Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Why am I up at 2 a.m. on a Monday morning? At an hour when it appears that even the unstoppable, indestructable Kathryn Lopez is recharging - er, sleeping?

To point out that the New York Times is reporting that CBS might fold.

After days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a "60 Minutes'' report that raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air.

But they cautioned that CBS News could still pull back from an announcement. Officials met last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it had collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision. Mr. Rather was not available for comment late last night...

But officials decided yesterday that they would most likely have to declare that they had been misled about the records' origin after Mr. Rather and a top network executive, Betsy West, met in Texas with a man who was said to have helped the news division obtain the memos, a former Guard officer named Bill Burkett.

Mr. Rather interviewed Mr. Burkett on camera this weekend, and several people close to the reporting process said his answers to Mr. Rather's questions led officials to conclude that their initial confidence that the memos had come from Mr. Killian's own files was not warranted. These people indicated that Mr. Burkett had previously led the producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, to have the utmost confidence in the material.

It was unclear last night if Mr. Burkett had told Mr. Rather that he had been misled about the documents' provenance or that he had been the one who did the misleading.

Several people familiar with the situation said they were girding for a particularly tough week for Mr. Rather and the news division should the network announce its new doubts.

One person close to the situation said the critical question would be, "Where was everybody's judgment on that last day?''

I will believe it when I see it. It's hard to see Rather changing his mind after digging his heels in for so long.

If this story is true, this had better be the biggest, most spectacular apology of all time.

UPDATE: What do I mean by “biggest, most spectacular apology of all time”? Resignations would be nice. An apology to the first lady, for claiming she had no evidence the documents were forged. An apology to President Bush. An apology to Killian's widow. An apology to Killian's son. An apology to the two doubtful document experts who were ignored. An apology to Marcel Matley and James Pierce, whose views were apparently misrepresented. An apology to Hughes, who was asked to verify a fake document over the phone. An apology to every skeptic, who Dan Rather initially called "partisan political operatives." An apology to every computer and typewriter expert who Dan Rather pretended didn’t exist. A separate apology for insulting the intelligence of those who use Microsoft Word, or who ever used a typewriter. An apology to CBS viewers, who apparently Rather thought he could treat like Montel Williams. An apology to Mrs. Knox, who was not interviewed before the initial story.

An apology to Retired Col. Walter Staudt, who was accused of pressuring others in the Texas Air National Guard to help George W. Bush in the memo.

And this is off the top of my head.

And, honestly, deep in my heart, I want to see Rather saying... "Those Pajamahadeen stomped me up and down like an angry bull chasing down a one-legged rodeo clown. I [bleeped] with the wrong guys in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

[Posted 09/20 02:06 AM]