Dan Rather Killian documents
What is Rather's connection to the Killian documents?
What is Dan Rather's connection to the Killian documents?
On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times.  Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents - former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett - had misled the network about how he had obtained them.  On September 20, CBS retracted the story. 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." The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."  Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." CANNOTANSWER
Rather reported on 60 Minutes
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people.

Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation.

In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes.

Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired.

In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010.

On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel.

Early life 

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston.

In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian.  He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston.

In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process.

Early career 

Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell."

He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs.

In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston.

In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people.  Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years.

On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America.

CBS News

JFK assassination to Watergate 
In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote: 
“The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.”

In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward.

Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV).

Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position.

In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress.

CBS Evening News anchor 

After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News.

Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.”

Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent.

Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff.

In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings.

For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone.
By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted.

Journalistic history and influence

Nixon 
During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal.

NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile.

Space Shuttle Challenger disaster 

In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as: 
“star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12.

On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows:

On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch.

 Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush 

During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions.

Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan.

Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers.

During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying: 
“I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment.

Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place.

 The Wall Within 
On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness.

In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam.

 Killian documents 

On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times.

Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them.

On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. 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.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."

Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.”

 Departure from the CBS Evening News 

Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006.
Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'”

“What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.”

 Ousted from CBS News 
In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather."

On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure:

 Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network 
On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story.

 Post-CBS career 
Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013.

Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption."

Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable.

On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.

In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News.

In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects.

In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories.

On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27.

In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career.

On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time.

 Personal life 

Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York.

Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism.

A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.”

 Books 
 The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. .
 The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. .
 I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. .
 The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. .
 , 1999. .
 "The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. .
 , with Digby Diehl, 2013. .
 What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. .

 Awards 

He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities.

In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

 Criticism 
As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor.

 Claims of bias 
Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.”

During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim.

In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect."

In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event.

 From Walter Cronkite 
During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner.

 From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker 
In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management.

 Incidents and controversies 

 1968 Democratic convention 
During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges.

As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.”  Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!"

 Chicago cab ride 
On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.”
By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments."

 Galloway lawsuit 
In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed.

 "Courage" 
For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it.

 "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" 
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events.

The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman.

In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010.

 Dead air 
On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.” 

 "Ratherisms" 

Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include:
 “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.”
 “This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.”
 His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”

 In popular culture 

Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said."

In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State.

In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum."

Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.

A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not."

Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein.

 Ratings 
Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers.

See also
 New Yorkers in journalism

 References 

 Further reading  
 Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 
 
 
 
 Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates
 
 Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden.
 Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow.
 
 
 2nd Saddam interview

External links 

 AXS TV The Big Interview
 
 
 
 Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History)

Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
1931 births
Living people
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
CBS News people
Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
60 Minutes correspondents
Associated Press reporters
Houston Chronicle people
Television anchors from Houston
Journalists from Houston
Killian documents controversy
People from Wharton, Texas
Sam Houston State University alumni
Writers from Texas
American victims of crime
Texas Democrats
The Young Turks people
American male journalists
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists
Journalists from New York City
People from Huntsville, Texas
Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award
Military personnel from Texas
The Killian documents controversy (also referred to as Memogate or Rathergate) involved six documents containing false allegations about President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972–73, allegedly typed in 1973. 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. Several typewriter and typography experts soon concluded that they were forgeries. Lt. Col. Bill Burkett provided the documents to CBS, but he claims to have burned the originals after faxing them copies.

CBS 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. Bush military service controversy. Burkett claimed that Bush's commander Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian wrote them, which included criticisms of Bush's service in the Guard during the 1970s. 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.

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. 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. CBS finally repudiated the use of the documents on September 20, 2004. 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. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."

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. CBS fired producer Mapes, requested resignations from several senior news executives, and apologized to viewers by saying only that there were "substantial questions regarding the authenticity of the Killian documents".

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. It is based on Mapes' memoir Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. Former CBS President and CEO Les Moonves refused to approve the film, and CBS refused to air advertisements for it. A CBS spokesman stated that it contained "too many distortions, evasions, and baseless conspiracy theories".

Background and timeline
The memos, allegedly written in 1972 and 1973, were obtained by CBS News producer Mary Mapes and freelance journalist Michael Smith, from Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, a former US Army National Guard officer.  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.

Burkett 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 [then-]Governor Bush", and in February 2004, when he claimed to have knowledge of "scrubbing" of Bush's Texas Air National Guard records.  Mapes was "by her own account [aware that] many in the press considered Burkett an 'anti-Bush zealot', his credibility in question".

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.  During the last week of August, Mapes asked Josh Howard, her immediate superior at CBS, for permission to facilitate contact between Burkett and the Kerry campaign; Howard and Mapes subsequently disputed whether such permission had been given.

Two documents were provided by Burkett to Mapes on September 2 and four others on September 5, 2004. At that time, Burkett told Mapes that they were copies of originals that had been obtained from Killian's personal files via Chief Warrant Officer George Conn, another former member of the TexANG.

Mapes informed Rather of the progress of the story, which was being targeted to air on September 8 along with footage of an interview with Ben Barnes, a former Lieutenant Governor of Texas, who would publicly state for the first time his opinion that Bush had received preferential treatment to get into the National Guard.  Mapes had also been in contact with the Kerry campaign several times between late August and September 6, when she spoke with senior Kerry advisor Joe Lockhart regarding the progressing story. Lockhart subsequently stated he was "wary" of contact with Mapes at this stage, because if the story were true, his involvement might undermine its credibility, and if it were false, "he did not want to be associated with it."  Lockhart called Burkett on September 6 at the number provided by Mapes, and both men stated they discussed Burkett's view of Kerry's presidential campaign strategy, not the existence of the documents or the related story.

