Mary Mapes

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Mary Mapes (born c. 1956) is an American journalist and former television news producer. She was a Peabody Award-winning producer for the American television show 60 Minutes (on the CBS network), from which she was fired for her part in the Killian documents scandal.

Early life

Mapes grew up with four sisters in Burlington, Washington where her family had lived for generations. She graduated from Burlington-Edison High School in 1974 and studied communications and political science at the University of Washington. In the 1980s she worked at the KIRO-TV in Seattle. There she also met her husband Mark Wrolstad when she was a producer and he was a reporter. They married in 1987.

Work at CBS

She went to work for CBS News in Dallas in 1989 and joined 60 Minutes Wednesday in 1999, working exclusively as a producer assigned to Dan Rather.

At 60 Minutes Wednesday, Mapes produced the story that announced the US military's investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the story that exposed Strom Thurmond's unacknowledged bi-racial daughter, Essie Mae Washington, winning a Peabody Award in 2005 for the former.

2004 election, Killian documents controversy

Main article: Killian documents controversy

Mary Mapes produced a segment for 60 Minutes Wednesday that aired criticism of President George W. Bush's military service, supported by documents purportedly from the files of Bush's commanding officer, the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B Killian. Those documents had been delivered to CBS from Bill Burkett, who was a retired Lt. Colonel with the Texas Army National Guard. During the segment, Dan Rather asserted that the documents had been authenticated by document experts, but ultimately, CBS could neither confirm nor definitively refute their authenticity. Morever, CBS did not have any original documents, only faxed copies, as Burnett claimed to have burned the originals.

After the report was aired, it was immediately the subject of harsh criticism, primarily from the blogosphere, primarily due to the allegation that some of the documents referenced in the report were forgeries. As a result of the controversy over the use of the documents, CBS ordered an independent internal investigation. The panel in charge of investigation was composed of former governor of Pennsylvania and United States Attorney General, Dick Thornburgh and retired president and chief executive officer and former executive editor of the Associated Press, Louis Boccardi. The panel investigated the memo scandal, subsequently dubbed "Memogate" or "Rathergate." Following the investigation, Mapes and others involved were accused of lapses in judgement and were fired.

Among the allegations in the 60 Minutes report were that Bush, the son of an ambassador, Congressman and future President, had received preferential treatment in passing over hundreds of applicants to enlist in the Texas Air National Guard in order to avoid being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam after he had graduated from Yale in 1968. Then-Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes had admitted making phone calls to get Bush into the Guard, as he claimed to have done for the children of several other influential Texans.

The Thornburgh/Boccardi report, however, stated that some of Bush's former instructors or colleagues had told Mapes that Bush had told them that he wanted to go to Vietnam, but that he could not go because there were others ahead of him with more seniority. Mapes was criticized for failing to air them in the 60 Minutes Report to balance the claim that Bush had enlisted in the Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam.

Mapes was also faulted for calling Joe Lockhart, a senior official in the John Kerry campaign, prior to the airing of the piece, and offering to put her source, Bill Burkett, in touch with him. The panel called Mapes’ action a "clear conflict of interest that created the appearance of political bias." Mapes was terminated by CBS on January 10, 2005. Also asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy.

Mapes herself continues to deny any wrongdoing. She said that the authenticity of the documents had been corroborated by an unnamed key source and that journalists often have to rely on photo-copied documents as the basis for verifying a story. Further, Burkett admitted lying to Mapes and the 60 Minutes team regarding the source of the documents. Further, she suggested that she would have preferred to do more work on the story, but that her superiors, including CBS News president Andrew Heyward, pushed for the story to be aired on September 8. Mapes later claimed that she was the victim of a right-wing Internet smear campaign, and is dismissive of opinions that the Killian Documents are forgeries.

Karl Rove, assistant to President George W. Bush, called Mapes' work "the gift that keeps on giving" due to the story's lurid foundations and the apparent boost it gave to President Bush during his reelection campaign.

2005 book publication

In 2005, Mapes published a book, Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power, in which she defends her record. Her view is that she was sacrificed when CBS caved in, without a proper investigation, to right-wing attacks as reported by its competitors without due diligence.

External links

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