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TechnoratiCBS Newsman's $70m Lawsuit Likely to Deal Bush Legacy a New Blow
As George W Bush prepares to leave the White House, at least one unpleasant episode from his unpopular presidency is threatening to follow him into retirement.
A $70m lawsuit filed by Dan Rather, the veteran former newsreader for CBS Evening News, against his old network is reopening the debate over alleged favourable treatment that Bush received when he served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. Bush had hoped that this controversy had been dealt with once and for all during the 2004 election.
Eight weeks before the 2004 presidential poll, Rather broadcast a story based on newly discovered documents which appeared to show that Bush, whose service in the Texas Air National Guard ensured that he did not have to fight in Vietnam, had barely turned up even for basic duty. After an outcry from the White House and conservative bloggers who claimed that the report had been based on falsified documents, CBS retracted the story, saying that the documents' authenticity could not be verified. Rather, who had been with CBS for decades and was one of the most familiar faces in American journalism, was fired by the network the day after the 2004 election.
He claims breach of contract against CBS. He has already spent $2m on his case, which is likely to go to court early next year. Rather contends not only that his report was true - "What the documents stated has never been denied, by the president or anyone around him," he says - but that CBS succumbed to political pressure from conservatives to get the report discredited and to have him fired. He also claims that a panel set up by CBS to investigate the story was packed with conservatives in an effort to placate the White House. Part of the reason for that, he suggests, was that Viacom, a sister company of CBS, knew that it would have important broadcasting regulatory issues to deal with during Bush's second term.
Among those CBS considered for the panel to investigate Rather's report were far-right broadcasters Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
"CBS broke with long-standing tradition at CBS News and elsewhere of standing up to political pressure," says Rather. "And, there's no joy in saying it, they caved ... in an effort to placate their regulators in Washington."
Rather's lawsuit makes other serious allegations about CBS succumbing to political pressure in an attempt to suppress important news stories. In particular, he says that his bosses at CBS tried to stop him reporting evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. According to Rather's lawsuit, "for weeks they refused to grant permission to air the story" and "continued to raise the goalposts, insisting on additional substantiation". Rather also claims that General Richard Meyers, then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military official in the US, called him at home and asked him not to broadcast the story, saying that it would "endanger national security".
Rather says that CBS only agreed to allow him to broadcast the story when it found out that Seymour Hersh would be writing about it in the New Yorker magazine. Even then, Rather claims, CBS tried to bury it. "CBS imposed the unusual restrictions that the story would be aired only once, that it would not be preceded by on-air promotion, and that it would not be referenced on the CBS Evening News," he says.
The charges outlined in Rather's lawsuit will cast a further shadow over the Bush legacy. He recently expressed regret for the "failed intelligence" which led to the invasion of Iraq and has received heavy criticism over the scale and depth of the economic downturn in the United States.
8 Comments so far
Show AllOf course, our Big Media courtesans, in reporting on Rather's revelations regarding Bush's TANG service, never mentioned that, whatever the status of the documents he used -- it's nearly impossible to prove that a copy of a document is a fake or authentic -- the story was thoroughly covered by the Boston Globe in 2000 using multiple sources to confirm Rather's contention that Bush never fulfilled his Air Guard requirements, received egregious preferential treatment, and his superior officers were in on the deal. (Also, those of us who were draft age in those days know that anyone violating the conditions of his Guard contract one iota, such as missing meetings, was instantly transferred to the regular Army and shipped off to Vietnam, unless you were a pampered pup from a well-connected family like Junior.)
Bush, Cheney and Rove sit atop a mountain of potential scandals and illegal activities -- I'm waiting to see which one of them results in jail time. (Most likely for Rove.) In Bush's case, although he may never wear stripes, he could lose millions in lawsuits, not only for Rather's valid claim, but also those who were unconstitutionally detained and tortured, such as Jose Padilla, and those innocents who were the targets of his illegal wiretap programs.
