Inside CBS News - Culture of Corruption - by Bill Carico
CBS news is one of the most corrupt news agencies our country has ever known. My first trip to South Africa occurred in February of 1984 and I entered a politically charged environment that due to media coverage was playing out on the world stage. Seeing first hand what was happening there did not resemble the violent images I saw on television news before I left the USA and after I had returned. That’s when I learned the power of the media to create and manage perceptions. The Newsweek magazine reporter and her cameraman I met at a dinner party I met in Johannesburg admitted the violence in black townships was rare and difficult to cover in a timely manner because black townships were remote and that’s where demonstrations and violent acts against poor and defenseless people were most prevalent. Whenever unrest was reported they dispatched a film crew to the scene from Johannesburg. However, upon arrival things had died down by the time they arrived. Let’s say a car was smoldering from being set on fire earlier. They would report the “incident” and create staged video footage by paying some older kids to yell, scream, jump up and down, and maybe even turn the smoldering car over.
I learned Prince Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi was the tribal leader of the Zulu nation, by far the largest group of black South Africans. He also founded the Inkatha Freedom party but his voice was not amplified in the media like left-leaning black voices Desmund Tutu and Alan Boesak. During my travels there I remember one damaging story carried by all the major news outlets was mistakenly misreported, and once the error came to light everyone issued retractions except CBS new anchor Dan Rather. Rather let the fake story stand. I wrote a personal letter to the president of CBS news complaining how Rather had misled all his viewers, and vowing to never watch CBS again.
In 1993, I was there when legendary political figure Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
Mandela held his first news conference as a free man in front of a tiny shack where he lived as a boy, rather than at a nearby mansion where he would be living with his 2nd wife, the infamous Willie Mandela. The lessons I learned were how mighty the news media is, and how easy to shape and manage perceptions worldwide.
Excerpt: “Not only were they disinterested, I sensed hostility. At that point, I realized that there would be no support for the idea of digging into anything involving Kerry __only Bush. I was so disgusted that I walked back into my office and dumped my whole Kerry file into the trash.”
Slanted - SHARYL ATTKISSON (2020)
How the News Media Taught us to LOVE CENSORSHIP AND HATE JOURNALISM
New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson takes on the media’s misreporting on Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, Joe Biden, Silicon Valley censorship, and more.
When the facts don’t fit their Narrative, the media abandons the facts, not the Narrative. Virtually every piece of information you get through the media has been massaged, shaped, curated, and manipulated before it reaches you. Some of it is censored entirely. The news can no longer be counted on to reflect all the facts. Instead of telling us what happened yesterday, they tell us what’s new in the prepackaged soap opera they’ve been calling the news.
For the past four years, five-time Emmy Award–winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson has been collecting and dissecting alarming incidents tracing the shocking devolution of what used to be the most respected news organizations on the planet. For the first time, top news executives and reporters representing every major national television news outlet—from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN to FOX and MSNBC—speak frankly, confiding in Attkisson about the death of the news as they once knew it. Their concern transcends partisan divides.
Most frightening of all, a broad campaign in the media has convinced many Americans not only to accept but to demand censorship over journalism. It is a stroke of genius on the part of those seeking to influence public opinion: undermine public confidence in the news, then insist upon “curating” information and divining the “truth.” The thinking is done for you. They’ll decide which pesky facts shouldn’t cross your desk by declaring them false, irrelevant, debunked, unsafe, or out-of-bounds.
We have reached a state of utter absurdity, where journalism schools teach students that their own, personal truth or chosen narratives matter more than reality. In her book Slanted, Attkisson digs into the language of propagandists, the persistence of false media narratives, the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion, the abandonment of journalism ethics, and the new, Orwellian definition of what it means to report the news.
Contents of "Slanted" -
Introduction
Chapter 1: CBS Tales: “Death by a Thousand Cuts”
Chapter 2: The Narrative by Proxy
Chapter 3: Weaponizing The Narrative
Chapter 4: When Narratives Collide
Chapter 5: The New York Times
Chapter 6: The Verbiage of The Narrative
Chapter 7: The Mother of All Narratives
Chapter 8: CNN: The Cable Narrative Network
Chapter 9: Pundits and Polls: Hard to Believe
Chapter 10: Media vs. Media
Chapter 11: Media Mistakes
Chapter 12: There’s Hope
Conclusion
Appendix: Major Media Mistakes in the Era of Trump
Excerpts from Slanted: Chapter 1: CBS Tales: “Death by a Thousand Cuts” p 19
...Another moment of clarity for me came later that year. CBS Evening News
Assigned me to try to dig up first on President George W, Bush, who was running against Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 race. A lot of rumors were circulating about Bush’s supposed (but unproven) cocaine use long before he was president.
I’m a pretty good digger, but I doubted that in a matter of a few days, I would be able to uncover evidence of Bush scandals that had eluded devoted Bush-hating reporters who’d spent a big chunk of their career looking for it.
Still, I set out to see what I could learn. I got up to speed on the rumors and allegations. There wasn’t much to bite into. I then developed a working theory, which is sometimes a good way to find a starting point when investigating something vague. I figured that if Bush had truly had a serious drug and/or alcohol problem in his youth, his family might have sent him to a rehab center somewhere outside their home state of Texas. I figured it would have been a center where wealthy families could count on discretion. And I theorized that such a center would have since closed down, the records destroyed long before Bush ran for president. So I began searching for prominent rehab centers for the era, wondering if I could luck upon a former employee with knowledge who would be willing to blow the whistle on something from the distant past. It was a long shot, to be sure, but one has to start somewhere.
While conducting Internet searches and reading articles, I inadvertently came across material raising questions about Bush’s opponent John Kerry. I was reaching dead ends on Bush, but some of the questions about Kerry were pretty easy to check out. They had to do with his Vietnam war record and whether he had exaggerated or misrepresented his hero status.
Long story short, I was able to obtain the citations for Kerry’s Purple Hearts, which are given when a soldier is injured during combat. I was also able to obtain the records describing the war event that led to each injury and merited a medal. From what I could see, the dates and injuries didn’t match up quite right. One of the narratives made no mention of Kerry getting injured. I asked some military experts and they told me that a Purple Heart always includes a narrative describing the event where the injury occurred. Taking a more careful look at the records, which were provided by the Pentagon, I saw that some of them were not originals from the Vietnam War era. For example, one document recounting Kerry’s actions in the war was signed by a navy secretary who had served long after the Vietnam War: Admiral John Lehman. Why?
I got one explanation from some Pentagon contacts. They told me that after Kerry returned from the Vietnam War, he supposedly threw his medals over the White House fence in protest. This supposedly accounted for why he did not have the original paperwork for his medals. Therefore, said the Pentagon officials, he later needed to apply for duplicates, which were then written up and issued long after the fact. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Were we to understand that Kerry threw documents about his medals – pieces of paper – over the White House fence along with his medals?
I figured the military might have some outstanding records that would explain the apparent gaps. I called a colleague, CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin, and asked if the Pentagon had more Kerry records to fill in some holes. Martin put in a query and got back to me. The Pentagon told him that the records we had were the only ones available regarding Kerry’s Vietnam War -era service.
So, although I was coming up empty on Bush the Kerry information merited further research. At that Point, I approached the folks in the CBS political unit, based in Washington, DC, to tell them what I was looking into.
I barely got the first few sentences out of my mouth before the political unit producers began scoffing.
“Vietnam was a long time ago,” one of them remarked.
“The records just probably aren’t very reliable,” another offered.
“Maybe,” I said. “But we should at least try to find out if there is a story here.” And playing my version of the Substitution game, long before I called it that,I pointed out to them, “If Bush’s records didn’t seem to match up, we wouldn't just say, ‘Vietnam was a long time ago.’ We would look into it.
Not only were they disinterested, I sensed hostility. At that point, I realized that there would be no support for the idea of digging into anything involving Kerry __only Bush. I was so disgusted that I walked back into my office and dumped my whole Kerry file into the trash.
I came to put a lot of thought into experiences like that during my two decades at CBS News. I began to focus a lot of energy on making sure I opened my eyes to see what was really going on around me rather than wearing blinders and missing the true story. And I came to believe that it was crucial for me to report on stories and views that were off the typical narrative.
It was not always easy, but I did have a lot of success in that arena. I was often encouraged and supported by some top notch bosses and colleagues. I was honored to be part of CBS News teams covering many stories in the CBS tradition of "fair and fearless." Some of the stories received award recognition from my peers and are part of the public record.
But there are many untold stories and they reveal a lot about the death of the news as we knew it."
In the pages that round out Chapter 1, Sharyl tells about a squashed story in 2013 about fires during development of Boeing's Dreamliner being caused by a faulty battery, and suspecting Boeing had some level of power or persuasion over high level executives at CBS.
When six years later two Boeing planes in production killed a combined 347 passengers she couldn’t help but wonder if her story might have saved those lives had it been published,
She had been similarly bewildered a year earlier by not getting approval to go with two different stories, one where labor Unions in Michigan were upset that tax dollars set aside for President Obama’s $300 million green energy stimulus program were also being given away to Korean companies and Korean workers and used by U.S. companies to buy Korean supplies at their plants. The producer hated it but wouldn’t say why.
A month later a story about $millions in school lunch fraud allegedly being committed by the companies involved in the program but without explanation the producers would read the script. Turns out that around that same time Michele OBama had just launched an initiative to improve school lunches.
The pattern of CBS producers and top executives killing stories that reflect poorly on Democrats or are favorable to Republicans is blatant. The egregious behavior of the media at large including false reporting on matters related to Donald Trump is illustrated using 131 examples found in the Appendix of “Slanted.”
Here are three short excerpts from her other best-seller “Stonewalled” published in 2014-
(Excerpt 1)
“...the differences between Karl’s presented quotes and the actual emails were without
distinction. Both demonstrated that the Obama administration had seriously misled Congress and the public. But all of that is lost in the furor whipped up by left-wing bloggers with help from the mainstream press.
(Excerpt 2)
... “Besides the implications for the story itself, I couldn’t get past the fact that upper-level journalists at CBS had been a party to misleading the public. Why wouldn’t they have immediately released the operative sound bite after Romney raised the issue in the debate? It would have been a great moment for CBS. The kind of break that news organizations hope for. We had our hands on original material that no other news outlet had that would shed light on an important controversy. But we hid it.”
