wouldn’t have tried it.
Imagine what a hit that would be. Dan Rather reporting on the 6:30 news that there was an attempt to throw an election in wartime with fake documents.
Nope. The people who put this together presumed CBS was absolutely corrupt. And they were right. Good guess, huh?
Or the presume CBS was absolutely gullible. And they were right.
Which do you think they were figuring?
I thought that the Type ‘tells’ which blew things up for Mr.Slimebag were only available on computers… IBM typewriters–Selectrics, I think–were common as spit at the large studio where I was starting out in the early ’70s.
I believe the original 60 minutes report was on Wednesday. Within minutes of that broadcast bloggers were on the story and poking holes in it. I didn’t see the story but I saw the controversy on the blogs as it developed the next morning. By later that evening, Thursday, it had already become a very big deal and Dan Rather addressed it on his nightly news broadcast. He backed the story. Even at that point, I was surprised. But as information continued to come out and the problems with the documents got bigger and bigger I was certain (really certain) that he’d step back from it on his Friday broadcast. But no, he doubled down. I don’t know if that was the occasion he used the term “unimpeachable source” but it simply amazed me that he stayed behind the story 100%. If you’ll remember, that weekend he flew down to Texas to do more interviews to prop up the story and again I was certain that on Monday he would have had enough time to think and comes to his senses. There was no way he could keep up the charade that there wasn’t a serious, serious problem. But, lo and behold, he brought in lame typewriter experts and doubled down yet again. At that point, any sympathy I had for him evaporated. I could see he was delusional. Whatever story he’d originally been handed (which he might not have known too much about) had become his own and his responsiblity. His claims about the genuineness of the documents were laughable and when it became clear that his “unimpeachable” source was a mysterious, unidentified woman at a state fair handing over photocopied documents then he became laughable, too. And that’s where he remains to this day.
It was that unimpeachable source comment, when finally exposed, that doomed his integrity for all time. Being fooled is one thing (perhaps he doesn’t have a good grasp of technology), but lying to his audience’s face is another. There is no way a sane human being could call the mysterious Lucy Ramirez an unimpeachable source.
The CBS investigation was disappointing in that it didn’t come out and call him a liar and label the documents forgeries. They stepped right up to that line but didn’t have the courage to cross it. I think they were trying to be nice to him because of his reputation and long service. Unfortunately it gave him the opening to run around saying the documents weren’t proven to be forgeries. Yes they were. Just read the report. That’s exactly what it says without directly using the “f” word. The meaning is crystal clear. And all the outside analysis proved it as well. It wasn’t simply a case of not having enough information to prove they were real (like Rather liked to believe), it was a matter of actively proving that they were fake. That no system in existence in that time period could produce those documents – and the one that could was a computer program from many years later.
I also couldn’t believe at the time how selfish he was. He unloaded that turkey on the Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes and then, instead of confining it there, he started using his other job, as the nightly news anchor, to defend it. So not only did he tarnish 60 Minutes, but also the nightly news broadcast and, by extension, all of CBS News. I wonder what his 60 Minutes co-anchors thought about that, when the story spiraled totally out of their control? In fact, the Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes only lasted another year. Thanks, Dan!
kcom
You have to admit that, if it weren’t for Rather, more people might believe CBS. Which would be too bad.
I haven’t read the article, but a trustworthy (by my lights) source I recall reading at the time, which detailed it out, was basically that he DID do the requisite number of hours required for service, he just did them in an “unorthodox” way.
What always struck me as hilariously funny about the matter is that Rather thought the whole mess meant didly squat in the situation re: Kerry-v-Bush.
a) Kerry was the one who made his service into an issue — it had become a standard joke to end any quotation of Kerry with, “who, by the way, served in Vietnam, in case you didn’t know” — which meant it was fair game for everyone to investigate and comment about. And it wasn’t pretty — by all indications, he’d done the absolute minimum that he had do to, gotten himself out on trivial injuries as quickly as possible, and then turned around AFTERwards and did just about everything possible to denigrate the service and its soldiers.
b) so along comes Rather, attempting to turn Bush’s military service into some black mark for the people, since Kerry’s was so wretched. Frankly, this was a ludicrously stupid idea — Bush’s military service was irrelevant to the matter, it was old news. It might have been relevant to Bush-v-Gore, but it wasn’t even vaguely relevant to Bush for re-election, since we already KNEW what kind of PotUS — specifically, Commander-in-Chief — he’d be by that time, and it wasn’t awful by any rational measure (don’t turn this into an Iraq War “Bush Lied!” thread, pls). He’d made a lot of good, strong decisions in the aftermath of 911, and, even if his conduct of the Iraq War had been sub-optimal, anyone paying attention knew it was far more media caterwauling than reasonable argument and concern. Who remembers Cindy Sheehan? Did you recall her name until I mentioned it? I certainly didn’t until I looked it up? Bush actually managed to meet the parents of something like 1-in-7 of the soldiers who had lost their lives in Iraq, an unprecedentedly high number of them, because combat fatalities were exceptionally low. You certainly could not tell that from the media coverage.
The point is, the public didn’t CARE about Bush’s military service. It was wellbeyond the point where it reflected anything on his Presidency. But on this stupid basis, Rather ruined his name and his career, turning a long and storied litany of media credentials into a laughingstock and shining a dark light on ALL media that still echoes in the public’s mind today, and he still gets mocked by the term “Fake But Accurate”, when it gets applied to similarly ill-vetted stories. So he pissed it all away chasing a white whale, and never even saw the whale.
At its heart also lies a really stupid meme that Bill Whittle personally debunked as a sub-part of his long but excellent essay Seeing The Unseen (search for “War of The Bumper Stickers”, about a page or so down):
He cites the meme, then nails it dead with an opening broadside, then proceeds to shred the splattered remnants to subatomic particles:
Somewhere in Texas, a Village is missing its Idiot. I chose this one first since it’s the only one that has a particle of real wit. But the Bush is an idiot meme is very tired, and the most cursory look causes it to fall apart like — how can I make them understand? — like a lemon almond biscotti left too long in a grande’ caffe verona.
For starters, you can of course point to the fact that the man did graduate from both Harvard and Yale, but that was with a C average, and clearly, the idea of being merely in the middle of the pack of those getting advanced degrees from America’s two preeminent universities cuts you no slack from those community-college theater major drop-outs who love to level the charge.
Trust me, at least read the “Bush” part right after the “War of the Bumper Stickers”. I suspect you’ll read the rest and then be asking me (please do) to find you more of his essays on The Wayback Machine — there are at least a half dozen or so of similar quality.
No one does the long-form political essay better than Whittle. It’s almost a shame he’s largely moved into video.
Gad, I’m re-reading it now and it’s just beautiful how simple and elegant his arguments are. I wish I could write that well, and I don’t think I write that badly, either.