Customer Reviews

Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power

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This book is a warning to people who use the networks as their only source of news. The alphabet networks are anything but unbiased. I long for the "good old days" when all they did was report the news, with integrity.

Unlike many of the "reviewers" on this Web site, I have read Mary Mapes' book and it is excellent. All concerned Americans should read this book which tells the story of the CBS "Documents Scandal" from the perspective of the CBS 60 Minutes II producer who lived it. For those who do not have an anti-CBS or Dan Rather agenda and who read this with an effort to get the truth rather than the hate-filled rhetoric of a partisan right-wing blogger, you will come away with a lot of respect for Mapes. She was a hard-working, dedicated, and professional journalist. She had award winning programs to her credit with the Abu Ghraib story and the sensitive, warm story of Senator Strom Thurmond's illegitimate bi-racial daughter. Her bravery got her into Watts to cover the Rodney King story and her story to find out the truth about George W. Bush's service or lack thereof in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War got her fired. Not because she didn't tell the truth...she got a former Lt. Governor of Texas to admit he had used his influence to get Bush a slot in the guard unit when others could not get in. She got the secretary of Bush's commanding officer to verify that the information in the questioned documents was correct regarding the situation with Bush's failure to take his flight physical and the pressure brought to bear on Bush's commander to give him an outstanding officer rating when he did not deserve one. Her confirmations of these facts went unnoticed in the hail storm of hatefilled partisan blogs written by GOP operatives and partisan hacks who wanted to kill the story. Anyone who understands the Bush administration's lack of respect for honesty and fairness will quickly see where the attacks on Mapes began and from where they were directed. They will also see that CBS out of fear of the Bush administration was willing to throw an award winning producer to the wolves and thereby give credence to the partisan bloggers and Internet liars that they did not deserve. Mapes was more loyal to CBS and to Dan Rather than they were to her, although Rather has had nothing but praise for her. If you do not come away from this book fearing for a free and independent press, uncontrolled by the government, and with a better appreciation of how the Bush Administration controls the press in this country, then you need to search your reasoning ability for a lack of objectivity and chalk it up to the kind of partisan hatred that is dividing this country in a very dangerous way! Mary Mapes made some mistakes but NO ONE HAS YET PROVED THE DOCUMENTS WERE FAKES! Many of the claims made by the bloggers have proved to be wrong and misleading. Many of the bloggers had an agenda and a mission to destroy CBSand Dan Rather and they almost succeeded. Instead, Mary Mapes has suffered unfairly for telling the Truth! Remember that and remember that she found people to substantiate the information contained in the documents. Who do you really believe? Read her book and then decide!

I have been through chapter one of Marry Mapes' book;
I also have been through the Thornburgh-Boccardi report.
There are so many misrepresntations of fact in Chapter One,
I will not waste my time with the rest of the book.

Free Republic web logger "Buckhead" is not the only person
with decades of computer publishing experience who spotted
the CBS memos as not 1970s typewritten documents. Mapes
sets "Freeper blogger Buckhead" up as a demonized strawman
to distract attention away from the documents themselves.

I worked at Kingsport Press for thirty-four years in computer
assisted typesetting, starting with IBM 1130 punching paper
tape to drive Linotype linecasters, through the VideoComp
and Linotron typesetters, ending with various Mac and Win PCs
producing PostScript.

When I followed Joseph Newcomer's demonstration on the Web that
the CBS memos were typeset recently and were not typewritten in
the 1970s, it was like Composition 101. I followed along with
PDFs of the four CBS memos downloaded from their website. Plus
a PDF of an authenticated Lt Col Killian memo promoting Lt Bush
in Nov 1970. Plus my experience typesetting hundreds of books
and quarterly journals, and creating dozens of fonts for the
VideoComp, Linotron, and Postscript typesetters.

The fact that another typesetter "Buckhead" found the same
flaws confirms my observations.

The bottom line is: those memos could not have been created on
TexANG clerk-typist Knox's Olympia typewriter; although Knox did
receive an IBM Selectric (after Bush left the TexANG) she did not
receive the "Executive" or the "Composer" models; even with those
models, she could not have done the kerning of letter pairs,
like "fr", which is shown in the CBS memos. At the time those
memos were allegedly written, Lt Col Killian's office used an
Olympia and did not use any model of IBM electric until 1975.

