After "Syriana" and all those heavy-breathing movies about oil, money and corruption, the most horrific Mideast drama of all is on PBS' Frontline this week as it documents the story of Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar and the British arms company BAE that culminated in the blackmailing of former prime minister Tony Blair with threats over terrorism to stop investigating billions of dollars in bribes.
What's most discouraging is that this story is not new. Testimony in a London court over a year ago led a judge to conclude that Blair "rolled over" for Bandar "just as if a gun had been held to the head" of the government.
The Saudi Prince threatened to hold back information on terrorists and suicide bombers that would lead to the loss of "British lives on British streets" if Blair's investigators kept looking into charges that he took $2 billion of bribes in arms deals with the British company BAE. They stopped.
Now Frontline is telling the Bandar-BAE story from its roots in the Margaret Thatcher era to the present day when only the US Justice Department is doggedly pursuing charges of massive criminal corruption by the Bush family's Saudi friend who liked to call himself "Bandar Bush."
The details add up to souped-up penthouse porn with "black money" paying for fast cars, loose women, shopping sprees and a private jet decorated with the colors of Bandar's favorite team, the Dallas Cowboys.
For movie buffs, an added frisson is that the documentary is the work of Lowell Bergman, played by Al Pacino a decade ago in "The Insider," about his misadventures as a 60 Minutes producer trying to get the story of Big Tobacco's misdeeds on the air.
But Americans are still smoking and the Saudis are still raking in huge bribes. Truth may out, but does anybody care?
Showing posts with label 60 Minutes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 60 Minutes. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
An Obama Kiss for Cousin Cheney
On 60 Minutes tonight, the President takes note of the assertion by his long-lost relative Dick Cheney that the Obama Administration's refusal to torture raises the risk for another 9/11 attack on America.
"How many terrorists," Obama asks, "have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."
In answer to a question about released Guantanamo detainees who have reportedly returned to terrorism, the President acknowledges, "There is no doubt that we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting through who are truly dangerous individuals...to make sure [they] are not a threat to us" but calls the Bush policy of long incarcerations with no trials "unsustainable."
As unusual as it is for a president and former vice-president to engage in public argument, at least this one is all in the family, but Obama may want to engage his own genealogist to double-check on the lineage.
"How many terrorists," Obama asks, "have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."
In answer to a question about released Guantanamo detainees who have reportedly returned to terrorism, the President acknowledges, "There is no doubt that we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting through who are truly dangerous individuals...to make sure [they] are not a threat to us" but calls the Bush policy of long incarcerations with no trials "unsustainable."
As unusual as it is for a president and former vice-president to engage in public argument, at least this one is all in the family, but Obama may want to engage his own genealogist to double-check on the lineage.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Rescue Fantasies
The emotional power of 60 Minutes tonight went deeper than a disaster story with a happy ending--the safe ditching of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River with 155 passengers and crew. In a time of fear and anxiety, it affirmed a powerful collective belief that, against all odds, human beings can save themselves and others from disaster.
The retelling of that story was ironically interrupted by commercials for a CBS reality series, celebrating the more dominant values of our time, competition and self-survival, as a counterpoint to the feat of the pilot and crew (along with the river rescuers) of taking responsibility for the lives of so many strangers.
With 9/11, Katrina and social upheaval, this has not been a good age for the rescue fantasies that coexist in all of us along with the selfish instincts that get so much more attention. But a reunion of the Flight 1549 crew with passengers and their families underscores how far and wide the saving of a life reaches into the world.
The pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, told of a woman who "came up to me and said, 'Thank you for not making me a widow. Thank you for allowing my three-year-old son to have a father.'"
Another passenger showed him a picture of himself with his niece, the child of his brother, a firefighter killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. "And he told me, he didn't think that his family could take losing a second son."
The meaning of it all was summed up in a letter to the pilot:
"Yesterday I received a voicemail from my 84-year-old father who lives on the 30th floor of a building with river views here in Manhattan. Had you not been so skilled, my father or others like him in their sky-high buildings could have perished along with your passengers...As a Holocaust survivor my father taught me that to save a life is to save a world as you never know what the person you’ve saved nor his or her prodigy will go on to contribute to the peace and healing of the world."
