- They finally put Dan Rather out of his
misery. Today, CBS finally terminated him and sent him to the electronic
glue factory -- all for reporting the truth. But not all of it.
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- Rather's "unsubstantiated story
of Bush's military service" (says USA Today) got him canned.
Yet, all the poor man did was repeat a story we put on BBC Television a
year earlier -- that Poppy Bush put in the fix to get his son out of 'Nam
and into the Texas Air Guard, spending his war years guarding Houston from
Viet Cong attack.
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- But Dan never reported this: the
documentation from inside the US Department of Justice detailing the fix.
Why not? Because it opened up a far more serious charge: that
those who kept Little George out of war's way ended up very well rewarded.
We ran that full story -- from the evidence of the fix to the evidence
of the lucrative pay-backs -- on the world's biggest network, BBC, and
we've never retracted a comma of it. Nor, by the way, has the White
House denied our accusations despite our repeated offers to respond.
-
- George's slithering out of combat turned
into big pay-days for those in on the fix and its cover-up: Harriett
Miers (remember her?), Karen Hughes and Texas lobbyists.
-
- For the complete story, read, "The
Necklace-ing of Dan Rather" in Armed Madhouse. See below for
a piece of the puzzle.
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- The Necklace-ing of Dan Rather
-
- [Excerpted from Armed Madhouse, the new
book by Greg Palast - order your copy here or from your local bookstore.]
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- You aren't stupid, they just talk to
you that way. It's 2004. Falluja's on fire, your pension's burning away,
the last General Motors worker is turning out the lights in Detroit-and
the biggest issue of the election, aside from Christians who don't want
homosexuals to have families, was whether some elderly news celebrity,
Dan Rather, had besmirched the reputation of our President, a former Naval
Aviator. They can't get you to ignore that man behind the curtain, Dorothy,
unless there's a fascinating show on stage to distract you. And, for the
final days of the presidential campaign, they gave us the lynching of Dan
Rather.
-
- We know George Bush was a Naval Aviator
because it says so right on his toy box. Actually, he never was a Naval
Aviator and never once landed a plane on the deck of an aircraft carrier.
During the Vietnam War, our future President flew in the Texas Air National
Guard protecting Houston from Viet Cong attack. Our President obtained
that job the same way he got the current one: The fix was in.
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- Congressman Poppy Bush, said Rather,
put in the fix for his son, despite Junior's too-dumb-to-fly test scores,
by putting in a call to the head of the Texas Air Guard via Texas Lt. Governor
Ben Barnes. That's what Dan Rather reported on 60 Minutes, that Bush Jr.
got the Texas top gun post, and thereby dodged the draft and the bullets
of Vietnam. It was a hell of a scoop and his network rewarded him and his
producer, Mary Mapes, by firing their sorry asses. That wasn't enough.
-
- The president of CBS, Leslie Moonves,
bullwhipped his network's stars and, with his own spit, polished the soiled
war record of our President, declaring that Rather's producer: ...ignored
information that cast doubt on the story she had set out to report-that
President Bush had received special treatment thirty years ago, getting
to the Guard ahead of many other applicants.
-
- Really? Well, Mr. Moonves, look at this
evidence: "His [George W. Bush's] dad called thenLt. Gov. Barnes
to ask for his help to get his son not just in the Guard, but to get one
of the coveted pilot slots which were extremely hard to get. [Barnes, through
a "cut-out," a third party,] contacted General Rose at the Guard
and took care of it.
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- George Bush was placed ahead of thousands
of young men, some of whom died in Vietnam."
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- This is from a letter which had remained
locked for years in the file cabinets of the U.S. Justice Department prosecutor
in Austin, Texas. How I got it does not matter. Our War President has not
challenged authenticity. And its contents, Mr. Moonves, were confirmed
by the "cut-out" himself, the man who made the call to the Texas
Air Guard for young George. (Would the cut-out, a major figure in the Lone
Star State, allow BBC to film his statement? He said, "Do I look like
the dumbest Texan on the prairie?") But you knew that, if you're not
American. At the Guardian and on BBC we also reported, before the presidential
election, that Lt. Governor Barnes had put in the fix for George Jr. at
the Air Guard. We reported that in 1999, before Bush's first run for office.