In the 1970s I had access to a RCA GSD VideoComp 830 with
Times-Roman font; I could with great difficulty have produced
copies of the CBS memos on a machine that cost the Press $500,000.
Sept 2004 I was able to make a mirror-image of one of the CBS memos
in minutes by just typing the text into Microsoft Word default
settings for Truetype Times New Roman on my son's old PC.

I went a step further: I captured Killian's signature off the
validated Nov 1970 memo. I tweaked pointsize and setwidth of
Postscript Courier Bold to match the Olympia typewriter font
and offset the Courier figures 35679 to mimic Olympia Old Style
figures. Following the Nov 1970 memo TexANG document style,
I created my own "Killian" memo placing FDR guiding the Pearl
Harbor attack and Harry S Truman shooting the UFO aliens at
Roswell NM. I pasted in Killian's signature and printed the
memo. I then crumpled the printed document, rubbed it
on the floor to get random dust specks, scanned it slightly
off center, and violin! I had my own 60 Minutes quality
documentation, that "meshed" with the official record: FDR
was president 7 Dec 1941 and HST was president in 1947.
Mary Mapes has the documentation standards of Criswell in
Plan Nine From Outer Space: "Can you prove it didn't happen?"

Problems with the CBS memos are not limited to the style
or form.

May 4, 1972 Lt Col Killian orders Lt Bush to report for a physical examination no later than May 14, 1972.
- In TexANG squadron officers did not write orders for flight physical exams.
- Physical exams were routinely scheduled based on officer's birth date.
- There is no record of Lt Col Killian writing orders for physical exams.
- Officialy Bush could take his exam as late as 31 Jul 72.

May 19, 1972 File memorandum, Lt Col Killian discusses Lt Bush
transfer request to Alabama for personal reasons
- This does mesh well with Bush's efforts to transfer to non-flying status so he could live and do political work in Alabama.

August 1, 1972 Lt Col Killian verbally orders Lt Bush suspended from flight status.
- Bush's suspension from flying status was actually handled by Col Harris, and the tone of Harris' memo is routine and not at all like this memo attributed to Killian.
- Standard Texas Air National Guard abbrv. was 'TexANG' not 'USAF/TexANG'.
- Lt Col Killian abbreviated 'lieutenant' as 'Lt' not 'Lt.' period.
- There is a 'flight evaluation board' but NO 'flight review board.'
- Lt Col Killian and Tex Air NG did not use the Army term 'billet.'
There are many clues that the author was not Lt Col Killian TexANG.

June 24, 1973 Lt. Colonel Killian authors a Memorandum to 'Sir,' about Bush not receiving a TexANG annual evaluation while stationed in Alabama.

- Again, Lt Col Killian did not put a period after 'Lt' or 'Lt Col'
- Killian abbreviated Fighter Interceptor Squadron as 'FIS' not as 'F. I. S.'
- Lt Col Killian never addressed memos to 'Sir' and was very strict about addressing people by their rank and name, another clue that the author was not Killian.
- Otherwise, this meshes with Bush's transfer to non-flying in Alabama.

August 18, 1973 Lt. Colonel Killian authors a CYA File Memorandum stating as follows:
1. Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I'm
having trouble running interference and doing my job. Harris gave
me a message today from Grp regarding Bush's OETR and Staudt
is pushing to sugar coat it: Bush wasn't here during rating
period and I don't have any feedback from 187th in Alabama.
I will not rate. Austin is not happy today either.
2. Harris took the call from Grp today. I'll back date but
won't rate. Harris agrees.

- General Staudt had been retired for at least 17 months by the date ascribed to this memo and by all TexANG sources had no involvement with TexANG internal affairs after his retirement.
- Group is abbreviated as "Gp" in all other TexANG memos, not "Grp".
- 'OETR' is not the correct TexANG abbreviation for Officer Efficiency/Training Report (OER), another clue that the author was NOT TexANG.

Well before the segment aired, the four document examiners
hired by CBS tried to warn CBS that there were problems with
authenticating the documents. Mapes in her five year crusade
against Bush refused to listen. When the "holy grail" the
obviously faked documents were posted in PDF format on the CBS
website, people with font and type composition experience got
to see them and raised questions. Mapes and Rather dismissed
critics with the sign-off "FTA" F--- Them All. Mapes and Rather
both were arrogant and full of themselves to the bursting point.
Mary, Dan and fans: I hope you live long, learn the error of
your ways, and repent.

Before writing this, I downloaded and read fifty-nine Amazon
revoews of "Truth and Duty." Quite frankly, the blindness of
the Bush-haters and Mapes-idolizers does not speak well for
the future of America's left wing.