There couldn't be a better time in our national life for hearing that.
The retelling of that story was ironically interrupted by commercials for a CBS reality series, celebrating the more dominant values of our time, competition and self-survival, as a counterpoint to the feat of the pilot and crew (along with the river rescuers) of taking responsibility for the lives of so many strangers.
With 9/11, Katrina and social upheaval, this has not been a good age for the rescue fantasies that coexist in all of us along with the selfish instincts that get so much more attention. But a reunion of the Flight 1549 crew with passengers and their families underscores how far and wide the saving of a life reaches into the world.
The pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, told of a woman who "came up to me and said, 'Thank you for not making me a widow. Thank you for allowing my three-year-old son to have a father.'"
Another passenger showed him a picture of himself with his niece, the child of his brother, a firefighter killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. "And he told me, he didn't think that his family could take losing a second son."
The meaning of it all was summed up in a letter to the pilot:
"Yesterday I received a voicemail from my 84-year-old father who lives on the 30th floor of a building with river views here in Manhattan. Had you not been so skilled, my father or others like him in their sky-high buildings could have perished along with your passengers...As a Holocaust survivor my father taught me that to save a life is to save a world as you never know what the person you’ve saved nor his or her prodigy will go on to contribute to the peace and healing of the world."
There couldn't be a better time in our national life for hearing that.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Obamas: Keeping It Real
If self-possession is a requirement for a successful presidency, Michelle and Barack Obama showed it in abundance on 60 Minutes tonight.
In half a century of watching White House occupants publicly and privately, I have never seen a couple as comfortable with themselves and each other as these two people who had to overcome extraordinary barriers to get there.
Obama, who avoided talking about race after his Philadelphia speech, acknowledged on Election Night "emotion that I could see in people's faces and in my mother-in-law's face...Michelle's mom, who grew up on the west and south sides of Chicago, who worked so hard to help Michelle get to where she is, her brother to be successful. She was sitting next to me, actually, as we were watching returns...
"And suddenly she just kind of reached out and she started holding my hand, you know, kind of squeezing it. And you had this sense of, 'Well, what's she thinking?' For a black woman who grew up in the 50s, you know, in a segregated Chicago, to watch her daughter become first lady of the United States. I think there was that sense across the country. And not unique to African-Americans."
When their journey started, Obama told Tim Russert with a nervous smile that his wife and friends thought he was still there behind all the hype and hoopla. Almost two years later, he still seems to be himself after all the exposure and pressure to become the fictional character that presidential aspirants usually morph into.
From the evidence of their interplay tonight, his staying grounded has much to do with the woman at his side, who teased him about the car he drove with a hole in the floorboard when they first met and his Washington apartment ("a dump") that she refused to sleep in during his Senate days.
Talking about what he will face as president in dealing with a sick economy, the President-to-be projected a no-nonsense approach that would be seamless with the kind of personal life he has led and will, if Michelle Obama has anything to say about it, continue to lead in the White House.
In half a century of watching White House occupants publicly and privately, I have never seen a couple as comfortable with themselves and each other as these two people who had to overcome extraordinary barriers to get there.
Obama, who avoided talking about race after his Philadelphia speech, acknowledged on Election Night "emotion that I could see in people's faces and in my mother-in-law's face...Michelle's mom, who grew up on the west and south sides of Chicago, who worked so hard to help Michelle get to where she is, her brother to be successful. She was sitting next to me, actually, as we were watching returns...
"And suddenly she just kind of reached out and she started holding my hand, you know, kind of squeezing it. And you had this sense of, 'Well, what's she thinking?' For a black woman who grew up in the 50s, you know, in a segregated Chicago, to watch her daughter become first lady of the United States. I think there was that sense across the country. And not unique to African-Americans."
When their journey started, Obama told Tim Russert with a nervous smile that his wife and friends thought he was still there behind all the hype and hoopla. Almost two years later, he still seems to be himself after all the exposure and pressure to become the fictional character that presidential aspirants usually morph into.
