I am reminded daily of the Hell that was visited upon my family, myself, and Mary Mapes, Mike Smith and others as a political retribution for daring to elevate facts or potential consideration of facts on the issue of President Bush's own service record.

Let me first say, that none of this would have been possible, and certainly not marketably acceptable, had George Bush openly submitted a military record that met the basic requirements of having met the minimum requirements of service and performance. When one has a contract for six years of satisfactory service completion within a time of war, yet public records only reflect 48 months of credible service, it is a natural and professional act for individuals and the media to do their job and investigate.

And they did--all of them did. Believe me, I was contacted by far more than just CBS for their assistance, and might add that those who moved the quickest to knock down this story were the ones not selected to investigate, authenticate and air the facts on this story.

Second, it must be stated, that the documents shared with me and thus shared with CBS, including Mapes and Rather, were as Mary Mapes has claimed, "purported" to be authentic. I can assure you that within my preliminary discussions with Mapes, Rather and CBS executives, CBS insured me they would be vetted fully prior to air.

And I believe they were, contrary to the political counterattacks launched.

Foundationally, I would suggest that we all remember that this was a political election season within a re-election campaign that was framed about a war that was not going well; proof was becoming evident each day that we had been lied into the War in Iraq by President Bush and Vice President Cheney; and the political framework of the Bush Republican machine was active in defensive mode.

Once we establish that context, I agree that Mary Mapes has properly defined all statements within her Web article.

Next let me say, that with all of the political pressure coming from within the Republican campaign, all that was required was the same defense applied to most defense attorneys within high profile cases--reasonable doubt. It was a "glove doesn't fit" moment--an unproven claim or perception.

Nearly two years later, and by accident, I received a telephone call from a high-profile writer from the World News Daily in 2006. This person was actually calling for "Jugs" Burkett, who had been a key to the Republican campaign to discredit John Kerry and other's military records. Before the caller realized his mistake, he had already communicated that their target at the time was Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha; a fact that I relayed to Congressman Murtha's Chief of Staff.

This was the Brent Bozelle, World News Daily organization. And once I pointed out to the caller, who I was, he was quick to claim credit for having broken the story on what he called "exposing" the CBS documents as frauds.

There is far more--in fact a lifetime--of history to this case that I'll probably take to my grave with me; none of which is earth-shattering, but is mostly peculiar.

But there is plenty of documentation that in fact, WND and its connections to the Rush Limbaugh Program, Matt Drudge and others actually developed the real duping of the American public with their development of a reasonable doubt scenario.

No, the documents were never proven false, fraudulent or in any way forged. None of the claims of reasonable doubt were even substantiated, to my knowledge. But the active defense by the White House and the Republican political machine was rabid. For example, for the record, within four days of the date (September 20, 2004)Dan Rather threw me under the bus to save CBS and maybe himself, the US Attorney's Office out of Dallas filed a suit against my brother in Albuquerque (jurisdiction??) on IRS tax matters. Mary Mapes and her fellow journalists were thrown under the bus subsequently, after my sacrifice simply wasn't enough to take the heat off--heat mostly generated at the Summer Redstone, Leslie Moonves, Andrew Heyward levels of VIACOM/CBS. And Dan Rather was finally thrown under the bus months later in a final attempt to kill the issue.

The "Documents" story was an aberration that is evidence of a third rail within journalism. By producing it, the story touched a sitting President's own character at a time of the most severe scrutiny in history to determine whether he had in fact lied America into war. Once there is proof of previous consequential lies, it isn't such a stretch for the veracity test of the motivation for a War that has now killed or mamed so many--both American and Iraqi.

Lest we forget, this was the lead story among several others that followed that exposed everything from the machinations and manipulations of the Vice President through Scooter Libby and others to keep a rope on the media who had been previously a part of the big lie into War.

Mary's web article primarily focuses on the journalistic aspects of those still trying to cultivate a version of mistruth, not unlike those told by Bush to get us into War. In fact, they are not fact, but propaganda.

Within the deepest hours of the CBS "documents story," I told Mary and others that "the truth does not change; it remains the same" . . .regardless of the spin.

