The New York Observer has an update on the aftermath of CBS's
phony-documents scandal. Two of the three CBS executives who were asked
to resign in January after the release of the report on the scandal, Mary
Murphy and Betsy West, have now done so, "signing nondisclosure
agreements in the process." The third exec, Josh Howard, is still holding
out; a Howard wrongful-termination suit could be disastrous for CBS.
Meanwhile, Mary Mapes, the segment producer, "is preparing to shop a book
proposal offering an inside account of what happened at CBS News during
the memo scandal":
The book will constitute Ms. Mapes' defense against
charges of journalistic misconduct. According to Wesley
Neff, president of the literary and lecture agency
that is representing Ms. Mapes, the producer plans to
argue for the veracity of the four memos supposedly
typed by President Bush's former National Guard
squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, in the
early 1970's. . . .
Ms. Mapes' book proposal will include 40 pages of
analysis and documentation that she offered to the
panel to back up the documents' authenticity. In an
addendum to that material--supplied on the condition
it not be directly quoted--Ms. Mapes avoids direct
discussion of fonts and character spacing.
Instead, she argues that the substance of the memos
meshes with Mr. Bush's known records (the CBS panel
has claimed the documents clashed) and that inconsistencies
in their format could have reflected the work of
different typists--as found, she argues, in some of
the official records.
Moreover, Ms. Mapes adds, given that two of Mr.
Killian's contemporaries said the documents fit his
thoughts and actions, a forger would have had to
correctly guess the mental state of a dead man.
Well, which is harder--guessing the mental state of a dead man, or
generating a Microsoft Word document in 1973? In any case, it appears
that of the four journalists CBS decided to "hold accountable" for the
National Guard fiasco, one will get a nice book advance and the other
three will get paid by CBS to go away.
--
Krugman's moonbat ranting encapsulates the combination of rage and
nostalgia that is at the heart of the Angry Left. They still think
they're fighting for civil rights, a battle their predecessors won two
generations ago. They long for another Vietnam; hence the endless
insistence that Afghanistan and Iraq are "quagmires." And they fondly
remember--and hope for a repetition of--Watergate.
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