Mary Mapes Shopping Rathergate Book

Joe Hagan reports in The New York Observer that Dan Rather's producer for 60 Minutes Wednesday, Mary Mapes, is shopping a book proposal which will be an inside account of what happened at CBS news during the National Guard memo scandal.

The book will constitute Ms. Mapes' defense against charges of journalistic misconduct. According to Wesley Neff, president of the literary and lecture agency that is representing Ms. Mapes, the producer plans to argue for the veracity of the four memos supposedly typed by President Bush's former National Guard squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, in the early 1970's.

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Ms. Mapes' book proposal will include 40 pages of analysis and documentation that she offered to the panel to back up the documents' authenticity. In an addendum to that material -- supplied on the condition it not be directly quoted -- Ms. Mapes avoids direct discussion of fonts and character spacing.

Instead, she argues that the substance of the memos meshes with Mr. Bush's known records (the panel had claimed the documents clashed) and that inconsistencies in their format could have reflected the work of different typists - as found, she argues, in some of the official records.

So, she's going to prove that the fake documents are accurate, but she won't allow her supporting documentation to be quoted. Since the original case against George Bush was based on fake documents, the case could not be supported. Nonetheless, Mapes now feels that she can write a book, keeping her supporting documentation secret, which proves the original case was true. Holy moly, I hope there's a video. This is confusing. And frankly, Mapes sounds like she's going to just repeat the "fake but accurate" blather we've already heard from Rather.

On another note, Hagan also mentions that CBS had official (the independent panel) and unofficial (private eye Erik T. Rigler) investigations being conducted simultaneously and separately. Interestingly, Rigler was hired by CBS News President Andrew Heyward to find the original source of the fake Air National Guard documents and ultimately identified six "suspects" who may have given them to Bill Burkett.

One suspect, J.R. Rodriguez, was a former guardsman who was contacted and denied any knowledge of the documents. None of the other five are identified in the article.

In conclusion, Mapes is writing a book which will likely continue pressing the "fake but accurate" angle and a private investigator has a list of names (Rodriguez and five others) who potentially authored the fake documents. Personally, I like to see all the names on the list.