Jim Gerharty says that if the CBS retraction story is true, “this had better be the biggest, most spectacular apology of all time.”
1. Resignations would be nice.
2. An apology to the first lady, for claiming she had no evidence the documents were forged. An apology to President Bush.
3. An apology to Killian's widow. An apology to Killian's son.
4. An apology to the two doubtful document experts who were ignored.
5. An apology to Marcel Matley and James Pierce, whose views were apparently misrepresented.
6. An apology to Hughes, who was asked to verify a fake document over the phone.
7. An apology to every skeptic, who Dan Rather initially called "partisan political operatives."
8. An apology to every computer and typewriter expert who Dan Rather pretended didn’t exist.
9. A separate apology for insulting the intelligence of those who use Microsoft Word, or who ever used a typewriter.
10. An apology to CBS viewers, who apparently Rather thought he could treat like Montel Williams.
11. An apology to Mrs. Knox, who was not interviewed before the initial story.
12. An apology to Retired Col. Walter Staudt, who was accused of pressuring others in the Texas Air National Guard to help George W. Bush in the memo.
And this is off the top of my head.
RatherBiased.com is hoping—but not expecting—that CBS will apologize today for the following:
1. Failing to use the best document experts it could find,
2. Hiring a signature expert to look at a copied document when he himself said earlier that doing such a thing was foolish,
3. Ignoring and lying about the testimony of those it did hire,
4. Failing to interview Marian Knox as well as the others listed above,
5. Not interviewing anyone directly connected with Lt. Col Killian,
6. Not informing viewers that Staudt had retired a year-and-a-half before the time he was supposedly trying to help "sugarcoat" Bush's record,
7. Failing to inform viewers that not a single verified document signed by Killian or his fellow officers during the time period used the typographical techniques used in the CBS Memos,
8. Not mentioning Ben Barnes's partisan background enough,
9. Not disclosing the 30-year friendship of the two Texas Democrats Barnes and Rather,
10. Failing to even know who producer Mary Mapes's document source was before the broadcast,
11. Dishonestly impugning the motives of critics,
12. Using its news broadcasts to defend a bad report instead of examining how it could be wrong,
13. Never once featuring a single document expert on the air who doubted CBS's claims,
14. Putting total non-experts on the air to spin the preferred "authentic" line even though CBS would not allow them to see its documents,
15. Not mentioning that Killian never kept notes and hated to type,
16. Failing to provide the public with copies of the documents as close as possible to the ones CBS obtained,
17. Not finding out if the office in which Killian worked even had a typewriter capable of duplicating most of the complex formatting used in the CBS documents (it did not),
18. Using the testimony of a vehemently anti-Bush author to prove its case and simply referring to him as an author who "wrote two books on the subject,"
19. Failing to inform viewers that its document source was someone who hated George Bush,
20. Not telling viewers that one of its key (if not the key) sources was a man known to be mentally unstable and one who has lodged false accusations against Bush for years.
Something tells me the real apology--if indeed it happens today--is going to be a lot more vague and diversionary and even accusatory than these!
