60 Minutes 6 Months Investigating Niger Fraud- Story Scrapped For NG Story

[G_j]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0923-02.htm

Published on Thursday, September 23, 2004 by MSNBC
The Story That Didn’t Run
Here’s the Piece that ‘60 Minutes’ Killed for Its Report on the Bush Guard Documents

by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

In its rush to air its now discredited story about President George W. Bush’s National Guard service, CBS bumped another sensitive piece slated for the same “60 Minutes” broadcast: a half-hour segment about how the U.S. government was snookered by forged documents purporting to show Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium from Niger.

The journalistic juggling at CBS provides an ironic counterpoint to the furor over apparently bogus documents involving Bush’s National Guard service. One unexpected consequence of the network’s decision was to wipe out a chance—at least for the moment—for greater public scrutiny of a more consequential forgery that played a role in building the Bush administration’s case to invade Iraq.

A team of “60 Minutes” correspondents and consulting reporters spent more than six months investigating the Niger uranium documents fraud, CBS sources tell NEWSWEEK. The group landed the first ever on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who first obtained the phony documents, as well as her elusive source, Rocco Martino, a mysterious Roman businessman with longstanding ties to European intelligence agencies.

<snip>
But just hours before the piece was set to air on the evening of Sept. 8, the reporters and producers on the CBS team were stunned to learn the story was being scrapped to make room for a seemingly sensational story about new documents showing that Bush ignored a direct order to take a flight physical while serving in the National Guard more than 30 years ago

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[bahrbearian]

1. Worked well for Stone and Rove..

[G_j]

2. you have to wonder

which story would have done more damage to Bush

3. HARD TO BELIEVE

But I am not surprised.


PHONY PAPERS which led to war...OR PHONY PAPERS (with real information) WHICH DON'T MATTER!

[gratuitous]

4. You really have to wonder

Because the "news" that there is documentation out there showing that Bush blew off his 1972 physical and was grounded for it is not news at all, and that was the major revelation of the Burkett documents.

Randi Rhodes had the salient question today: Who spiked the Niger documents story in favor of the National Guard documents story? Who made that call?

Niger = In-house, well-researched, with two "gets": Burba and Martino

National Guard = Outside source, unchecked back story, with no truly new revelations

[EST]

5. Need help here, people.

I wrote to CBS and inquired, pointedly, how dare they assume that damage control for their reputation was more important than getting this story out. I am pissed! Why should they worry about losing a few rabid right wing haters? They'll more than make up for it by the attention they will attract from folks who value the truth and who are aware the omly way we are going to hold this country together is by relentless truth-telling.

Help-send emails to cbs- tell 'em to buck up and tell the truth! Thanks!

[Hephaistos]

6. No way did they scrap a 6-months investigation ...

for some docs they just got their hands on. Remember, the memos added very litte to the AWOL storyline, just a nice little bonus scoop.

Somebody on the inside pushed this as well, somebody opposed to Rather and his producer. I bet it was the same person who installed the repuke to "investigate" memogate.

BS detector just caught on fire :wtf:

[G_j]

7. yep, as we all know by now, somebody set up somebody

Now will they air the Niger fraud report before the election?

[G_j]

8. kick

[mmonk]

9. I wonder who the mole is

there at CBS?

[Karenina]

10. It just gets

curiouser and curiouser... :freak: