Truth or Consequences
Truth or Consequences
Eight years ago, Dan Rather broadcast an explosive report on the Air National Guard service of President George W. Bush. It was supposed to be the legendary newsman’s finest hour. Instead, it blew up in his face, tarnishing his career forever and casting a dark cloud of doubt and suspicion over his reporting—and that of every other journalist on the case. This month, as Rather returns with a new memoir, Joe Hagan finally gets to the bottom of the greatest untold story in modern Texas politics, with exclusive, never-before-seen details that shed fresh light on who was right, who was wrong, and what really happened.
by Joe Hagan
May 2012
(Page 5 of 6)
Case in point: a story that seemed to tie together all the questions hanging over Bush’s Guard service appeared in the controversial book Fortunate Son, by J. H. Hatfield, during the 2000 campaign. In the book, Hatfield made the incendiary claim that Bush had been arrested in 1972 for cocaine possession but had had his record expunged through his father’s political influence with a state judge in exchange for community service at PULL. (The book also claimed the arrest file was stowed in a safe in Harriet Miers’s law office in Dallas.)
This story did a lot of work: it explained why Bush stopped flying, why he lit out for Alabama, and why he ended up at PULL when he got back to Houston. Within days of the book’s publication, however, a newspaper discovered that Hatfield had served five years in prison for hiring a hit man to kill a former colleague. The publisher, St. Martin’s Press, quickly pulled the book from the shelves, and, under pressure to reveal his sources, Hatfield claimed that Karl Rove himself had confirmed the story during a fishing trip. Rove denied all such claims. A small publisher in New York later reissued the book, offering as evidence of Hatfield’s honesty some phone records showing a two-minute call to Rove’s home before the original publication.
A year later, Hatfield died of a drug overdose in an apparent suicide. Hatfield’s defenders came to believe he’d been set up by Rove as the dupe messenger who could be easily destroyed. And with that, the Bush Guard story officially took on the dark aspects of a conspiracy: a puzzle in which the missing pieces became the story.
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-5.php
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-6.php
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-4.php
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-3.php
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-2.php
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-1.php
Truth or Consequences
Eight years ago, Dan Rather broadcast an explosive report on the Air National Guard service of President George W. Bush. It was supposed to be the legendary newsman’s finest hour. Instead, it blew up in his face, tarnishing his career forever and casting a dark cloud of doubt and suspicion over his reporting—and that of every other journalist on the case. This month, as Rather returns with a new memoir, Joe Hagan finally gets to the bottom of the greatest untold story in modern Texas politics, with exclusive, never-before-seen details that shed fresh light on who was right, who was wrong, and what really happened.
by Joe Hagan
May 2012
(Page 5 of 6)
Case in point: a story that seemed to tie together all the questions hanging over Bush’s Guard service appeared in the controversial book Fortunate Son, by J. H. Hatfield, during the 2000 campaign. In the book, Hatfield made the incendiary claim that Bush had been arrested in 1972 for cocaine possession but had had his record expunged through his father’s political influence with a state judge in exchange for community service at PULL. (The book also claimed the arrest file was stowed in a safe in Harriet Miers’s law office in Dallas.)
This story did a lot of work: it explained why Bush stopped flying, why he lit out for Alabama, and why he ended up at PULL when he got back to Houston. Within days of the book’s publication, however, a newspaper discovered that Hatfield had served five years in prison for hiring a hit man to kill a former colleague. The publisher, St. Martin’s Press, quickly pulled the book from the shelves, and, under pressure to reveal his sources, Hatfield claimed that Karl Rove himself had confirmed the story during a fishing trip. Rove denied all such claims. A small publisher in New York later reissued the book, offering as evidence of Hatfield’s honesty some phone records showing a two-minute call to Rove’s home before the original publication.
A year later, Hatfield died of a drug overdose in an apparent suicide. Hatfield’s defenders came to believe he’d been set up by Rove as the dupe messenger who could be easily destroyed. And with that, the Bush Guard story officially took on the dark aspects of a conspiracy: a puzzle in which the missing pieces became the story.
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-5.php
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-6.php
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-4.php
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-3.php
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-2.php
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-05-01/feature-1.php