Memogate

Paper Summary:

On September 8, 2004, CBS news anchor Dan Rather aired a report on apparent gaps in presidential candidate George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. In order to portray these gaps as evidence that Bush had received preferential treatment, Rather relied on memos that had allegedly been written by Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, one of Bush's superiors during the early 1970's. Immediately after Rather's report, bloggers across the Internet began to raise doubts about the authenticity of these memos. By describing how the bloggers' suspicions eventually led to Rather's downfall, this paper attempts to show that the scandal revolved, not around the actual facts of Bush's service, but around the methods that CBS had used to gather and present documentary evidence.

From the Paper:

"The report that aired on "60 Minutes Wednesday" featured an exclusive interview with Ben Barnes, a former lieutenant governor of Texas and speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, who said that he helped get Bush into the Texas Air National Guard at the pinnacle of the Vietnam War. As mentioned above, the report included documents from 1972 that were allegedly written by the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, one of Bush's former commanders. The Lt. Col. had previously alleged that Bush's Guard records had been "scrubbed" to hide information. The story was part of an investigation alleging that Bush benefited from political favoritism in getting out of commitments to the Texas Guard. The documents, supposedly made by Killian, included criticisms of Bush's service in the Guard and allegedly showed that Bush disobeyed orders. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents
• http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/11/cbs/index.html. Boehlert, Eric
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18982-2004Sep13.html. Dobbs, Michael & Kurtz, Howard.
• http://www.cjrarchives.org/issues/2005/1/pein-blog.asp Pein, Corey

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