The Lynching Of Dan Rather

[Guest guest]

THE LYNCHING OF DAN RATHER

On British TV, Dan feared the price of " asking questions "

By Greg Palast

 

September 21, 2004 00:29

 

" It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the

tough questions, " the aging American journalist told the British

television audience.

 

In June 2002, Dan Rather looked old, defeated, making a confession he

dare not speak on American TV about the deadly censorship -- and

self-censorship -- which had seized US newsrooms. After September 11,

news on

the US tube was bound and gagged. Any reporter who stepped out of

line, he said, would be professionally lynched as un-American.

 

" It's an obscene comparison, " he said, " but there was a time in South

Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they

dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be necklaced here.

You will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your

neck. " No US reporter who values his neck or career will " bore in on the

tough questions. "

 

Dan said all these things to a British audience. However, back in the

USA, he smothered his conscience and told his TV audience: " George Bush

is the President. He makes the decisions. He wants me to line up, just

tell me where. "

 

During the war in Vietnam, Dan's predecessor at CBS, Walter Cronkite,

asked some pretty hard questions about Nixon's handling of the war in

Vietnam. Today, our sons and daughters are dying in Bush wars. But,

unlike Cronkite, Dan could not, would not, question George Bush, Top Gun

Fighter Pilot, Our Maximum Beloved Leader in the war on terror.

 

On the British broadcast, without his network minders snooping, you

could see Dan seething and deeply unhappy with himself for playing the

game.

 

" What is going on, " he said, " I'm sorry to say, is a belief that the

public doesn't need to know -- limiting access, limiting information to

cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war. It's

extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted, and I'm

sorry to say

that up to and including this moment of this interview, that

overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the

current

Administration revels in that, they relish and take refuge in that. "

 

Dan's words had a poignant personal ring for me. He was speaking on

Newsnight, BBC's nightly current affairs program, which broadcasts my own

reports. I do not report for BBC, despite its stature, by choice. The

truth is, if I want to put a hard, investigative report about the USA

on the nightly news, I have to broadcast it in exile, from London. For

Americans my broadcasts are stopped at an electronic Berlin wall.

 

Indeed, Dan is in hot water for a report my own investigative team put

in Britain's Guardian papers and on BBC TV years ago. Way back in

1999, I wrote that former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes had put in the

fix

for little George Bush to get out of 'Nam and into the Air Guard.

 

What is hot news this month in the USA is a five-year-old story to the

rest of the world. And you still wouldn't see it in the USA except

that Dan Rather, with a 60 Minutes producer, finally got fed up and ready

to step out of line. And, as Dan predicted, he stuck out his neck and

got it chopped off.

 

Is Rather's report accurate? Is George W. Bush a war hero or a

privileged little Shirker-in-Chief? Today I saw a goofy two page

spread in the

Washington Post about a typewriter used to write a memo with no

significance to the draft-dodge story. What I haven't read about in

my own

country's media is about two crucial documents supporting the BBC/CBS

story. The first is Barnes' signed and sworn affidavit to a Texas Court,

from 1999, in which he testifies to the Air Guard fix -- which Texas

Governor George W. Bush, given the opportunity, declined to challenge.

 

And there is a second document, from the files of US Justice

Department, again confirming the story of the fix to keep George's

white bottom

out of Vietnam. That document, shown last year in the BBC television

documentary, " Bush Family Fortunes, " correctly identifies Barnes as the

bag man even before his 1999 confession.

 

At BBC, we also obtained a statement from the man who made the call to

the Air Guard general on behalf of Bush at Barnes' request. Want to

see the document? I've posted it at:

http://www.gregpalast.com/ulf/documents/draftdodgeblanked.jpg

 

This is not a story about Dan Rather. The white millionaire celebrity

can defend himself without my help. This is really a story about fear,

the fear that stops other reporters in the US from following the

evidence about this Administration to where it leads. American news

guys and

news gals, practicing their smiles, adjusting their hairspray levels,

bleaching their teeth and performing all the other activities that are

at the heart of US TV journalism, will look to the treatment of Dan

Rather and say, " Not me, babe. " No questions will be asked, as Dan

predicted, lest they risk necklacing and their careers as news actors

burnt to

death.

 

 

 

" Bush Family Fortunes, " the one-hour documentary taken from Greg

Palast's BBC investigative reports, including the story of George Bush

and

Texas Air Guard, can be viewed, in part, at

http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

 

To receive more of Palast's investigative reports, sign up at

http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm