Mary's Land: Planet Of The Mapes

When Mary Mapes's new book, "Truth and Duty" came out last week, I pledged a full reading and a review for you. I'm going to modify that pledge somewhat after reading it and give you something less than a point-by-point critique. That's because I fully anticipated some new information to be presented by Mapes, something that would at least throw some serious shadows or some light on the Thornburgh-Boccardi report, if not a smoking gun. I thought there would be a strong journalistic reason to write about the book here.

Instead, what we get is Mary Mapes' justification of her own self-declared martyrdom and nothing more except, perhaps, a glimpse of how she sees the world. What we don't get is humility, new facts or any acceptance of responsibility for her role in a story that spawned an independent investigation and further tarnished the reputation of the media as whole, and CBS News in particular.

Stunningly, Mapes has taken the failings of the National Guard story and turned it into a kind of personal credo. She believed (and still does) the documents she used in the Guard story were valid and authentic but couldn't prove them to be (and still can't). She believed (and still does) that the documents did not need to be authenticated to be used on the air. She believed (and still does) that President Bush "walked out on his duty" but just couldn't quite nail it down (and still can't). In the book, she offers lots of her thoughts about Texas politics, corruption in the Air National Guard and good-old-boy networks but nothing in the way of hard, substantial proof.

And she approaches the book in the same way. She believes that she and her story were the victims of a coordinated political attack by Bush supporters. She even claims that Bush aide Karl Rove "was the mastermind of the Republican attack against the story." But again, there's no evidence brought forth-- just assertion, not even argument. Mapes claims a corporate executive harangued her about the damage her stories had done to Viacom's bottom line. Who? We don't know, she isn't telling. And we're told that the independent panel was a whitewash, engineered by nervous power brokers who feared the White House. Sexy claim, no actual proof.

Call it Mary's land. It's a world where Bobby Hodges, whom Mapes believed to have confirmed the contents in the documents, recanted his words because he was a supporter of President Bush's. At the same time, we're asked to believe Bill Burkett's opposition to Bush didn't compromise his reliability as a source for the documents. Mapes assigns and debunks motives as she sees fit, leaving us to rely solely on her judgment to decide who is a "truth-teller" and who's part of the "army of Bush-backers," supported by "different divisions, different weapons and different techniques" designed to "kill the messenger."

It's one where Mapes is eager to tout her role in stories like Abu Ghraib and awards she has won for the network but is quick to blame senior producers like Josh Howard and Betsy West for rushing the National Guard story to air. One in which CBS can spend "tens of thousands of dollars fighting" to keep Mapes' interview notes out of the hands of prosecutors in the James Byrd case then turn into a "corporate, political and public relations operation" in the wake of the Guard story.

In Mary's land, it's enough to believe. But as we learned from the National Guard story a year ago, that doesn't always fly in the real world.

You can read my take on Memogate and the Thornburgh-Boccardi report here. Beyond that, there's not much I can add or that needs to be said.