Powerline pulls this quote from the latest NYT story on the 60 Minutes fraud:
"This is not verbatim," Mr. Rather recalled. "But I said: 'Andrew, if true, it's breakthrough stuff. But I need to do something unusual. It may even be
unique. I have to ask you to oversee, in a hands-on way, the handling of this story, because this is potentially the kind of thing that will cause great controversy.'
“He got it. He immediately agreed.”
Couple of things. Here is a story which Dan Rather thought at the time to be so explosive (Read: might influence the outcome of a presidential election) that he punted ultimate responsibility for it to his boss, Andrew Heyward, head of CBS news. How bad does this make CBS look now, considering the lackadaisical way in which it vetted the forged documents? Should not the more important a network considers a story, the MORE CAREFUL they should be about authenticating the documents on which the story is based? This is a tad more serious than a golf commentator at the Masters making the wrong call on yards to the pin when Tiger Woods is approaching the green.
Second, there is the curious post script: “He got it.” What did Andrew 'get'? Did he get that Rather was saying he – Rather – had doubts about the story that producer Mary Mapes had assembled and that Rather wanted Andrew to spike it if he didn’t like the smell? Could this be the opening salvo in Rather’s attempt to put Andrew's or Mape's head, and not his, on the chopping block?
Can you imagine Dan embellishing his story in the next few days: “I told Andrew--this is not verbatim-- this was a very explosive story, strong stuff, stronger than week old Texas road kill. I told him Mary had put this thing together, she’s really excited about it. But that I wasn’t so sure she had her ducks in a row. This 'ole boy isn't about to get in a pissing match with a skunk, so I wanted Andrew to look at this with a fine toothed comb. After all, when its time for the cow to eat the cabbage, Andrew's the boss and he has to make the call.”
As they used to say, don’t change that channel.
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