Content of the memos
The documents claimed that Bush had disobeyed orders while in the Guard, and that undue influence had been exerted on Bush's behalf to improve his record.  The documents included the following:

An order directing Bush to submit to a physical examination.
A note that Killian had grounded Bush from flying due to "failure to perform to USAF / TexANG standards", and for failure to submit to the physical examination as ordered. Killian also requested that a flight inquiry board be convened, as required by regulations, to examine the reasons for Bush's loss of flight status.
A note of a telephone conversation with Bush in which Bush sought to be excused from "drill", The note records that Bush said he did not have the time to attend to his National Guard duties because he had a campaign to do (the Senate campaign of Winton M. Blount in Alabama).
A note (labeled "CYA" for "cover your ass") claiming that Killian was being pressured from above to give Bush better marks in his yearly evaluation than he had earned. The note attributed to Killian says that he was being asked to "sugarcoat" Bush's performance. "I'm having trouble running interference [for Bush] and doing my job."

USA Today also received copies of the four documents used by CBS, reporting this and publishing them the morning after the CBS segment, along with two additional memos.  Burkett was assured by USA Today that they would keep the source confidential.

CBS investigations prior to airing the segment
Mapes and her colleagues began interviewing people who might be able to corroborate the information in the documents, while also retaining four forensic document experts, Marcel J. Matley, James J. Pierce, Emily Will, and Linda James, to determine the validity of the memos.

On September 5, CBS interviewed Killian's friend Robert Strong, who ran the Texas Air National Guard administrative office. Among other issues covered in his interview with Rather and Mapes, Strong was asked if he thought the documents were genuine. Strong stated, "they are compatible with the way business was done at the time. They are compatible with the man that I remember Jerry Killian being."  Strong had first seen the documents twenty minutes earlier and also said he had no personal knowledge of their content; he later claimed he had been told to assume the content of the documents was accurate.

On September 6, CBS interviewed General Robert "Bobby" Hodges, a former officer at the Texas Air National Guard and Killian's immediate superior at the time. Hodges declined CBS' request for an on-camera interview, and Mapes read the documents to him over the telephone—or perhaps only portions of the documents; his recollection and Mapes's differed. According to Mapes, Hodges agreed with CBS's assessment that the documents were real, and CBS reported that Hodges stated that these were "the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time".  However, according to Hodges, when Mapes read portions of the memos to him he simply stated, "well if he wrote them, that's what he felt", and he stated he never confirmed the validity of the content of the documents. General Hodges later asserted to the investigatory panel that he told Mapes that Killian had never, to his knowledge, ordered anyone to take a physical and that he had never been pressured regarding Lieutenant Bush, as the documents alleged. Hodges also claims that when CBS interviewed him, he thought the memos were handwritten, not typed, and following the September 8 broadcast, when Hodges had seen the documents and heard of claims of forgery by Killian's wife and son, he was "convinced they were not authentic" and told Rather and Mapes on September 10.

Response of the document examiners

Prior to airing, all four of the examiners responded to Mapes' request for document analysis, though only two to Mapes directly:

Emily Will noted discrepancies in the signatures on the memos, and had questions about the letterhead, the proportional spacing of the font, the superscripted "th" and the improper formatting of the date. Will requested other documents to use for comparison.
Linda James was "unable to reach a conclusion about the signature" and noted that the superscripted "th" was not in common use at the time the memos were allegedly written; she later recalled telling CBS, "the two memos she looked at 'had problems.'"
James Pierce concluded that both of the documents were written by the same person and that the signature matched Killian's from the official Bush records. Only one of the two documents provided to Pierce had a signature. James Pierce wrote, "the balance of the Jerry B. Killian signatures appearing on the photocopied questioned documents are consistent and in basic agreement", and stated that based on what he knew, "the documents in question are authentic".  However, Pierce also told Mapes he could not be sure if the documents had been altered because he was reviewing copies, not original documents.
Marcel Matley's review was initially limited to Killian's signature on one of the Burkett documents, which he compared to signatures from the official Bush records. Matley "seemed fairly confident" that the signature was Killian's. On September 6, Matley was interviewed by Rather and Mapes and was provided with the other four documents obtained from CBS (he would prove to be the only reviewer to see these documents prior to the segment). Matley told Rather "he could not authenticate the documents due to the fact that they were poor quality copies." In the interview, Matley told Rather that with respect to the signatures, they were relying on "poor material" and that there were inconsistencies in the signatures, but also replied "Yes", when asked if it would be safe to say the documents were written by the person who signed them.
Both Emily Will and Linda James suggested to Mapes that CBS contact typewriter expert Peter Tytell (son of Martin Tytell). Associate producer Yvonne Miller left him a voicemail on September 7; he returned the call at 11 am on September 8 but was told they "did not need him anymore".

September 8 segment and initial reactions
The segment entitled "For the Record" aired on 60 Minutes Wednesday on September 8.  After introducing the documents, Rather said, in reference to Matley, "We consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic."

The segment introduced Lieutenant Robert Strong's interview, describing him as a "friend of Killian" (without noting he had not worked in the same location and without mentioning he had left the TexANG prior to the dates on the memos). The segment used the sound bite of Strong saying the documents were compatible with how business was done but did not include a disclaimer that Strong was told to assume the documents were authentic.

In Rather's narration about one of the memos, he referred to pressure being applied on Bush's behalf by General Buck Staudt, and described Staudt as "the man in charge of the Texas National Guard". Staudt had retired from the guard a year and a half prior to the dates of the memos.

Interview clips with Ben Barnes, former Speaker of the Texas House, created the impression "that there was no question but that President Bush had received Barnes' help to get into the TexANG", because Barnes had made a telephone call on Bush's behalf, when Barnes himself had acknowledged that there was no proof his call was the reason, and that "sometimes a call to General Rose did not work". Barnes' disclaimer was not included in the segment.

Internet skepticism spreads
Discussion quickly spread to various weblogs in the blogosphere, principally Little Green Footballs and Power Line. The initial analysis appeared in posts by "Buckhead", a username of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta attorney who had worked for conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and the Southeastern Legal Foundation, and who had helped draft the petition to the Arkansas Supreme Court for the disbarment of President Bill Clinton. MacDougald questioned the validity of the documents on the basis of their typography, writing that the memos were "in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman", and alleging that this was an anachronism:  "I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively."

