Mapes and Rather

The CBS report of what went wrong in the Mapes-Rather scandal about Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard was just issued.

It makes dull reading, but it does have some interesting information.

First Mary Mapes comes across as a completely unprincipled liar.

Dan Rather comes out better. His main sin lies in his pompous and pious claims of the truth of absurd foolishness, day after day. He seems better only because he seems not to have been aware at all of the awful details, or perhaps of any of them. He comes across as a senile fool.

The report reveals that Mapes had been told that the Texas National Guard at all times had vacancies for fighter pilots. It had trouble attracting them. “It was hurtin’ for them,” as someone told her.

The implication of this appears to be that no pull whatsoever was needed to join the TANG as a fighter pilot trainee.

Yet Mapes persisted in publicize the story that Bush was allowed joined the TANG only through political pull. The September 8, 2004 segment on Bush’s service began with a claim by the Democrat politician Barnes, that, in 1968 he recommended Bush for the TANG and that was how Bush got in as a fighter pilot. Apparently we are to understand that the solicitude of politicians for others of their ilk crosses party lines in Texas, and that a Democrat politician would go out of his way to use his influence to get the son of a Republican ex-Congressman accepted as a fighter pilot-trainee. Since apparently no influence at all was needed, perhaps Barnes unwittingly did do enough to get Bush in: by doing nothing.

The unstated, or maybe it was stated, implication was that Bush wanted into the Texas National Guard to avoid service in Viet-Nam.

I learned from this report that during his training Bush volunteered to serve in Viet-Nam, but was turned down, apparently because their were more fighter pilot volunteers than positions open, and he had relatively little experience in the air at that time. This is another thing that Mapes learned in her study of Bush’s service. I am amazed at how well our main stream press publicized this fact!

By 1972, our Viet-Nam effort was essentially over, and the military was trying to downsize. Bush was fully trained, but the plane he trained on was being phased out, and he was as useful to the military, and to TANG as an extra thumb.

Bush got involved in a political campaign in Alabama in 1972 and subsequently went to Harvard and got an MBA.

He applied for a transfer to an Alabama Guard unit in the Spring of 1972, which transfer was approved by TANG and the Alabama Guard, but retroactively (in August) turned down by some bureaucrats in Utah. He applied again, and this time the bureaucrats approved. Meanwhile the 90 days (May through July) in which he was supposed to have his (annual) Texas physical exam had expired, so his commander’s commander suspended his permission to fly. Bush eventually got his honorable discharge.

Mapes, we learn, went over every detail of this story in 1999-2000, hoping to find something newsworthy in it. She failed.

She tried again in 2004. Of course there is no evidence that she had any political motivation for doing so. She just got urges every four years to study Bush’s TANG service. It’s something like premenstrual tension. I guess you could call it pre-election tension.

This time she found a fellow named Burkett, who claimed to find documents that seemed to establish:
1. Bush’s commander was mad at him for some unstated reason.
2. Bush’s commander ordered him to take a physical within the first two weeks of his 90 day window for doing so.
3. Bush’s commander suspended his permission to fly for not taking the physical and other unspecified reasons.
4. Some superior officer was pressuring the commander to “sugar coat” Bush’s records.
The implication of all these was apparently that Bush violated an explicit order by failing to take his physical. And he did other unspecified bad things. And a cover-up of all this was attempted.
Burkett also had claimed previously that he had overheard a plot to cover up Bush’s bad behavior.


We learn from the report that:
1. The commander’s wife and son claim that the commander loved Bush and would be campaigning for him if he were alive today.
2. The secretary who would have typed these denies having done so, based on non-standard notations and terminology.
3. The secretary has no recollection of an order to take a physical, a suspension, or anything about sugar coating.
4. The superior who was implicated in the documents as trying to pressure the commander to “sugar coat” Bush’s records had left TANG more than a year before the claimed attempt, and claims to have had nothing to do with TANG after his retirement, a statement confirmed by the commander’s commander.
5. The documents were submitted to four supposed experts on documents, none of whom vouched for it!
6. Burkett had a reputation as a crank, with a grudge against TANG based on some medical issue.
7. Burkett showed distinct paranoid symptoms. In particular he seemed to feel that his life was in danger from his revelations. (Could he be right? The more he spoke the better Bush looked, so Republicans would not have been after him. For all Kerry’s faults, Burkett could not have expected Kerry to go after him. Who would then be trying to kill him? Mapes herself? Dan Rather? Ralph Nader? No, it is paranoia.)
8. Burkett lied about the source of the documents, and there was an insignificant effort to check him.
9. The documents were typed using characteristics easy to duplicate today on a computer and apparently non-existent on Olympia typewriters used by TANG. They differed from all known authentic documents in having proportional spacing and true superscripting, and various other features.
10. The commander’s commander believes the documents to be forgeries, and disbelieves their content.
11. There is no record of Bush’s commander ever ordering anyone to take a physical or any reason he would order Bush to do so.
12. After September 8 CBS sought document experts who would authenticate the documents. No authentication = no pay! Authentication = pay! (Is there a crime of expert shopping akin to doctor shopping?)
13. One of the original experts who said he could not authenticate the documents was asked to write a statement claiming to authenticate them. He did so! CBS read this statement on the air, after strengthening it some!!
14. Mapes denied having contacted the DNC, then admitted doing it after September 8, then admitted doing it before receiving all the documents. These statements are mutually contradictory. Two of the three have to be lies!
15. Mapes claimed that her superior OKed the contact. He denied it.
16. Mapes and friends spent time worrying that the documents were planted by Bush supporters, though why Bush supporters would forge documents seeming to cast aspersions on his behavior 32 years ago is hard to fathom. But they never worried, that the documents, which came from a confirmed Bush-hater, could have been fabricated by Bush haters. I suppose they could not imagine Bush haters who lie or distort.

