Rather lied, people died

Marcel Matley hasn’t answererd my questions, but he did speak with the LA Times: …CBS and Rather presented an on-air interview with Marcel B. Matley, a San Francisco document examiner. Rather said Matley had corroborated the four Killian memos. But in an interview with The Times, the analyst said he had only judged a May … Continue reading “Rather lied, people died”

Marcel Matley hasn’t answererd my questions, but he did speak with the LA Times:

…CBS and Rather presented an on-air interview with Marcel B. Matley, a San Francisco document examiner. Rather said Matley had corroborated the four Killian memos.

But in an interview with The Times, the analyst said he had only judged a May 4, 1972, memo ? in which Killian ordered Bush to take his physical ? to be authentic.

So whatever else we know and don’t know about this story, we know that Rather lied.

4 thoughts on “Rather lied, people died”

  1. unrelated, but a note from the Newsweek 11-point poll:

    “In general, do you think going to war with Iraq has made Americans safer from terrorism, or not?”

    50 to 45, No.

  2. Rather has been unworthy of public trust for a long time. As CBS correspondent in Dallas in Nov. 1963, he was one of the few to view the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination, and stated on CBS TV that JFK’s head went “forward with considerable violence”, ensuring that the public would believe the government’s single-assassin claims. When questioned about this in 1973, he explained:

    “It is gruesome even now, and always will be, to talk about this scene, but the single most dramatic piece of the film is the part where the President’s head lurches slightly forward, then explodes backward. I described the forward motion of his head. I failed to mention the violent, backward reaction. This was, as some assassination buffs now argue, a major omission. But certainly not deliberate.”

    “Buffs” indeed. Anyone who has seen the film can see that it is evidence of a shot from the front.

    Complete story Dan Rather Blinked in Fair Play Magazine Issue #5, July-Aug 1995.

    Same ol’ Dan, still at it!

  3. Anyone who knows anything about how the brain works knows that the direction of the head’s motion has nothing to do with the direction of the shot. Specific parts of the brain control the movement of the body. When these parts are violently destroyed, any part of the body can violently jerk in any direction, depending on what garbled message it’s getting from the damaged brain. Biology trumps physics in this case.

  4. What’s better, he “judged” the memo to be “authentic”, evidently, over the phone, after having been told it was hand-written.

    In other words, he thought its tone sounded plausible. He didn’t even see the damned thing when he “judged” it. As I understand the war of counterclaims at the moment, it looks like CBS has been thoroughly misrepresenting what he actually said about their memos.

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