By the following day, questions about the authenticity of the documents were being publicized by the  Drudge Report, which linked to the analysis at the Powerline blog in the mid-afternoon, and the story was covered on the website of the magazine The Weekly Standard and broke into mass media outlets, including the Associated Press and the major television news networks. It also was receiving serious attention from conservative writers such as National Review Online's Jim Geraghty.  By the afternoon of September 9, Charles Foster Johnson of Little Green Footballs had posted his attempt to recreate one of the documents using Microsoft Word with the default settings.  The September 9 edition of ABC's Nightline made mention of the controversy, along with an article on the ABC News website.

Thirteen days after this controversy had emerged the national newspaper USA Today published a timeline of events surrounding the CBS story. Accordingly, on the September 9 morning after the "60 minutes" report, the broadcast was front-page news in the New York Times and Washington Post. Additionally, the story was given two-thirds of a full page within USA Today'''s news section, which mentioned that it had also obtained copies of the documents. However, the authenticity of the memos was not part of the story carried by major news outlets on that day.  Also on that day, CBS published the reaction of Killian's son, Gary, to the documents, reporting that Gary Killian questioned one of the memos but stated that others "appeared legitimate" and characterized the collection as "a mixture of truth and fiction".  In an interview with Fox News, Gary Killian expressed doubts about the documents' authenticity on the basis of his father's positive view of Bush.

In 2006, the two Free Republic (Rathergate) bloggers, Harry W. MacDougald, username "Buckhead", an Atlanta-based lawyer and Paul Boley, username "TankerKC", were awarded the Reed Irvine Award for New Media by the Accuracy in Media watchdog at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

CBS's response and widening media coverage
At 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 9, CBS News released a statement saying the memos were "thoroughly investigated by independent experts, and we are convinced of their authenticity", and stating, "this report was not based solely on recovered documents, but rather on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources". The statement was replaced later that day with one that omitted this claim.

The first newspaper articles questioning the documents appeared on September 10 in The Washington Post, The New York Times and in USA Today via the Associated Press. The Associated Press reported, "Document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines ... said she was 'virtually certain' [the documents] were generated by computer. Lines said that meant she could testify in court that, beyond a reasonable doubt, her opinion was that the memos were written on a computer."

Also on September 10, The Dallas Morning News reported, "the officer named in one memo as exerting pressure to 'sugarcoat' Bush's military record was discharged a year and a half before the memo was written. The paper cited a military record showing that Col. Walter 'Buck' Staudt was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972, while the memo cited by CBS as showing that Staudt was interfering with evaluations of Bush was dated August 18, 1973."

In response to the media attention, a CBS memo said that the documents were "backed up not only by independent handwriting and forensic document experts but by sources familiar with their content" and insisted that no internal investigation would take place. On the CBS Evening News of September 10, Rather defended the story and noted that its critics included "partisan political operatives".

In the broadcast, Rather stated that Marcel Matley "analyzed the documents for CBS News. He believes they are real", and broadcast additional excerpts from Matley's September 6 interview showing Matley's agreement that the signatures appeared to be from the same source. Rather did not report that Matley had referred to them as "poor material", that he had only opined about the signatures or that he had specifically not authenticated the documents.
Rather presented footage of the Strong interview, introducing it by stating Robert Strong "is standing by his judgment that the documents are real", despite Strong's lack of standing to authenticate them and his brief exposure to the documents.
Rather concluded by stating, "If any definitive evidence to the contrary of our story is found, we will report it. So far, there is none."

In an appearance on CNN that day, Rather asserted "I know that this story is true. I believe that the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they would not have been."

However, CBS's Josh Howard spoke at length by telephone with typewriter expert Peter Tytell and later told the panel that the discussion was "an 'unsettling event' that shook his belief in the authenticity of the documents". Producer Mapes dismissed Tytell's concerns.

A former vice president of CBS News, Jonathan Klein, dismissed the allegations of bloggers, suggesting that the "checks and balances" of a professional news organization were superior to those of individuals sitting at their home computers "in their pajamas".

CBS's defense, apology

As media coverage widened and intensified, CBS at first attempted to produce additional evidence to support its claims. On September 11, a CBS News segment stated that document expert Phillip Bouffard thought the documents "could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter, available at the time". The Selectric Composer was introduced in 1966 for use by typesetting professionals to generate camera-ready copy; according to IBM archives describing this specialized equipment, "To produce copy which can be reproduced with 'justified', or straight left-and right-hand margins, the operator types the copy once and the composer computes the number of spaces needed to justify the line. As the operator types the copy a second time, the spaces are added automatically." Bouffard's comments were also cited by the Boston Globe in an article entitled "Authenticity backed on Bush documents". However, the Globe soon printed a retraction regarding the title. CBS noted that although General Hodges was now stating he thought the documents were inauthentic, "we believed General Hodges the first time we spoke with him."  CBS reiterated: "we believe the documents to be genuine."

By September 13, CBS's position had shifted slightly, as Rather acknowledged "some of these questions come from people who are not active political partisans", and stated that CBS "talked to handwriting and document analysts and other experts who strongly insist the documents could have been created in the '70s". The analysts and experts cited by Rather did not include the original four consulted by CBS. Rather instead presented the views of Bill Glennon and Richard Katz. Glennon, a former typewriter repairman with no specific credentials in typesetting beyond that job, was found by CBS after posting several defenses of the memos on blogs including Daily Kos and Kevin Drum's blog hosted at Washington Monthly. However, in the actual broadcast, neither interviewee asserted that the memos were genuine.

As a result, some CBS critics began to accuse CBS of expert shopping.

60 Minutes Wednesday, one week later
The original document examiners, however, continued to be part of the story. By September 15, Emily Will was publicly stating that she had told CBS that she had doubts about both the production of the memos and the handwriting prior to the segment. Linda James stated that the memos were of "very poor quality" and that she did not authenticate them, telling ABC News, "I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it understood that I did."