From the evidence of their interplay tonight, his staying grounded has much to do with the woman at his side, who teased him about the car he drove with a hole in the floorboard when they first met and his Washington apartment ("a dump") that she refused to sleep in during his Senate days.
Talking about what he will face as president in dealing with a sick economy, the President-to-be projected a no-nonsense approach that would be seamless with the kind of personal life he has led and will, if Michelle Obama has anything to say about it, continue to lead in the White House.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Supreme Indifference
Just as the '08 election heads for a Democratic-Republican choice, Antonin Scalia comes out from behind the robes to tell us on 60 Minutes this weekend to stop moping about the Supreme Court's award of the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000.
"Get over it," he says in an interview with Lesley Stahl. "It’s so old by now." He may be right. The war in Iraq, the wrecking of our economy, the usurping of traditional American legal rights are so yesterday.
But Scalia himself is a living reminder of what's at stake in this year's election beyond all the mumbo-jumbo of the campaigns--the president's power to name Supreme Court Justices.
If Obama or Clinton is in the White House, it probably won't be someone who goes duck-hunting with Dick Cheney as he is considering a case over the Vice President's meetings with industry officials, including Enron's Ken Lay, while formulating the Administration's energy policy.
Meanwhile, not to worry about Scalia's role on the Court: "I am a law-and-order guy," he tells Stahl. "I mean, I confess to being a social conservative, but it does not affect my views on cases."
Now that is something it make take some time to get over.
"Get over it," he says in an interview with Lesley Stahl. "It’s so old by now." He may be right. The war in Iraq, the wrecking of our economy, the usurping of traditional American legal rights are so yesterday.
But Scalia himself is a living reminder of what's at stake in this year's election beyond all the mumbo-jumbo of the campaigns--the president's power to name Supreme Court Justices.
If Obama or Clinton is in the White House, it probably won't be someone who goes duck-hunting with Dick Cheney as he is considering a case over the Vice President's meetings with industry officials, including Enron's Ken Lay, while formulating the Administration's energy policy.
Meanwhile, not to worry about Scalia's role on the Court: "I am a law-and-order guy," he tells Stahl. "I mean, I confess to being a social conservative, but it does not affect my views on cases."
Now that is something it make take some time to get over.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Stupidity Plus
Gen. Tommy Franks was off the mark when he called Douglas Feith the dumbest effing guy on the planet. On 60 Minutes tonight, Feith showed that stupidity alone is not enough to describe a clueless academic intoxicated by power and willing to stoop to intellectual dishonesty that would shame any used-car salesman
"What we did after 9/11," he told Steve Kroft, "was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States might come. And we did not focus narrowly only on the people who were specifically responsible for 9/11. Our main goal was preventing the next attack."
"So you're saying," an incredulous Kroft followed up by asking, "you didn't think it was that important to go after the people who were responsible for it--more important to go after people who weren't responsible for it?"
Feith, who helped cook the intelligence to justify the invasion, was pimping his doorstop book that blames everyone else, especially L. Paul Bremer, who ran the Iraq occupation for the first two years, for the ensuing fiasco.
If he had had his way, Feith claims, he would have turned the country over to con man Ahmad Chalabi, who fed him and his Neo-Con rubes $33 million of false information to lie us into the war.
Dumb isn't enough. Try shameless, arrogant and deceitful. There is at least one like him on most campuses. Just our luck that this specimen ended up in Rumsfeld's Defense Department.
"What we did after 9/11," he told Steve Kroft, "was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States might come. And we did not focus narrowly only on the people who were specifically responsible for 9/11. Our main goal was preventing the next attack."
"So you're saying," an incredulous Kroft followed up by asking, "you didn't think it was that important to go after the people who were responsible for it--more important to go after people who weren't responsible for it?"
Feith, who helped cook the intelligence to justify the invasion, was pimping his doorstop book that blames everyone else, especially L. Paul Bremer, who ran the Iraq occupation for the first two years, for the ensuing fiasco.
If he had had his way, Feith claims, he would have turned the country over to con man Ahmad Chalabi, who fed him and his Neo-Con rubes $33 million of false information to lie us into the war.
