How Did Dan Rather Get in This Fix?

By Amanda Ripley

The morning before Dan Rather went on the air with his flammable story, senior staff at CBS's 60 Minutes gathered to consider whether it was true. Network producers, lawyers and Betsy West, a CBS News senior vice president, among others, met in a screening room to decide whether to broadcast the story about President Bush's record in the National Guard. Five days before, they had received copies of new and intriguing memos suggesting that Lieut. Bush had ignored a direct order to get a physical and that his superiors were pressured to "sugar coat" his evaluation. No one talked much about whether the documents could have come from a 1970s-era typewriter, and there was no strident dissent. But, says Josh Howard, the show's executive producer, "We pressed the producer on 'How do you know they're authentic?'" And the producer, a respected veteran named Mary Mapes who had helped break the stunning Abu Ghraib torture story just months before, had answers. She had credible sources and document experts, he says.

Much of this evidence would melt away in the days to come. The family and the office typist of Lieut. Colonel Jerry Killian, the alleged author of the memos, as well as additional document experts, would say they did not look real. There would be calls for Rather's resignation. The Wall Street Journal would declare that the "liberal media establishment" had finally lost its hold on the national agenda. But behind the hysteria, this is a story about human errors whipped into a new-media news cycle. It is also a familiar tale of journalists wanting ever so badly to fit all the disparate fragments of a story into a fine, taut narrative.

Rather and other CBS News employees acknowledged for the first time last week that there may be problems with the authenticity of the memos. "It's up to us to get to the bottom of legitimate questions that have been raised," CBS News President Andrew Heyward told TIME. Then, in a surprising twist, Howard pulled the Administration back into the fiasco on Friday. "If the White House had just raised an eyebrow--they didn't have to say they were forgeries--but if there was any hint that there was a question, that would have sent us back," says Howard. The morning the show aired, CBS staff members had shown copies of the memos to Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. In response, according to a transcript of the interview, Bartlett tried to spin parts of the memos in Bush's favor and attributed the whole debate to partisan sniping. He did not, however, challenge the authenticity of the memos.

But the White House did not check the memos for invisible ink either. And why should it have? After all, the documents were allegedly written some 30 years ago by Bush's squadron commander in Texas, who has been dead for 20 years. There was no reason the Administration would have known if the documents were real.

Bartlett says that, having heard rumors about a big exclusive in the works, he had his staff call CBS at 5:45 p.m. the day before the Sept. 8 broadcast. "They said, 'Oh, yes, we were going to call,'" Bartlett says. By 7 p.m., CBS staff members had read Bartlett the memos over the phone. He told them he wouldn't comment on the air until he had physically seen them. The next day, he was given three hours to look them over. He showed them to the President, who said he had no recollection of those specific documents. "There was no way to check the authenticity," Bartlett says.

After the story began to unravel, CBS--and Rather in particular--spent a week aggressively defending it. Then Rather broadcast an interview with Marian Carr Knox, Killian's typist, who had by that point told several news outlets that she didn't think the memos were real. But Rather emphasized that Knox felt the memos nonetheless reflected Killian's opinion at the time. "Those who have criticized aspects of our story have never criticized the heart of it ... that George Bush received preferential treatment to get into the National Guard and, once accepted, failed to satisfy the requirements of his service," Rather said. That may be true and important, but it is the kind of thing better left unsaid by the subject of a media inquisition.

Of course, Rather has a 40-year history of rushing into the inferno. And the fact that conservatives have been calling him biased since before man walked on the moon seems to have done little to deter him. When he covered President Richard Nixon, he was known as "the reporter the White House hates." In 1988 he relentlessly grilled George H.W. Bush, then Vice President, about the Iran-contra affair, and the elder Bush has not spoken to him since. Rather got in trouble again in 2001 for speaking at a Democratic fund-raiser in Texas, for which he later apologized. But those who know him well say he isn't driven by politics as much as his addiction to breaking news. "He takes to stories like he's still a kid and trying to prove himself," says a CBS News producer. "He loves it." Rather's contract expires in 2006, at which point he will be 75. Heyward denies any talk of asking Rather to leave early.

But that doesn't mean the rest of the staff at CBS News is happy. "We're getting whacked. And it's not fun," says the CBS News producer, who blames CBS executives, not Rather. "CBS seems to be caught flat-footed. They were slow to respond." Heyward says it's too soon to say if anything should have been done differently. But he concedes that in the current maelstrom of media, "very quickly, in this case almost instantly, you can find yourself in a debate that is raging on so many levels that it is difficult to keep track of and sort out legitimate concerns."

Ironically, one of the reasons CBS (and the White House) may not have vetted the memos with extra care is that they weren't all that shocking. "This wasn't the document that said, 'Here's the proof that George Bush was using cocaine,'" says Howard. "These were documents that incrementally added shading to the story. The idea that someone would forge a document that was so mild--that didn't send up a warning flag." (Then again, CBS was excited enough about the memos to hype them on its original show.) Mapes, who spent five years pursuing this story, declined to comment.

CBS now has a 12-person team furiously working to sort out the story. Other reporters are now fixated on Bill Burkett, who has become a prime target of speculation as a possible source of the memos. A retired National Guard officer, Burkett has spent years telling the media shifting stories about efforts to purge or embellish Bush's military records. In February, Burkett told TIME, "I don't have the smoking gun, but there was an effort to make [Bush] look better than he was." He has posted angry and sometimes reckless statements on liberal blogs. CBS's Howard denies that Burkett was interviewed for the Sept. 8 show but won't comment further.

Since the story broke, Burkett has not spoken to reporters. His lawyer says Burkett never falsified any memos. Besieged by calls last week from irate viewers, the CBS affiliate in Abilene, Texas, 21 miles from Burkett's home, broadcast a special message disavowing the network's original story. As for Bush's military records, they still contain glaring holes. But that has been largely forgotten in the recent excitement. Says a senior Administration official of the focus on CBS's predicament: "This is the gift that keeps on giving." --Reported by Anna Macias Aguayo/Abilene, John F. Dickerson/Washington, Sean Gregory and Nathan Thornburgh/New York, Hilary Hylton/Austin and Cathy Booth Thomas/Dallas

With reporting by Anna Macias Aguayo/Abilene; John F. Dickerson/Washington; Sean Gregory; Nathan Thornburgh/New York; Hilary Hylton/Austin; Cathy Booth Thomas/Dallas