There are those that wish to place a flag in the ground and call the documents story a landmark and use it as an example of what went wrong and what not to do within both journalism and politics. Obscured within that case are those that try to force this revision of facts; the political network, the corporate network and the media network. In each case, the landmark is based upon their own motivation and need; not the facts.

Factually, however, Mary believes the landmark is a statement to the sad affairs of responsible journalism. I would add to Mary's remarks that it is also an accurate reflection of the infusion of "Entertainment Tonight" and "elite society" on the profession.

But, in my view and I believe history's view, if accurately reflected, the CBS documents story was much the same stumbling event and impact as the Pentagon Papers were within the unraveling of the big lie in the days of Richard Nixon. But this time far more costly than a Nixon unravelling; this time about a War that should have never been waged and the loss of reality and human conscience within the mind of a President who was willing to say anything to take us to War. It was George W. Bush 101 - the end justifies the means.

"So???". [As Dick Cheney has smugly responded on camera]

This is about basic faith and trust by the electorate within its leadership; and about the tenets of National Security and whether this nation's mighty Armies will be used for the nation's defense, or as political folly.

LTC Bill Burkett (Ret)

Baird, Texas

Dear Mary:

I may be a minority, but I think you were intentionally "set up" as the saying goes.

As a longtime consumer of CBS, since the sixties, I have watched them assassinate people who didn't toe the corporate logo line and I have watched CBS go from a credible news organization to a rag that anyone can pick at the super market news stand.

Witness the lack of on site coverage of the war in Iraq. We have leveled cities destroyed priceless artifacts, killed countless thousands, displaced millions, reduced the population to hopelessness and never a peep. Even their premiere flagship "60 Minutes" seems to be tainted by commercial interests.

The lines also seem to be blurring between ABC, NBC CNN AND EVEN C-SPAN, at times. I'm intentionally leaving out PBS, but there are worrying sings there also. I can't help but see the picture of the contorted face of a thirteen-year-old boy in grief who had just seen his parents killed by an American Army tank that had leveled his home. The problem is that the picture was in a French newspaper, it was also in a British newspaper, it was also in a German news paper. I never saw it in the American newspapers.

Have we become the modern version of Germany of the thirties, A very bad imitation of the Roman empire during its last century?

James Pinette

Caribou, Maine

Ms. Mapes' surgical deconstruction of this country's corporate media groupthink, especially how it's been co-opted--along with pre-cooked intelligence, overwhelming military power, astronomical deficit funding and "The Big Lie"--into the planned creation of the faith-based "Bush Reality", is a brilliant argument for the resurgence of the enlightened, analytical mind over what Bush has called "instinct" (or, in private, his personal pipeline to God).

What she may misconstrue are the darker motives of the owners of our so-called mainstream media: General Electric, Disney, Viacom, Time-Warner, The News Corp, The New York Times Company, and their myriad subsidiaries and affiliates. The thousands of journalists who toil inside these behemoths may in many individual cases be driven by authentic commitment to truth and fact-based reporting that appears to drive Ms. Mapes, and guys like Dan Rather and Lowell Bergman and a relative handful of both high profile and faceless colleagues, in the spirit of the iconic Ed Murrow or William L. Shirer.

However, there are still the editors and publishers, and of course the OWNERS atop the chain of command, who ultimately dictate, if not the raw content(debatable), then the slant, the tone, the style and the consensus of what's newsworthy and what's not. What's deemed not "newsworthy" is simply under-reported by the MSM, or not reported at all, no matter its true import or impact on the course of world events or people's lives.

It's not simply about a profession that given its druthers would be openly challenging broader government duplicity, let alone the Bush administration's documented incompetence, through old-school investigative muckraking, the likes of which we see and read less and less in the current mediasphere. It's about a profession that over time, with rare exceptions, has mutated into a mass communication and propaganda arm of the very authority it's supposed to be monitoring and holding to account. For every Mary Mapes, there's a Wolf Blitzer or a Larry King or an Anderson Cooper.

I don't believe there's any going back.

Stewart Braunsteinst
www.stonecutter.blogspot.com

Deerfield Beach, Florida