In response, 60 Minutes Wednesday released a statement suggesting that Will and James had "misrepresented" their role in the authentication of the documents and had played only a small part in the process. CBS News concurrently amended its previous claim that Matley had authenticated the documents, saying instead that he had authenticated only the signatures. On CNN, Matley stated he had only verified that the signatures were "from the same source", not that they were authentically Killian's: "When I saw the documents, I could not verify the documents were authentic or inauthentic. I could only verify that the signatures came from the same source", Matley said. "I could not authenticate the documents themselves. But at the same time, there was nothing to tell me that they were not authentic."

On the evening of September 15, CBS aired a segment that featured an interview with Marian Carr Knox, a secretary at Ellington Air Force Base from 1956 to 1979, and who was Killian's assistant on the dates shown in the documents. Dan Rather prefaced the segment on the recorded interview by stating, "She told us she believes what the documents actually say is, exactly, as we reported." In the aired interview, Knox expressed her belief that the documents reflected Killian's "sentiments" about Bush's service, and that this belief motivated her decision to reach out to CBS to provide the interview.CBS Sept 15 2004: Dan Rather Talks To Lt. Col. Killian's Ex-Secretary About Bush Memos In response to a direct question from Rather about the authenticity of the memo on Bush's alleged insubordination, she stated that no such memo was ever written; she further emphasized that she would have known if such a memo existed, as she had sole responsibility to type Killian's memos in that time period. At this point, she also admitted she had no firsthand knowledge of Bush's time in the Guard. However, controversially, Knox said later in the interview, "The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones." She went on to say, "I probably typed the information and somebody picked up the information some way or another." The archived link works only with JavaScript disabled in the browser; a version with all scripts disabled is here.   The New York Times' headline report on this interview, including the phrase "Fake but Accurate", created an immediate backlash from critics of CBS's broadcast. The conservative-leaning Weekly Standard proceeded to predict the end of CBS's news division.

At this time, Dan Rather first acknowledged there were problems in establishing the validity of the documents used in the report, stating: "If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story."

CBS also hired a private investigator to look into the matter after the story aired and the controversy began.

Copies of the documents were first released to the public by the White House. Press Secretary Scott McClellan stated that the memos had been provided to them by CBS in the days prior to the report and that, "We had every reason to believe that they were authentic at that time."

The Washington Post reported that at least one of the documents obtained by CBS had a fax header indicating it had been faxed from a Kinko's copy center in Abilene, Texas, leading some to trace the documents back to Burkett.

CBS states that use of the documents was a mistake

As a growing number of independent document examiners and competing news outlets reported their findings about the documents, CBS News stopped defending the documents and began to report on the problems with their story. On September 20 they reported that their source, Bill Burkett, "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source." While the network did not state that the memos were forgeries, 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. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.

Dan 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."

In an interview with Rather, Burkett admitted that he misled CBS about the source of the documents, and then claimed that the documents came to him from someone he claimed was named "Lucy Ramirez", whom CBS was unable to contact or identify as an actual person. Burkett said he then made copies at the local Kinko's and burned the original documents. Investigations by CBS, CNN and the Washington Post failed to turn up evidence of "Lucy Ramirez" being an actual person.Jonathan V. Last, "Whitewash", The Weekly Standard, January 10, 2005.

On September 21, CBS News addressed the contact with the Kerry campaign in its statement, saying "it is obviously against CBS News standards and those of every other reputable news organization to be associated with any political agenda."

The next day the network announced it was forming an independent review panel to perform an internal investigation.

Review panel established

Soon after, CBS established a review panel "to help determine what errors occurred in the preparation of the report and what actions need to be taken". Dick Thornburgh, a Republican former governor of Pennsylvania and United States Attorney General under George H.W. Bush, and Louis Boccardi, retired president and chief executive officer and former executive editor of the Associated Press, made up the two-person review board. CBS also hired a private investigator, a former FBI agent named Erik T. Rigler, to gather further information about the story.

Findings
On January 5, 2005, the Report of the Independent Review Panel on the September 8, 2004, 60 Minutes Wednesday Segment "For the Record" Concerning President Bush's Air National Guard Service was released. The purpose of the panel was to examine the process by which the September 8 Segment was prepared and broadcast, to examine the circumstances surrounding the subsequent public statements and news reports by CBS News defending the segment, and to make any recommendations it deemed appropriate. Among the Panel's conclusions were the following:

The most serious defects in the reporting and production of the September 8 Segment were:
 The failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner;
 The false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents when all he had done was authenticate one signature from one document used in the Segment;
 The failure of 60 Minutes Wednesday management to scrutinize the publicly available, and at times controversial, background of the source of the documents, retired Texas Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett;
 The failure to find and interview the individual who was understood at the outset to be Lieutenant Colonel Burkett's source of the Killian documents, and thus to establish the chain of custody;
 The failure to establish a basis for the statement in the Segment that the documents "were taken from Colonel Killian's personal files";
 The failure to develop adequate corroboration to support the statements in the Killian documents and to carefully compare the Killian documents to official TexANG records, which would have identified, at a minimum, notable inconsistencies in content and format;
 The failure to interview a range of former National Guardsmen who served with Lieutenant Colonel Killian and who had different perspectives about the documents;
 The misleading impression conveyed in the Segment that Lieutenant Strong had authenticated the content of the documents when he did not have the personal knowledge to do so;
 The failure to have a vetting process capable of dealing effectively with the production speed, significance and sensitivity of the Segment; and
 The telephone call prior to the Segment's airing by the producer of the Segment to a senior campaign official of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry – a clear conflict of interest – that created the appearance of a political bias.