...That meant there should be an internal ethics investigation holding accountable whoever was responsible. But that was not to be.
A few weeks later, I met with David Rhodes during one of his regular visits to Washington. I asked for an update on the internal investigation. For me, there was no point in pulling punches. Speaking of the Evening News managers who I felt had been a party to covering up the Obama bite, I said, “They’re dishonest, they're unethical, and they’re not very smart. I don’t trust them, I don’t respect them, and I can’t work for them.”
David assured me that a full investigation was underway. Or was going to be conducted in the future. I wasn’t entirely sure. It was a bit vague.
“Will the rest of us get to know the results?” I asked. Twice.
I wondered realistically what could be done. Pretty much the whole New York fishbowl was potentially implicated in the ethics breach. How could CBS really punish them all? And would the network risk taking action that could draw attention to something that had gone relatively unnoticed by the public? David assured me that, yes, we would all know the results of the investigation when it was finished.
That was the last I ever heard of it.
POST White House
As the 2020 election was approaching, many Americans were still wondering who was responsible for the riots and looting in our country. At that time I had written extensively about China’s efforts to bring down our economy and prevent Trump's reelection see my China research. People also need to know about two of the larger organizations that keep people guessing about where their money is going. The first is Organize for Action (OFA) and the second is The Open Society Network which is discussed under Soros’ story. Both of these organizations are extremely well funded and have wealthy and prominent people involved.
According to Wikipedia, Organizing for Action (OFA) is a nonprofit organization and community organizing project that advocates for the agenda of former U.S. President Barack Obama. The organization is officially non-partisan, but its agenda and policies are strongly allied with the Democratic Party. It is the successor of Obama's 2012 re-election campaign and of Organizing for America, which itself succeeded Obama's 2008 campaign.
However, tabloid journalist Paul Sperry, writing for the New York Post, published a mix of facts with unconfirmable speculations that was widely echoed across conservative media:
“The OFA will fight President Donald Trump at every turn of his presidency and the ex-president will command them from a bunker less than two miles from the White House...The ex-president is setting up a shadow government to sabotage the Trump administration through a network of nonprofits led by OFA, which is growing its war chest (more than $40 million) and has some 250 offices nationwide.”
The OFA IRS filings, according to Sperry, indicate that the OFA has 32,525 (and growing) volunteers nationwide. The ex-president and his wife will oversee the operation from their home/office in Washington DC.
He continued, “Think about how this works. Trump issues an immigration executive order; the OFA signals for protests and statements from pro-immigrant groups; the ACLU lawyers file lawsuits in jurisdictions where activist judges obstruct the laws; volunteers are called to protest at airports and Congressional town hall meetings; the leftist media springs to action in support of these activities; the twitter sphere lights up with social media; and violence follows. All of this happens from Obama's signal that he is ”heartened by the protests."
We do know when the protest happened and legal challenges were filed, but its unlikely we will ever know who was calling the shots. Thus we are left to speculate. Some of Mr. Sperry’s writings were recirculated but falsely attributed to a different author, the late Charles Krauthammer, who had a wide following. Unknowingly people keep it circulating, even writing letters to the editor of their local paper.
It’s natural to wonder how Obama could sit quietly on the sidelines, with his political machine still in place and Trump having promised to repeal Obama's most noteworthy achievements. I haven’t researched it but this may be the first time in history a former president’s “machine” has continued to function.
The deep hostility and contempt displayed in his speech to the Democratic National Convention in August begs the question - how could Obama sit quietly on the sidelines in light of the peril our democracy is facing? It takes Obama only ten sentences to subtly mention his threatened legacy, belittle Trump as a person, claim he has accomplished nothing as president, blame him rather than China for deaths from the pandemic, and portray Trump’s reelection bid as the greatest threat our democracy has ever faced:
"I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies. I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care. But he never did. For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves. Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe. 170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs are gone while those at the top take in more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before."
Regarding Obama’s reference to "those at the top take in more than ever" he is a leading example. Former president Obama is on track to become a billionaire since leaving the White House by doing the same types of things other former presidents have done, only his financial gains are setting records for former presidents. For example, he and his wife were paid $65 million for their memoirs and have cut deals with Netflix and Spotifyworth tens of millions more.
He travels all over the world to give about 50 speeches a year and averages $400,000 per talk.
When he spoke at a business conference in Bogotá, Colombia he was paid an estimated $600,000. Colombia is infamous for its drug cartels that export half of the world’s cocaine, for how drug money has corrupted its government and military, and for the countless millions of lives ruined by illegal drugs including opioids.
When he isn't giving speeches warning people of the danger of “exploding inequality” and questioning Trump's motives, he solicits donations for his Presidential library that is projected to cost $500 million.
Regarding his comment, "I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies," he failed to mention the steps he's taken and OFA has taken to protect his legacy.
It's one thing to legally organize communities for “progressive” change... on issues like gun control, socialist healthcare, abortion, sexual equality, climate change, and immigration reform, and to protest peacefully, but you'll see in my next letter how the unrest the riots and looting are intentional and designed to trigger civil war and revolution to tear down our Constitutional Republic.
The three short excerpts above are all found in this large 20-page excerpt, delineated using blue text. These paged come from from final pages of “STONEWALLED” by Sharyl Attkisson, 2014, in the chapter - The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem,” starting at p.370:
BENGHAZIGATE
I should have known something was up when I received an unsolicited phone call from a White House official a few days before the second debate between President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney on October 16, 2012.
The president was coming off a tough loss in the first debate, after which uncommitted voters, by a 46 percent to 22 percent margin, said Romney won; and 56 percent had an improved opinion of the Republican candidate.
The White House official and I chatted casually about unrelated topics and then he introduced a non sequitur: “The president called Benghazi a ‘terrorist attack’ the day after in the Rose Garden,” he told me.
At the time, I hadn’t given any thought to whether the president had or hadn’t termed the Benghazi assaults “terrorism.” The debate on that point hadn’t widely emerged and I was still focused on the State Department’s denial of security requests from Americans in Libya prior to the attacks.
Since I really didn’t know what the president had said in the Rose Garden the day after, I didn’t offer a comment to the White House official on the other end of the phone. He repeated himself as if to elicit some sort of reaction.
“He did call it a terrorist attack. In the Rose Garden. On September twelfth.”
I had no idea that the question of how the administration portrayed the attacks—and whether it was covering up the terrorist ties—would emerge as a touchstone leading up to the election. But the White House already seemed to know.
A couple of days later, I’m watching the Obama-Romney debate at home on television as moderator Candy Crowley of CNN asks a Benghazi-related question. My ears perk up when the president replies using very similar language to that of the White House official on the phone.
OBAMA The day after the attack, Governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime.
I now feel as though the White House official had been trying to prep me to accept the president's debate claim that he’d called the Benghazi assaults an “act of terror” on September 12.
The Benghazi question and the president’s response are all Romney needs to try to seize control of the debate and score big points. He accuses the president of downplaying terrorist ties to protect his
campaign claim that al-Qaeda was on the run.
ROMNEY I—I think [it’s] interesting the president just said something which—which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.
OBAMA That’s what I said.
ROMNEY You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror? It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you're saying?
OBAMA Please proceed, Governor. …
ROMNEY I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president fourteen days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
OBAMA Get the transcript.
The exchange feels strangely awkward. Romney seems genuinely bewildered and President Obama seems oddly anxious to move on. Then, the moderator, Crowley, comes to the president's rescue.
CROWLEY It—it—it—he did in fact, sir. So let me—let me call it an act of terror... .
OBAMA Can you say that a little louder, Candy?.
CROWLEY He—he did call it an act of terror.
Crowley is quick with her take. It makes me wonder if she, too, had gotten that call from a White House official in advance, telling her that the president had immediately labeled Benghazi a terrorist act.
Why is this point so important to the Obama administration?
The next day, I look for a transcript of the president’s Rose Garden statement to see if I can figure out the puzzle.
When I locate and review the remarks that the president made in the Rose Garden on September 12, 2012, I find that he did not say Benghazi was “an act of terror,” as he’d claimed in the debate. In fact, at each point in his speech when he could have raised the specter of “terrorism” or “terrorists,” he’d chosen a synonym (examples of this from his speech are bolded):
THE PRESIDENT Good morning. . . . Yesterday, four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi. Among those killed was our Ambassador, Chris Stevens, as well as Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith. ... The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack. ... And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people. Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts. Already, many Libyans have joined us in doing so, and this attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya. Libyan security personnel fought back against the attackers alongside Americans. ...
Nope, no mention of terrorism there.
Where the president may be granted some wiggle room, though there’s no doubt he overstated it in the debate, is when his speech segued to the fact that the attacks happened on the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. That’s when he used the word terror. But not referring directly to Benghazi.
THE PRESIDENT Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks. We mourned with the families who were lost on that day. I visited the graves of troops who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery, and had the opportunity to say thank you and visit some of our wounded warriors at Walter Reed. And then last night, we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi. As Americans, let us never, ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because there are people who are willing to fight for it, to stand up for it, and in some cases, lay down their lives for it. Our country is only as strong as the character of our people and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe. No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done. But we also know that the lives these Americans led stand in stark contrast to those of their attackers. …
One might be able to believe that the administration’s wholesale avoidance of the term terrorism in direct reference to Benghazi is an accident of wording. Except that the same accident happened in those early days when White House spokesman Carney briefed reporters, when Secretary of State Clinton spoke at the return of the victims bodies, and when U.S. ambassador Rice appeared on Sunday talk shows. Except that the references to terrorism and al-Qaeda were purposefully removed from the talking points used to relate details to the public. In fact, one would have to go out of his way to use so many synonyms for the attackers and mot say the actual word terrorist.
Taken together, it’s difficult to believe the wording is anything other than a purposeful strategy. The main unanswered questions: Who spearheaded the strategy? Why? And in what form was it transmitted to all the officials who got on board with it?
So what does all this have to do with my own situation at CBS?
In an unexpected way, it came to expose the extraordinary lengths to which some of my colleagues would go to misrepresent and slant the facts when they had explicit evidence to the contrary, which they
The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem” 375
kept hidden. It was enough to irreparably destroy any confidence in and respect I might have had for those at the network who were involved.