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- Justice for Miers
-
-
- But there's much, much more to the story
than Rather had cojones to report. Barnes had two tasks-one, to get little
George into the Air Guard and the other was to shut up about it. Keep it
quiet. Barnes's good deeds and long silence were, indeed, well rewarded.
-
- Barnes, who left office under a cloud
of impropriety, stayed on in Austin as a big-fee lobbyist. And the biggest
fee he received, maybe the biggest ever in the history of the lobbying
art, was at least $23 million for representing a company called GTech when
it got the contract to operate the Texas lottery. GTech's creepy ways of
doing business caught up with it in 1997, when, after questionable payments
to the Texas lottery director's boyfriend were exposed, GTech lost its
contract by order of the new, uncorrupted, lottery director. The lottery
work was put up for bid and GTech's replacement chosen.
-
- But then something quite extraordinary
happened: The new state lottery director was fired, the bids tossed out
and GTech given back the lottery work-no bidding required. The governor
at the time: George W. Bush. Now, let's go back to the letter buried at
the U.S. Attorney's Office in Austin: Governor Bush through [another cut-out]
made a deal with Ben Barnes not to re-bid because Barnes could confirm
that Bush had lied during the '94 campaign. During that campaign [for Governor
of Texas], Bush was asked if his father...had helped him get in the National
Guard. Bush said no he had not, but the fact is his dad called thenLt.
Gov. Barnes.... Silence has a price and Barnes, the letter says, got his:
safety for his client GTech, with whom he maintained hidden ties. I can't
imagine that Barnes would make such a raw demand on Bush.
-
- But the war hero Governor's team made
damn sure that no harm came to Barnes and his business associates. The
Governor talked to the chair of the lottery two days later and she then
agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid. Did Governor
Bush put in the fix for GTech as alleged?
-
- I wasn't on the phone when he spoke to
the lottery board Chairwoman. Maybe they talked about their newfound faith
in the Lord, which they both discovered together at the same time. The
Chairwoman? Harriet Miers. We don't know if Miers gave the overpriced GTech
its contract back to help the governor keep his Air Guard secret a secret
or simply because she liked GTech's record of high costs and corruption.
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- In 2005, George W. Bush's attempted appointment
of Miers to the United States Supreme Court surprised the U.S. media and
even the President's own supporters. But I wasn't surprised at all.
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- Silence of the Media Lambs
-
-
- In 2004, he knew exactly what would happen
when he finally asked those questions. He had already delivered his own
eulogy.
-
- On June 6, 2002 on the program I report
for, BBC Newsnight, Rather said:
-
- "It's an obscene comparison but
there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tyres around
people's necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will
be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tyre of lack of patriotism
put around your neck. It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking
the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough
questions so often. Again, I'm humbled to say I do not except myself from
this criticism."
-
- The lynching of Dan Rather is a cautionary
tale of how news is made in the USA-and unmade-and topics permissible during
an election. The story that cannot be reported is not about George Bush's
special treatment but about the special treatment of the specially privileged.
-
- The real story, for me, is that Little
George was just one of a dozen privileged princelings saved from the dangers
of their powerful daddies' wars. Barnes did not give help to Bushes only.
The man who actually made the call to the Air Guard for Little George at
Barnes's request also confirmed that at Barnes' request, he also put in
the fix for sons of Democratic big-wigs, Governor John Connally and Congressman,
later Senator, Lloyd Bentsen.
-
- Vietnam was one front in a class war,
and only one class was sent to fight it. I don't blame Congressmen Bush
Sr. or Bentsen for keeping their sons out of Vietnam. I do blame them for
sending other men's sons in their place.
-
-
- Read the entire story, "The Necklace-ing
of Dan Rather," in Armed Madhouse.
-
-
- Greg Palast is the author of the new
book, Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks,
The Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from
the Front Lines of the Class War. Order your copy today or get it
from your local book store.
-
-
- To read, watch, and listen to this report
and others go to www.GregPalast.com (The BBC Newsnight video of Dan
Rather will be available shortly at www.GregPalast.com)
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