Rather insisted that “this story is true” and that the news team would not have aired the segment if the memos had not been authentic. Other conservative online news sources such as the Drudge Report quickly followed suit, and mainstream news outlets such as ABC, Fox News, and the Associated Press mentioned the controversy in their own coverage on September 9. Initial doubts focused on typographic anachronisms, including curved apostrophes, superscripted abbreviations (such as “th”) that appeared throughout the memos, and the use of proportionally-spaced fonts, all of which were uncommon for typewriters at the time.
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Within hours after the segment aired, participants in online conservative forums like Free Republic, Powerline, and Little Green Footballs had raised questions about the documents, which CBS had made available on its website.
Robert Strong (described as a “friend and colleague” of Killian’s) who claimed that the documents were “compatible with the way that business was done at the time” and that he did not see “anything in the documents that are discordant with what were the times, what were the situations, and what were the people that were involved.” 3 The report included interview clips with Lt. 2ĬBS aired the segment on September 8, highlighting the memos and reporting that document experts believed them to be authentic. Several of those experts expressed reservations about the memos, but Mapes and other CBS News officials ignored those doubts. 1 Mapes sought out a handful of experts to assess the authenticity of the documents, including forensic analysts and several former officers and administrators from TXANG. One memo (dated ) seemed to indicate that Killian had ordered Bush to take his annual flying physical a second memo () described a conversation between Killian and Bush about transferring Bush to Alabama so he could work on Winton Blount’s Senate campaign a third memo (1 August 1972) referenced an order suspending Bush from flight status because he had not taken his physical and a fourth (18 August 1973) contained Killian’s complaints that he was receiving pressure to “sugar coat” Bush’s evaluation. In the late summer of 2004 Burkett offered CBS producer Mary Mapes six documents that he claimed to have obtained from Killian’s personal files. A former National Guard Lieutenant Colonel named Bill Burkett had publicly questioned Bush’s record in 2000 and again in early 2004. Bush’s misdeeds in the Texas Air National Guard had circulated for years. The episode embarrassed the network, ended the career of famed journalist Dan Rather, and became one of the bigger stories in the 2004 election. In the wake of the controversy, a formal investigation revealed that CBS News had committed numerous errors during the production of the segment and had failed to adequately address those errors in the weeks after the segment aired. Those documents, which CBS producers and reporters insisted were authentic, were subjected to withering scrutiny online and in the mainstream media. The report relied on a handful of documents allegedly written by Bush’s commanding officer, the late Lt. On September 8, 2004, the CBS news show 60 Minutes Wednesday aired a segment purporting to verify those criticisms. Bush attempted to do the same by suggesting that he had dodged the war altogether, that he had been a substandard pilot, or that he had received preferential treatment in his selection for the Texas Air National Guard (TXANG). The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign sought to undermine John Kerry’s Vietnam record. As the war in Iraq sank into a quagmire, the contest for the presidency turned in part on the question of which candidate had the military and defense credentials to resolve the conflict. Bush and John Kerry ranked among the most important. This image by blogger Charles Johnson compares the purportedly typewritten 1973 document with the same content created in Microsoft Word 2004 with default settings.Īmong the issues which shaped the 2004 election, the Vietnam-era military service of both George W.
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