Mary Mapes has done her profession and this country wrong with this unflinching, and unconvincing work of fiction. She hides from the truth and tries to turn the "Memogate" controversy inside-out and upside-down in an attempt to show that the neo-liberal unconventional views of this unfinished political/corporate episode are wrong, wrong, wrong. Finally, we get the details of how she thoroughly failed to check out the Bush Texas Guard documents and nailed down the forged documents before the mobs formed. With her lack of honesty, meticulous detail and no sense of shame, "Truth and Duty" is the story of a woman's cowardice and lack of conviction when attacked rightfully by bloggers, deserted by a cowardly corporation and betrayed by her fact-twisting colleagues.
Mapes fails to raise many important and disturbing issues about politics, corporate media ownership, and plain old fairness. She blows off the truth that jouralists should adhere to and plays out her political extremisms. Too bad she hasn't been inspirational in calling on journalists to do their valuable jobs.
Unfortunately, she hasn't completely gone away. Notice the ill-informed, illogical and insulting five-star "reviews" that the book has attracted from left-wing extremists. These folks still seem plenty scared the public might finally pay attention to the truth here.
Reasonable people will probably not want to read this book. Americans and journalists should thank people like Charles Johnson of www.littlegreenfootballs.com for blowing the lid off of Mary Mapes.

The 60 Minutes II piece on President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service has become such a political football that it is almost impossible to analyze the simple question of whether CBS should have run with it or not. Although the book was entertaining, I was unimpressed with Ms. Mapes's defense of the story and her own motivations. She tells us on page 20 that she will reveal who she is and what she believes -- "with some trepidation" -- and then proceeds to do nothing of the sort, using an old straw-man technique and sarcasm to suggest (but not state) that she is not "an elitist liberal."

Most maddening is her inability to understand that criticism of her journalism and CBS's decision to air the story are warranted EVEN IF the documents later proved to be authentic -- something that remains a subject of intense debate even today. Mapes's "ends-justify-the-means" defense is so mind-numbingly illogical, so lacking in common sense, that it does even more to harm her journalistic reputation than to help it. Note to Mapes: If you had decided that the documents were authentic based on the flip of a coin, would it really matter if, later, after you aired the story, they were proven accurate by more acceptable means? Can't you see the inanity of your position?

Mapes also appears to suffer from smartest person in the room syndrome, repeatedly arguing that her efforts to "mesh" the new documents with Bush's official records showed no inconsistencies. How could it be, she argues, that a forger could create documents that so seemlessly meshed with the official record, with no contradictions? Note to Mapes: That is EXACTLY what a forger would do. The official records were in the public domain and had been known for years. You are not the only person smart enough to determine what "meshed" with them and what didn't. Your rhetorical questions throughout the book about what a forger would or would not do demonstrate your gullibility and your naivete.

I also found it odd that Mapes -- who desperately wants to be seen as having no political agenda when it comes to her work -- repeatedly makes unnecessary (and often almost childish) political statements that are critical of Bush, Republican policies, and the political right. Perhaps Mapes does not even realize when she is being partisan.

Frankly, I was amazed that this book was the best Mapes could do to support CBS's decision to air the story. Her sources were suspect, her research gap-filled. I'm willing to take her word that she didn't intend to further a political agenda. She seems like a hard-working, pleasant, and loyal person. But this book has left me wondering how anyone can trust anything on the news. If a long-time journalist like Mapes thinks that she had enough hard evidence to go with this important story, I can only imagine what would be deemed satisfactory evidence for the thousands of stories of lesser importance.

I recommend the book. Although not particularly well-written or organized, I found Mapes's behind-the-scenes descriptions of reporting techniques interesting.

Truth and Duty is a fascinating read and a very sad commentary on the state of the news media in our FauxNews World.

Mary Mapes worked very hard on every story that she had ever done and did it with professionalism, that is, she gave an unbiased and fair account of every story that she had covered. However, when she prepared a story on the Bush National Guard years, she was bloggerized and demonized.

Bush was, for most of his two terms, a Teflon President; one protected from the truth by a non-stick surface, Internet bloggers; and, as David Brock would call it, the Republican Noise Machine.

