He's Rather Stubborn

Though I missed the show, Michelle Malkin presents what should have been David Letterman's Top Ten List last night, the top ten defects in CBS/Dan Rather's handling of the TANG document story.  It's an excellent summary, and she also notes the Paul Mirengoff (of Power Line) piece in the Weekly Standard which walks the observant reader to the conclusion that there was indeed political bias at CBS on this.

I'm interested in some of Dan's answers last night.  It appears he's going to play Captain Philip Francis Queeg right to the end, though instead of talking about circular logic and missing strawberries he's ruminating over "fake but accurate" and "never proven false" and "no political bias."

From the transcript of last night's interview, posted at RatherBiased:

LETTERMAN: Now, just taking that story in and of itself, would that have been a damaging story? Was it a damaging story? Is it... would it have caused people to change their votes? How big a story would that have been if it had been verified?

RATHER: I don't know because we never reached that point. We put it on the air with what we thought was credibility. We had things besides the documents, but for whatever reason, rightly or wrongly, the focus became the documents. We were not able to [authenticate] the documents as thoroughly as I think we should have, given a little more time perhaps we could have. (my emphasis)

Now think about that for a minute.  "We put it on the air with what we thought was credibility."  I think what he's trying to say here is that he believed the story, and CBS's credibility would vouch for the story.  I'm sorry Dan, it doesn't work that way.  The story in itself has to be credible.  When you run an incompletely researched story it affects CBS's credibility; that credibility can not be used to bolster the incompletely researched story.  Second point: "given a little more time perhaps we could have?"  Well, it's been 6 months since the story ran, and numerous document experts have examined them, and they're still not authenticated.  How much time does he need?  Perhaps he means that had they been discovered to be forgeries beforehand they could have been retyped on a 1970 Smith-Corona, to 'improve' their authenticity.  (By the way, I have a couple of old standard typewriters in my basement - would that help?)

Regarding the "independent" investigation:

LETTERMAN: Is this a big thing for a network news organization to have endured?

RATHER: I think the answer to that is yes, yes. Richard Thornburgh, former Attorney General who was in the Nixon administration, says the Bushes are good friends of his, both President one and two Bush. He headed the panel. They took the better part of four months, spent several million dollars, some people say as much as $5 million, and came out with a report which I've read, thought about, absorbed it, take it seriously and move on and carry it with me in my work. Among the things, they concluded a lot of things, many of them not complementary about my work. They concluded that whatever happened and whatever you thought about it, it was not motivated by political bias and they said that, although they had four months and millions of dollars, they could not demonstrate the documents were not authentic, that they were forgeries. They said they couldn't make that conclusion...

LETTERMAN: Did not exist. That evaporated. Secondly, they could not prove the documents were false. They could not prove they were true and accurate, but they also could not prove they were false

RATHER: That's correct.

You see, I knew this was going to come back and bite the panel in the backside.  There I wrote, regarding the failure of the panel to take their own experts opinion and label the documents forged:

This is important, because already the anti-Bush forces are using this failure to declare the memos forgeries as vindication of the memos, if this letter to the editor in today's Boston Globe is an indication:

THE IRONY of two separate news stories on Tuesday's front page is lost on no thinking person.  In the first, it is reported that CBS News is firing four individuals for airing a story based on documents that an independent investigation cannot determine conclusively they are forged or real.

Leaving aside the construction of the final sentence, this writer feels the absence of a declaration that the forged documents were indeed forged is, in essence, vindication for the documents, and whether you believe them or not is a matter of opinion.  Because the Panel abdicated it's responsibility to address this issue we're going to be hearing that they're true more often.  Aaaarrrgh!!, as Charlie Brown says.

So, here we have CBS's typology expert, in Appendix 4 of the report, saying the documents were forged, the panel doesn't declare them forged despite this, and Mr. Rather takes this as vindication.  Furthermore, Mr. Mirengoff walks you through the argument to see that, clearly, political bias is involved, and the panel ignored the evidence and logic he noted, and Dan takes that as further vindication.

Aaaarrgh!!