President Bush isn't the only person who has recently been slandered by Dan Rather and CBS News for political reasons. Eric Fettmann of the New York Post reports on "Rather's Other Imploding 'Scoop":
http://www.powerlineblog.com/
The network is coming under fire in some quarters for a "CBS Evening News" broadcast about what it billed as a sensational national-security scandal that may have impacted critical U.S. policy decisions in the Middle East.
Less than a month later, however, the "sensation" has fallen far short of its original explosive billing. But that hype has provided potent ammunition for enemies of both Israel and the Bush administration's Mideast policies — ammunition that those forces are gleefully using.
"We start tonight with breaking news," Rather intoned breathlessly, "a CBS News exclusive, what could be a serious security breach inside the United States Defense Department. Federal agents now believe there is a mole working at the highest levels of the Pentagon, a spy for a major world power who may have been in a position to influence Bush administration policy — policy on Iran and Iraq."
Lesley Stahl went on to report: "The FBI believes it has solid evidence that the suspected mole" — later identified as Larry Franklin, a mid-level analyst with no policymaking input — "supplied Israel with classified material that includes secret White House policy deliberations on Iran."
This, declared Stahl, "put the Israelis . . . inside the decision-making loop, so they could try to influence the outcome." And, she added, there's another concern: "Did Israel also use the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on the war in Iraq?"
But: CBS said arrests were imminent — yet none have materialized. And no one is talking anymore about moles or sinister forces secretly shaping U.S. policy — or even about espionage, for that matter. (Both AIPAC and the Israelis deny having done anything illegal or improper.)
Suffice it to say, though, that this has less to do with national security than with partisan politics. As Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a friend of Franklin's, told The New York Sun: "When the FBI has a case against someone . . . they indict him and arrest him and put him away. They don't go to Lesley Stahl."
There is a certain consistency in CBS's fictitious "scoops." Can anyone think of an example of Dan Rather breathlessly announcing breaking news that turned out to be a flop--if not a pure fabrication--where the story reflected badly on a Democrat?
