CBS Announces Independent Inquiry on Flawed Report

[murielm99]

Executives at CBS News said today that Richard Thornburgh, a former governor of Pennsylvania, and Louis D. Boccardi, retired president and chief executive officer of the Associated Press, will conduct an independent investigation of how a flawed report about President Bush's National Guard Service made its way onto the air.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/22/business/media/22CND-CBS.html

Thornburg was an attorney general under Reagan and the first Bush. I don't know anything about Boccardi, other than that he served on a panel that looked into the Jayson Blair matter.

Do you think these two are a good pick? Will they conduct a fair investigation?

[freesqueeze]

1. What Powers Do They Have?

Can they serve a subpoena? Can they get phone records of those involved? I doubt it.

[murielm99]

2. I don't imagine that they have many powers at all.

Since one of them is a lawyer, they could go to a judge, or a district attorney if they find evidence or suspicion of a crime.

What did they do to Jayson Blair? They fired him, and made him famous. Eventually, they got his boss fired.

I think they may go after the producer Mary Mapes. They may just make recommendations, and issue a report that we will hear about in a brief news segment.

I think Rove is trying to bring Rather down. If he does, it will be the end of honest journalism for a long time.

[starroute]

3. Thornburgh squashed investigations of BCCI and Silverado

http://discuss.50plus.com/ubb/Forum45/HTML/000884.html

"One link between Bush, Saddam, and Iran-Contra was the corrupt Middle Eastern bank, the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI). BCCI, it turns out, laundered drug money, financed CIA and Mossad covert operations, and helped Bush, Saddam, and others split over $250 billion in extortion from the sale of Persian Gulf oil. (BCCI also might have had links to the corrupt drug-money-laundering-and-CIA scandals involving Australia's Nugan Hand Bank.) Attorney General Richard Thornburgh squashed an investigation into First American Bankshares, secretly controlled by BCCI, in October 1990; and William von Raab, former U.S. customs official, was fired by Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady for delving too deeply into BCCI. This may have a lot to do with the links between Prescott Bush, First American director Stephens, Bahrain, and Iraq."


http://www.atforumz.com/archive/index.php/t-220447.html

"While the national news media pretended that President Bush was remaining neutral after the news of his son's multiple conflicts of interest finally were given national notice, political meddling was obvious from the start. Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas F. Brady is a longtime close friend of President Bush. The man Brady and Bush hand-picked to be director of the Office of Thrift Supervision and who imposed the mildest possible penalty on the president's son was T. Timothy Ryan Jr., who served in the Bush presidential campaign in 1988 and whose appointment to head the OTS was pushed through despite intense congressional opposition.

<snip>

"Shortly before the 1988 election, when the regulators wanted to close Silverado, a call came from Washington to delay that action for 45 days—until after election day. After George Bush was elected, an order was issued to close the bank. A Treasury Department request to the FBI a year ago for an investigation of White House pressure on federal regulators to delay closing Silverado until after the election received no attention from the president's good friend, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh (whom the voters of Pennsylvania last month temporarily removed from public office once they could get their votes on him)."

[alarimer]

4. I heard on Fox

That they are going to link it somehow to the Kerry campaign. Of course it was Fox, so maybe that was just wishful thinking on the part of Fox. I seriously doubt the Dems had anything to do with it. It probably was a Republican plot to discredit the Democrats. Why was there no "blue-ribbon" panel to investigate the Swift Boat liars?