Here is the non-statement from CBS:
Statement by the President of CBS News, Andrew Heyward:
“We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television. There was a great deal of coroborating [sic] evidence from people in a position to know. Having said that, given all the questions about them, we believe we should redouble our efforts to answer those questions, so that’s what we are doing.”
Others have already noted the presence of weasel words, using the term accurate rather than authentic, and it is clear that no one thinks the documents are authentic (except inside CBS perhaps, but I doubt even that).
I think we are now to the point where CBS is frantically trying to minimize the damage, and this statement, while it says nothing, really, is rather inciteful. It seems pretty clear to me that they understand how damaging this memogate bit has been to their reputation and their credibility. However, they have determined that revealing their sources and methodology in a forthright, open statement would be more damaging still.
I think we are going to learn, in the not so distant future, about a serious incestuous relationship between CBS News and some person, persons, or group. I also bet we will see a bit of the sausage making- and these facts terrify CBS. The only reasoning I can come up for this continued self-inflicted wound is the fear that the truth is much more damaging than the current stonewalling. Right now, they merely appear incompetent, and they have determined incompetence is better than complicit.
While they are re-doubling their efforts, perhaps they can dispatch a staffer or two to help O.J. find the real killers.
Ralph Gizzip
Could this forged memo be Clinton’s final nail in Kerry’s coffin?
I’m not saying it true. I’m just wondering, that’s all.
JohnO
So let me get this straight. If the general belief is that Michael Jackson is a child molester and/or that O.J. killed Nichole, then it’s perfectly acceptable (by CBS standards) to manufacture evidence since we all know they’re guilty anyway. Right?
Dean
JohnO, no, no. Only the PRESS is allowed to make the s*** up. After all, they’re the Fourth Estate, and therefore they must have powers beyond that of mere mortal men.
The rest, the politicians and the like, they’re supposed to operate by “little man” rules.
Although for Democrats, we might make an exception or four.
Mikey
High-speed high-altitude lawn dart. That’s CBS News. The question is how deep a crater will they make on impact?
CadillaqJaq
Being a judicious type, I’m having difficulty with believing Juanita Broderick’s previous allegation of rape but no problem at all believing an 86 year old national guard secretary recalling details that are more than 30 years old and intuiting what her superior officer actually meant.
(This is the best CBS can do?)
I’m waiting for memos to appear that GWB was actually in Cambodia with John Kerry during the time in question.
kjo
CBS is working hard to prop up a stumbling Kerry campaign. The chief witness seems to be an 86 year old former secretary to the txang. The lady is a Bush-hater, yet Rather takes her word, it’s supposed to stand in for the docs we now know are forged. Amazing. Yet CBS will not touch Kerry’s Vietnam record. Won’t even look at it. Yes, that’s fair and balanced. These people are slime.
kor
“CBS is working hard to prop up a stumbling Kerry campaign. The chief witness seems to be an 86 year old former secretary to the txang. The lady is a Bush-hater, yet Rather takes her word, it’s supposed to stand in for the docs we now know are forged. Amazing. Yet CBS will not touch Kerry’s Vietnam record. Won’t even look at it. Yes, that’s fair and balanced. These people are slime.”
I don’t know your political views, but I’m assuming that if CBS is slime for being biased, then Fox News is too? That’s not so unreasonable, is it? Fox has interviewed people who now say Kerry is a bungling fool, when only last year they praised him. How’s that for slime? Either everyone is slime (probably the case this year), or no one is. The other option is WHO REALLY CARES? The goal is not to find some network to smear, but to find out the truth about our presidential candidates. There are quite a few people by now who have come out with the exact same version of things that this secretary has. If Bush didn’t get a favor, how did he leapfrog so many people in an overflowing Guard to find his way into what they called the “Champagne Unit” because it contained so many sons of famous and well-connected people? If you’ve got an explanation, please share it. There is also plenty of evidence by now that he skipped out on some of his duties. I think by now there is enough evidence for all of this that the burden of proof is on Bush, not everyone else.
REGARDLESS, all of these issues are pointless. Why are people focusing on bullshit from years ago, when the real issue that Bush has overhauled some our nation’s most fundamental values? He has discarded a foreign policy approach that has worked well for us since the days of George Washington, and he is chipping fiercely away at the separation of church and state. (Yes, they intended a TWO-WAY separation. Don’t listen to what some wackos on the Christian right tell you, because they are highly agenda driven. Quite simply, “religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.” –James Madison What’s not to get?) He’s also, incidentally, driving a once-robust economy completely into the ground without saving anything for a rainy day. Greenspan: “Has something fundamental happened to the US economy and, by extension, US banking, that enables us to disregard all the time-tested criteria of imbalance and economic danger? Regrettably, the answer is no. The free lunch has still to be invented… Our fiscal prospects are, in my judgment, a significant obstacle to long-term stability…” Throwing HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS away on an unnecessary war certainly doesn’t help either.
Unnecessary? We’re fighting the “war on terror”! Bush told us so! Well, we were attacked on 9/11 by bin Laden, and it’s been THREE years. “I don’t know where [bin Laden] is, and I really don’t care,” Bush was candid enough to tell us. Well guess who does care? ME. Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and others have been planning this war in Iraq since the late 90’s, and they DID NOT mention terrorism back then. Instead of focusing on our true enemies, we are throwing away money we don’t have solely for the purpose of DISTRACTING OURSELVES from what should be our true foreign policy goals.
What else? We’re UNDERFUNDING homeland security. We’re ANGERING the Arab world, which helps extremists recruit. We’re WEAKENING our alliances with important people we need to help us reduce terrorism. There were NO EXTREMISTS of note active in the Saddam-controlled portion of Iraq prior to our invasion. Now Iraq is a breeding grounds for Islamic extremists. Weapons inspectors said inspections were going quite smoothly, with a few small quirks. The IAEA told us Iraq’s nuclear program was diddly.
What we are doing right now is extraordinarily dangerous. I’m not a Democrat, nor a Republican (I might be if not for the fact that “Republican” seems to be synonymous these days with “blind faith,” which is not what our country is about). I am a very concerned citizen, and I urge people to genuinely find out more about what is going on this government, and how Bush is meeting, or failing to meet, the extremely difficult challenges of our time. We ought to be AMERICANS first, not BUSH SUPPORTERS first. Bush is just a man. Our country is much more, and today it is in trouble.
Slartibartfast
CBS isn’t slime for being biased, CBS is slime for using something as basis for a story that it hadn’t done its homework on. It didn’t have original source documentation, had never even seen the originals, and some of the very experts it had hired to authenticate expressed doubts as to authenticity.
There’s your slime.