Once questions were raised about the September 8 segment, the reporting thereafter was mishandled and compounded the damage done. Among the more egregious shortcomings during the Aftermath were:
 The strident defense of the September 8 Segment by CBS News without adequately probing whether any of the questions raised had merit;
 Allowing many of the same individuals who produced and vetted the by-then controversial September 8 Segment to also produce the follow-up news reports defending the Segment;
 The inaccurate press statements issued by CBS News after the broadcast of the Segment that the source of the documents was "unimpeachable" and that experts had vouched for their authenticity;
 The misleading stories defending the Segment that aired on the CBS Evening News after September 8 despite strong and multiple indications of serious flaws;
 The efforts by 60 Minutes Wednesday to find additional document examiners who would vouch for the authenticity of the documents instead of identifying the best examiners available regardless of whether they would support this position; and
 Preparing news stories that sought to support the Segment, instead of providing accurate and balanced coverage of a raging controversy.

Panel's view of the documents

The Panel did not undertake a thorough examination of the authenticity of the Killian documents, but consulted Peter Tytell, a New York City-based forensic document examiner and typewriter and typography expert. Tytell had been contacted by 60 Minutes producers prior to the broadcast, and had informed associate producer Yvonne Miller and executive producer Josh Howard on September 10 that he believed the documents were forgeries. The Panel report stated, "The Panel met with Peter Tytell, and found his analysis sound in terms of why he thought the documents were not authentic ... The Panel reaches no conclusion as to whether Tytell was correct in all respects."

Aftermath
The controversy had long-reaching personal, political and legal consequences. In a 2010 issue of  TV Guide, Rather's report was ranked  on a list of TV's ten biggest "blunders".

CBS personnel and programming changes
CBS terminated Mary Mapes and demanded the resignations of 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard and Howard's top deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy, as well as Senior Vice President Betsy West, who had been in charge of all prime time newscasts. Murphy and West resigned on February 25, 2005, and after settling a legal dispute regarding his level of responsibility for the segment, Josh Howard resigned on March 25, 2005.

Dan Rather announced on November 23, 2004, that he would step down in early 2005 and on March 9, his 24th anniversary as anchor, he left the network. It is unclear whether or not Rather's retirement was directly caused by this incident. Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, stated "Dan Rather has already apologized for the segment and taken responsibility for his part in the broadcast. He voluntarily moved to set a date to step down from the CBS Evening News in March of 2005." He added, "We believe any further action would not be appropriate."

CBS was originally planning to show a 60 Minutes report critical of the Bush administration justification for going to war in Iraq. This segment was replaced with the Killian documents segment. CBS further postponed airing the Iraq segment until after the election due to the controversy over the Killian documents. "We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election", CBS spokesman Kelli Edwards said in a statement.

After the Killian documents controversy, the show was renamed 60 Minutes Wednesday to differentiate it from the original 60 Minutes Sunday edition, and reverted to its original title on July 8, 2005, when it was moved to the 8 p.m. Friday timeslot. It was cancelled in 2005 due to low ratings.

Mapes's and Rather's view of the documents
On November 9, 2005, Mary Mapes gave an interview to ABC News correspondent Brian Ross. Mapes stated that the documents have never been proved to be forgeries. Ross expressed the view that the responsibility is on the reporter to verify their authenticity. Mapes responded with, "I don't think that's the standard." This stands in contrast to the statement of the president of CBS News that proof of authenticity is "the only acceptable journalistic standard."  Also in November 2005, Mapes told readers of the Washington Post, "I personally believe the documents are not false" and "I was fired for airing a story that could not definitively be proved false but made CBS's public relations department cringe." As of September 2007, Mapes continued to defend the authenticity of the documents:  "the far right blogosphere bully boys ... screamed objections that ultimately proved to have no basis in fact."

On November 7, 2006, Rather defended the report in a radio interview, and rejected the CBS investigation's findings. In response, CBS spokesman Kevin Tedesco told the Associated Press, "CBS News stands by the report the independent panel issued on this matter and to this day, no one has been able to authenticate the documents in question."

Dan Rather continued to stand by the story, and in subsequent interviews stated that he believed that the documents have never conclusively been proven to be forgeries – and that even if the documents are false, the underlying story is true.

 Rather's lawsuit against CBS/Viacom 
On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former corporate parent, Viacom, claiming they had made him a "scapegoat" over the controversy caused by the 2004 60 Minutes Wednesday report that featured the Killian documents.  The suit names as defendants: CBS and its CEO, Leslie Moonves: Viacom, Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS Corporation; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News.

In January 2008, the legal teams for Rather and CBS reached an agreement to produce for Rather's attorneys "virtually all of the materials" related to the case, including the findings of Erik T. Rigler's report to CBS about the documents and the story.

On September 29, 2009, New York State Court of Appeals dismissed Rather's lawsuit and stated that the lower court should have honored CBS's request to throw out the entire lawsuit instead of just throwing out parts.

Authentication issues

No generally recognized document experts have positively authenticated the memos. Since CBS used only faxed and photocopied duplicates, authentication to professional standards is impossible, regardless of the provenance of the originals.

Document experts have challenged the authenticity of the documents as photocopies of valid originals on a variety of grounds ranging from anachronisms of their typography, their quick reproducibility using modern technology, and to errors in their content and style.<ref name=wapoexpert>Kurtz, Howard Document Experts Say CBS Ignored Memo 'Red Flags' Washington Post'.' Retrieved April 2006.</ref>

The CBS independent panel report did not specifically take up the question of whether the documents were forgeries, but retained a document expert, Peter Tytell, who concluded the documents used by CBS were produced using current word processing technology.

Tytell concluded ... that (i) the relevant portion of the Superscript Exemplar was produced on an Olympia manual typewriter, (ii) the Killian documents were not produced on an Olympia manual typewriter and (iii) the Killian documents were produced on a computer in Times New Roman typestyle [and that] the Killian documents were not produced on a typewriter in the early 1970s and therefore were not authentic.

Accusations of bias
Some critics of CBS and Dan Rather argued that by proceeding with the story when the documents had not been authenticated, CBS was exhibiting media bias and attempting to influence the outcome of the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Freelance journalist Michael Smith had emailed Mapes, asking, "What if there was a person who might have some information that could possibly change the momentum of an election but we needed to get an ASAP book deal to help get us the information?" Mapes replied, "that looks good, hypothetically speaking of course." The Thornburgh–Boccardi report found that Mapes' contact with Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart was "highly inappropriate", and that it "crossed the line as, at a minimum, it gave the appearance of a political bias and could have been perceived as a news organizations' assisting a campaign as opposed to reporting on a story"; however, the Panel did not "find a basis to accuse those who investigated, produced, vetted or aired the Segment of having a political bias". In a later interview with The Washington Post, when asked about the issue of political bias, review panel member Louis Boccardi said "bias is a hard thing to prove". The panel concluded that the problems occurred "primarily because of a rush to air that overwhelmed the proper application of the CBS News Standards".