In the Benghazi chapter of this book, I referred to the fact that 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft happened to have an unrelated interview scheduled with President Obama the day after the Benghazi attacks.
However, the contents of his crucial interview, as it related to Benghazi, were largely kept under wraps at the time. The interview was only pulled out of the archives more than five weeks later when CBS Evening News managers wished to cherry-pick an excerpt and dictate its use out of context in a way that supported President Obama’s version of events.
It’s October 19, 2012, three days after that fateful Obama-Romney debate and less than three weeks before the election. Obama had managed to turn around Romney’s advantage. The president had held his own in the debate. Maybe even thrown Romney back on his heels with his Benghazi answer, insisting he’d immediately labled the attacks “terrorism.” After being smacked down by Crowley, Romney would hesitate to raise the specter of Benghazi again during the rest of the campaign.
But still simmering in the background is the building flap over whether the Obama administration had tried to hide the Benghazi attacks’ terrorist ties. The CBS Evening News wants the controversy addressed and, preferably, put to rest. The New York producers commission a story on the topic from a fellow CBS Washington correspondent.
Midday, I’m in the Washington newsroom when I overhear our senior producer relay strict instructions from New York. The instructions say that the other correspondent’s story must include a specific, never-before-aired sound bite from President Obama’s September 12 60 Minutes interview with Kroft. I’m busy working on my own story that day, but it’s news to me that 60 Minutes had spoken to the president about Benghazi weeks before. New York also dictates the precise wording that the other correspondent should use to introduce the chosen Obama sound bite. It appears to be an attempt to make the president’s case for him—that he had called the Benghazi attacks “terrorism.”
The resulting Evening News script reads as follows:
It had been about 14 hours since the attack, and the President said he did not believe it was due simply to mob violence. “You're right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt,” Obama said, referring to protests sparked by an anti-Islam film. “And my suspicion is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start.” Shortly after that, Obama stepped into the Rose Garden and spoke of the killing of four Americans as if it were a terrorist attack. “No act of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation,” Obama said in his Rose Garden remarks.
I mentally note that my own interpretation of the president’s Rose Garden remarks isn’t quite the same.
Meanwhile, in subsequent days, my producers and I break several more important stories on Benghazi as documents and witnesses chip away at the Obama administration’s narrative.
On October 24, 2012, I exclusively obtain the email alerts issued by the State Department to the White House Situation Room and government and intelligence agencies as the attacks unfolded on September 11. One of the initial alerts stated what the Obama administration kept hidden from the public: that the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for the attacks. As
The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem” - 377
evidence mounts, none of it supports the Obama administration’s narrative about a spontaneous protest.
As I’m writing my script for the Evening News, the hotline from the New York fishbowl sounds in the Washington newsroom. New York is instructing me to insert the same Obama 60 Minutes sound bite in my story that they'd told the other correspondent to use a few days before.
“It has to be used, and you have to use that same wording to introduce it: Obama ‘said he did not believe it was simply due to mob violence,” my senior producer tells me in the voice that conveys to me there’s no arguing the point and don’t-ask-why-because-he-doesn’t- know-the-answer. Their minds are made up.
So for the second time in five days, New York has us insert the same line and Obama sound bite in an Evening News story to imply that the president had called Benghazi a terrorist attack the next day. It seems as though they’re putting a lot of effort into trying to defend the president on this point.
It’s not long after that story when the proverbial light switch on the Benghazi story turns off at CBS. The broadcast has gone from asking me to aggressively pursue all leads, to demurring when I begin to turn up more facts that show important inconsistencies in the administration’s accounts. The election is drawing near. Witnesses and documents are raising more legitimate questions by the day. But I feel that familiar Big Chill.
Leave it alone.
Troublemaker.
Pretty soon, the only sure outlet for new developments is CBSNews.com. As with Fast and Furious, the public is thirsty for developments on the Benghazi story and the Web postings draw a great deal of traffic. Clearly, viewers are interested. But the broadcast producers are not.
It’s not until the weekend before the November presidential election that I learn something that would shake any remaining faith I had in the New York fishbowl.
It’s Friday afternoon. A colleague called.
“You know that interview 60 Minutes did with Obama in the Rose Garden on September twelfth?” the colleague says.
“Yes”, I answer. “Why?”
“I just got a transcript. Of the entire interview.”
“From Who?”
“I can’t say. Holy Sh-t.”
“What’s it say?” I ask.
“Holy Sh-t.”
The colleague proceeds to read to me from the transcript. It’s undeniably clear to both of us. We instantly know that the interview that had been kept under such a tight wrap for nearly eight weeks is explosive.
The very first comment Kroft made, and the president’s response, proved that Romney had been correct all along:
KROFT Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya attack.
OBAMA Right.
Kroft’s take on the president’s wording and intent was the same as mine had been and, according to the president himself, at the time, our take was correct. All the synonyms used by Obama, Clinton, White House spokesman Carney, and Ambassador Rice were intentional. They “went out of [their] way to avoid the use of the word terrorism.”
Then Kroft asked a question that offered the president the opportunity to clarify or at least hint at the behind-the-scenes conclusions
The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem” - 379
already formed by nearly everyone on the inside: that the attacks were the work of terrorists. But the president balked.
KROFT Do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?
OBAMA Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans.
Kroft had asked the question point blank. Though the president has told the world that he unequivocally called it a terrorist attack that very day, and though the media has largely sided with his interpretation, his own hidden interview with CBS belied the claim.
My thought turns to the selectively chosen Obama sound bite the Evening News had directed me to use a week before. To put it mildly: it was misleading.
This was a really bad thing.
Besides the implications for the story itself, I couldn’t get past the fact that upper-level journalists at CBS had been a party to misleading the public. Why wouldn’t they have immediately released the operative sound bite after Romney raised the issue in the debate? It would have been a great moment for CBS. The kind of break that news organizations hope for. We had our hands on original material that no other news outlet had that would shed light on an important controversy. But we hid it.
Now, eight years after Rathergate, I feared that we'd once again mischaracterized facts in advance of a presidential election to hurt a Republican. We not only had stood by silently as the media largely sided against Romney, but we'd also taken an active part in steering them in that direction.
Still on the phone with my colleague, we both knew what had to be done but I said it out loud.
“This has to be published,” I said. “Before the election.”
“I know,” agreed my colleague.
What's really going to bake your noodle later on is--How did the White House know CBS wouldn't use the part of the 60 Minutes Obama interview that disproved the president's debate claim?
Thus began a frenetic forty-eight hours of activity inside CBS News during which a small group of us made individual contact with news executives and explained what we thought needed to happen.
I told the executives I spoke with that withholding the operative sound bite and information was extremely unethical and dishonest. I argued that we had no choice but to publish it quickly, prior to the election. It was up to them to decide the format, but it had to be published.
It was all going to come out one way or another. There were 60 Minutes staffers who had been talking about it, wondering why the Evening News had avoided using the operative part of the Obama interview. And now, at the eleventh hour, the chatter had grown so strong that a transcript had been leaked to some of us outside 60 Minutes. Like chewing on a gristly piece of bad meat, it was only going to get bigger. It was only a matter of time before people outside of CBS found out.
If we published quickly and took our lumps, at least we would have done so before the election. If we didn’t publish, and outsiders found out later—and they would—it would be said that we engaged in a cover-up to try to affect the outcome of the election.
In no instance did any executive express disagreement to me or to others in our small group. In fact, they enthusiastically agreed. There had been a grave and purposeful error. We had to fix it. And so, the Sunday night before the election, nearly eight weeks after the Obama interview had taken place, the network posted it on CBSNews.com as part of a comprehensive Benghazi timeline that I and several colleagues had built.
The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem” - 381
I exhaled for the first time in two days.
I paused and thought back to the actual transcript I’d seen of the entire Kroft interview with Obama. 60 Minutes had emailed it to the Evening News fishbowl in New York the very day it took place. Anchor and Managing Editor Pelley. Executive Producer Shevlin. They had to have known. They were emailed the full transcript on day one. They must have known after the Romney debate and when they dictated use of the misleading sound bites in October.
“Look, we f…ed up,” CBS News president Rhodes would tell me in our continuing discussions. “But what matters is that as soon as it was brought to my attention I took steps to correct it. And if there are [congressional] hearings, that’s what I'll testify to, because it’s the truth.”
There were no hearings.
A few Republican members of Congress who were paying closer attention than others contacted CBS News executives with their concerns about the belated posting of the president's Benghazi interview. But by and large, the whole episode was mostly forgotten, eclipsed by the actual election, after which attentions were focused elsewhere.
I was relieved that the material was published before the election. But I felt the internal follow-up was crucial. There had been a serious breach of ethics that could have done irreparable harm to the news division, had it not been caught and remedied. Those responsible for the lapse have no business working in a news division. People like that can bring down a news operation by caring more about their own selfish motives than the good of the network and its duty to the public. If there ever were to be an outside inquiry, as there was after Rathergate, we would need to demonstrate that we'd taken all the appropriate steps. That we'd learned from our past mistakes. That meant there should be an internal ethics investigation holding accountable whoever was responsible.
But that was not to be.
A few weeks later, I met with David Rhodes during one of his regular visits to Washington. I asked for an update on the internal investigation. For me, there was no point in pulling punches. Speaking of the Evening News managers who I felt had been a party to covering up the Obama bite, I said, “They’re dishonest, they're unethical, and they’re not very smart. I don’t trust them, I don’t respect them, and I can’t work for them.”
David assured me that a full investigation was underway. Or was going to be conducted in the future. I wasn’t entirely sure. It was a bit vague.
“Will the rest of us get to know the results?” I asked. Twice.
I wondered realistically what could be done. Pretty much the whole New York fishbowl was potentially implicated in the ethics breach. How could CBS really punish them all? And would the network risk taking action that could draw attention to something that had gone relatively unnoticed by the public?
David assured me that, yes, we would all know the results of the investigation when it was finished.
That was the last I ever heard of it.
CONTROVERSIALIZING IN ACTION
It’s spring of 2013 and, disillusioned about the network’s handling of the Benghazi story, I nonetheless continue to turn up new information and offer stories. My sources and information on Benghazi are bearing serious fruit but, more often than not, it tends to die on the vine now. The partisan propaganda campaign to portray Benghazi as an Area 51-type conspiracy theory, a Republican-manufactured phony scandal, has successfully taken root with
The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem” - 383
media outlets that had once enthusiastically covered the story have, like CBS, backed off.