Dumb isn't enough. Try shameless, arrogant and deceitful. There is at least one like him on most campuses. Just our luck that this specimen ended up in Rumsfeld's Defense Department.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Global Warming Alarmism
Disregard those crackling sounds up north and pictures of an ice shelf the size of Rhode Island breaking apart. It's just global warming alarmism, and Jim Inhofe, the ranking Republican of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, is having none of it.
"Media hype," says Sen. Inhofe, who has it on the authority of a former Weather Channel meteorologist that "the vast majority of Antarctica has cooled over the past 50 years and ice coverage has grown to record levels."
But tomorrow night on 60 Minutes, Al Gore will be at it again, telling Lesley Stahl that skeptics like Inhofe and Dick Cheney are "in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat.”
The former Vice President is giving his Nobel Peace Prize money and proceeds from "An Inconvenient Truth" to pay for ads to mobilize public opinion about fighting global warming, featuring such radicals as Pat Robertson and Newt Gingrich.
This week's pictures of the ice shelf splitting are accompanied by warnings from international scientists that "key glaciers flowing from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are thinning at rates not seen since the last ice age" and "losing 132 billion tons of ice a year."
But no sweat, Inhofe and his Weather Channel man are sure there's nothing to worry about.
"Media hype," says Sen. Inhofe, who has it on the authority of a former Weather Channel meteorologist that "the vast majority of Antarctica has cooled over the past 50 years and ice coverage has grown to record levels."
But tomorrow night on 60 Minutes, Al Gore will be at it again, telling Lesley Stahl that skeptics like Inhofe and Dick Cheney are "in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat.”
The former Vice President is giving his Nobel Peace Prize money and proceeds from "An Inconvenient Truth" to pay for ads to mobilize public opinion about fighting global warming, featuring such radicals as Pat Robertson and Newt Gingrich.
This week's pictures of the ice shelf splitting are accompanied by warnings from international scientists that "key glaciers flowing from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are thinning at rates not seen since the last ice age" and "losing 132 billion tons of ice a year."
But no sweat, Inhofe and his Weather Channel man are sure there's nothing to worry about.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Showtime for Obama
In the lull between now and the remaining primaries, it's time for Barack Obama's crucial closeup. Casual dismissals of his minister's troubling views and his ties to indicted fixer Tony Rezko won't be enough to withstand last-minute attacks from the Clinton campaign and, if Obama is nominated, from salivating free-lance Republican swiftboaters.
Over a year ago, the candidate introduced himself and his family on 60 Minutes, with a tour of his old neighborhood. Now Obama, who has said he doesn't want to "airbrush" his past, should follow up by answering the tougher questions that have come up during the campaign.
The drumbeat of accusations is on. Today's Wall Street Journal harps on the tirades of Obama's minister and mentor, Jeremiah Wright, charging that Americans "care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means" by importing drugs, exporting guns and starting the AIDS virus, among other iniquities.
Dismissing Wright as "an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with," as Obama did recently before Jewish leaders, doesn't erase all doubts about the influence on his thinking of the man from whom he borrowed the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."
Even more disclosure is needed about the candidate's ties to Tony Rezko, now on trial for corruption in federal court. Returning campaign contributions and waving away Rezko's involvement in the Obamas' purchase of their home as "boneheaded" on his part barely dent the surface of what the Presidential candidate should explain to voters who have signed onto his promises of a new kind of politics.
Starting with Bill Clinton's response (or non-response, as some saw it) to Gennifer Flowers accusations in 1992, 60 Minutes has come as close to being an arbiter of Presidential character as we have.
If 60 Minutes can get Obama to cooperate in an appraisal of the questions about him, the next step should be a no-holds-barred followup on John McCain's ties to lobbyists.
The time for sound bites and evasions is over.
Over a year ago, the candidate introduced himself and his family on 60 Minutes, with a tour of his old neighborhood. Now Obama, who has said he doesn't want to "airbrush" his past, should follow up by answering the tougher questions that have come up during the campaign.
