Here’s Dan Rather, insisting to this day that the Rathergate story was true: “Our story was true…They couldn’t attack the truth of the story, so they attacked the process by which we arrived at the truth — was it flawed? Yes, it was flawed. Was it more flawed than it should have been? Yes. Am I responsible for some of that? Yes. This is the point: The story was true. It was true then, it was true now.”


“Flawed” is an unusual euphemism for a hoax. As the CBS report afterwards detailed, the memos — which Rather and Mary Mapes claimed came from 1972, but perfectly matched the format of 2004-era Microsoft Word – were never authenticated by document examiners; Rather and his team insisted they had been authenticated by the document examiners when they had not; failed to examine the background of source Bill Burkett; failed to identify the ultimate source of the documents; failed to compare the alleged 1972 memos to existing, verified Texas Air National Guard memos and documents; failed to interview colleagues of the deceased alleged author of the documents; and misled viewers to believing that Texas Air National Guard officials had verified the document.

Rather calls that “flawed”; other people will more accurately label the work a pack of lies.


When last we saw Dan Rather, he was reporting on an alien invasion in the sci-fi movie, “Skyline.”

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