Some Democratic critics of Bush suggested that the memos were produced by the Bush campaign to discredit the media's reporting on Bush's National Guard service. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, suggested that the memos might have originated with long-time Bush strategist Karl Rove. McAuliffe told reporters on September 10, "I can tell you that nobody at the Democratic National Committee or groups associated with us were involved in any way with these documents", he said. "I'm just saying that I would ask Karl Rove the same question." McAuliffe later pointed out that Rove and another Republican operative, Ralph E. Reed, Jr., had "a known history of dirty tricks", and he asked whether Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie would rule out any involvement by GOP consultant Roger Stone. At a community forum in Utica, New York in 2005, U.S. Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) pointed out that the controversy served Rove's objectives: "Once they did that, then it undermined everything else about Bush's draft dodging. ... That had the effect of taking the whole issue away." After being criticized, Hinchey responded, "I didn't allege I had any facts. I said this is what I believe and take it for what it's worth."

Rove and Stone have denied any involvement.  In a 2008 interview in The New Yorker, Stone said "It was nuts to think I had anything to do with those documents ... [t]hose papers were potentially devastating to George Bush. You couldn't put them out there assuming that they would be discredited. You couldn't have assumed that this would rebound to Bush's benefit. I believe in bank shots, but that one was too big a risk."

See also

 George W. Bush military service controversy
 Questioned document examination

Footnotes

External links

Killian documents PDF files 
These are the Killian documents supplied to CBS Reports by Bill Burkett: 
Memorandum, May 4, 1972 (CBS News)
Memo to File, May 19, 1972 (CBS News)
Memorandum For Record, August 1, 1972 (CBS News)
Memo to File, August 18, 1973 (CBS News)
USA Today Killian documents (USA Today, six memos in one.pdf file)

Bush documents from the TexANG archives 
Page 31 is a 3 November 1970 memo from the office of Lt Col Killian on promotion of Lt Bush:
Bush enlistment documents (USA Today)

60 Minutes II, September 8 transcript 
Transcript of CBS segment

Dan Rather interviews Marion Carr Knox - September 15, 2004 
 YouTube

Statements of the CBS document examiners 
 Marcel B. Matley, September 14, 2004
 James J. Pierce, September 14, 2004
 Bill Glennon, September 13, 2004
 Richard Katz, September 13, 2004

Thornburgh–Boccardi report 

 [Link to site supposedly containing the exhibits and appendices, but links from that site don't work]

Document analysis
A Pentagon memo next to one of CBS's Killian memos — The Washington Post, September 14, 2004
The Paper Trail: A Comparison of Documents The Washington Post, September 18, 2004
Graphic comparison of all the CBS memos with officially released Killian memos The Washington Post, September 19, 2004
"Blog-gate" Columbia Journalism Review
"CJR Fallacies", response by Joseph Newcomer
"Are the Bush Documents Fakes?", analysis by Richard Polt

Overview Timeline at USA Today
"Scoops and skepticism: How the story unfolded" — timeline from USA Today — September 21, 2004

Further reading
Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power (), by Mary Mapes, November 2005, St. Martin's Press,

In other media
 Truth, 2015 film starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford, whose story is based on the Mapes book above about this controversy.
"Dan Rather interviews Marion Carr Knox - September 15, 2004" YouTube

 
60 Minutes
Memoranda
2004 controversies
2004 in American politics
Political forgery
Journalistic scandals
Mass media-related controversies in the United States
2004 United States presidential election
Political controversies in the United States
2000s controversies in the United States During the Killian documents controversy in 2004, the authenticity of the documents themselves was disputed by a variety of individuals and groups. Proof of authenticity is not possible without original documents, and since CBS used only faxed and photocopied duplicates, authentication to professional standards would be impossible regardless of the provenance of the originals. However, proving documents inauthentic does not depend on the availability of originals, and the validity of these photocopied documents has been challenged on a number of grounds, ranging from anachronisms in their typography to issues pertaining to their content.

Typography 

In the initial hours and days after the CBS broadcast, most of the criticism of the documents' authenticity centered on the fact that they did not look like typical typewritten documents and appeared very similar to documents produced with modern word-processing software. These criticisms, first raised by bloggers, were taken up by outlets of the mainstream press, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, and others, who sought opinions from multiple experts. The arguments and findings are summarized below.

Proportional fonts 
One of the initial doubts bloggers raised about the memos was the use of proportional fonts (as opposed to a monospaced typeface, where all glyphs have a single, standard width). Most typewriters in 1972 used fixed-width fonts, and, according to The Washington Post, all of the authenticated documents from the TexANG were typed using fixed-width fonts commonly associated with typewriters.

Several experts interviewed by the media suggested that the proportional fonts in the documents indicated likely forgery. John Collins, vice president and chief technology officer at Bitstream Inc., the parent of MyFonts.com, stated that word processors that could produce proportional-sized fonts cost upwards of $20,000 at the time ().  Allan Haley, director of words and letters at Agfa Monotype, stated "It was highly out of the ordinary for an organization—even the Air Force—to have proportional-spaced fonts for someone to work with."  William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. The Washington Post also indicated the presence of proportional fonts as suspicious because "of more than 100 records made available by the 147th Group and the Texas Air National Guard, none used the proportional spacing techniques characteristic of the CBS documents".

Bill Glennon, a technology consultant in New York City with typewriter repair experience from 1973 to 1985, said experts making the claim that typewriters were incapable of producing the memos "are full of crap. They just don't know." He said there were IBM machines capable of producing the spacing, and a customized key — the likes of which he said were not unusual — for creating the superscript th.

