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Posted November 29, 2005
Mike Wallace Discloses ‘Chaos’ at CBS Before National Guard Story

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Bill O’Reilly: “Mary Mapes. I had her on the broadcast. Did an extensive interview with her. Millions of people watched it. She came off as very unsteady. Her main thesis was well, they haven't proved the documents about Bush National Guard weren’t real, were not real. That was her thesis. I said as an investigative reporter, you’ve to use the same threshold you use in a court of law. Beyond a reasonable doubt. If there’s one doubt, you can't put them on the air. How do you feel about it?”

Mike Wallace: “I think you're right. Simple as that.”

O’Reilly: “Did you tell her that?”

Wallace: “Did I tell her that? I had nothing to do with it.”

O’Reilly: “No, but you're in the same building over there at 60 Minutes.”

Wallace: “Never met her.”

O’Reilly: “Really?”

Wallace: “Never met Mary Mapes.”

O’Reilly: “She’s been at CBS for 28 years.”

Wallace: “I know that. Me, I’ve been there since 1963. I have never met her. She lives in Texas. I’ve read a couple of things about it. Look, I was there the weekend they were putting it together. It was chaos.”

O’Reilly: “Chaos?”

Wallace: “Yeah, it was. I didn't know what they were doing, but it was -- they didn't want us to know what they were doing. Dan Rather is my friend, remains my friend. I have nothing but respect for him. Nonetheless, truth to tell, he has acknowledged to me that he did not see the finished piece before it went on the air.”

O’Reilly: “Is that right? Too busy?”

Wallace: “Yeah. Busy. One thing or another.”

O’Reilly: “But in a report that's going to denigrate the President of the United States, you would think that you would want to see it.”

Wallace: “That's your view.”

O’Reilly: “You would want to see it, would you not?”

Wallace: “Damn right.”

O’Reilly: “Did you tell Rather that he screwed it up?”

Wallace: “I wondered -- I had a pleasant, sensible discussion with Dan. I said everybody who was involved with you in this thing, everybody got fired. Why didn't you go with them? Or did it never occur to you along the way?”

O’Reilly: “You said that to Rather?”

Wallace: “Of course. Everybody, everybody got fired. And Dan didn't. Okay. He had a contract, whatever. And I told this to Dan. Perhaps if you had said, 'hey, if they go, I go,’ the whole thing would have been perceived as somewhat different.”

O’Reilly: “You think he could have saved all those people?”

Wallace: “I don't know about that.”

O’Reilly: “Do you think he should have been fired?”

Wallace: “You don’t fire a man like Rather who’s been with the company forever and has done extraordinary things forever, no.”

O’Reilly: “Bottom line, the whole thing was a fiasco, the Bush National Guard story and CBS News, just a fiasco.”

Wallace: “That's your view.”

O’Reilly: “Is it yours?”

Wallace: “I don't know enough about the piece, honest.”

O’Reilly: “But if they cannot prove the documents were real and they can't, isn't that the definition of a journalistic fiasco?”

Wallace: “Well, apparently, I’ve not -- as I say, I’ve never met Mary Mapes.”

O’Reilly: “You're dancing.”

Wallace: “I am dancing a little bit.”

O’Reilly: “You're doing the Lambada here, Mike.”

Wallace laughs: “Look, if I’d been there, I wouldn't have gone on the air unless I was certain.”

O’Reilly: “Beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Wallace: “Yeah.”

O’Reilly: “Is Iraq Vietnam?”

Wallace: “Say again?”

O’Reilly: “Is Iraq Vietnam?”

Wallace: “Well, you know, 58,000 people were killed in Vietnam. It's a mere -- can you imagine, Iraq is becoming a kind of Vietnam. We should never have gone into Iraq. We were sold a bill of goods. Now, whether the President was sold a bill of goods or whether Dick Cheney was sitting in the chair at that time, I don't know.”

O’Reilly: “Well, it was Bush who made the decision. Cheney encouraged it.”

-- Exchange on The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News Channel, Nov. 28, 2005

Posted November 8, 2005
Mary Mapes’ Ridiculous Journalistic ‘Standards’

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Mary Mapes: "I'm perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there's proof that I haven't seen."

Brian Ross: "But isn't it the other way around? Don't you have to proof they're authentic?"

Mapes: "Well, I think that's what critics of the story would say. I know more now than I did then and I think, I think they have not proved to be false, yet."

Ross: "Have they proved to be authentic though? Isn't that really what journalists do?"

Mapes: "No, I don't think that's the standard."
-- Exchange between former CBS Producer Mary Mapes and ABC’s Brian Ross about the 60 Minutes “Memogate” scandal, Good Morning America, Nov. 8, 2005.

Posted November 7, 2005
Newsweek’s Clift Raises Issue of Impeachment of President Bush

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Eleanor Clift: “First of all, what the Democrats did was a welcome show of spine that Democrats needed and the Libby indictments have opened the door to making the wider case against the Bush administration that they misled the country into war and so Democrats now have an opportunity to re-think their vote in support of going to war, although they claim they gave the President the authority to go to war and he abused that authority. It’s a little tricky argument to make. But the point is they interrupted the White House message that Libby is some single, rogue aide and that this has nothing to do with the case for war. And the Democrats are going to push this and frankly if the country, according to the polls, believes by a margin of 55 percent that President Bush misled us into war, the next logical step is impeachment and I think you’re going to hear that word come up and if the Democrats ever capture either house of Congress there are going to be serious proceedings against this administration.”

-- Newsweek reporter and columnist Eleanor Clift, The McLaughlin Group, Nov. 6, 2005. 

Posted November 2, 2005
Cafferty Unleashes Tirade on View "We Were Lied To" Pre Iraq War

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Jack Cafferty: "You know, I get a lot of mail. And depending on what we read, they say you’re a conservative, you’re a liberal; you’re a Republican, you’re a Democrat. This isn’t about any of that stuff, I don’t think. It’s about what’s right and what’s wrong. There’s a perception in this country that we were lied to about the run-up to the war in Iraq. Maybe we were, and maybe we weren’t, but there are a lot of people who think we were. And a half a trillion dollars and 2,000 of our kids later, we’re still there. We’re mired in a thing that has no visible end. If it was necessary, and if the threats were real, fine and dandy. But if they lied to us, if there was some kind of intent to deceive, then they ought to find out who did it, and tear their fingernails out, and then get rid of them. And it’s not about being, you know, on one side of the political spectrum or the other. It’s about what’s right and what’s wrong and what people who are entrusted to govern this country do with the power we give them. If it’s being abused, we damn well have a right to know, and something should be done about it. Wolf?"

-- Jack Cafferty in exchange with reporter Wolf Blitzer, The Situation Room, CNN, Nov. 1, 2005.

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