US: CBS News announced yesterday that an independent panel, headed by former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and retired Associated Press president Louis Boccardi, would investigate how CBS made serious charges against President Bush on discredited evidence, writes Conor O'Clery in New York
Also yesterday former Texas Air National Guard officer Bill Burkett, the source of the CBS "60 Minutes" story that caused the controversy, said he was taking legal action against the network for allegedly breaking a promise to honour his anonymity. On September 8th "60 Minutes" cited 30-year-old memos provided by Mr Burkett to prove that Mr Bush had disobeyed an order while in the Texas National Guard and that there had been family pressure to 'sugar-coat' his service record.
As evidence mounted that the documents had been printed on a modern computer rather than a 1970's typewriter, CBS News anchor Dan Rather apologised on air, saying the story was a mistake and "I'm sorry".
The scandal, which has dominated talk shows on rival channels, deepened this week when White House communications director Dan Bartlett accused CBS and a high-level adviser to the Kerry campaign of coordinating a personal attack on Mr Bush.
The basis for this was a telephone call between a CBS producer, Mary Mapes, and a senior Kerry official, Joe Lockhart, before the story aired, in which Ms Mapes said Mr Burkett wanted to talk to the campaign and gave Mr Lockhart his telephone number.
Mr Lockhart said he rang Mr Burkett and gave him some advice on how to respond to attacks on John Kerry, but that "the guard document issue never came up". The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie, demanded to know the nature of the conversation between campaign advisers for Senator Kerry and the person who provided the documents and they agreements they reached.
Mr Lockhart said the campaign had nothing to do with the documents and called the White House charge a "gutless political attack."
This week Mr Burkett admitted on air that he lied about obtaining the documents from another former National Guard member, and CBS now says it does not know the source.
In his threatened law suit, Mr Burkett says he was guaranteed anonymity and that he left it up to CBS to authenticate the memos.
Meanwhile in another embarrassment for the network, US regulators yesterday fined CBS a record $550,000 for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," when her breast was exposed at the Super Bowl last February.