Monday, September 20, 2004

I did not have sexual relations with those memos

Does this announcement sound familiar? Is this just a mistake in judgement or are these the same sort of "weasel words" we heard a few years ago?

Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

After ten days of being exposed by everyone from experts to ten-year-olds with a PC and Word, he has finally been able to get to the emails from those document examiners who told him before the story aired that the documents were questionable.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

This was an error made in the spirit of partisan politics by journalists more concerned with getting a story that might unseat a President. From all I have heard, this story was five years in the making and had been at a standstill until these "memos" fell into their fax inbox one recent morning.

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

Dan, you have squandered that trust in you and your network by your shabby actions that are not even up to the standards of the National Enquirer, let alone a national broadcast journalist

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