Ben Barnes to break silence on "60 Minutes"

[cal04]

The campaign battle over Vietnam War records is still raging, but President Bush may soon be the one answering uncomfortable questions about his past service. Ben Barnes, the former lieutenant governor of Texas, will finally break his silence and talk to the press about what role he played in helping Bush get a coveted slot in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. Sources say Barnes has already sat down for a "60 Minutes" interview that will air a week from Sunday. A "60 Minutes" spokesperson declined to comment, saying the program does not discuss reports that are in progress.

Barnes made headlines last week when his videotaped comments that he was "very ashamed" of getting Bush into the National Guard began circulating on the Web. He said the remorse was prompted by a recent visit to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, where he saw the names of thousands of other young men who did not enjoy the connections of the Bush family. Barnes made his comments in May and the video was posted on a pro-Kerry Web site in June, but word of it only began to spread widely last Friday.

Over the weekend, the national press, which for weeks has been amplifying factually challenged allegations against John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, gave Barnes' stunning remarks only cursory coverage. The Washington Post, for instance, ran a brief wire story on Saturday, the same day it printed yet another exhaustive piece about allegations surrounding Kerry's war past. In a subsequent WashingtonPost.com online chat, the Post reporter covering the Swift boat story suggested Barnes' comments didn't qualify as "fresh information," and consequently he wasn't interested in "simply regurgitating old controversies." The New York Times ran a brief item on Barnes' statements deep inside its Saturday news section, next to yet another lengthy profile of Kerry's longtime Swift boat nemesis, John O'Neill.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/01/barnes60minutes/index.html

[cthrumatrix]

1. two months for FACTS and issues.... shrub is cooked

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

2. He'd better stay out of small planes

In fact, he'd better dig himself a bunker in an undisclosed location and cover it up. His life expectancy just plummeted.

[Junkdrawer]

17. Nah. They'll assassinate his character. See: James Hatfield

:(

[TNOE]

24. Isn't James Hatfield DEAD though?

[BiggJawn]

32. Because Rove ruined his life.

An easy pick-off for Karl, but the desired result, just the same.

[Junkdrawer]

33. Yeah. But that was after James identified Rove as the character assassin..

So:

1.) Attack Bush - Rove assassinates your character

2.) Attack Rove - Rove assassinates you

I hope that clears things up.

[pacalo]

3. This is good news.

[Pirate Smile]

4. That is good news. Hopefully, they will also have some new info

to use against Shrubby boy.

Maybe, a little investigative reporting. Some reporting on the scrubbed record.

We can dream, can't we?

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Ah the Lib'ral press strikes again

:puke:

[Kimber Scott]

6. Abu Ghraib wasn't "fresh" when it "broke," either. Go 60 Minutes!

nt

[David Dunham]

7. A positive development.

[bmbmd]

8. They will eat Ben Barnes alive.

Lots of shady dealings in his past, left office in shame, a real disappointment to his party. I consider him the Len Bias of the Texas Democratic Party.

[lancdem]

11. Really?

[barbaraann]

13. Got some links?

n/t

[Bridget Burke]

19. Yeah, all other Texas politicians are 100% pure.

I can see why certain people want to shut him up or have him ignored.

[starroute]

28. His history of shady dealings is the whole point

Barnes is essentially saying: "I've done this stuff that I'm ashamed of now, I was a whore to the rich, and getting W into the National Guard was part of it."

The more mud the Republicans try to throw at him, the slimier Bush looks for being in his debt.

[bmbmd]

31. What I'm saying is

don't get your hopes up. Like others before him, Barnes is trying to do the right thing, performing his mea culpa, trying to clear his name. He will be destroyed by the Bushes for daring to speak the truth.

[JoFerret]

54. The Lee Atwater credibility routine

...works for me

[Nordic]

51. exactly.

n't

[whalerider55]

30. ouch

that's not a name you bring up lightly here in massachusetts.

as far as i'm concerned, Barnes is our ho' agasinst their ho's. may the best ho' win. that's the game they framed, let'em live it.

whalerider55

[Bluzmann57]

9. The last paragraph in that story is telling

"Over the weekend, the national press...etc". Its about time that this Barnes story gets coverage on nationwide TV.

[Cocoa]

10. Peter Jennings won't like this

:cry:

[cthrumatrix]

63. facts have a way of bring down the shrub .... can't wait

[PROGRESSIVE1]

73. Why does Jennings and KKKopel cover for Bush? Oh wait.....

I know why, Disney is Corporate Pravda that depends on Jeb for BIG TAX BREAKS!!!

