Mapes and Smith made contact with Burkett in late August, and on August 24 Burkett offered to meet with them to share the documents he possessed, and later told reporters from USA Today "that he had agreed to turn over the documents to CBS if the network would arrange a conversation with the Kerry campaign", a claim substantiated by emails between Smith and Mapes detailing Burkett's additional requests for help with negotiating a book deal, security, and financial compensation. Mapes was "by her own account many in the press considered Burkett an 'anti-Bush zealot', his credibility in question". īurkett had received publicity in 2000, after making and then retracting a claim that he had been transferred to Panama for refusing "to falsify personnel records of Governor Bush", and in February 2004, when he claimed to have knowledge of "scrubbing" of Bush's Texas Air National Guard records. Mapes and Dan Rather, among many other journalists, had been investigating for several years the story of Bush's alleged failure to fulfill his obligations to the National Guard. The memos, allegedly written in 19, were obtained by CBS News producer Mary Mapes and freelance journalist Michael Smith, from Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, a former US Army National Guard officer. Investigations into his military service led to the Killian documents controversy. Background and timeline ġst Lieutenant George W. A CBS spokesman stated that it contained "too many distortions, evasions, and baseless conspiracy theories". Former CBS President and CEO Les Moonves refused to approve the film, and CBS refused to air advertisements for it. It is based on Mapes' memoir Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. The story of the controversy was dramatized in the 2015 film Truth starring Robert Redford as Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes, directed by James Vanderbilt. CBS fired producer Mapes, requested resignations from several senior news executives, and apologized to viewers by saying that there were "substantial questions regarding the authenticity of the Killian documents". Several months later, a CBS-appointed panel led by Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi criticized both the initial CBS news segment and CBS's "strident defense" during the aftermath. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret." Rather stated, "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", and CBS News President Andrew Heyward said, "Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. CBS finally repudiated the use of the documents on September 20, 2004. CBS and Rather defended the authenticity and usage of the documents for two weeks, but other news organizations continued to scrutinize the evidence, and USA Today obtained an independent analysis from outside experts. The authenticity of the documents was challenged within hours on Internet forums and blogs, with questions initially focused on anachronisms in the typography, and the scandal quickly spread to the mass media. In the 60 Minutes segment, Rather stated that the documents "were taken from Lieutenant Colonel Killian's personal files", and he falsely asserted that they had been authenticated by experts retained by CBS. Killian, wrote them, which included criticisms of Bush's service in the Guard during the 1970s.
Burkett claimed that Bush's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. ĬBS News producer Mary Mapes obtained the copied documents from Burkett, a former officer in the Texas Army National Guard, while pursuing a story about the George W. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett provided the documents to CBS, but he claims to have burned the originals after faxing them copies. Several typewriter and typography experts soon concluded that they were forgeries. Dan Rather presented four of these documents as authentic in a 60 Minutes II broadcast aired by CBS on September 8, 2004, less than two months before the 2004 presidential election, but it was later found that CBS had failed to authenticate them. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972–73, allegedly typed in 1973. The Killian documents controversy (also referred to as Memogate or Rathergate ) involved six documents containing allegations about President George W. Charles Foster Johnson's animated GIF image comparing a memo purportedly typewritten in 1973 with a proportional-spaced document made in Microsoft Word with default settings in 2004
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