Cheney has a long rap sheet as well, including the leak of Valerie Plame's covert identity, his admitted role in authorizing and suborning illegal torture, cherry-picking intelligence to promote the Iraq debacle, and arranging no-bid contracts for his old buddies at Halliburton, et al.
Rove is also up to his neck in criminality, ranging from fraudulently fixing the vote in the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections to his Abramoff connections to his involvement in the Don Siegelman case in Alabama, and much more.
After Obama takes office, I've read, hundreds of federal whistleblowers are going to go on record against this terrible trio -- Bush and Cheney will likely leave the country; the Little King has his jungle estate in South America, and Deadeye Dick hasn't spent millions on a fortress in Dubai for nothing -- so that leaves Rove to take the heat. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
I'm optimistic that Rather will eventually get his $70 million, but that will be only a spring rain compared to the legal hurricane that will hit the top three bosses of BushCo. And finally seeing that smug scoundrel Rove frogmarched in handcuffs -- priceless.
Go Dan go.......
Hey give the guy credit, he was submarined and people within his own staff were, what I call, planted spies.....
But try to visit another intersting case, One of the Tinner Brothers was released from jail in Switzerland....He and his brother sold nuclear materials to Pakistan .....But wait, official documents were destroyed and the The Tinner Brothers were allegedly working for the CIA.......Doea that not sound familiar?
The CIA established so many "Off Book" Companies in the 80's that the CIA can only cover their butts by having information destroyed.
What happened to Dan Rather was "The Off Book People" were able to infiltrate his staff and pass on "Black Propaganda"....Unfortunately, the "Elite" reamed him over the coals because they knew what they had given him.
Too bad, no one, not even "commondreams", wants to deal with the "Demolition of World Trade Center #7. At least, Dan has a personal grudge.
Dan Rather & the Bush crime family have long been enemies: remember Rather's infamous encounter with Bush Sr.? Though the USA and the World would have been better served if the report in question was not successfully slimed by the Right Wing Noise Machine, it is better late than never that it enter the public record and help put Dubya, Cheney, & Co. amongst their other more foul Republican predecessors: Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, & Herbert Hoover immediately come to mind. Now if only Grandpa Caligula's (Reagan) dirty laundry came out: there is another former Republican sleaze bag who's "legacy" is in serious need of historical revision.
www.wunderman-comics.com
Mr. Rather would be better served and his $2M saved if he joins us at the legal level and charge the Bush Administration in the International Court of Justice for the many crimes committed against millions of people, over the past eight years.
If the Bush administration looses the suit by Mr. Rather, they could out wait him using the appeals process where the same people who helped make the problem for Mr. Rather still have control.
But then it is "better copy" to handle it this way.
The rest of us do not have this forum, or $2M to hand over to a suit with a JD, working for a Law Firm that is part of the same political cabal that helped to create the problem in the first place.
It is obvious that Mr. Bush does not have Mr. Rather's 'consent', but the rest of us do not have Mr. Rather's 'connections' but we do have;
The Bush administration does not have my consent, and I am not a "TV Star/News Guy"
nurembergrevisited@gmail.com
Your silence wil be your consent.
That would be funny if Dan Rather gave all of his winnings to Common Dreams or Media Matters. Not that CBS isn't a part of the mainstream media machine. Dan was just another cog in that machine. He made his money.
"Among those CBS considered for the panel to investigate Rather's report were far-right broadcasters Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter."
Wow, what a kangaroo court that would have been!
It's funny how the conservatives get all lathered up over "safe" people like Dan Rather. In a just world the entire CBS News team would be replaced with the people from Democracy Now!
I got an internship with Media Matters and start working for them next month :-)
>>The charges outlined in Rather's lawsuit will cast a further shadow over the Bush legacy. He recently expressed regret for the "failed intelligence" which led to the invasion of Iraq and has received heavy criticism over the scale and depth of the economic downturn in the United States.
You can not cast a shadow in complete darkness.
Which is exactly what the Bush legacy amounts to.