I'm taking a day off on Friday, May 10, when Bureau Chief Isham contacts me and asks me to check out a story that’s just been broken by ABC’s Jonathan Karl about the Benghazi talking points.
For months, the Obama administration had refused to publicly release crucial emails showing the genesis of the controversial and misleading talking points that excluded mention of terrorism. But the administration had made some of the emails available to members of Congress and their staff on an extremely restricted basis: the documents had to be viewed in a special room during certain hours in the presence of one or more administration officials. Members of Congress and their staff were not allowed to remove the documents from the room. They were not allowed to make copies. All they could do was make handwritten notes about them.
Karl’s news is big. He reports that ABC has “reviewed” “White House emails” and obtained “12 different versions of the talking points.” They reveal for the first time that, from start to finish, the content of the talking points was transformed from revealing that terrorism and al-Qaeda were responsible, and that the CIA had issued prior warnings of an attack on the Benghazi compound, to a scrubbed version that removed all traces of terror references. This is the very thing that inside sources had suggested, but the administration had denied.
Isham wants to know if I can get the emails, too. I make some calls and pretty quickly discover that I can’t get the actual emails. But I can find out what they said from a reliable source who reviewed them. I report back to Isham.
“I can’t find anybody who has the administration emails. The administration turned them over to Congress with a bunch of restrictions. But I can get a read on them from a good source who reviewed the emails and took handwritten notes,” I tell Isham.
The source reads to me directly from notes and repeats the caveat that there may be paraphrasing because of the unusual arrangement whereby access was limited and they weren't allowed to photocopy the emails.
After the briefing, | compare my notes to Karl’s emails and they match up very closely. Not exactly, which could be expected due to the paraphrasing, but the meaning is the same.
The series of Obama administration revisions chronicled in the emails is astonishing. The White House had spent months hiding the information in them, insisting it didn’t know who was responsible for developing the talking points and refusing to release the drafts to members of Congress who requested them. Under any neutral assessment, Karl’s break is the big story of the day.
I write up a comprehensive note summarizing the various drafts of the Obama administration talking points emails and I forward it to my Washington managers and our Capitol Hill staff. Then I brief them in a conference call. I make it crystal clear both in my note and on the telephone that neither I nor my source have the emails in hand since the administration had not allowed them to be physically turned over to Congress. For that reason, I reiterate, my source’s notes are paraphrases, but can be trusted as accurate representations.
My Washington managers forward my email note to the substitute White House correspondent on duty and the Evening News fish-bowl in New York. They send back a message for me to not bother to come into work. They’ll have the White House correspondent use my notes to do the story.
Yeah, we’re in that phase. I think.
Isham tells me to go ahead and post a write-up on CBSNews.com to match Karl’s reporting. The very first line of my article contains the same disclosure I’d made to my managers:
NOTE *Emails were provided by the Administration to certain
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Congressional Committees for limited review. The Committees were not permitted to copy the emails, so they made handwritten notes. Therefore, parts of the quoted emails may be paraphrased.
The cleansing of the talking points is such a damning development in the Benghazi saga, the Obama propaganda forces focus their full attention to trying to discredit it. Their crisis response is primarily directed at controversializing Karl, who broke the story.
STEP ONE The White House releases the talking point emails— the ones it had withheld all this time—and shows wording that differs slightly from the quotes Karl had provided.
STEP TWO The White House falsely claims the discrepancies are significant, and then uses them to discredit Karl and controversialize the whole damaging story.
STEP THREE Assistance comes from the administration’s surrogate bloggers on the Web who claim the unnamed source of the email leaks lied by saying he had the emails in hand— though the source had done no such thing. They accuse the source of “doctoring” quotes. Again, utterly false. But pretty soon, legitimate news organizations take the baton and perpetuate the idea that the whole talking-point-email-fuss is a Republian-created-scandal.
It’s a familiar syndrome: the same news outlets that ignore a genuine controversy when it emerges are all too eager to jump in and pick up the story if it means discrediting it . . . or if it means reporting on the administration’s defense.
In fact, the differences between Karl’s presented quotes and the actual emails were without distinction. Both demonstrated that the Obama administration had seriously misled Congress and the public.
But all of that is lost in the furor whipped up by left-wing bloggers with help from the mainstream press.
I feel sorry for Karl. He doesn’t have a chance against the White House spin machine, its surrogates on the Web, and a complicit news media on Obama’s side.
A few days later, I inadvertently get wrapped up in the controversy. It starts with a text message from a colleague.
“Did you see what they did to your story?” the colleague asks.
“What are you talking about?” I reply.
“I’ll call you.”
On the phone, the colleague explains that the Evening News had required our White House correspondent to do a one-sided story discrediting Karl’s reporting on the talking point emails and, by proxy, discrediting my own reporting on the same subject, as well as my source.
I was told that there were heated internal arguments over this particular Evening News story. That nobody in the Washington bureau thought it should air. Not the correspondent, not the producer, not the senior producer, not the bureau chief. But New York was hell-bent. I was told that Pelley and his producers rewrote the entire script to their liking, “top to bottom.”
So CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley introduces the resulting report, referring to the content of the White House emails “leaked to reporters last week.” (That would include me.)
“It turns out some of the quotes in those emails were wrong,” Pelley says. For reasons unknown, he ignores the fact that I had reported the “quotes” provided to me as paraphrases—they weren’t “wrong” at all.
The correspondent’s report then continues the fallacy by comparing supposed “quotes that had been provided by Republicans”
(which are actually paraphrases supplied by a source) to the emails
The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem” - 387
the White House later released, as if some sort of subterfuge has been unearthed.
But the differences are without distinction: a review of the emails proves that the original paraphrased quotes from a source the week before were entirely accurate in spirit, context, and meaning.
Tonight's CBS story is, in my view, inaccurate, misleading, and unfair. It may as well have been written by the White House. On top of that, it mentions the White House’s Ben Rhodes as author of some of the talking points drafts in question, but fails to disclose that he’s the brother of CBS News president David Rhodes.
I’m genuinely stunned that this story about my reporting and my source aired on my network with nobody picking up the telephone and speaking to me to get the facts. It’s contrary to the most basic practices in journalism. Whoever wrote the story appeared to make no effort to seek the facts beyond the White House spin. I could have immediately told them that what they were about to report was wrong.
Although my source isn’t named in the disparaging CBS Evening News story, I worry about potential liability. Not only have the facts been misrepresented, but the report, in essence, labeled my source a liar. I feel pretty certain that nobody had run this script by the CBS legal department. They never would have allowed it to air.
The White House and outlets such as Mother Jones seize upon this new CBS Evening News report as an admission that my report, and Karl’s, had been wrong. That the GOP had “doctored” quotes, though my source had doctored nothing.
Several CBS colleagues encouraged me not to let this inaccuracy go answered.
“[CBS is] selling you down the river,” says one. “They'll gladly sacrifice your reputation to save their own. If you don’t stand up for yourself, nobody will.”
I email key CBS News executives, noting that my original article contained the explicit disclosure that the email quotes were paraphrased from handwritten notes, just as my source had explained. I point out that the content of the paraphrases and the emails match up perfectly. I reiterate that everyone who received my story note, including the New York fishbowl, knew this and so shouldn't have pursued a story that falsely implied quotes were doctored or a source had lied.
Next, I go to view the original article I'd written for the Web. As I click on the page, I quickly scroll up and down—something is missing. Somebody has edited out the key explanation I'd included at the top of the article about the paraphrased quotes. It’s gone.
Who edited out the caveat—and why?
Within a matter of hours, I solve the mystery. An editor for CBSNews.com had made an innocent error. He had removed the disclosure paragraph because he simply didn’t feel it was necessary.
The big question is: How to fix the whole mess? We need to add back the disclosure paragraph as I originally wrote it and include an explanation as to how it got inadvertently edited out. That way people would know that our source hadn’t lied, and that my reporting had been accurate.
But that simple fix is met with resistance from management.
“If we amend the story, it will just draw attention to the [incorrect] Evening News story [the other correspondent had aired],” one New York manager tells me.
I decide to consult some trusted advisors within CBS Corporation. They agree I need to push the point both for the sake of accuracy and my reputation. They come up with this suggestion: if my managers won't agree to restore my Web story to the way I’d written it, then I should ask that it be removed from the website entirely.
I contact the relevant New York executive and ask that he facilitate
The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem” 389
getting my Web article reinstated to its initial version. He puts me off saying he’s too busy to focus on it. But for me, the whole thing has already been drawn out too long and the propagandists are making serious hay out of the affair. I tell the executive that if he doesn’t have time to address my concerns, I plan to consult our CBS lawyers.
“No Sharyl,” comes his quick reply. I’ve gotten his attention.
In the end, CBS management agreed to make the fix to my Web article.
Understandably, the whole Washington inner circle that watches these things seemed confused by the shenanigans surrounding the talking points emails, the spin, and the CBS News stories. So much so that a Washington Post fact-checker ultimately dissected the matter. He, too, was befuddled by the most recent Evening News story that seemed.to contradict my reporting. But he was able to get a grasp on the facts. He noted that the paraphrases of the White House emails reported by me and Karl were identical in meaning to the actual quotes, though the White House spin claimed otherwise. He correctly reported that I had clearly disclosed that the material used in my Web article was paraphrased. He even pointed out that Ben Rhodes is David Rhodes’s brother. As a result, he gave the Wnite House three out of four “Pinocchios,” meaning he found “significant fact errors and/or contradictions” in its claim that “GOP operatives deliberately tried to ‘smear the president’ with false, doctored emails.”
“Indeed, Republicans would have been foolish to seriously doctor emails that the White House at any moment could have released (and eventually did),” noted the Post.
All of these unnecessary internal battles, largely prompted by propagandists, consume time and energy, and they take their toll. They steal effort away from real newsgathering. They divert attention from important stories. And they result in convincing management more than ever that it's easier just to avoid these types of stories entirely. As intended.
Of course, to this day, the propagandists who manufactured the false tale about the “doctored” emails continue to promulgate the narrative. Yet another effort to controversialize the factual reporting on Benghazi. That’s just what they do.
-------------- End of Excerpts
You can support Sharyl Attkisson by purchasing her books. Here is a reference copy for Stonewalled.
