It appears Bob Schieffer is not prepared to see his reputation sink with the CBS news ship, athough he parrots the company line.
Bob Schieffer Calls Upon CBS to Give More ProofOn the air over the years Dan Rather has repeatedly called him "one of the most experienced political correspondents in the nation." After covering so many stories, CBS Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer has seen plenty of stonewalling and knows it when he sees it.
Speaking at a news conference in Sioux City, Iowa, Schieffer said CBS needs to do more to prove that the suspect photocopied memos are not phony.
"I think we have to find some way to show our viewers they are not forgeries,'' Schieffer said, although he didn't "know how we're going to do that without violating the confidentiality of sources.''
Although Schieffer said he didn't believe someone was trying to set up Dan Rather, he did acknowledge the memos could have been planted by the opposing campaign as a political smear, something he's certainly seen plenty of in his career.
"People ask me, 'Do I think somebody was trying to set up Dan Rather?' I say, No that's completely out of the question.'"
"Would somebody do this in an effort to smear George Bush? That may be so. We're in the middle of a political campaign, and this would not be the first campaign where somebody on one side slipped something to a reporter because he feels it would hurt the guy on the other side.''
Rather won't admit that the planting of memos could have been an effort to gain political advantage.
Although it's not absolutely proven that the Kerry campaign placed the documents, the campaign is still enthusiastic about CBS's reporting, and have run political ads with footage of Dan Rather.
This is not the first instance of Rather's poor research/bias as this article by Anne Morse at NRO shows, it's a pattern.
On June 2, 1988, CBS aired an hour-long special titled CBS Reports: The Wall Within, which CBS trumpeted as the "rebirth of the TV documentary." It purported to tell the true story of Vietnam through the eyes of six of the men who fought there. And what terrible stories they had to tell.[...]
The The Wall Within was hailed by critics who — like the Washington Post's Tom Shales — gushed that the documentary was "extraordinarily powerful." There was just one problem: Almost none of it was true.
The truth was uncovered by B.G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran and author of Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History (with Glenna Whitley). Burkett discovered that only one of the vets had actually served in combat. Steve Southards, who'd claimed to be a 16-year-old Navy SEAL assassin, had actually served as an equipment repairman stationed far from combat. Later transferred to Subic Bay in the Philippines, Steve spent most of his time in the brig for repeatedly going AWOL.
And George Gruel, who claimed he was traumatized by the sight of his friend being chopped to pieces by a propeller? Navy records reveal that a propeller accident did take place on the Ticonderoga when Gruel was aboard — but that he wasn't around when it happened. During Gruel's tour, the ship had been converted to an antisubmarine warfare carrier which operated, not on "secret mission" along the Vietnam coast, but on training missions off the California coastline. Nevertheless, Burkett notes, Gruel receives $1,952 a month from the Veterans Administration for "psychological trauma" related to an event he only heard about.
Mikal Rice — the anguished vet who claimed to have cradled his dying buddy in his arms — actually spent his tour as a guard with an MP company at Cam Ranh Bay. He never saw combat. Neither did Terry Bradley, who was not the "fighting sergeant" he'd claimed to be. Instead, military records reveal he served as an ammo handler in the 25th Infantry Division and spent nearly a year in the stockade for being AWOL. That's good news for the hundreds of Vietnamese civilians Bradley claimed to have slaughtered. But it doesn't say much for Dan Rather's credibility.
As Burkett notes, the records of all of these vets were easily checkable through Freedom of Information Act requests of their military records — something Rather and his producers simply didn't bother to do. They accepted at face value the lurid tales of atrocities committed in Vietnam and the stories of criminal behavior, drug addiction, and despair at home.
Is it just me or does this have an eerie similarity to Kerry's Winter Soldier testimony?
Dan Rather must retract/correct this story on-air in prime time, and CBS must dismiss CBS producer Mary Mapes or CBS should not be allowed to moderate the presidential debate as they have broken the public trust.