I could go on, but after a point it becomes boring.

It seems to me that the one feature which makes it 100% certain that the documents are forgeries is the pseudo-kerning used in them. There was definitely no typewriter at all available in the 1970’s that did pseudo-kerning. The authors of this report apparently haven’t even heard of it.

The parallel between Bush’s military service and Kerry’s is curious.

Bush enlisted in TANG. He apparently, according to this report, volunteered for service in Viet-Nam but was turned down. His unit was never sent there.

Kerry enlisted in the Inactive Naval Reserve. His unit was activated and sent to VietNam. He volunteered for Swiftboat service. At the time these boats were used only for ferrying from one ship to another, never in combat. Just Kerry’s luck, after he arrived they were sent into combat, mainly patrolling rivers to prevent VC crossings at night, in addition to ferrying. Kerry managed to infuriate his colleagues; some of them claim it was by fleeing from combat when other boats were attacked, and firing first asking questions later when encountering VietNamese. Somehow he wrote up all the action reports and, somehow he was always the hero in them. He wrote lengthy soliloquys (published in the Boston Globe) and fantasized about going to Cambodia. He was sent home after a few months with three purple hearts and other medals. Then, he started attacking the war and even had private meetings with North Vietnamese leaders. This definitely infuriated his colleagues. It is said by some suspicious observers that as a result he got a dishonorable discharge, and his medals were taken away from him. When he got to Congress, they claim, his discharge was changed to honorable, by political influence of course, and eventually his medals were reissued.

There is no question that Kerry got medals and wounds and Bush did not. On the other hand, there were many seemingly ordinary people who raised serious questions about Kerry’s military service, Bush’s service was routine and boring and without any obvious points that anyone would normally care about.

Yet CBS spent lots of money and effort attempting to develop a story with two main points: that political influence was used on Bush’s behalf in his military service; and that Bush’s failure to take a physical exam needed for flying when he was no longer flying was a violation of orders that should have been heavily penalized, and wasn’t, presumably for political reasons.

In some sense this represents a laudable attempt to probe Bush’s character, as represented by his behavior thirty odd years ago. On the other hand, a news media that claims to be politically neutral, as CBS does, would be expected to devote a similar amount of effort to investigating Kerry’s military career. Yet it did nothing of the kind. All sorts of sensational questions were raised by critics of Kerry, many of whom were democrats, and were respectable citizens, attorneys, etc. CBS ignored them all.

You have to wonder why CBS did this. A serious and unbiased report focused on one of Kerry’s heroic exploits that exonerated Kerry from even one of the charges against him would have highlighted his courage and helped his campaign. It was only fair and reasonable to create one. Why was there nothing whatever done? The only reason I can think of is fear that something negative about Kerry would turn up and have to be reported. Is there another explanation?

The whole story is a sad one.

The protagonists, all of them, showed not the slightest interest in truth. Rather was perfectly willing to state that he knew the documents were genuine, on the basis of nothing but the word of Mapes, a pathological liar (according to this report), based upon evidence supplied by Burkett, a crank and a paranoid.

They authenticated the documents by showing it to four “document experts”. None of these experts would vouch for them. And nobody seemed to care. Apparently authentication to CBS consists of submitting material to experts, independent of their opinions. One of the “experts’ agreed to write a statement in direct contradiction to his oral opinion in response to a request to do so. And this statement was read to the American public!

Apparently it is acceptable at CBS to consult “experts” until you find some that agree with you; then ignore what the others have said.

Apparently also Mapes and associates played fast and loose with every single witness. Everyone shown anything, without exception, was told that the documents had been verified and authenticated, and was asked what he or she thought of them. If the witness said, well, if you say so it must be so, that was enough to confirm them. That was enough to allow CBS to quote only when asked, Are they authentic? X answered : it must be so.” This is not an exact quote but it conveys the structure of practically every claim made in this incredibly distorted farce.

Vetting reports at CBS was an abysmal joke. The vetters met and questioned the authentication process, not its result. Thus they asked, in effect. How did you authenticate? Answer: we consulted four experts. And that answer was enough for the vetters, There was no question at all about the conclusions of the authenticators.

Reading this report is really depressing. It is like wandering through circles of Hell, watching the damned wallowing in their disgrace.

But even the panelists appear clueless. They refuse themselves to judge the authenticity of the documents, seem unaware of the meaning of kerning, and have nothing to say about political motivation.

I can’t help wondering how this panel would attempt to address the question of political motivation. What would it take to establish it?

For their benefit, here are some questions I would ask:

Were the participants in this activity interested in politics at all?
Did they have strong political views that they openly expressed?
Were openly expressed political views, if any, evenly divided among parties or candidates?
Was the expression of such views of any possible influence on hiring of any CBS employees?
Did any participants express an interest in influencing the election?
Do any of the participants today admit to having wanted to influence the election through their activities on this project?


These questions would only show a political motivation if the participants admitted it. Why were they not asked?