CBS news is one of the most corrupt news agencies our country has ever known. My first trip to South Africa occurred in February of 1984 and I entered a politically charged environment that due to media coverage was playing out on the world stage. Seeing first hand what was happening there did not resemble the violent images I saw on television news before I left the USA and after I had returned. That’s when I learned the power of the media to create and manage perceptions. The Newsweek magazine reporter and her cameraman I met at a dinner party I met in Johannesburg admitted the violence in black townships was rare and difficult to cover in a timely manner because black townships were remote and that’s where demonstrations and violent acts against poor and defenseless people were most prevalent. Whenever unrest was reported they dispatched a film crew to the scene from Johannesburg. However, upon arrival things had died down by the time they arrived. Let’s say a car was smoldering from being set on fire earlier. They would report the “incident” and create staged video footage by paying some older kids to yell, scream, jump up and down, and maybe even turn the smoldering car over.
I learned Prince Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi was the tribal leader of the Zulu nation, by far the largest group of black South Africans. He also founded the Inkatha Freedom party but his voice was not amplified in the media like left-leaning black voices Desmund Tutu and Alan Boesak. During my travels there I remember one damaging story carried by all the major news outlets was mistakenly misreported, and once the error came to light everyone issued retractions except CBS new anchor Dan Rather. Rather let the fake story stand. I wrote a personal letter to the president of CBS news complaining how Rather had misled all his viewers, and vowing to never watch CBS again.
In 1993, I was there when legendary political figure Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
Mandela held his first news conference as a free man in front of a tiny shack where he lived as a boy, rather than at a nearby mansion where he would be living with his 2nd wife, the infamous Willie Mandela. The lessons I learned were how mighty the news media is, and how easy to shape and manage perceptions worldwide.
Excerpt: “Not only were they disinterested, I sensed hostility. At that point, I realized that there would be no support for the idea of digging into anything involving Kerry __only Bush. I was so disgusted that I walked back into my office and dumped my whole Kerry file into the trash.”
Slanted - SHARYL ATTKISSON (2020)
How the News Media Taught us to LOVE CENSORSHIP AND HATE JOURNALISM
New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson takes on the media’s misreporting on Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, Joe Biden, Silicon Valley censorship, and more.
When the facts don’t fit their Narrative, the media abandons the facts, not the Narrative. Virtually every piece of information you get through the media has been massaged, shaped, curated, and manipulated before it reaches you. Some of it is censored entirely. The news can no longer be counted on to reflect all the facts. Instead of telling us what happened yesterday, they tell us what’s new in the prepackaged soap opera they’ve been calling the news.
For the past four years, five-time Emmy Award–winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson has been collecting and dissecting alarming incidents tracing the shocking devolution of what used to be the most respected news organizations on the planet. For the first time, top news executives and reporters representing every major national television news outlet—from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN to FOX and MSNBC—speak frankly, confiding in Attkisson about the death of the news as they once knew it. Their concern transcends partisan divides.
Most frightening of all, a broad campaign in the media has convinced many Americans not only to accept but to demand censorship over journalism. It is a stroke of genius on the part of those seeking to influence public opinion: undermine public confidence in the news, then insist upon “curating” information and divining the “truth.” The thinking is done for you. They’ll decide which pesky facts shouldn’t cross your desk by declaring them false, irrelevant, debunked, unsafe, or out-of-bounds.
We have reached a state of utter absurdity, where journalism schools teach students that their own, personal truth or chosen narratives matter more than reality. In her book Slanted, Attkisson digs into the language of propagandists, the persistence of false media narratives, the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion, the abandonment of journalism ethics, and the new, Orwellian definition of what it means to report the news.
Contents of "Slanted" -
Introduction
Chapter 1: CBS Tales: “Death by a Thousand Cuts”
Chapter 2: The Narrative by Proxy
Chapter 3: Weaponizing The Narrative
Chapter 4: When Narratives Collide
Chapter 5: The New York Times
Chapter 6: The Verbiage of The Narrative
Chapter 7: The Mother of All Narratives
Chapter 8: CNN: The Cable Narrative Network
Chapter 9: Pundits and Polls: Hard to Believe
Chapter 10: Media vs. Media
Chapter 11: Media Mistakes
Chapter 12: There’s Hope
Conclusion
Appendix: Major Media Mistakes in the Era of Trump
Excerpts from Slanted: Chapter 1: CBS Tales: “Death by a Thousand Cuts” p 19
...Another moment of clarity for me came later that year. CBS Evening News
Assigned me to try to dig up first on President George W, Bush, who was running against Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 race. A lot of rumors were circulating about Bush’s supposed (but unproven) cocaine use long before he was president.
I’m a pretty good digger, but I doubted that in a matter of a few days, I would be able to uncover evidence of Bush scandals that had eluded devoted Bush-hating reporters who’d spent a big chunk of their career looking for it.
Still, I set out to see what I could learn. I got up to speed on the rumors and allegations. There wasn’t much to bite into. I then developed a working theory, which is sometimes a good way to find a starting point when investigating something vague. I figured that if Bush had truly had a serious drug and/or alcohol problem in his youth, his family might have sent him to a rehab center somewhere outside their home state of Texas. I figured it would have been a center where wealthy families could count on discretion. And I theorized that such a center would have since closed down, the records destroyed long before Bush ran for president. So I began searching for prominent rehab centers for the era, wondering if I could luck upon a former employee with knowledge who would be willing to blow the whistle on something from the distant past. It was a long shot, to be sure, but one has to start somewhere.
While conducting Internet searches and reading articles, I inadvertently came across material raising questions about Bush’s opponent John Kerry. I was reaching dead ends on Bush, but some of the questions about Kerry were pretty easy to check out. They had to do with his Vietnam war record and whether he had exaggerated or misrepresented his hero status.
Long story short, I was able to obtain the citations for Kerry’s Purple Hearts, which are given when a soldier is injured during combat. I was also able to obtain the records describing the war event that led to each injury and merited a medal. From what I could see, the dates and injuries didn’t match up quite right. One of the narratives made no mention of Kerry getting injured. I asked some military experts and they told me that a Purple Heart always includes a narrative describing the event where the injury occurred. Taking a more careful look at the records, which were provided by the Pentagon, I saw that some of them were not originals from the Vietnam War era. For example, one document recounting Kerry’s actions in the war was signed by a navy secretary who had served long after the Vietnam War: Admiral John Lehman. Why?
I got one explanation from some Pentagon contacts. They told me that after Kerry returned from the Vietnam War, he supposedly threw his medals over the White House fence in protest. This supposedly accounted for why he did not have the original paperwork for his medals. Therefore, said the Pentagon officials, he later needed to apply for duplicates, which were then written up and issued long after the fact. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Were we to understand that Kerry threw documents about his medals – pieces of paper – over the White House fence along with his medals?
I figured the military might have some outstanding records that would explain the apparent gaps. I called a colleague, CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin, and asked if the Pentagon had more Kerry records to fill in some holes. Martin put in a query and got back to me. The Pentagon told him that the records we had were the only ones available regarding Kerry’s Vietnam War -era service.
So, although I was coming up empty on Bush the Kerry information merited further research. At that Point, I approached the folks in the CBS political unit, based in Washington, DC, to tell them what I was looking into.
I barely got the first few sentences out of my mouth before the political unit producers began scoffing.
“Vietnam was a long time ago,” one of them remarked.
“The records just probably aren’t very reliable,” another offered.
“Maybe,” I said. “But we should at least try to find out if there is a story here.” And playing my version of the Substitution game, long before I called it that,I pointed out to them, “If Bush’s records didn’t seem to match up, we wouldn't just say, ‘Vietnam was a long time ago.’ We would look into it.
Not only were they disinterested, I sensed hostility. At that point, I realized that there would be no support for the idea of digging into anything involving Kerry __only Bush. I was so disgusted that I walked back into my office and dumped my whole Kerry file into the trash.
I came to put a lot of thought into experiences like that during my two decades at CBS News. I began to focus a lot of energy on making sure I opened my eyes to see what was really going on around me rather than wearing blinders and missing the true story. And I came to believe that it was crucial for me to report on stories and views that were off the typical narrative.
It was not always easy, but I did have a lot of success in that arena. I was often encouraged and supported by some top notch bosses and colleagues. I was honored to be part of CBS News teams covering many stories in the CBS tradition of "fair and fearless." Some of the stories received award recognition from my peers and are part of the public record.
But there are many untold stories and they reveal a lot about the death of the news as we knew it."
In the pages that round out Chapter 1, Sharyl tells about a squashed story in 2013 about fires during development of Boeing's Dreamliner being caused by a faulty battery, and suspecting Boeing had some level of power or persuasion over high level executives at CBS.
When six years later two Boeing planes in production killed a combined 347 passengers she couldn’t help but wonder if her story might have saved those lives had it been published,
She had been similarly bewildered a year earlier by not getting approval to go with two different stories, one where labor Unions in Michigan were upset that tax dollars set aside for President Obama’s $300 million green energy stimulus program were also being given away to Korean companies and Korean workers and used by U.S. companies to buy Korean supplies at their plants. The producer hated it but wouldn’t say why.
A month later a story about $millions in school lunch fraud allegedly being committed by the companies involved in the program but without explanation the producers would read the script. Turns out that around that same time Michele OBama had just launched an initiative to improve school lunches.
The pattern of CBS producers and top executives killing stories that reflect poorly on Democrats or are favorable to Republicans is blatant. The egregious behavior of the media at large including false reporting on matters related to Donald Trump is illustrated using 131 examples found in the Appendix of “Slanted.”
Here are three short excerpts from her other best-seller “Stonewalled” published in 2014-
(Excerpt 1)
“...the differences between Karl’s presented quotes and the actual emails were without
distinction. Both demonstrated that the Obama administration had seriously misled Congress and the public. But all of that is lost in the furor whipped up by left-wing bloggers with help from the mainstream press.
- Pages 385-386
(Excerpt 2)
... “Besides the implications for the story itself, I couldn’t get past the fact that upper-level journalists at CBS had been a party to misleading the public. Why wouldn’t they have immediately released the operative sound bite after Romney raised the issue in the debate? It would have been a great moment for CBS. The kind of break that news organizations hope for. We had our hands on original material that no other news outlet had that would shed light on an important controversy. But we hid it.”
