G
gilliam
Guest
Producer Mary Mapes and the crew at “60 Minutes Wednesday” viewed their segment on President Bush receiving special treatment in the Texas Air National Guard as the “Holy Grail,” before it aired last September. Mapes was right. The story is just like King Arthur’s Holy Grail: the stuff of legend.
That’s my take on a report by former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press honcho Louis Boccardi, which CBS commissioned after the expose melted down. The Dan Rather story purported to show that one former National Guard officer was pressured to “sugar coat” Bush’s record. Instead, the story showed that “60 Minutes” was on an ill-fated crusade.
Mapes’ quest for the grail began in 1999, when she looked into allegations that Bush pere’s political connections got Bush into the National Guard despite a waiting list. “Significantly,” the report noted, “Mapes indicated in the April 1999 e-mail that she had been informed that there was no waiting list for President Bush’s TexANG unit at the time he entered.” Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges told her that the Guard was "hurting for pilots at that time. "
No waiting list. No story.
But five years later, Mapes had rejoined the crusade. She contacted a Bush-hating blogger, who told her she believed that a retired Lt. Col. Bill Burkett had a classified document damaging to Bush. Mapes began courting Burkett, apparently undeterred by that fact that he had a history of changing his story. -snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com …
That’s my take on a report by former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press honcho Louis Boccardi, which CBS commissioned after the expose melted down. The Dan Rather story purported to show that one former National Guard officer was pressured to “sugar coat” Bush’s record. Instead, the story showed that “60 Minutes” was on an ill-fated crusade.
Mapes’ quest for the grail began in 1999, when she looked into allegations that Bush pere’s political connections got Bush into the National Guard despite a waiting list. “Significantly,” the report noted, “Mapes indicated in the April 1999 e-mail that she had been informed that there was no waiting list for President Bush’s TexANG unit at the time he entered.” Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges told her that the Guard was "hurting for pilots at that time. "
No waiting list. No story.
But five years later, Mapes had rejoined the crusade. She contacted a Bush-hating blogger, who told her she believed that a retired Lt. Col. Bill Burkett had a classified document damaging to Bush. Mapes began courting Burkett, apparently undeterred by that fact that he had a history of changing his story. -snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com …