Dan Rather's Raw Deal

By Greg Palast, AlterNet. Posted June 23, 2006.

They finally put Dan Rather out of his misery at CBS. CEO Leslie Moonves put on his best mourning face, offering upon Rather's departure, "He had a very distinguished career. I'm sorry he's leaving us." However sorry Moonves may be, he still sent Rather to the glue factory -- all for reporting the truth. But not all of it.

Rather's "unsubstantiated story of Bush's military service" (says USA Today) got him canned. Yet, all the poor man did was repeat a story the Brits put on BBC Television a year earlier -- that Poppy Bush put in the fix to get his son out of 'Nam and into the Texas Air Guard, spending his war years guarding Houston from Viet Cong attack.

But Dan never reported this: the documentation from inside the US Department of Justice detailing the fix. Why not? Because it opened up a far more serious charge: that those who kept Little George out of war's way ended up very well rewarded. The BBC, the world's biggest network, ran that full story -- from the evidence of the fix to the evidence of the lucrative pay-backs -- and the BBC never retracted a comma of it. Nor, by the way, has the White House denied our accusations despite our repeated offers to respond.

George's slithering out of combat turned into big pay-days for those in on the fix and its cover-up: Harriett Miers (remember her?), Karen Hughes and Texas lobbyists.

The necklace-ing of Dan Rather

You aren't stupid, they just talk to you that way. It's 2004. Falluja's on fire, your pension's burning away, the last General Motors worker is turning out the lights in Detroit -- and the biggest issue of the election, aside from Christians who don't want homosexuals to have families, was whether some elderly news celebrity, Dan Rather, had besmirched the reputation of our President, a former Naval Aviator. They can't get you to ignore that man behind the curtain, Dorothy, unless there's a fascinating show on stage to distract you. And, for the final days of the presidential campaign, they gave us the lynching of Dan Rather.

We know George Bush was a Naval Aviator because it says so right on his toy box. Actually, he never was a Naval Aviator and never once landed a plane on the deck of an aircraft carrier. During the Vietnam War, our future President flew in the Texas Air National Guard protecting Houston from Viet Cong attack. Our President obtained that job the same way he got the current one: The fix was in.

Congressman Poppy Bush, said Rather, put in the fix for his son, despite Junior's too-dumb-to-fly test scores, by putting in a call to the head of the Texas Air Guard via Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes. That's what Dan Rather reported on 60 Minutes, that Bush Jr. got the Texas top gun post, and thereby dodged the draft and the bullets of Vietnam. It was a hell of a scoop and his network rewarded him and his producer, Mary Mapes, by firing their sorry asses. That wasn't enough.

The president of CBS, Leslie Moonves, bullwhipped his network's stars and, with his own spit, polished the soiled war record of our President, declaring that Rather's producer "...ignored information that cast doubt on the story she had set out to report -- that President Bush had received special treatment thirty years ago, getting to the Guard ahead of many other applicants."

Really? Well, Mr. Moonves, look at this evidence: "His [George W. Bush's] dad called then-Lt. Gov. Barnes to ask for his help to get his son not just in the Guard, but to get one of the coveted pilot slots which were extremely hard to get. [Barnes, through a 'cut-out,' a third party,] contacted General Rose at the Guard and took care of it. George Bush was placed ahead of thousands of young men, some of whom died in Vietnam."

This is from a letter which had remained locked for years in the file cabinets of the U.S. Justice Department prosecutor in Austin, Texas. How I got it does not matter. Our War President has not challenged authenticity. And its contents, Mr. Moonves, were confirmed by the "cut-out" himself, the man who made the call to the Texas Air Guard for young George. (Would the cut-out, a major figure in the Lone Star State, allow BBC to film his statement? He said, "Do I look like the dumbest Texan on the prairie?") But you knew that, if you're not American. At the Guardian and on BBC we also reported, before the presidential election, that Lt. Governor Barnes had put in the fix for George Jr. at the Air Guard. The BBC reported that in 1999, before Bush's first run for office.

Greg Palast is the author of a new book, Armed Madhouse. Read his work at GregPalast.com.

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