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