- Page 379
...That meant there should be an internal ethics investigation holding accountable whoever was responsible. But that was not to be.
A few weeks later, I met with David Rhodes during one of his regular visits to Washington. I asked for an update on the internal investigation. For me, there was no point in pulling punches. Speaking of the Evening News managers who I felt had been a party to covering up the Obama bite, I said, “They’re dishonest, they're unethical, and they’re not very smart. I don’t trust them, I don’t respect them, and I can’t work for them.”
David assured me that a full investigation was underway. Or was going to be conducted in the future. I wasn’t entirely sure. It was a bit vague.
“Will the rest of us get to know the results?” I asked. Twice.
I wondered realistically what could be done. Pretty much the whole New York fishbowl was potentially implicated in the ethics breach. How could CBS really punish them all? And would the network risk taking action that could draw attention to something that had gone relatively unnoticed by the public? David assured me that, yes, we would all know the results of the investigation when it was finished.
That was the last I ever heard of it.
- Page 382
POST White House
As the 2020 election was approaching, many Americans were still wondering who was responsible for the riots and looting in our country. At that time I had written extensively about China’s efforts to bring down our economy and prevent Trump's reelection see my China research. People also need to know about two of the larger organizations that keep people guessing about where their money is going. The first is Organize for Action (OFA) and the second is The Open Society Network which is discussed under Soros’ story. Both of these organizations are extremely well funded and have wealthy and prominent people involved.
According to Wikipedia, Organizing for Action (OFA) is a nonprofit organization and community organizing project that advocates for the agenda of former U.S. President Barack Obama. The organization is officially non-partisan, but its agenda and policies are strongly allied with the Democratic Party. It is the successor of Obama's 2012 re-election campaign and of Organizing for America, which itself succeeded Obama's 2008 campaign.
However, tabloid journalist Paul Sperry, writing for the New York Post, published a mix of facts with unconfirmable speculations that was widely echoed across conservative media:
“The OFA will fight President Donald Trump at every turn of his presidency and the ex-president will command them from a bunker less than two miles from the White House...The ex-president is setting up a shadow government to sabotage the Trump administration through a network of nonprofits led by OFA, which is growing its war chest (more than $40 million) and has some 250 offices nationwide.”
The OFA IRS filings, according to Sperry, indicate that the OFA has 32,525 (and growing) volunteers nationwide. The ex-president and his wife will oversee the operation from their home/office in Washington DC.
He continued, “Think about how this works. Trump issues an immigration executive order; the OFA signals for protests and statements from pro-immigrant groups; the ACLU lawyers file lawsuits in jurisdictions where activist judges obstruct the laws; volunteers are called to protest at airports and Congressional town hall meetings; the leftist media springs to action in support of these activities; the twitter sphere lights up with social media; and violence follows. All of this happens from Obama's signal that he is ”heartened by the protests."
We do know when the protest happened and legal challenges were filed, but its unlikely we will ever know who was calling the shots. Thus we are left to speculate. Some of Mr. Sperry’s writings were recirculated but falsely attributed to a different author, the late Charles Krauthammer, who had a wide following. Unknowingly people keep it circulating, even writing letters to the editor of their local paper.
It’s natural to wonder how Obama could sit quietly on the sidelines, with his political machine still in place and Trump having promised to repeal Obama's most noteworthy achievements. I haven’t researched it but this may be the first time in history a former president’s “machine” has continued to function.
The deep hostility and contempt displayed in his speech to the Democratic National Convention in August begs the question - how could Obama sit quietly on the sidelines in light of the peril our democracy is facing? It takes Obama only ten sentences to subtly mention his threatened legacy, belittle Trump as a person, claim he has accomplished nothing as president, blame him rather than China for deaths from the pandemic, and portray Trump’s reelection bid as the greatest threat our democracy has ever faced:
"I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies. I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care. But he never did. For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves. Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe. 170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs are gone while those at the top take in more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before."
Regarding Obama’s reference to "those at the top take in more than ever" he is a leading example. Former president Obama is on track to become a billionaire since leaving the White House by doing the same types of things other former presidents have done, only his financial gains are setting records for former presidents. For example, he and his wife were paid $65 million for their memoirs and have cut deals with Netflix and Spotifyworth tens of millions more.
He travels all over the world to give about 50 speeches a year and averages $400,000 per talk.
When he spoke at a business conference in Bogotá, Colombia he was paid an estimated $600,000. Colombia is infamous for its drug cartels that export half of the world’s cocaine, for how drug money has corrupted its government and military, and for the countless millions of lives ruined by illegal drugs including opioids.
When he isn't giving speeches warning people of the danger of “exploding inequality” and questioning Trump's motives, he solicits donations for his Presidential library that is projected to cost $500 million.
Regarding his comment, "I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies," he failed to mention the steps he's taken and OFA has taken to protect his legacy.
It's one thing to legally organize communities for “progressive” change... on issues like gun control, socialist healthcare, abortion, sexual equality, climate change, and immigration reform, and to protest peacefully, but you'll see in my next letter how the unrest the riots and looting are intentional and designed to trigger civil war and revolution to tear down our Constitutional Republic.
The three short excerpts above are all found in this large 20-page excerpt, delineated using blue text. These paged come from from final pages of “STONEWALLED” by Sharyl Attkisson, 2014, in the chapter - The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem,” starting at p.370:
BENGHAZIGATE
I should have known something was up when I received an unsolicited phone call from a White House official a few days before the second debate between President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney on October 16, 2012.
The president was coming off a tough loss in the first debate, after which uncommitted voters, by a 46 percent to 22 percent margin, said Romney won; and 56 percent had an improved opinion of the Republican candidate.
The White House official and I chatted casually about unrelated topics and then he introduced a non sequitur: “The president called Benghazi a ‘terrorist attack’ the day after in the Rose Garden,” he told me.
At the time, I hadn’t given any thought to whether the president had or hadn’t termed the Benghazi assaults “terrorism.” The debate on that point hadn’t widely emerged and I was still focused on the State Department’s denial of security requests from Americans in Libya prior to the attacks.
Since I really didn’t know what the president had said in the Rose Garden the day after, I didn’t offer a comment to the White House official on the other end of the phone. He repeated himself as if to elicit some sort of reaction.
“He did call it a terrorist attack. In the Rose Garden. On September twelfth.”
I had no idea that the question of how the administration portrayed the attacks—and whether it was covering up the terrorist ties—would emerge as a touchstone leading up to the election. But the White House already seemed to know.
A couple of days later, I’m watching the Obama-Romney debate at home on television as moderator Candy Crowley of CNN asks a Benghazi-related question. My ears perk up when the president replies using very similar language to that of the White House official on the phone.
OBAMA The day after the attack, Governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime.
I now feel as though the White House official had been trying to prep me to accept the president's debate claim that he’d called the Benghazi assaults an “act of terror” on September 12.
The Benghazi question and the president’s response are all Romney needs to try to seize control of the debate and score big points. He accuses the president of downplaying terrorist ties to protect his
campaign claim that al-Qaeda was on the run.
ROMNEY I—I think [it’s] interesting the president just said something which—which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.
OBAMA That’s what I said.
ROMNEY You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror? It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you're saying?
OBAMA Please proceed, Governor. …
ROMNEY I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president fourteen days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
OBAMA Get the transcript.
The exchange feels strangely awkward. Romney seems genuinely bewildered and President Obama seems oddly anxious to move on. Then, the moderator, Crowley, comes to the president's rescue.
CROWLEY It—it—it—he did in fact, sir. So let me—let me call it an act of terror... .
OBAMA Can you say that a little louder, Candy?.
CROWLEY He—he did call it an act of terror.
Crowley is quick with her take. It makes me wonder if she, too, had gotten that call from a White House official in advance, telling her that the president had immediately labeled Benghazi a terrorist act.
Why is this point so important to the Obama administration?
The next day, I look for a transcript of the president’s Rose Garden statement to see if I can figure out the puzzle.
When I locate and review the remarks that the president made in the Rose Garden on September 12, 2012, I find that he did not say Benghazi was “an act of terror,” as he’d claimed in the debate. In fact, at each point in his speech when he could have raised the specter of “terrorism” or “terrorists,” he’d chosen a synonym (examples of this from his speech are bolded):
THE PRESIDENT Good morning. . . . Yesterday, four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi. Among those killed was our Ambassador, Chris Stevens, as well as Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith. ... The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack. ... And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people. Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts. Already, many Libyans have joined us in doing so, and this attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya. Libyan security personnel fought back against the attackers alongside Americans. ...
Nope, no mention of terrorism there.
Where the president may be granted some wiggle room, though there’s no doubt he overstated it in the debate, is when his speech segued to the fact that the attacks happened on the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. That’s when he used the word terror. But not referring directly to Benghazi.
THE PRESIDENT Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks. We mourned with the families who were lost on that day. I visited the graves of troops who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery, and had the opportunity to say thank you and visit some of our wounded warriors at Walter Reed. And then last night, we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi. As Americans, let us never, ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because there are people who are willing to fight for it, to stand up for it, and in some cases, lay down their lives for it. Our country is only as strong as the character of our people and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe. No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done. But we also know that the lives these Americans led stand in stark contrast to those of their attackers. …
One might be able to believe that the administration’s wholesale avoidance of the term terrorism in direct reference to Benghazi is an accident of wording. Except that the same accident happened in those early days when White House spokesman Carney briefed reporters, when Secretary of State Clinton spoke at the return of the victims bodies, and when U.S. ambassador Rice appeared on Sunday talk shows. Except that the references to terrorism and al-Qaeda were purposefully removed from the talking points used to relate details to the public. In fact, one would have to go out of his way to use so many synonyms for the attackers and mot say the actual word terrorist.
Taken together, it’s difficult to believe the wording is anything other than a purposeful strategy. The main unanswered questions: Who spearheaded the strategy? Why? And in what form was it transmitted to all the officials who got on board with it?
So what does all this have to do with my own situation at CBS?
In an unexpected way, it came to expose the extraordinary lengths to which some of my colleagues would go to misrepresent and slant the facts when they had explicit evidence to the contrary, which they
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kept hidden. It was enough to irreparably destroy any confidence in and respect I might have had for those at the network who were involved.
