Not Long Now

The NYT says End Is Near:
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.
Those 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, and that it was mounting an intensive news investigation of where they came from.
And there’s this, all-but-confirming Burkett as the source:
But officials decided yesterday that they would most likely have to declare that they were 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 came 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 whether Mr. Burkett told Mr. Rather that he had been misled about the documents’ provenance or that he had been the one who did the misleading.
Remember the end of ‘All the President’s Men‘, where the news wire slams out a series of updates showing the Nixon administation’s collapse?
I keep picturing an equivalent sequence for the CBS news team:
***NEWS ANCHOR RATHER ANNOUNCES IMMEDIATE RETIREMENT, DENIES TIMING TIED TO FORGERY SCANDAL…
***VETERAN ’60 MINUTES’ PRODUCER MARY MAPES SACKED BY CBS, CLAIMS SHE’S “TAKING THE FALL” …
***CBS NEWS PRESIDENT ANDREW HAYWARD FORCED OUT; TOP BRASS DECLARES ‘HOUSE IS CLEAN’…
***END***
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