I strongly feel it is time and long overdue to repeal the "lie and

get out of jail free" card for the press. I strongly have supported

a free press as part of our sacred democracy but we have created a monster

who has lied to the American people over and over and used this "card" to

proudly push their own liberal agenda again and again. When questioned about

whether their print is true they then proudly wave their "I am protecting

my sources" card and continue to lie to the American people.

America has taken this far too long. It has gotten to the point that we

just expect to get the bias liberal slant on all the news and go on. This

must stop and the way to stop it is to hold them totally liable and accountable

for what they print. Then and only then will we start getting factual and

reliable news.

If you or I print something in the media that is untrue, we are held liable

for what we say. The press is not. They need to be held by the same rules

that you and I are. No more double standards.

CBS and Dan rather have done this before; the only guarantee is that Dan

is ultra-liberal and hates Bush.

September 15, 2004, 5:52 a.m.

The First Rathergate

The CBS anchor's precarious relationship with the truth

Critics are calling the media scandal over the Jerry Killian forgeries "Rathergate." But

to thousands of Vietnam veterans, the real Rathergate took place 16 years

ago when Dan Rather successfully foisted a fraud onto the American people.

Then, unlike now, there was no blogosphere to expose him.

On June 2, 1988, CBS aired an hour-long special titled "CBS Reports:

The Wall Within," which CBS trumpeted as the "rebirth of the TV

documentary." It purported to tell the true story of Vietnam through

the eyes of six of the men who fought there. And what terrible stories they

had to tell.

"I think I was one of the highest trained, underpaid, eighteen-cent-an-hour

assassins ever put together by a team of people who knew exactly what they

were looking for," said Steve Southards, a Navy SEAL who told Rather

he had escaped society to live in the forests of Washington State. Under

Rather's gentle coaxing, Southards described slaughtering Vietnamese civilians,

making his work appear to be that of the North Vietnamese.

"You're telling me that you went into the village, killed people, burned

part of the village, then made it appear that the other side had done this?" Rather

asked.

"Yeah," Steve replied. "It was kill VC, and I was good at

what I did."

Steve arrived home "in a straitjacket, addicted to alcohol and drugs" knowing

that "combat had made him different," Rather intoned. "He

asked for help; that's unusual, many vets don't. They hold back until they

explode."

Rather then moved on to suicidal veteran named George Grule, who was stationed

on the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga off the coast of Vietnam during a secret

mission. Grule described the horror of watching a friend walk into the spinning

propeller of a plane, which chopped him to pieces and sprayed Grule with

his blood. The memory of this trauma left Grule, like Steve, unable to function

in normal society.

Neither could Mikal Rice, who broke down as he described a grenade attack

at Cam Ranh Bay, which blew in half the body of a buddy, "Sergeant Call." "He

died in my arms," Rice tearfully recalled. Rice described how the sound

of thunder and cars backfiring would regularly trigger his terrible memories.

Most horrific of all were the memories of Terry Bradley, a "fighting

sergeant" who told Rather he had skinned alive 50 Vietnamese men, women,

and children in one hour and stacked their bodies in piles. "Could you

do this for one hour of your life, you stack up every way a body could be

mangled, up into a body, an arm, a tit, an eyeball ... Imagine us over there

for a year and doing it intensely," Bradley said.

"That is sick, you've got to be angry about it," Rather replied.

"I'm suicidal about it," Bradley responded.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, drug abuse, alcoholism, joblessness, homelessness,

suicidal thoughts: These tattered warriors suffered from them all.

The "Wall Within" was hailed by critics who, like the Washington

Post's Tom Shales, gushed that the documentary was "extraordinarily

powerful." There was just one problem:�Almost none of it was true.

The truth was uncovered by B.G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran and author of "Stolen

Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History

(with Glenna Whitley)." Burkett discovered that only one of the vets

had actually served in combat. Steve Southards, who'd claimed to be a 16-year-old

Navy SEAL assassin, had actually served as an equipment repairman stationed

far from combat. Later transferred to Subic Bay in the Philippines, Steve

spent most of his time in the brig for repeatedly going AWOL. And George

Gruel, who claimed he was traumatized by the sight of his friend being chopped

to pieces by a propeller? Navy records reveal that a propeller accident did

take place on the Ticonderoga when Gruel was aboard - but that he wasn't

around when it happened. During Gruel's tour, the ship had been converted

to an antisubmarine warfare carrier which operated, not on "secret mission" along

the Vietnam coast, but on training missions off the California coastline.

Nevertheless, Burkett notes, Gruel receives $1,952 a month from the Veterans

Administration for "psychological trauma" related to an event he

only heard about.

