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New Film “Truth” Revisits George W. Bush AWOL Controversy

A controversy both Karl Rove and George W. Bush likely thought was safely buried in the past has resurfaced with the release of the new motion picture "Truth", starring Robert Redford as legendary journalist Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett as producer Mary Mapes, which opened in Texas and across the country last weekend.

A controversy both Karl Rove and George W. Bush likely thought was safely buried in the past has resurfaced with the release of the new motion picture “Truth”, starring Robert Redford as legendary journalist Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett as producer Mary Mapes, which opened in Texas and across the country last weekend.
 
The film is based on the memoir of Dallas writer Mary Mapes who was an award-winning news producer for Dan Rather at 60 Minutes.
 
In 2004, during the heat of George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, 60 Minutes aired a report that questioned whether Bush received preferential treatment to enlist in the National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam and that he may have gone AWOL while in the Guard. During the same period of time, Bush allies had launched the infamous “Swift Boat” attack video to discredit the decorated combat service of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
 
The 60 Minutes report on Bush’s military service set off alarms and sparked a panic within the Bush White House. Karl Rove and other Bush allies launched a ruthless attack on the 60 Minutes crew. Rove’s team never answered the substantive questions raised in the report. Instead, they pushed attention away from the central claims by zeroing in on a single document they said was forged. They falsely claimed that document’s font and superscript styles were not available on military typewriters at the time of Bush’s Guard service. Bush-friendly right-wing blogs weighed in to reinforce the White House alibi.
 
Rove’s strategy to attack, distract and intimidate while focusing on a single document worked. CBS executives folded. Mary Mapes and others lost their jobs. Dan Rather resigned as CBS News anchor. Bush won election to a second term, and the likelihood that he failed to properly fulfill his military obligation was never fully debated or considered by the American public.
 

Rove reacts with an attack

The release of the new film “Truth,” however, has Karl Rove agitated all over again. He is clearly worried, knowing that the questions never answered back in 2004 are being asked again. In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News last month, Rove sputtered and stammered through a rehashed attack on Mary Mapes and Dan Rather. Rove again dodged the facts and focused on one questionable document along with the willingness of CBS executives to bend to pressure from the Bush White House and to throw their journalists under the bus.
 

Bottom line

Time and the facts have been kinder to Mary Mapes and Dan Rather than to Karl Rove and other Bush apologists. Rove’s bluster doesn’t hold up nearly as well now as it did ten years ago.
 
Texas-based author/activist Glenn Smith laid out the facts and put the Rove smear in clear perspective in a recent Huffington Post column. However, the central arguments Rove used in the Fox News interview can be clearly rebutted with just these three points:

  • Font, spacing and superscript styles
    As it turns out, the font and superscript styles in the key document were in fact available to the military during Bush’s service in the Guard. In a detailed recounting of the controversy, Texas Monthly wrote:

    “…Mike Missal, a lawyer for the firm that CBS hired to investigate its own report, said, “It’s ironic that the blogs were actually wrong. . . . We actually did find typewriters that did have the superscript, did have proportional spacing. And on the fonts, given that these are copies, it’s really hard to say, but there were some typewriters that looked like they could have some similar fonts there. So the initial concerns didn’t seem as though they would hold up.”
     
  • Bush received help getting in the Guard
    Former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes has confirmed that he helped George W. Bush gain enlistment into the Guard. Like many other privileged young men in the 1960’s, George W. Bush had connections, and he used them to avoid the possibility of deployment to Vietnam.
     
  • Mapes was a journalist working a story and had no vendetta against Bush
    There has never been any evidence that Mary Mapes or Dan Rather had a vendetta against George Bush. Mapes and Rather were simply raising questions about Bush that had been kicking around in Texas for years. In fact, journalist Jim Moore asked Bush directly about his Guard service during a debate in 1994. Bush answered Moore’s question dishonestly back in 1994 and, in doing so, all but guaranteed that the issue would resurface later in his career.

Now, twenty years after Bush failed to tell the truth in a debate and ten years after Karl Rove destroyed careers in order to discredit the 60 Minutes report, the film “Truth” is bringing facts back to light and Rove is on the defensive all over again. 

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