I was a victim of the same type of attacks but on a much smaller scale. Before the Iraq war, I wrote columns for a local newspaper, the Lee's Summit Journal. I had written on many topics and offered my views with a touch of humor. I was well liked by readers, the editor and the publisher, until I wrote a column that criticized Bush for preparing this country to go to war with Iraq. I turned his own propaganda on him using his language to describe George W. Bush as an "evil man". That was too much for the publisher of the Journal who promptly blackballed me from writing in that paper ever again. Today, over five years later, I am still blackballed at that and another paper where the former publisher of the Journal is now publisher.

Bloggers did not attack me as they did Mary Mapes, but local neo-con apologists wrote scathing letters to the Journal to attack and slander me. When I demanded a disclaimer from the publisher, he told me, "You will never write for this paper again."

After two and a half years of writing free columns for the Journal, I was ostracized for writing what most people now recognize is the truth. So, I can totally understand how Mary Mapes, without political bias, reported the truth and suffered for it. I was an unpaid columnist; I lost nothing but my column space. Mary was a professional who, for doing a thorough job, suffered great damage to her reputation and financial harm, so, to a lesser extent, I can certainly relate to her experience.

Mary Mapes, Dan Rather and the rest of the crew that reported the Bush National Guard story made one huge mistake. Instead of offering real evidence, they should have adopted the FauxNews tactic of saying repeatedly, "Some people say". On Fox, they never identify the "people" who say what Rupert Murdoch wants them to say, people who are probably other Fox employees standing around the coffee machine making up tripe.

If you want to read a great story, written by a professional writer who suffered from the political fall out of the Republican Noise Machine, read Truth and Duty. And if you want to know more about how the news media has become infiltrated by the neo-con fifth column, read David Brock's great book, the Republican Noise Machine.

Mary Mapes was an award-winning television news producer and reporter for 25 years. This is her story about the report on George W. Bush's dereliction of his National Guard duty. The reporters who write the stories seldom become the story. This book tells what it is like in TV news. What I learned from this book is the NEED for breaking up the news media monopolies. What did you learn?

Chapter 1 begins with her acclaimed story on "60 Minutes" about George W. Bush's Air National Guard career. The documents meshed with official records, and had been analyzed by a document analyst. These copies could not be 100% tested as to ink and paper (p.3). But soon after the congratulations things began to change with rumors that the documents were forged (p.6)! How could these long treatises be published so quickly (p.7)? These criticisms were anonymous, real analysts used their names. Copying documents introduce changes that can be seen whenever you make a copy of a copy (p.8). Mapes says criticism of CBS came from those blinded by their bias (p.9) [you may hear examples on your local talk radio show]. This fact is shown by the attacks on former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes (p.10). Mapes was shocked by the attacks on CBS (p.13). There was the problem of Gen Bobby Hodges, who had corroborated the content of the documents but who now thought they were forgeries (p.14). The complaint of CBS News President Andrew Heyward hurt their morale (p.16). Poor Mary was terrified by the complaints (p.16). Could she have really been that naive about politics (p.18)? Certainly the words of Les Moonves didn't help (p.19). Mary correctly contrasts the treatment of Kerry and McCain. Mary gives her personal background (p.20). [I wonder how many of her critics can meet her standards?] Didn't Mary ever hear about the messenger with bad news being shot (p.23)?

There are problems with this book. The biggest is her maudlin emotions over her job loss. Didn't she learn nothing in 15 years at CBS? [Bernard Goldberg comes to mind.] The table of contents lacks chapter descriptions. I didn't mind the sometimes rambling writing, but a better edited book would be quicker reading yet make the same points. Mary does this well in describing the "independent" investigative panel (p.25). Also the Viacom media monopoly (p.26). Could this story have been the payback for her expose of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal (p.26)? The vast right-wing attack on her suggests a conspiracy (p.28). Mary does criticize "the superficial nature of daily news reporting" (p.29). "Newspapers weren't much better." [Is this caused by the loss of middle class businesses or Journalism schools or media mismanagement?] Does Mary really believe in some golden glorious past when journalists sought and wrote The Truth (p.30)? Wasn't that when there was competition? What did she study in college?

I'm sure there is a long hidden history of reporters sabotaged by deliberately planted false stories. Prevention is in not using a sole source. The refusal of her "sources" to be recorded should have been a warning. If a source seemed too good to be true, beware. Upper management is also guilty by their failures to oversee their system. I would argue that this story was set up to blow-up as a scandal and gain sympathy for a wrongly accused President just before the election. That is why the "long treatises" were prepared well in advance. Fixing an election involves more than just selecting your opponent. [I believe the selection of Goldwater in 1964 and Dole in 1996 etc. were done to insure the re-election of the incumbent. If not, what is the purpose of a two-party-system?]