[madaboutharry]

12. The phone over at CBS

must be on fire. You can practically hear the threats coming out of Rove's big ugly mouth. I hope CBS doesn't cave.

[Dulcinea]

14. I hope CBS tells Rove to go Cheney himself.

mw

[NewYorkerfromMass]

15. who can corroborate Barnes' story?

I think GHW is a no go.

[Catfight]

16. HUM...RATINGS vs. Rove....RATINGS vs. rove...RATINGS vs.

Rove

I'm sure the Hitler Bush will be angry too!Whatever...the whole family is worthless to America, let them all go back to Germany, take Arnold too!

[MaryH]

20. Germany Doesn't Want Them

They have enough problems with their Skinheads - don't need a bunch of arrogant Emptyheads.

[Catfight]

23. Now you made me laugh!

[JoFerret]

55. You need a time machine for that to be effective

.

[TwentyFive]

18. This is good news....but Dems need to focus on Bush's record

The Texas national guard thing looks bad, but Bush's terrible record as president will sink him:

-$133 billion on Iraq, with OBL still on the loose.
-Clinton surplus is now a $500 billion deficit.
-2.5 million jobs lost.
-5.2 million lost health insurance.
-4.3 million fell into poverty.
-3rd straight year for household income decline.
-9/11 world sympathy turned in world hatred for USA.
-Billions worth of Haliburton "no bid" contracts.
-Women's right to choose hangs on next Supreme Court justice.

This needs to be on the tip of every loyal democrats tongue between now and Nov 2nd.

[TNOE]

25. You are exactly right

Welcome to DU :hi:

[TrogL]

26. you forgot all the money blown on the Afghan pipeline

aka the Afghan war against OBL

[mumon]

21. The repugs have the reply already...

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/SS/mqs1.html

This has to be handled carefully!

The state officials denied all the charges, asserting that they had obtained the bank loans and made the stock purchases purely as business transactions unrelated to the passage of Sharp's bank bills. But as the spring of 1971 droned into summer, political pressure mounted on Smith, Baum, Mutscher, and Shannon-even on Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, who had been connected in several tangential ways to Frank Sharp, his companies, and the bank bills. By the fall of 1971, when Mutscher and his associates were indicted, the politics of 1972 had begun to take shape. Incumbents moved as far away as possible, politically, from the "old system" and the current state leaders. New candidates came forward, some of them literally with no governmental experience, under a "throw the rascals out" banner.

Mutscher, Shannon, and McGinty were tried in Abilene, on a change of venue from Austin because of adverse pretrial publicity, in February and March 1972. The indictment charged the three men with conspiracy to accept a bribe from Sharp, and District Attorney R. O. (Bob) Smith of Austin said during the trial that Governor Smith was an unindicted coconspirator. Prosecutors acknowledged from the start that the case would be based entirely on circumstantial evidence, which produced legal technicalities inexplicable to laymen. But the jury needed only 140 minutes on March 15, 1972, after exposure to hundreds of pounds and hours of evidence, to find the Mutscher group guilty. The next day, at the request of the defendants, Judge J. Neil Daniel assessed punishment at five years' probation.

The conviction of the Abilene Three dramatically advanced the momentum of the "reform" movement, coming less than three months before primary elections, at which more legislative seats were contested than in any year since World War II.qv (Redistricting decisions by the federal courts added to the high percentage of electoral challenges, but the Sharpstown scandal generally was credited as the main factor.) In statewide races "reform" candidates also dominated. The Democratic governor's race saw two newcomers-liberal legislator Frances (Sissy) Farenthold of Corpus Christi and conservative rancher-banker Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde-run far ahead of Governor Smith, who was seeking a third term as governor, and Lieutenant Governor Barnes, whose seemingly inexorable rise to political prominence was ended when his reputation was tainted by the scandal. Briscoe defeated Farenthold in the runoff and later was elected governor; but Republican candidate Henry Grover of Houston and Raza Unida Partyqv candidate Ramsey Muñiz of Waco drew enough votes to make Briscoe Texas's first "minority" governor. For the state's second top executive branch job, voters chose moderate Houston newspaper executive William P. Hobby, Jr., over seven other Democratic candidates as lieutenant governor-also on a "reform" theme. Reform-minded moderate Democrat John Luke Hill of Houston, a former secretary of state, left a successful private law practice to defeat the popular three-term attorney general, Crawford C. Martin,qv who had been criticized for his handling of the stock fraud scandal and for his own relationship with Frank Sharp. The Democratic primary and the general election of 1972 also produced a striking change in the legislature's membership, including a half-new House roster and a higher-than-normal turnover in the Senate. Most of the newcomers were committed to "reform" in some fashion, regardless of their ideological persuasion. The voters simultaneously indicated that their confidence in the legislature had been restored to some extent, because they approved in November 1972 an amendment allowing the legislature to sit as a constitutional convention in 1974. The convention failed by three votes on July 30, 1974, to approve a proposed new constitution for the voters to consider


Although it appears that Barnes wasn't really guilty of anything, expect the repugs to dredge this dreck up.

