Presidents and the Media: George W. Bush and Dan Rather
During the 2004 election campaign a controversy emerged concerning the military records of President George W. Bush. On September 8, 2004, CBS anchor and veteran newsman Dan Rather reported on the program "60 Minutes Wednesday" about a series of memos that had been discovered, which critical of President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record. The records had allegedly been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Copies of the documents were made available on the Internet.
CBS reported that these "Killian documents" came from the "personal files" of the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who had been Bush's squadron commander during Bush's Air National Guard service. The documents described preferential treatment that was given to Bush during his service in the guard. They alleged that pressure had been put on Killian to put a positive spin on an annual officer rating report for the then 1st Lt. Bush. CBS aired the story on as more of Bush's official records from the Department of Defense were released, including one just the day before as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Associated Press.
There was just one problem. The Killian documents turned out to be fake. A Free Republic web posting by Harry MacDougald, a conservative Republican lawyer, posting under the blogger name, "Buckhead", claimed that the formatting shown in the documents used proportional fonts that did not come into common use until the mid-to-late 1990s. He alleged that the documents were therefore likely forgeries. It was unlikely that the typewriters available to Killian's secretary could have produced such these documents. The documents also contained U.S. Army jargon, rather than U.S. Air Force, jargon. The documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents had characteristics that exactly matched standard font features of Microsoft Word. These accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times.
Experts questioned the documents' authenticity and the lack of a chain of custody among them. The original documents were never submitted for authentication, and the man who delivered the copies of them, Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, was a former officer in the Texas Army National Guard and an outspoken critic of President Bush. Burkett claimed that he burned the original documents. Burkett later admitted lying to CBS and USA Today about where he had obtained the papers and eventually expressed doubts of his own about their authenticity.
At first CBS and Rather stood by their story. But on September 20, 2004, less than two months before Election Day, CBS News retracted the story. It reported that it had been misled about the Killian documents. The network also said that it could not authenticate the documents and said in a statement that it should not have used them. In a later 60 Minutes broadcast, Marian Carr Knox, secretary to Killian at the time, said in an interview that she "didn't type these memos". Rather said, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question."
CBS then formed an independent panel headed by former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and retired Associated Press president Louis D. Boccardi to investigate the story and the handling of the Killian memos. The final report of the panel, while not addressing the authenticity of the documents, faulted many of the decisions made in developing the story, and producer Mary Mapes along with three others were forced to resign from CBS News. Following the panel's investigation, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign.
Prior to the panel report being completed, Dan Rather had announced the date of his retirement. He left "60 Minutes Wednesday", stepped down as CBS news anchor on March 9, 2006, and then left CBS altogether on June 20, 2006. The news show "60 Minutes Wednesday" was canceled on May 18, 2005, allegedly due to poor ratings and not because of the memos broadcast.
On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live. He said of the Killian documents: "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. The truth of this story stands up to this day." That same month, in September 2007, Rather sued CBS and its former parent company, Viacom, for US$70 million. He said that he had been made a "scapegoat" over the story. His legal fight with CBS ended in January 2010 when the New York State Supreme Court declined to hear his motion to reinstate his lawsuit.
The incident did not effect the outcome of the election for Bush. His opponent, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, had his own problems related to his military service. Kerry was accused by two groups, the Swift Vets and the POWs for Truth, who accused Kerry of making "phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compels us to step forward." The group challenged the legitimacy of the combat medals awarded to Kerry by the U.S. Navy, and the disposition of his discharge. A successful Republican National Convention along with the allegations by Kerry's former fellow servicemen gave Bush his a 14 point lead in the polls by the time that CBS retracted its story. Bush won the election, receiving 62,040,610 votes (50.73%) and 286 electoral votes, compared with 59,028,444 votes for Kerry (48.27%), who won 251 electoral votes.
CBS reported that these "Killian documents" came from the "personal files" of the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who had been Bush's squadron commander during Bush's Air National Guard service. The documents described preferential treatment that was given to Bush during his service in the guard. They alleged that pressure had been put on Killian to put a positive spin on an annual officer rating report for the then 1st Lt. Bush. CBS aired the story on as more of Bush's official records from the Department of Defense were released, including one just the day before as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Associated Press.
There was just one problem. The Killian documents turned out to be fake. A Free Republic web posting by Harry MacDougald, a conservative Republican lawyer, posting under the blogger name, "Buckhead", claimed that the formatting shown in the documents used proportional fonts that did not come into common use until the mid-to-late 1990s. He alleged that the documents were therefore likely forgeries. It was unlikely that the typewriters available to Killian's secretary could have produced such these documents. The documents also contained U.S. Army jargon, rather than U.S. Air Force, jargon. The documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents had characteristics that exactly matched standard font features of Microsoft Word. These accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times.
Experts questioned the documents' authenticity and the lack of a chain of custody among them. The original documents were never submitted for authentication, and the man who delivered the copies of them, Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, was a former officer in the Texas Army National Guard and an outspoken critic of President Bush. Burkett claimed that he burned the original documents. Burkett later admitted lying to CBS and USA Today about where he had obtained the papers and eventually expressed doubts of his own about their authenticity.
At first CBS and Rather stood by their story. But on September 20, 2004, less than two months before Election Day, CBS News retracted the story. It reported that it had been misled about the Killian documents. The network also said that it could not authenticate the documents and said in a statement that it should not have used them. In a later 60 Minutes broadcast, Marian Carr Knox, secretary to Killian at the time, said in an interview that she "didn't type these memos". Rather said, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question."
CBS then formed an independent panel headed by former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and retired Associated Press president Louis D. Boccardi to investigate the story and the handling of the Killian memos. The final report of the panel, while not addressing the authenticity of the documents, faulted many of the decisions made in developing the story, and producer Mary Mapes along with three others were forced to resign from CBS News. Following the panel's investigation, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign.
Prior to the panel report being completed, Dan Rather had announced the date of his retirement. He left "60 Minutes Wednesday", stepped down as CBS news anchor on March 9, 2006, and then left CBS altogether on June 20, 2006. The news show "60 Minutes Wednesday" was canceled on May 18, 2005, allegedly due to poor ratings and not because of the memos broadcast.
On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live. He said of the Killian documents: "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. The truth of this story stands up to this day." That same month, in September 2007, Rather sued CBS and its former parent company, Viacom, for US$70 million. He said that he had been made a "scapegoat" over the story. His legal fight with CBS ended in January 2010 when the New York State Supreme Court declined to hear his motion to reinstate his lawsuit.
The incident did not effect the outcome of the election for Bush. His opponent, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, had his own problems related to his military service. Kerry was accused by two groups, the Swift Vets and the POWs for Truth, who accused Kerry of making "phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compels us to step forward." The group challenged the legitimacy of the combat medals awarded to Kerry by the U.S. Navy, and the disposition of his discharge. A successful Republican National Convention along with the allegations by Kerry's former fellow servicemen gave Bush his a 14 point lead in the polls by the time that CBS retracted its story. Bush won the election, receiving 62,040,610 votes (50.73%) and 286 electoral votes, compared with 59,028,444 votes for Kerry (48.27%), who won 251 electoral votes.