Did Koppel Slam Rather?
Ted tells Dan you can't have your yellow-cake and
eat it too...
In the closing of Nightline on Oct 14 it
appeared Ted Koppel took a direct shot at Dan Rather. Nightline did a very
interesting piece on what Vietnamese villagers remembered about the events that
resulted in John Kerry receiving a silver star some 35 years ago. The
recollections of the Vietnamese seemed more or less consistent with after-action
report that kinda supported Kerry’s account. After a heated exchange with
John O’Neill that left Mr. O’Neill looking more than a little bit
nutty, Koppel came back with closing thoughts. In his closing, Koppel basically
said that even though it was close to the election they felt compelled to air
what they found. Koppel said that they weren’t in the business of
concealing what they learned.
I took that to be a reference to 60 Minutes’
refusal to air the story on the forged documents that led to Bush’s claims
regarding “yellow-cake” uranium he talked about in the
2003 State of the Union
address. As you may or may not know, 60
Minutes, buckled, as they have many times before, after their debacle about
Bush’s guard service. The yellow-cake story was supposed to run instead of
the guard piece, but it got pulled at the last minute. After the sloppiness 60
Minutes demonstrated in "confirming" the Burkett supplied documents they decided
it would be inappropriate to air the yellow-cake story prior to election.
According to a statment released by CBS News they pulled the expose on
yello-cake uranium because of the impact it might have on voters. Let that sink
in. 60 minutes didn’t run the piece, they say, because it might change
voters minds. Go figure. Thanks for calling them out Ted.
Posted: Fri - October 15, 2004 at 09:01 AM