[bmbmd]

35. delete

dupe

[DS1]

22. YAY! JUST IN TIME FOR FOOTBALL SEASON

You fucking moran! Too late - now nobody will see it as some game will inevitably preempt 60 Minutes.

Bank it.

[indie_voter]

27. just in time for Kitty Kelly's book. :) n/t

[David Zephyr]

29. Hallelujah!

As the Sixty Minutes Theme Songs says, "Tick, tick, tick."

[REVOLT823]

34. Great news!! Doesn't 60 minutes have some of the highest

ratings on TV, this will definitely get the word out. I hope they also cover the fact that Bush attempted to cover this up by paying him off with the lottery contract for his client. I think everyone knows that there was some funny stuff going on about Bush's NG service, but if they can bring to light that we bought him off during the govs race, that will be big news, becasue then we've caught Bush in another lie, to both the people of Texas and then to the American people.

[Just Me]

36. SWEEEEEEET!!!!

Meanwhile, Bush Sr. is saying the implication that he used his influence is a complete lie.

Wonderful timing.

[AmandaRuth]

37. maybe he will shead some light on who

washed boosh's driver license. And why. Now that would be interesting.

[louis-t]

38. What do you think the chances are

of a new terra alert around 7pm Sunday?

[SKKY]

39. See, this is the big bomb I was hoping would get dropped...

...Sorry for the insensitive analogy. Hopefully, once and for all this will expose the entire Bush family for what they really are.

[Carla in Ca]

40. This may coincide nicely with

the book Phony Fighter Pilot, due for release on the 7th. It is authored by Hugh Scott, who I have been talking to this week through e-mails.
His point is he fears *ush will be elected regardless of anything negative that comes from his book or any other. He wrote it, he says, for the "unborn children of his grandkids" so they may know what really happened.
I told him I will buy the book and pass it along to anyone else that wants to know the truth...sometimes it is all you can do.

[Just Me]

53. Please, give more information about Hugh's experiences,...

,...as I am,...okay, I confess,...I have an obsession to knowledge,...not merely "theory" but the "facts" of human existence.

[TryingToWarnYou]

68. Dont "pass it on"..ask that they buy it.

This will help the author.

[Guaranteed]

41. HERE we go. nt

[chelsea0011]

42. 60 Minutes. all these years and still all guts

[liberalcanuck]

43. Kick!

:kick: :kick: :kick:

Time to roll up the sleeves and take the gloves off. Kerry gave an excellent speech today btw.

[AngryWhiteLiberal]

44. NOW, HERE'S YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO FIGHT BACK...KERRY

Wake up, Kerry ops!!!!!!

Don't make the issue about his guard duty or the favors he received...make the issue about Bush using wealth and privilege to avoid giving something to the community. The attack needs to be handled with care, but if done right the implication will be that Bush is a slacker, selfish, opportunist, who is out-of-touch with ordinary Americans.

JB

[p.lukasiak]

67. precisely right

We need to emphasize that Bush was the EXCEPTION in terms of his dereliction and desertion, and that the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of those who served in the ANG did so with honor and distinction.

The fact that Bush got INTO the Guard through the use of political influence needs to take a back seat to the fact that he continues to lie about how he got in.

If anything, we need to present Bush's superior officers (Hodges and Killian) as heroes--- men who cared about those who served under them, and who did their best to maintain training and discipline within a corrupt system that allowed EXCEPTIONS like Bush to get away with desertion.

We don't know for certain who the "prime movers" were, but I think its far better to say that Hodges did not act against Bush for failing to maintain his flight status because it was better for his unit that Bush did NOT fly, than to say that Hodges was doing favors for Bush.

(one of the "unknown" facts about the actions of the leadership of the 147th is that Officer Effectiveness Training Reports were usually filled out WEEKS after the end of the reporting period. The "not observed" OETR was sent in TWO DAYS after the end of the reporting period---if Killian was trying to cover for Bush, he would have waited as long as possible before filing that report. The immediate report was, IMHO, Killian's way of BRINGING TO THE AIR FORCE'S ATTENTION that Bush was screwing up, because Bush's TXANG political protectors prevent him from taking action against Bush himself.)