In the Benghazi chapter of this book, I referred to the fact that 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft happened to have an unrelated interview scheduled with President Obama the day after the Benghazi attacks.
However, the contents of his crucial interview, as it related to Benghazi, were largely kept under wraps at the time. The interview was only pulled out of the archives more than five weeks later when CBS Evening News managers wished to cherry-pick an excerpt and dictate its use out of context in a way that supported President Obama’s version of events.
It’s October 19, 2012, three days after that fateful Obama-Romney debate and less than three weeks before the election. Obama had managed to turn around Romney’s advantage. The president had held his own in the debate. Maybe even thrown Romney back on his heels with his Benghazi answer, insisting he’d immediately labled the attacks “terrorism.” After being smacked down by Crowley, Romney would hesitate to raise the specter of Benghazi again during the rest of the campaign.
But still simmering in the background is the building flap over whether the Obama administration had tried to hide the Benghazi attacks’ terrorist ties. The CBS Evening News wants the controversy addressed and, preferably, put to rest. The New York producers commission a story on the topic from a fellow CBS Washington correspondent.
Midday, I’m in the Washington newsroom when I overhear our senior producer relay strict instructions from New York. The instructions say that the other correspondent’s story must include a specific, never-before-aired sound bite from President Obama’s September 12 60 Minutes interview with Kroft. I’m busy working on my own story that day, but it’s news to me that 60 Minutes had spoken to the president about Benghazi weeks before. New York also dictates the precise wording that the other correspondent should use to introduce the chosen Obama sound bite. It appears to be an attempt to make the president’s case for him—that he had called the Benghazi attacks “terrorism.”
The resulting Evening News script reads as follows:
It had been about 14 hours since the attack, and the President said he did not believe it was due simply to mob violence. “You're right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt,” Obama said, referring to protests sparked by an anti-Islam film. “And my suspicion is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start.” Shortly after that, Obama stepped into the Rose Garden and spoke of the killing of four Americans as if it were a terrorist attack. “No act of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation,” Obama said in his Rose Garden remarks.
I mentally note that my own interpretation of the president’s Rose Garden remarks isn’t quite the same.
Meanwhile, in subsequent days, my producers and I break several more important stories on Benghazi as documents and witnesses chip away at the Obama administration’s narrative.
On October 24, 2012, I exclusively obtain the email alerts issued by the State Department to the White House Situation Room and government and intelligence agencies as the attacks unfolded on September 11. One of the initial alerts stated what the Obama administration kept hidden from the public: that the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for the attacks. As
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evidence mounts, none of it supports the Obama administration’s narrative about a spontaneous protest.
As I’m writing my script for the Evening News, the hotline from the New York fishbowl sounds in the Washington newsroom. New York is instructing me to insert the same Obama 60 Minutes sound bite in my story that they'd told the other correspondent to use a few days before.
“It has to be used, and you have to use that same wording to introduce it: Obama ‘said he did not believe it was simply due to mob violence,” my senior producer tells me in the voice that conveys to me there’s no arguing the point and don’t-ask-why-because-he-doesn’t- know-the-answer. Their minds are made up.
So for the second time in five days, New York has us insert the same line and Obama sound bite in an Evening News story to imply that the president had called Benghazi a terrorist attack the next day. It seems as though they’re putting a lot of effort into trying to defend the president on this point.
It’s not long after that story when the proverbial light switch on the Benghazi story turns off at CBS. The broadcast has gone from asking me to aggressively pursue all leads, to demurring when I begin to turn up more facts that show important inconsistencies in the administration’s accounts. The election is drawing near. Witnesses and documents are raising more legitimate questions by the day. But I feel that familiar Big Chill.
Leave it alone.
Troublemaker.
Pretty soon, the only sure outlet for new developments is CBSNews.com. As with Fast and Furious, the public is thirsty for developments on the Benghazi story and the Web postings draw a great deal of traffic. Clearly, viewers are interested. But the broadcast producers are not.
It’s not until the weekend before the November presidential election that I learn something that would shake any remaining faith I had in the New York fishbowl.
It’s Friday afternoon. A colleague called.
“You know that interview 60 Minutes did with Obama in the Rose Garden on September twelfth?” the colleague says.
“Yes”, I answer. “Why?”
“I just got a transcript. Of the entire interview.”
“From Who?”
“I can’t say. Holy Sh-t.”
“What’s it say?” I ask.
“Holy Sh-t.”
The colleague proceeds to read to me from the transcript. It’s undeniably clear to both of us. We instantly know that the interview that had been kept under such a tight wrap for nearly eight weeks is explosive.
The very first comment Kroft made, and the president’s response, proved that Romney had been correct all along:
KROFT Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya attack.
OBAMA Right.
Kroft’s take on the president’s wording and intent was the same as mine had been and, according to the president himself, at the time, our take was correct. All the synonyms used by Obama, Clinton, White House spokesman Carney, and Ambassador Rice were intentional. They “went out of [their] way to avoid the use of the word terrorism.”
Then Kroft asked a question that offered the president the opportunity to clarify or at least hint at the behind-the-scenes conclusions
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already formed by nearly everyone on the inside: that the attacks were the work of terrorists. But the president balked.
KROFT Do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?
OBAMA Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans.
Kroft had asked the question point blank. Though the president has told the world that he unequivocally called it a terrorist attack that very day, and though the media has largely sided with his interpretation, his own hidden interview with CBS belied the claim.
My thought turns to the selectively chosen Obama sound bite the Evening News had directed me to use a week before. To put it mildly: it was misleading.
This was a really bad thing.
Besides the implications for the story itself, I couldn’t get past the fact that upper-level journalists at CBS had been a party to misleading the public. Why wouldn’t they have immediately released the operative sound bite after Romney raised the issue in the debate? It would have been a great moment for CBS. The kind of break that news organizations hope for. We had our hands on original material that no other news outlet had that would shed light on an important controversy. But we hid it.
Now, eight years after Rathergate, I feared that we'd once again mischaracterized facts in advance of a presidential election to hurt a Republican. We not only had stood by silently as the media largely sided against Romney, but we'd also taken an active part in steering them in that direction.
Still on the phone with my colleague, we both knew what had to be done but I said it out loud.
“This has to be published,” I said. “Before the election.”
“I know,” agreed my colleague.
What's really going to bake your noodle later on is--How did the White House know CBS wouldn't use the part of the 60 Minutes Obama interview that disproved the president's debate claim?
Thus began a frenetic forty-eight hours of activity inside CBS News during which a small group of us made individual contact with news executives and explained what we thought needed to happen.
I told the executives I spoke with that withholding the operative sound bite and information was extremely unethical and dishonest. I argued that we had no choice but to publish it quickly, prior to the election. It was up to them to decide the format, but it had to be published.
It was all going to come out one way or another. There were 60 Minutes staffers who had been talking about it, wondering why the Evening News had avoided using the operative part of the Obama interview. And now, at the eleventh hour, the chatter had grown so strong that a transcript had been leaked to some of us outside 60 Minutes. Like chewing on a gristly piece of bad meat, it was only going to get bigger. It was only a matter of time before people outside of CBS found out.
If we published quickly and took our lumps, at least we would have done so before the election. If we didn’t publish, and outsiders found out later—and they would—it would be said that we engaged in a cover-up to try to affect the outcome of the election.
In no instance did any executive express disagreement to me or to others in our small group. In fact, they enthusiastically agreed. There had been a grave and purposeful error. We had to fix it. And so, the Sunday night before the election, nearly eight weeks after the Obama interview had taken place, the network posted it on CBSNews.com as part of a comprehensive Benghazi timeline that I and several colleagues had built.
The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem” - 381
I exhaled for the first time in two days.
I paused and thought back to the actual transcript I’d seen of the entire Kroft interview with Obama. 60 Minutes had emailed it to the Evening News fishbowl in New York the very day it took place. Anchor and Managing Editor Pelley. Executive Producer Shevlin. They had to have known. They were emailed the full transcript on day one. They must have known after the Romney debate and when they dictated use of the misleading sound bites in October.
“Look, we f…ed up,” CBS News president Rhodes would tell me in our continuing discussions. “But what matters is that as soon as it was brought to my attention I took steps to correct it. And if there are [congressional] hearings, that’s what I'll testify to, because it’s the truth.”
There were no hearings.
A few Republican members of Congress who were paying closer attention than others contacted CBS News executives with their concerns about the belated posting of the president's Benghazi interview. But by and large, the whole episode was mostly forgotten, eclipsed by the actual election, after which attentions were focused elsewhere.
I was relieved that the material was published before the election. But I felt the internal follow-up was crucial. There had been a serious breach of ethics that could have done irreparable harm to the news division, had it not been caught and remedied. Those responsible for the lapse have no business working in a news division. People like that can bring down a news operation by caring more about their own selfish motives than the good of the network and its duty to the public. If there ever were to be an outside inquiry, as there was after Rathergate, we would need to demonstrate that we'd taken all the appropriate steps. That we'd learned from our past mistakes. That meant there should be an internal ethics investigation holding accountable whoever was responsible.
But that was not to be.
A few weeks later, I met with David Rhodes during one of his regular visits to Washington. I asked for an update on the internal investigation. For me, there was no point in pulling punches. Speaking of the Evening News managers who I felt had been a party to covering up the Obama bite, I said, “They’re dishonest, they're unethical, and they’re not very smart. I don’t trust them, I don’t respect them, and I can’t work for them.”
David assured me that a full investigation was underway. Or was going to be conducted in the future. I wasn’t entirely sure. It was a bit vague.
“Will the rest of us get to know the results?” I asked. Twice.
I wondered realistically what could be done. Pretty much the whole New York fishbowl was potentially implicated in the ethics breach. How could CBS really punish them all? And would the network risk taking action that could draw attention to something that had gone relatively unnoticed by the public?
David assured me that, yes, we would all know the results of the investigation when it was finished.
That was the last I ever heard of it.
CONTROVERSIALIZING IN ACTION
It’s spring of 2013 and, disillusioned about the network’s handling of the Benghazi story, I nonetheless continue to turn up new information and offer stories. My sources and information on Benghazi are bearing serious fruit but, more often than not, it tends to die on the vine now. The partisan propaganda campaign to portray Benghazi as an Area 51-type conspiracy theory, a Republican-manufactured phony scandal, has successfully taken root with
The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem” - 383
media outlets that had once enthusiastically covered the story have, like CBS, backed off.