Mikal Rice - the anguished vet who claimed to have cradled his dying buddy

in his arms - actually spent his tour as a guard with an MP company at Cam

Ranh Bay. He never saw combat. Neither did Terry Bradley, who was not the "fighting

sergeant" he'd claimed to be. Instead, military records reveal he served

as an ammo handler in the 25th Infantry Division and spent nearly a year

in the stockade for being AWOL. That's good news for the hundreds of Vietnamese

civilians Bradley claimed to have slaughtered. But it doesn't say much for

Dan Rather's credibility.

As Burkett notes, the records of all of these vets were easily checkable

through "Freedom of Information Act" requests of their military

records - something Rather and his producers simply didn't bother to do.

They accepted at face value the lurid tales of atrocities committed in Vietnam

and the stories of criminal behavior, drug addiction, and despair at home.

Perhaps that's because this is what they wanted to believe.

Says Burkett: "'The Wall Within' precisely fit what Americans have

grown to believe about the Vietnam War and its veterans: They routinely committed

war crimes. They came home from an immoral war traumatized, vilified, then

pitied. Jobless, homeless, addicted, suicidal, they remain afflicted by inner

conflicts, stranded on the fringes of society."

Burkett, who did check the records of the vets Rather interviewed, shared

his discoveries with CBS. So did Thomas Turnage, then administrator of the

Veterans Administration, who was appalled by Rather's use of bogus statistics

on the rates of suicide, homelessness, and mental illness among Vietnam veterans

- statistics that can also be easily checked. Rather initially refused to

comment, and CBS spokeswoman Kim Akhtar said, "The producers stand behind

their story. They had enough proof of who they are."

For his part, CBS president Howard Stringer defended the network with irrelevancies. "Your

criticisms were not shared by a vast majority of our viewers," he sniffed,

adding that "CBS News and its affiliates received acclaim from most

quarters ... In sum, this was a broadcast of which we at CBS News and I personally

am proud. There are no apologies to make."

Sarah Lee Pilley, who ran a restaurant in Colville, Washington, where the

CBS crew dined while filming "The Wall Within," would not agree.

The wife of a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who saw combat in Vietnam,

Pilley said she "got the distinct feeling that CBS had a story they

had decided on before they left New York." After interviewing 87 Vietnam

veterans, CBS chose the "four or five saddest cases to put on the film," Pilley

said. "The factual part of it didn't seem to matter as long as they

captured the high drama and emotion that these few individuals offered. We

felt all along that CBS committed tremendous exploitation of some very sick

individuals."

Why would Dan Rather do such a thing? Partly because the stories of deranged,

trip-wire vets is much more dramatic than the true story: that most Vietnam

veterans came home to live normal, productive, happy lives.

Second, Rather apparently wanted the story of whacked-out Vietnam veterans

to be true - just as he now wants the Jerry Killian story to be true.

Or maybe - despite a preponderance of the evidence - he considered the sources

of these tales of Vietnam atrocities "unimpeachable." As angry

Vietnam veterans began calling CBS to complain about the factual inaccuracies

of "The Wall Within," Perry Wolff, the executive producer who wrote

the documentary, claimed that "No one has attacked us on the facts."

Despite the growing evidence that he'd been had, Rather also continued to

defend the documentary - which is now part of CBS's video history series

on the Vietnam War.

Perhaps Vietnam veterans ought to take a page out of the book of the "Swift

Boat Veterans for Truth" and air television ads exposing Rather's deceits

- something along the lines of: "Dan Rather lied about his Vietnam documentary.

I know. I was there. I saw what happened. When the chips were down, you could

not count on Dan Rather."

Certainly, we cannot count on him for the truth. During a 1993 speech to

the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Rather criticized his

colleagues for competing with entertainment shows for "dead bodies,

mayhem, and lurid tales."We should all be ashamed of what we have and

have not done, measured against what we could do," Rather said.

Thousands of Vietnam veterans - not to mention the Bush campaign - would

agree."

(Anne Morse is a writer living in Maryland.)

And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

(Dr. Knox Herndon is the pastor of His House Community Church (SBC). Rev.

Greg Mausz is Sr. Assoc. Dr. Lydia Herndon is the Sunday School superintendent,

Bible study coordinator and teacher. The church is on Ga. Highway 85 South

near Senoia, a mile south of Ga. Highway 16, on the right just past the fire

station. Visitors welcome. Church office and prayer line 770-719-2365. E-mail

address is [email protected]. Web address is www.hishousecommunitychurch.com.

Also visit www.ddaytravelingmuseum.com.)