[malatesta1137]

45. I bet money

it won't be aired. CBS is too corrupt.

[redqueen]

46. They showed the Sibel Edmunds piece, didn't they?

It's really up to us... how many of us will make a stink if it doesn't air?

I love that they're waiting till after the convention will be over.

:evilgrin:

[malatesta1137]

50. up to us?

we sat quietly watching an election being stolen in front of our very eyes, do you think anything major will happen if this interview gets canceled?

[redqueen]

70. Like I said... it's up to us

Do we make a stink, or don't we?

[Nordic]

52. did they? Did they ever air the new one?

I thought they only showed the old one, the re-run

[Bridget Burke]

61. Yes.

They showed the new one.

[jsquared]

47. They also set up the O'Neill and Clarke firestorms

with their great interviews of those men. That all seems so long ago, about eight or ten scandals ago. I think maybe older journalists still retain knowledge of what that profession was really about before it became "infotainment."

[airron]

48. will the repubs . . . .

will the repubs just label Barnes as a Kerry operative who is changing his story? (That is, if he even changes his story, which was originally that the Bush family did not know about the special favor. Yeah, right, but that is what he has said before).

If he has no other proof or compelling info, this will not get very far.

Don't get me wrong, it is telling that Bush got special treatment and then lied, but my question is . . . does it really have legs in the current media?

[highnooner]

49. IMO

60 Minutes will use the article to place Barnes in ill-repute. Therefore, his words regarding Bush will be the lesser story and less believable.

[joefree1]

56. Whoops, too late

The media sharks smell blood in the water. Calling MoveOn.org.


Download the free poster/sign here:
http://ediablo.com/eDiabloGallery.html

[Bridget Burke]

60. How much will you bet?

CBS news is less corrupt than many media outlets.

[quinnox]

57. May this be the first of many counterstrikes on Bush to come in next 2

months. Let's have this one blow up as big as the Swift Vets, or at least enough to cause a ripple.

[npincus]

58. This is what I've been waiting for....

Let's get it on!

[npincus]

59. Time for a Terror-Alert!

they're coming.... they're coming to get us....

[Ganja Ninja]

62. I doubt this will get much coverage thanks to Frances.

Once Hurricane Frances hits Florida the media will concentrate on covering the disaster so by Sunday night this will get little or no attention.

This sucks.

[Elginoid]

64. it says that it will air a week from sunday...

i hope that means the next sunday after this one, not this coming sunday...

and i hope that france erases florida from the map.

[yelladawg]

65. It will get all kinds of attention

It will get out. One way is start sending e-mails.

[9119495]

66. Anybody see a terror threat announced a weak from Sunday?

[mainer]

69. Kitty Kelley's book -- here's the flap copy -- I can't wait!

"They have wielded enormous financial power and dominated world politics for more than half a century. They have been appointed to positions of great power and have been elected as governors, congressmen, senators and presidents. They have shaped our past and, with our country at war under the leadership of their number one son, they are, more critically than ever, shaping our future...

(snip)

An important polemic on wealth, power, and class in America, The Family is rich in texture, probing in its psychological insight, revealing in its political and financial detail, and stunning in the patterns that emerge and expose the Bush dynasty as it has never before been exposed. Ms. Kelley takes us back to the origins of the family fortune in the Ohio steel industry at the turn of the last century, through the oil deals and international business associations that have maintained and increased their wealth over the past hundred years. The book leads us through Prescott Bush's first entrée into government at the state level in 1950s' Connecticut, to George Herbert Walker Bush's long and winding road to the White House, to his son's quick sweep into the same office. Along the way, we see the complex relationships the Bushes have had with the giants of the century--Eisenhower, Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, Kissinger, Reagan, Clinton--as well as the often ruthless methods used to realize their goals.

Perhaps most impressive--and surprising--is the way the book delves behind the obsessively protected public image into the family's intimate private lives: the matriarchs, the mistresses, the marriages, the divorces, the jealousies, the hypocrisies, the golden children, and the black sheep.

At a crucial point in American history, Kitty Kelley is the one person to finally tell all about the family that has, perhaps more than any other, defined our role in the modern world. This is the book the Bushes don't want you to read. This is The Family."

[Khephra]

71. kick

[Khephra]

72. kick

[struggle4progress]

74. kick

:kick:

[Tight_rope]

75. Yes. Little by little the truth is creeping out. Hurting them nick by nick

[Tight_rope]

76. Welcome to DU whalerider55