The most important part is the fact that Mary's Inquisitors could not question "the authenticity of the Killian documents" (p.291). Many pages tell how they meshed with authentic records. Mary makes Thornburgh and Boccardi look like fools. Isn't this an authentic report (p.294)? The IBM "Executive" typewriter was sold from around 1957. Its proportional spacing and carbon ribbon produced a page that looked like from a printed book. An unintended consequence for Mary's critics is the doubt they cast on any document that is a copy of the original. The "pumpkin papers" of Whittaker Chambers is a famous example. Wasn't there a problem with the serial number of the typewriter used to create those documents?

Why would those documents be real but recreations? In those days documents would be stamped to show receipt. There could be comments on the margins. All easy to trace to an individual. Retyping the document to omit those marks would erase clues to their origin.

Brief and briskly paced, this book is an interesting look inside the 60 Minutes franchise and the George W. Bush AWOL controversy. Although the TANG papers in question are copies rather than originals and can not be definitively authenticated or discredited, they are certainly consistent in many ways with the information that we know about this shameful period in the President's life. Ms Mapes presents a blow-by-blow account of the furor that was stirred up when 60 Minutes broke a story about the emergence of some more data about the TANG. The story is presented in chronological order and then followed by a short section where she discusses her feelings about the case. Amazingly, she still does not quite seem to understand completely how blogs work and seems naively surprised that criticizing this president should ignite such a firestorm.

This book is mostly interesting as a look at how the long running TV news magazine works. It is also interesting to compare the account to the recent movie "Good Night and Good Luck". In the 1950s CBS was fearless in backing up its reporters when they questioned power, but in 2004 they quickly caved in. The President's true-believers are unlikely to be convinced, but other people will find this to be worth reading as an aid to understanding the TANG story.

Mary Mapes' story about President Bush's National Guard service was "fake but accurate" we are told. This book, however, is just fake. Every once in a while I force myself to read a book by someone on the other side of the political divide from myself. This book was a bad choice. Now, Mapes is good at recasting facts and history to present herself in a good light. But the fact is that she was grinding this particular axe for many years, and was delighted to accept "evidence" that was incontrovertibly fake in order to "prove" a story that was equally fake.

This book's real bias is evident from its title. The "power" that Mapes really wants to see is the privilege and power of the media to distort the news, or tell outright lies and get away with it.

American politics will be in a bad way as long as the news media cuts in only one direction, and is infested by political axe-grinders like Mapes. Thank goodness that the internet and other "new media" are rapidly destroying the media Oligopoly's ability to distort the news to the American people.

Ms. Mapes is an excellent writer. I couldn't put the book down. Of course, I would expect nothing less from a successful television news producer/reporter with over 25 years of award-winning experience under her belt. A career that includes the breaking of the history-changing story of the Abu Ghraib prison torture for which she won a Peabody Award.

The book is witty and amusing, yet also completely honest. Something President Bush has never been with regard to his truncated National Guard service.

I am a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Upon graduation I was committed to serve my country for five long years as a nuclear submarine officer. Five years. Six deterrent nuclear submarine patrols. 1,826.21099 days of dedicated service. Not one day, not one hour less. I did not have the option to skip town a year or two early with the excuse that I needed to work on some political campaign. I would have been punished for going AWOL. I was completely accountable for my military service commitment. Mr. Bush was not held accountable. He somehow served his country significantly less than required.

This is the crux of Ms. Mapes story on CBS. Yet, instead of focusing on THIS story, the right-wing bloggers and conservative spin doctors spent HUGE amounts of time and money discussing typewriters and fonts.

Such diversionary tactics make me disheartened and angry.

Ms. Mapes also does an excellent job of describing the way she was completely abused by her employers, put on some ridiculous mock trial facilitated by an inappropriate, biased investigation team comprised of people with absolutely no television news experience. She was then very publicly fired such that she was basically the sole scapegoat for this entire debacle. As if Ms. Mapes single-handedly wrote, produced and aired this National Guard story completely by herself...without any supervision, CBS news organization/team, or leadership.

In my books, Ms. Mapes is the hero when it comes to seeking the truth and doing her duty. And the current President Bush and his minions are ever the cover-up artists. Covering up the truth and side-stepping their duty. This has been proven time and time again to be the case. So sad.

I know Ms. Mapes will land on her feet and may she continue to seek the truth and hold our government leaders accountable for their words and actions.