The drumbeat of accusations is on. Today's Wall Street Journal harps on the tirades of Obama's minister and mentor, Jeremiah Wright, charging that Americans "care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means" by importing drugs, exporting guns and starting the AIDS virus, among other iniquities.
Dismissing Wright as "an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with," as Obama did recently before Jewish leaders, doesn't erase all doubts about the influence on his thinking of the man from whom he borrowed the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."
Even more disclosure is needed about the candidate's ties to Tony Rezko, now on trial for corruption in federal court. Returning campaign contributions and waving away Rezko's involvement in the Obamas' purchase of their home as "boneheaded" on his part barely dent the surface of what the Presidential candidate should explain to voters who have signed onto his promises of a new kind of politics.
Starting with Bill Clinton's response (or non-response, as some saw it) to Gennifer Flowers accusations in 1992, 60 Minutes has come as close to being an arbiter of Presidential character as we have.
If 60 Minutes can get Obama to cooperate in an appraisal of the questions about him, the next step should be a no-holds-barred followup on John McCain's ties to lobbyists.
The time for sound bites and evasions is over.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Castro and Karl Rove, Commentators
Fidel just won't go away and, like Bush's Brain in Newsweek, he has to give us his expertise on '08.
“I enjoyed observing the embarrassing position of all the presidential candidates in the United States,” Castro wrote this week about reaction to his stepping down in a column for Cuba's state-run newspaper. “One by one, they found themselves forced to proclaim their immediate demands to Cuba, so as not to alienate a single voter.”
Castro also had a few words about theme of change that has dominated the campaign: "Half a century of blockade was not enough for the chosen few. 'Change, change, change!' they shouted in unison. I agree. Change!--but in the United States."
After noting the first President Bush's endorsement of John McCain, Castro remarked on the current President's visit to Africa, "I don't know what he's doing there."
Karl Rove could tell him. Now that they both have time on their hands, the Western Hemisphere's two leading political manipulators might want to get together and exchange secrets of the trade.
If Fidel wants to learn a thing or two, he might watch 60 Minutes Sunday night, for an interview with a Rove operative explaining how the Master ordered her to take sexually compromising pictures of a Democratic governor. That's Rove's definition of an "embarrassing position."
“I enjoyed observing the embarrassing position of all the presidential candidates in the United States,” Castro wrote this week about reaction to his stepping down in a column for Cuba's state-run newspaper. “One by one, they found themselves forced to proclaim their immediate demands to Cuba, so as not to alienate a single voter.”
Castro also had a few words about theme of change that has dominated the campaign: "Half a century of blockade was not enough for the chosen few. 'Change, change, change!' they shouted in unison. I agree. Change!--but in the United States."
After noting the first President Bush's endorsement of John McCain, Castro remarked on the current President's visit to Africa, "I don't know what he's doing there."
Karl Rove could tell him. Now that they both have time on their hands, the Western Hemisphere's two leading political manipulators might want to get together and exchange secrets of the trade.
If Fidel wants to learn a thing or two, he might watch 60 Minutes Sunday night, for an interview with a Rove operative explaining how the Master ordered her to take sexually compromising pictures of a Democratic governor. That's Rove's definition of an "embarrassing position."
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Congressional Circus Back in Town
They still don't know who destroyed the CIA interrogation tapes or ordered the firing of US attorneys, but Capitol Hill bloodhounds will stop at nothing to find out if Roger Clemens used steroids.
On January 15th, the House Oversight Committee starts two days of hearings to pursue this pressing national issue, a month after the well-publicized Mitchell Report was issued and ten days after Clemens appears on 60 Minutes.
"It could be a circus with players, true," the Committee's minority staff director, David Marin, admits. "But if you tailor it right and invite people who clearly have pertinent information about the substance of the report, then it's anything but a circus. It's substantive."
The lawmakers will be following in the footsteps of Mike Wallace, whose grilling of Clemens to be shown tomorrow night elicits testimony that he only took legal injections of Lidocaine and B-12, not steroids.
"Swear?" Wallace asks Clemens. "Swear," Clemens answers. Would the Rocket lie to CBS' 89-year-old icon? Congress will put him under oath to find out.