Thomas W. Phinney II, program manager for fonts at Adobe Systems, responded to Glennon's statement by saying that the memos could not have been produced with either the IBM Executive or IBM Selectric Composer, which had been suggested as possibilities, due to differences in letter width and spacing. Phinney says that each time a typeface was redeveloped for mechanical technologies with different width factors, the width and designs are altered, which is why even if Press Roman had been intended to look like Times Roman, the result is significantly different. Phinney suggests that the real typist prevented Word from auto-formatting "th" in superscript by typing and deleting a space in some cases but in other cases did not use the space or left it in the document.

Phinney's analysis was based on the fact that the typography of the Killian documents could be closely matched with a modern personal computer and printer using Microsoft Word with the default font (Times New Roman) and other settings. Therefore, the equipment with which the Killian documents were actually produced must have been capable of matching the typographical characteristics produced by this modern technology.

As Phinney explained, the letterspacing of the Times New Roman font used by Microsoft Word with a modern personal computer and printer employs a system of 18 units relative to the letter height (em), with common characters being 5 to 17 units wide. (The technology allows even finer variability of character widths, but the 18 unit system was chosen for compatibility with the Linotype phototypesetting and earlier hot-metal versions of the font.) In contrast, the variability of character widths available on early 1970s typewriters using proportional letterspacing was more limited, due to the mechanical technology employed. The most sophisticated of these machines, the IBM Selectric Composer, used a system of 9 units relative to the letter height, in which all characters were 3 to 9 units wide. Less complex machines used fewer widths.

Differences in individual character widths accumulate over the length of a line, so that comparatively small differences would become readily apparent. Because of the differing character widths employed, the letterspacing exhibited by the Killian documents (matching that produced by a modern computer and printer) could not have been produced with a mechanical typewriter using proportional letterspacing in the early 1970s. At the time the documents were purportedly created, the matching letterspacing could only have been produced using phototypesetting or hot-metal printing. Since it is not a realistic possibility that Killian would have had these documents printed, Phinney concludes that they are almost certainly modern forgeries.

Phinney has long offered $1,000 "to anybody who can produce an office-level device that was available in 1972 that can replicate the relative line endings of those memos" but no-one has ever tried to do that.

Desktop magazine in Australia analysed the documents in its November 2004 issue and concluded that the typeface was a post-1985 version of Times Roman, rather than Times New Roman, both of which are different in detail to IBM Press Roman.

Inter-character spacing 
Joseph Newcomer, who helped pioneer electronic typesetting and word processing software, claims that the memos display a simple alternative to kerning characteristic of TrueType fonts but not available on any office equipment in 1972. For example, in words containing "fr", TrueType moves the "r" left to tuck it in under the top part of the "f". The Weekly Standard called Newcomer's explanation the "definitive account" of why the documents were "necessarily forgeries."  The Washington Post quoted Newcomer in an article regarding questions about the authenticity of the papers.

Centered headers 
Creating centered headers is possible on a typewriter, even if the font is proportional.  The typist can left-justify the header and then use the space bar to count the number of spaces from the end of the text to the right margin.  In addition, the IBM Executive and Selectric have a kerning key that would give a more accurate measure of the whitespace.  Once this number is determined, halving it gives the number of leading spaces for a centered header.  The same centering will be achieved on different occasions if the paper is inserted flush to the paper guide, and the same count of spaces is applied.  For an example of multiple centered lines produced using a proportionally spaced typewriter font, see the third page of the contemporary annual history of Bush's Alabama guard unit.

Word processors, by contrast, center text based on a computer algorithm using a fixed central reference point rather than the left margin on the typewriter as measured from the paper's edge.  If the paper in a printer is flush to the left of the paper guide, then a word processor will achieve the same centering throughout a given page and on different pages. The bloggers asserted that it is unlikely that two documents produced 3 months apart by a manual centering process would exactly overlap.  In the Killian memos the text matches perfectly when overlaid with a word processor-produced 3 line address block, and between the 3- and 2- line blocks of different memos.

Curved apostrophes 
In several places, the documents use apostrophes such as in the words I'm and won't.  These are curved somewhat to the left, similar to the shape of a comma. Most typewriters of the era featured vertical apostrophes, rather than angled or curved ones. They were also used for both the opening and closing quotation mark embedded within another quotation instead of the curved forms available in modern day word processors. Compare the straight forms in

 The witness testified that "Jones yelled, 'Run!' before fleeing the scene" in court yesterday.

to the curved forms in

 The witness testified that “Jones yelled, ‘Run!’ before fleeing the scene” in court yesterday.

The latter requires two separate glyphs for each pair of single and double quotation marks.

Similarity to contemporary documents 
The Washington Post reported that "of more than 100 records made available by the 147th Group and the Texas Air National Guard, none used the proportional spacing techniques characteristic of the CBS documents." This raises the question of the likelihood of a National Guard office having access to this type of equipment.

According to The Washington Post, "The analysis shows that half a dozen Killian memos released earlier by the military were written with a standard typewriter using different formatting techniques from those characteristic of computer-generated documents. CBS's Killian memos bear numerous signs that are more consistent with modern-day word-processing programs, particularly Microsoft Word..." (September 14, 2004).

Content and formatting 

In addition to typography, aspects of the memos such as the content and formatting have been challenged.

Signatures 
Of the documents, only the May 4 memo bears a full signature. CBS stated that document examiner Marcel Matley had determined the signature was authentic.  However, Matley told the Washington Post on September 14, "There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them" because they are copies far removed from the original source.  Eugene P. Hussey, a certified forensic document examiner in Washington state, expressed the "limited opinion" that Killian did not sign or initial the documents.

Skepticism from Killian's family and others 
Jerry Killian's wife and son argued that their father never used typewriting equipment and would have written these memos by hand. The family also stated that Killian was not known for keeping personal memos and that he had been very pleased with George W. Bush's performance in his TXANG unit.