I'm taking a day off on Friday, May 10, when Bureau Chief Isham contacts me and asks me to check out a story that’s just been broken by ABC’s Jonathan Karl about the Benghazi talking points.
For months, the Obama administration had refused to publicly release crucial emails showing the genesis of the controversial and misleading talking points that excluded mention of terrorism. But the administration had made some of the emails available to members of Congress and their staff on an extremely restricted basis: the documents had to be viewed in a special room during certain hours in the presence of one or more administration officials. Members of Congress and their staff were not allowed to remove the documents from the room. They were not allowed to make copies. All they could do was make handwritten notes about them.
Karl’s news is big. He reports that ABC has “reviewed” “White House emails” and obtained “12 different versions of the talking points.” They reveal for the first time that, from start to finish, the content of the talking points was transformed from revealing that terrorism and al-Qaeda were responsible, and that the CIA had issued prior warnings of an attack on the Benghazi compound, to a scrubbed version that removed all traces of terror references. This is the very thing that inside sources had suggested, but the administration had denied.
Isham wants to know if I can get the emails, too. I make some calls and pretty quickly discover that I can’t get the actual emails. But I can find out what they said from a reliable source who reviewed them. I report back to Isham.
“I can’t find anybody who has the administration emails. The administration turned them over to Congress with a bunch of restrictions. But I can get a read on them from a good source who reviewed the emails and took handwritten notes,” I tell Isham.
The source reads to me directly from notes and repeats the caveat that there may be paraphrasing because of the unusual arrangement whereby access was limited and they weren't allowed to photocopy the emails.
After the briefing, | compare my notes to Karl’s emails and they match up very closely. Not exactly, which could be expected due to the paraphrasing, but the meaning is the same.
The series of Obama administration revisions chronicled in the emails is astonishing. The White House had spent months hiding the information in them, insisting it didn’t know who was responsible for developing the talking points and refusing to release the drafts to members of Congress who requested them. Under any neutral assessment, Karl’s break is the big story of the day.
I write up a comprehensive note summarizing the various drafts of the Obama administration talking points emails and I forward it to my Washington managers and our Capitol Hill staff. Then I brief them in a conference call. I make it crystal clear both in my note and on the telephone that neither I nor my source have the emails in hand since the administration had not allowed them to be physically turned over to Congress. For that reason, I reiterate, my source’s notes are paraphrases, but can be trusted as accurate representations.
My Washington managers forward my email note to the substitute White House correspondent on duty and the Evening News fish-bowl in New York. They send back a message for me to not bother to come into work. They’ll have the White House correspondent use my notes to do the story.
Yeah, we’re in that phase. I think.
Isham tells me to go ahead and post a write-up on CBSNews.com to match Karl’s reporting. The very first line of my article contains the same disclosure I’d made to my managers:
NOTE *Emails were provided by the Administration to certain
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Congressional Committees for limited review. The Committees were not permitted to copy the emails, so they made handwritten notes. Therefore, parts of the quoted emails may be paraphrased.
The cleansing of the talking points is such a damning development in the Benghazi saga, the Obama propaganda forces focus their full attention to trying to discredit it. Their crisis response is primarily directed at controversializing Karl, who broke the story.
STEP ONE The White House releases the talking point emails— the ones it had withheld all this time—and shows wording that differs slightly from the quotes Karl had provided.
STEP TWO The White House falsely claims the discrepancies are significant, and then uses them to discredit Karl and controversialize the whole damaging story.
STEP THREE Assistance comes from the administration’s surrogate bloggers on the Web who claim the unnamed source of the email leaks lied by saying he had the emails in hand— though the source had done no such thing. They accuse the source of “doctoring” quotes. Again, utterly false. But pretty soon, legitimate news organizations take the baton and perpetuate the idea that the whole talking-point-email-fuss is a Republian-created-scandal.
It’s a familiar syndrome: the same news outlets that ignore a genuine controversy when it emerges are all too eager to jump in and pick up the story if it means discrediting it . . . or if it means reporting on the administration’s defense.
In fact, the differences between Karl’s presented quotes and the actual emails were without distinction. Both demonstrated that the Obama administration had seriously misled Congress and the public.
But all of that is lost in the furor whipped up by left-wing bloggers with help from the mainstream press.
I feel sorry for Karl. He doesn’t have a chance against the White House spin machine, its surrogates on the Web, and a complicit news media on Obama’s side.
A few days later, I inadvertently get wrapped up in the controversy. It starts with a text message from a colleague.
“Did you see what they did to your story?” the colleague asks.
“What are you talking about?” I reply.
“I’ll call you.”
On the phone, the colleague explains that the Evening News had required our White House correspondent to do a one-sided story discrediting Karl’s reporting on the talking point emails and, by proxy, discrediting my own reporting on the same subject, as well as my source.
I was told that there were heated internal arguments over this particular Evening News story. That nobody in the Washington bureau thought it should air. Not the correspondent, not the producer, not the senior producer, not the bureau chief. But New York was hell-bent. I was told that Pelley and his producers rewrote the entire script to their liking, “top to bottom.”
So CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley introduces the resulting report, referring to the content of the White House emails “leaked to reporters last week.” (That would include me.)
“It turns out some of the quotes in those emails were wrong,” Pelley says. For reasons unknown, he ignores the fact that I had reported the “quotes” provided to me as paraphrases—they weren’t “wrong” at all.
The correspondent’s report then continues the fallacy by comparing supposed “quotes that had been provided by Republicans”
(which are actually paraphrases supplied by a source) to the emails
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the White House later released, as if some sort of subterfuge has been unearthed.
But the differences are without distinction: a review of the emails proves that the original paraphrased quotes from a source the week before were entirely accurate in spirit, context, and meaning.
Tonight's CBS story is, in my view, inaccurate, misleading, and unfair. It may as well have been written by the White House. On top of that, it mentions the White House’s Ben Rhodes as author of some of the talking points drafts in question, but fails to disclose that he’s the brother of CBS News president David Rhodes.
I’m genuinely stunned that this story about my reporting and my source aired on my network with nobody picking up the telephone and speaking to me to get the facts. It’s contrary to the most basic practices in journalism. Whoever wrote the story appeared to make no effort to seek the facts beyond the White House spin. I could have immediately told them that what they were about to report was wrong.
Although my source isn’t named in the disparaging CBS Evening News story, I worry about potential liability. Not only have the facts been misrepresented, but the report, in essence, labeled my source a liar. I feel pretty certain that nobody had run this script by the CBS legal department. They never would have allowed it to air.
The White House and outlets such as Mother Jones seize upon this new CBS Evening News report as an admission that my report, and Karl’s, had been wrong. That the GOP had “doctored” quotes, though my source had doctored nothing.
Several CBS colleagues encouraged me not to let this inaccuracy go answered.
“[CBS is] selling you down the river,” says one. “They'll gladly sacrifice your reputation to save their own. If you don’t stand up for yourself, nobody will.”
I email key CBS News executives, noting that my original article contained the explicit disclosure that the email quotes were paraphrased from handwritten notes, just as my source had explained. I point out that the content of the paraphrases and the emails match up perfectly. I reiterate that everyone who received my story note, including the New York fishbowl, knew this and so shouldn't have pursued a story that falsely implied quotes were doctored or a source had lied.
Next, I go to view the original article I'd written for the Web. As I click on the page, I quickly scroll up and down—something is missing. Somebody has edited out the key explanation I'd included at the top of the article about the paraphrased quotes. It’s gone.
Who edited out the caveat—and why?
Within a matter of hours, I solve the mystery. An editor for CBSNews.com had made an innocent error. He had removed the disclosure paragraph because he simply didn’t feel it was necessary.
The big question is: How to fix the whole mess? We need to add back the disclosure paragraph as I originally wrote it and include an explanation as to how it got inadvertently edited out. That way people would know that our source hadn’t lied, and that my reporting had been accurate.
But that simple fix is met with resistance from management.
“If we amend the story, it will just draw attention to the [incorrect] Evening News story [the other correspondent had aired],” one New York manager tells me.
I decide to consult some trusted advisors within CBS Corporation. They agree I need to push the point both for the sake of accuracy and my reputation. They come up with this suggestion: if my managers won't agree to restore my Web story to the way I’d written it, then I should ask that it be removed from the website entirely.
I contact the relevant New York executive and ask that he facilitate
The “Sharyl Attkisson Problem” 389
getting my Web article reinstated to its initial version. He puts me off saying he’s too busy to focus on it. But for me, the whole thing has already been drawn out too long and the propagandists are making serious hay out of the affair. I tell the executive that if he doesn’t have time to address my concerns, I plan to consult our CBS lawyers.
“No Sharyl,” comes his quick reply. I’ve gotten his attention.
In the end, CBS management agreed to make the fix to my Web article.
Understandably, the whole Washington inner circle that watches these things seemed confused by the shenanigans surrounding the talking points emails, the spin, and the CBS News stories. So much so that a Washington Post fact-checker ultimately dissected the matter. He, too, was befuddled by the most recent Evening News story that seemed.to contradict my reporting. But he was able to get a grasp on the facts. He noted that the paraphrases of the White House emails reported by me and Karl were identical in meaning to the actual quotes, though the White House spin claimed otherwise. He correctly reported that I had clearly disclosed that the material used in my Web article was paraphrased. He even pointed out that Ben Rhodes is David Rhodes’s brother. As a result, he gave the Wnite House three out of four “Pinocchios,” meaning he found “significant fact errors and/or contradictions” in its claim that “GOP operatives deliberately tried to ‘smear the president’ with false, doctored emails.”
“Indeed, Republicans would have been foolish to seriously doctor emails that the White House at any moment could have released (and eventually did),” noted the Post.
All of these unnecessary internal battles, largely prompted by propagandists, consume time and energy, and they take their toll. They steal effort away from real newsgathering. They divert attention from important stories. And they result in convincing management more than ever that it's easier just to avoid these types of stories entirely. As intended.
Of course, to this day, the propagandists who manufactured the false tale about the “doctored” emails continue to promulgate the narrative. Yet another effort to controversialize the factual reporting on Benghazi. That’s just what they do.
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You can support Sharyl Attkisson by purchasing her books. Here is a reference copy for Stonewalled.