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‘‘I want to say personally and directly — I’m sorry,’’ Dan Rather said last night on the ‘‘CBS Evening News.’’
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CBS says it's sorry for story on BushGuard documents called unverifiedCBS News executives said yesterday that a former Texas National Guard officer had ''deliberately misled" the network about the authenticity of purported military documents that provided the basis for a ''60 Minutes" report questioning President Bush's performance as a Guard pilot during the Vietnam War.
The president of CBS News, Andrew Heyward, and anchorman Dan Rather, who filed the report broadcast on Sept. 8, apologized -- with Rather doing so on the ''CBS Evening News" -- because the network has been unable to verify the authenticity of the documents, which indicated that Bush benefited from favoritism because of his politically connected family. A media and political firestorm erupted almost immediately after the broadcast. The Texan who supplied the documents, retired Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, initially told CBS that he had obtained them from a fellow Guardsman. But in a CBS interview with Rather last night, Burkett admitted that, under pressure by CBS News to name his source, he lied about how he obtained the documents. Burkett has since provided ''a different source, one we cannot verify," Rather said. ''At the time, CBS News and this reporter fully believed the documents were genuine," Rather said last night, about eight minutes into the program. ''Tonight, after further investigation, we can no longer vouch for their authenticity. . . . I want to say personally and directly -- I'm sorry." The report did not explain how the network tried to verify either source identified by Burkett. Burkett is known in Texas military and political circles as a disgruntled former Guardsman and longtime critic of Bush. In recent days, a series of e-mails has also surfaced showing that -- a few weeks before the ''60 Minutes" report -- Burkett spoke with Max Cleland, an adviser to John F. Kerry's presidential campaign, about assisting the Democrats with a counterattack on Bush. Kerry campaign officials yesterday denied again that they were connected to the CBS report. Also, an adviser to Kerry, Joe Lockhart, said last night that he talked with Burkett about the role of Vietnam in the campaign -- but not Bush's National Guard records -- shortly before the ''60 Minutes" piece aired. He denied any connection between the presidential campaign and the documents. Several media analysts said CBS's errors in judgment--especially because they involved such allegations about an incumbent president in the middle of his reelection campaign--were a major embarrassment that would tarnish the reputations of Rather and the news division. They also criticized CBS as taking too long to repudiate the documents, said to be written by Bush's commander, despite media stories indicating they were forged. CBS said it was commissioning an independent panel to review the incident. ''It's a devastating event for CBS, not only because they made serious editorial mistakes, but also because they responded in a totally arrogant fashion for the last two weeks when they turned their guns on their critics rather than quickly investigating and owning up to the problems with these so-called documents," said Bob Zelnick, a former ABC News reporter who is chairman of Boston University's journalism department. Continued... |
