In a statement released tonight Mary Mapes brilliantly exploits the gaps in the Thornburgh Report to defend herself against the report's findings of misfeasance on her part:

I am terribly disappointed in the conclusions of the report and its effects on the four of us who will no longer work at CBS News. I am disappointed as well for the entire organization. It has been my second family and I will miss my colleagues there.

I am shocked by the vitriolic scape-goating in Les Moonves’s statement. I am very concerned that his actions are motivated by corporate and political considerations -- ratings rather than journalism. Mr. Moonves’s response to the review panel’s report and the panel’s assessment of the evidence it developed in its investigation combine not only to condemn me, but to put all investigative reporting in the CBS tradition at risk.

Much has been made about the fact that these documents are photocopies and therefore cannot be trusted, but decades of investigative reporting have relied on just such copies of memos, documents and notes. In vetting these documents, we did not have ink to analyze, original signatures to compare, or paper to date. We did have context and corroboration and believed, as many journalists have before and after our story, that authenticity is not limited to original documents. Photocopies are often a basis for verified stories.

Before the Bush/Guard story aired, the newly found documents that supported it were thoroughly examined and corroborated. The contents of the new documents mesh perfectly, in large ways and small, with all previously known records. The new documents also were corroborated by retired Gen. Bobby Hodges, the late Col. Killian’s commander, who said that the documents showed Col. Killian’s true sentiments as well as his actions in the case. After the broadcast, Marian Carr Knox provided the same corroboration in her televised interview. Yet, despite the panel’s recognition of the heretofore unchalleneged integrity of my work in the past, the panel was quick to condemn me here on the basis of statements of people who told my associates and me very different versions than what they told the panel.

I cooperated fully with the review panel, provided them with more than 1,000 pages of reporting and background materials and answered each and every one of their questions completely and truthfully. To the extent that my answers differed from others’ statements, I can only emphasize my own honesty and integrity in attempting to reconstruct the details of the days leading up to the story’s airing.

It is noteworthy the panel did not conclude that these documents are false. Indeed, in the end, all that the panel did conclude was that there were many red flags that counseled against going to air quickly. I never had control of the timing of any airing of a 60 Minutes segment; that has always been a decision made by my superiors. Airing this story when it did, was also a decision made by my superiors, including Andrew Heyward. If there was a journalistic crime committed here, it was not by me. Those superiors also made the decision to give the White House little time to consider or respond to the Killian documents. Contrary to the conclusions of the panel, I vetted all aspects of the story with my editors. In fact, as I have always done with my editors, I told them everything.

I believe the segment presented to the American people facts they were free to accept or reject, and that as those facts were presented, there was nothing that was false or misleading. I am heartened to see that the panel found no political bias on my part, as indeed I have none. For 25 years, I have built a reputation as a fair, honest and thorough journalist. I have had 15 wonderful years at CBS News and four very bad months. I love and respect the people there and I wish them every good fortune.

In Mapes's universe, the earth is at the center of the celestial sphere and the planets move in epicycles around it. The authors of the Thornburgh Report doubt that the planets revolve around the earth, but are not ready to abandon the Church that commissioned them and place the sun at the center of the solar system; not for them the leap of Copernicus, or the bravado of Galileo. "And yet she lies!"

HINDROCKET adds: There is much to criticize in Ms. Mapes's self-serving statement, but the key paragraph is this one:

The contents of the new documents mesh perfectly, in large ways and small, with all previously known records.

This is absurd. The best part of the Thornburgh report is a lengthy section that dissects each of the fake documents and shows how it is contradicted by any number of facts in the public record. The report addresses and makes mincemeat of Mapes's claim that the documents "mesh perfectly" with the record.

The new documents also were corroborated by retired Gen. Bobby Hodges, the late Col. Killian’s commander, who said that the documents showed Col. Killian’s true sentiments as well as his actions in the case.

Another lie. Mapes never showed the documents to Hodges; she merely read portions of them to him over the telephone. Hodges says she misquoted him on the program, and as soon as he saw the documents, he pronounced them forgeries.

After the broadcast, Marian Carr Knox provided the same corroboration in her televised interview.

Another absurdity. Ms. Knox, a rabid Democrat and Bush-hater, said the documents were fakes that she did not type, and were not typed on any equipment owned by the Texas Air National Guard. (She added, for good measure, that Lt. Col. Killian never typed and had no "personal files.") Beyond that, she had no knowledge of the facts.

I assume Ms. Mapes hopes that someone will actually believe her statement, but that "someone" would have to be an individual with no knowledge of the case.

UPDATE: Dafydd ab Hugh writes:

Actually, I think you guys missed the funniest aspect of Mary Mapes's response to the Thornburgh report: her pretense that the only reason anyone has to doubt the authenticity of the Burkett documents is that -- they're photocopies! She spends a long paragraph patiently explaining, as though to a first-year student at Columbia J-School, that it's perfectly acceptable to use Xeroxes in a news story.

Yeah, Mary. That's the only problem with them. The fact that they're FORGERIES is just an uninteresting side issue.

That's true, of course. The funny thing is that the Thornburgh report adopts an approach rather similar to Mapes's on this point:

The Panel reaches no definitive conclusion as to whether the Killian documents are authentic. Given that the Killian documents are copies and not originals, that the author is deceased, that the Panel has not found any individual who knew about them when they were created, and that there is no clear chain of custody, it may never be possible for anyone to authenticate or discredit the documents.

This really makes no sense. The implication of the "photocopy" argument is that anyone can create a crude, obvious forgery and then baffle the experts by the simple expedient of copying it. This is silly. Likewise, the fact that no one purports to have seen the documents until more than twenty years after they were ostensibly created, and that no one knows where they came from, do not make it impossible to discredit the documents. They are indicia of forgery.

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