CBS, Rather admit Bush military documents may be false

Earlier this week, amid controversy over the validity of the recently released documents saying President Bush skirted his military duty in Texas, CBS News said it can no longer confirm that the memos from Colonel Jerry Killian are real.

Questions have abounded since the release of the documents two weeks ago that were allegedly from the late Texas Air National Guard Colonel Jerry Killian, who said that he gave President George W. Bush preferential treatment in the guard and in making up lost flight hours.

On Monday night's CBS Evening News, anchor Dan Rather apologized for what had happened and said that he personally "was sorry." Rather added, "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." Rather also admitted that he "wasn't as good on this story as I would have liked to have been."

The network, which has been deeply hurt by this scandal, also revealed their "unimpeachable source." The man is former Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, who has called Bush a liar that has "demonic personality shortcomings."

Burkett now admits that he lied about who he got the documents from, but says he did it because Rather's Dallas-based producer, Mary Mapes, pressured him to reveal the source.

CBS News President Andrew Heyward admits that CBS rushed the story, which aired on the Sept. 8 episode of 60 Minutes II despite concerns expressed by some of the CBS-hired document experts that the memos could not have been made on a 1972 typewriter. "In retrospect, we shouldn't have used the documents, and we clearly should have spent more time and more effort to authenticate them," Heyward admitted to The Washington Post.

CBS has been chided by many for standing by this story defiantly up until Monday, even though the general public had many doubts about the documents well before then. Some have called for Rather himself to be fired since he is the Editor-in-Chief of CBS News.

CBS News announced today that it would be forming a commission to study how it was misled about the documents. The members of the committee have not been finalized, but according to CBS News, one of those on the staff will be former Pennsylvania governor Dick Thornburgh.

As for Rather's future, the CBS Evening News has been in last place in the nightly news rating out of the three main stations for a while now, and there has been speculation that this could be the end of a two-decade long run for him as the head anchorman of the CBS Evening News.

Rather, who replaced Walter Cronkite in the mid-1980s, was a Houston television reporter prior to being hired by CBS News. The native Texan has been in broadcast journalism for over 30 years.