In contrast, Killian's secretary at the time, Marian Carr Knox, stated, "We did discuss Bush's conduct and it was a problem Killian was concerned about. I think he was writing the memos so there would be some record that he was aware of what was going on and what he had done."  Although she believed the content of the memos was accurate, she insisted that she did not type the memos CBS had obtained, called them fakes, and noted they contained Army terminology that the Air Guard never used.

Earl W. Lively, who at the time was the commanding officer at the Austin TXANG facility was quoted in the Washington Times as saying, "They're forged as hell."

Mention of influence by retired officer 
Walter Staudt, cited in the memo dated August 18, 1973 as exerting pressure on officers to "sugar coat" their evaluations of Bush, had in fact retired from the service in March 1972.

Staudt also denied being pressured to accept George W. Bush into the National Guard, in an exclusive interview with ABC ("Speaking Out," 17 September 2004): "'No one called me about taking George (W.) Bush into the Air National Guard,' he said. 'It was my decision. I swore him in. I never heard anything from anybody. And I never pressured anybody about George (W.) Bush because I had no reason to,' Staudt told ABC News in his first interview since the documents were made public."

Mention of Flight Inquiry 
It is a matter of record that Lt Bush was suspended from flight status on August 1, 1972 for failure to complete a required annual physical.  The Killian memo dated May 4, 1972 is an order to Lt Bush requiring him to report for his physical by May 14, thus making it appear that Lt Bush ignored a direct written order. Lt. Bush's last rating report, dated May 2, 1973, states that Lt Bush "cleared" the base on May 15, 1972 to head to Alabama.  The Killian memo of August 1 called for a flight inquiry board to review Lt Bush's status. However, no records of this request or the flight inquiry board itself have been found.  Regulations required such a review following the grounding of any pilot.

Mother's Day 
Retired Colonel and former TXANG pilot William Campenni disputed the document dated Thursday May 4, 1972, which ordered Bush to report for a flight physical not later than May 14.  According to Campenni, the squadron commander supposedly ordered Bush to report on a weekend when the base was closed.  The Ellington Air Guard Base was closed for Mother's Day the weekend of May 13–14.  The next Air Guard drill weekend was May 20–21. Bush's last day on base was Monday, May 15, 1972, according to the official record.

Peter Tytell's analysis 
The CBS review panel led by Dick Thornburgh (a Republican and former U.S. Attorney General) and Louis Boccardi hired Peter Tytell, a leading document examiner, to analyze the four documents:

concluded ... that (i) the relevant portion of the Superscript Exemplar was produced on an Olympia manual typewriter, (ii) the Killian documents were not produced on an Olympia manual typewriter and (iii) the Killian documents were produced on a computer in Times New Roman typestyle [and that] the Killian documents were not produced on a typewriter in the early 1970s and therefore were not authentic.

Mother Jones
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones said that believing the documents to be authentic was "delusional".

See also 
 Questioned document examination
 Dan Rather

References

External links

Primary source documents 
Links to large PDF documents.

The four CBS News Killian documents:
 Memorandum, May 4, 1972
 Memo to File, May 19, 1972
 Memorandum For Record, August 1, 1972
 Memo to File, August 18, 1973
The six USA Today Killian documents:
  USA Today Killian documents

The CBS four and USA Today six are the documents supplied by Bill Burkett to Mary Mapes.
 Bush enlistment documents (USA Today) Page 31 is a 3 Nov 1970 memo from the office of Lt Col Killian on promotion of Lt Bush.

Peter Tytell's analysis from the Thornbourgh-Boccardi report, Appendix 4

News items 
 "60 Minutes Documents on Bush Might Be Fake" CNSNews.com – September 9, 2004
 "Questions Arise About Authenticity of Newly Found Memos on Bush's Guard Service" ABC News – September 9, 2004
 "Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush" Washington Post – September 10, 2004
 "False Documentation? Questions Arise About Authenticity of Newly Found Memos on Bush's Guard Service" ABC News – September 10, 2004
 "Anatomy of a Forgery" American Spectator – September 10, 2004
 "Rather Defends CBS Over Memos on Bush" Washington Post – September 11, 2004
 "Amid Skepticism, CBS Sticks to Bush Guard Story" Los Angeles Times – September 11, 2004
 "More challenges about whether Bush documents are authentic" The Seattle Times – September 11, 2004
 "The X Files Of Lt. Bush: A flurry of contested memos and memories sheds more heat than light on his record" Time – September 13, 2004
 "Expert Cited by CBS Says He Didn't Authenticate Papers" Washington Post – September 14, 2004
 Washington Post: A Pentagon memo next to one of CBS's Killian memo – September 14, 2004
 "Document Experts Say CBS Ignored Memo 'Red Flags'" Washington Post – Wednesday, September 15, 2004
"Dan Rather interviews Marion Carr Knox - September 15, 2004" Youtube
 "Ex-Guard Typist Recalls Memos Criticizing Bush" Los Angeles Times – September 15, 2004
 Boston Globe apologizes for taking misquoting two experts about memos
 "Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate, Typist Says' NY Times – September 15, 2004
 "CBS Guard Documents Traced to Tex. Kinko's" Washington Post – September 16, 2004
 "Rather Concedes Papers Are Suspect" Washington Post – September 16, 2004
 "'Buckhead', who said CBS memos were forged, is a GOP-linked attorney" Seattle Times – September 17, 2004
 The Paper Trail: A Comparison of Documents by The Washington Post print edition.
 "In Rush to Air, CBS Quashed Memo Worries" Washington Post – September 19, 2004
 Graphic comparison of all the CBS memos with officially released Killian memos Washington Post – September 19, 2004
 "CBS Says It Can't Vouch for Bush Documents" – New York Times – September 20, 2004
 "Scoops and skepticism: How the story unfolded" – timeline from USA Today – September 21, 2004
 "Prof Pursued by Mob of Bloggers" Wired, October 7, 2004
 Blog-gate Columbia Journalism Review
 Transcript of online Q&A with Mary Mapes, November 11, 2005, by washingtonpost.com

2004 United States presidential election
Killian documents controversy