Bush Sr. set up Dan Rather in 1988---history repeats itself [View All]

[Blue_Roses]

It's now not "just" about the "allegedly" forged or fake documents, it's a about a history with this administration, Rove, and their dirty tactics that go way back. This hack job now reeks and stinks to high heavens. Dan Rather has always been fair and has gotten to the truth, which isn't always liked by the those in question.

In 1988, Dan Rather had a heated exchange with Bush Sr. about Iran-Contra and that has never been forgotten. Dan Rather was getting the job done, even way back then, and his credibility has ALWAYS been in tact.

Questions about a scandal in the Reagan administration led Rather to a run-in with then-Vice President George Bush during a live interview on national television in January 1988. This incident highlighted Rather's testy relations with top politicians, but also his vulnerability to attack. In the midst of the interview, Bush chastised Rather for creating a six-minute blackout on the network the previous September. It was the vice president's retort to Rather's insistent questioning about Bush's role in the Iran-Contra affair.

The blackout, Rather says, "was an effort to convince the powers-that-be that news is more important than sports. Among the many battles I've lost, that's one." However, the point Rather was trying to make, one of a number that has earned him the nickname "Dan Quixote," was lost in the thicket of bizarre, confusing and often contradictory explanations. From a journalist's perspective, Rather's stance was heroic. He was standing up for the news, but it ended up being another weird incident.

Four months later, on Jan. 25, 1988, Rather was in New York doing a live satellite interview on the "CBS Evening News" with Bush, who was in Washington. Rather asked the vice president, who was running to succeed Reagan, about the Iran-Contra affair and his involvement in it. Bush was not being responsive and Rather kept pressing. Bush finally let Rather have it with a planned assault.

"It's not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran," Bush began. "How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York ? Would you like that?" Bush got the length of time and the city wrong, but it was plain that he had thrown Rather.

"I had raised the possibility with the staff before the interview that he might raise Miami," Rather recalls. "The staff unanimously felt that no way he'd do that, but I thought he might." In fact, some at CBS News had gotten word shortly before the interview that Bush would raise the Miami incident. "I wasn't shocked or surprised by it. I was thinking at the time, 'Let's get to the core questions.' That's exactly what I did. Now, what I wasn't prepared for, and this is where I made a big mistake, was for the whole weight of the vice president's presidential campaign--even before the interview was over--to begin spinning things their way, and to succeed."

The Bush campaign claimed that Rather had tried to set them up. The truth was that Bush and his confederates had set up Rather. Bettag, who was Rather's executive producer at the time, believes that Rather knew what he was getting into with Bush, but that his nature would not allow him to avoid the confrontation. "He believes so deeply that it is essential that a reporter not shrink from controversy that he has taken on any number of things that tee people off," Bettag says.

That also goes to the heart of what Dan Rather is about...

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