In 2005, the same panel questioned other baseball stars and got blanket denials, but this time with 400 pages of documents and rumors compiled by a former Senate Majority Leader and paid for by anxious team owners, the results may very well be different.
One of the eagerly anticipated witnesses will be former New York Yankees All-Star second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, who intrigued observers of the national pastime some years back by suddenly losing the ability to make an accurate throw to first base without the aid of a Seeing Eye dog. Could steroids have had anything to do with that?
On January 15th, the House Oversight Committee starts two days of hearings to pursue this pressing national issue, a month after the well-publicized Mitchell Report was issued and ten days after Clemens appears on 60 Minutes.
"It could be a circus with players, true," the Committee's minority staff director, David Marin, admits. "But if you tailor it right and invite people who clearly have pertinent information about the substance of the report, then it's anything but a circus. It's substantive."
The lawmakers will be following in the footsteps of Mike Wallace, whose grilling of Clemens to be shown tomorrow night elicits testimony that he only took legal injections of Lidocaine and B-12, not steroids.
"Swear?" Wallace asks Clemens. "Swear," Clemens answers. Would the Rocket lie to CBS' 89-year-old icon? Congress will put him under oath to find out.
In 2005, the same panel questioned other baseball stars and got blanket denials, but this time with 400 pages of documents and rumors compiled by a former Senate Majority Leader and paid for by anxious team owners, the results may very well be different.
One of the eagerly anticipated witnesses will be former New York Yankees All-Star second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, who intrigued observers of the national pastime some years back by suddenly losing the ability to make an accurate throw to first base without the aid of a Seeing Eye dog. Could steroids have had anything to do with that?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Dan Rather's Rage
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas’ fierce poem must have influenced Dan Rather in adolescence, as it did me, and now he has taken it to heart by suing CBS and its executives for the dying of his TV light sooner than deserved.
His $70 million lawsuit claims the network violated his contract by not giving him enough airtime on “60 Minutes” after he was forced to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005 and that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” investigation of the broadcast about George W. Bush’s National Guard service and thereby “seriously damaged his reputation.”
If it goes to trial, the suit should shed light on more than Rather’s treatment by CBS. The piece of journalism in question played a part, potentially crucial, in Bush’s 2004 reelection and diverted attention from the truth about the President’s service during Vietnam to the shaky reporting about it by CBS.
By calling into question the authenticity of one letter, it allowed the Rove Smear Machine to drum up sympathy for Bush’s “mistreatment” by the media rather than continuing the inquiry into his evasion of combat service during the war.
Skeptics will note that Rather’s action comes only after Don Imus extracted a settlement from the network of his contract and that his hurt feelings have been consoled all along by continuing to collect his $6 million annual salary. But CBS’ casual willingness to sacrifice his lifetime of good work as a respected reporter to placate Bush yahoos is a subject that deserves an airing.
It certainly won’t get it on “60 Minutes.”
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas’ fierce poem must have influenced Dan Rather in adolescence, as it did me, and now he has taken it to heart by suing CBS and its executives for the dying of his TV light sooner than deserved.
His $70 million lawsuit claims the network violated his contract by not giving him enough airtime on “60 Minutes” after he was forced to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005 and that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” investigation of the broadcast about George W. Bush’s National Guard service and thereby “seriously damaged his reputation.”
If it goes to trial, the suit should shed light on more than Rather’s treatment by CBS. The piece of journalism in question played a part, potentially crucial, in Bush’s 2004 reelection and diverted attention from the truth about the President’s service during Vietnam to the shaky reporting about it by CBS.
By calling into question the authenticity of one letter, it allowed the Rove Smear Machine to drum up sympathy for Bush’s “mistreatment” by the media rather than continuing the inquiry into his evasion of combat service during the war.
Skeptics will note that Rather’s action comes only after Don Imus extracted a settlement from the network of his contract and that his hurt feelings have been consoled all along by continuing to collect his $6 million annual salary. But CBS’ casual willingness to sacrifice his lifetime of good work as a respected reporter to placate Bush yahoos is a subject that deserves an airing.
It certainly won’t get it on “60 Minutes.”
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