Internet Must FREE "60 MINUTES NIGER REPORT" which is Held Hostage!

How can we do this? Can we request copies from CBS? Flood them with e-mails asking to "FREE 60 MINUTES NIGER REPORT."

If you haven't read the Salon Article on this PLEASE get the "Free Day Pass." It won't take but a minute to read the ad and then you won't be sorry you did.

The article walks you through the hour special with Ed Bradley and you will know that this report is something Every American needs to see before they vote.

The very fact that CBS has held the report citing it might have an effect on the election is the evidence that it must be seen. Would we have wanted Richard Nixon to be re-elected knowing that he would have to resign in his second term because complicity in Watergate criminality would lead to his Impeachment?

Does America need to go through another Presidential Impeachment because our people don't know that we were lied to about Invasion of Iraq which has changed the course of our foreign policy by forcing us to accept the "Bush Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike?

Why should information as crucial as the health of our Democracy be held hostage? Are our Senators and Congresspeople so afraid that this will affect their own elections? Are there other influencial groups who are pressuring CBS to withold this information for their own gain?

We must do something, before it's too late. What can we do?

Here is just one snip from this outstanding article in Salon from the 60 Minutes Report held hostage.

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/29/cbs_wmd/index2.html

Burba, the Italian journalist, for the first time tells how anxious she felt when she received the Niger documents, knowing they could change the course of history, and her dismay that after she personally had investigated and debunked them, that Bush could mention them again in his State of the Union address.

The former foreign minister of Niger, Allele Habibou, whose signature was on one of the forged documents, is shown next in footage from a German documentary. Wearing traditional African dress, he gesticulates dismissively. "I only found out about this when my grandchildren found this on the Internet. I was shocked," he says. The document was dated 2000, but by then Habibou had been out of the government for 11 years.

Bradley then interviews an expert from the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, who tells him laughingly that it took only about two hours of Google searches for his staff to figure out the documents were fraudulent.

Then-CIA director George Tenet warns the White House not to let Bush use the discredited Niger information in his speeches. "That might have been the end of it, but it wasn't," Bradley says. Cut to Bush delivering the fateful 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/29/cbs_wmd/index2.html

With playing "gotcha!" and "me too!" on a 30 year old story that nobody but those of us already decided ont he left cared about, then this story would have gotten play instead.

"We need to hit Bush on AWOL! We need to hit Bush on AWOL!!"

Yeah, great. Now that issue is dead and the Niger story is shelved.

Yes, I know it SHOULDN'T be an either/or type thing but there's this little thing called reality that intervenes every now and again.

Sorry for the rant. I'm just bitter that we allowed ourselves to get caught up in that game and on these two issues, lost our footing.

over the AWOL/TANG story. It was out of our hands. Instead we tried to support CBS for airing the story.

Whatever happened with that it was orchestrated and had nothing to do with whether we were focused on it here on DU or not. I like to think that we tried to show how the documents could have been authentic rather than that we somehow enabled anything.

It was a done deal somewhere in the bowels of CBS that there were conflicting groups there. The PRIZE was the Niger Story the TANG story was pushed to fail so that the result would be the Niger story getting spiked.

At least that's how it looks to me. I'm angry over it, too...but it was out of our hands...:shrug:

Documentary?

:kick:

Cough up 30 buck. It's the best money you'll spend all year.

Sy Hersh is trying to get the story out in his book.

what's said in this report. The Salon article shows how good a report it was that they canned. Folks who won't read Hersh or anything else about Niger...would understand the visuals of 60 minutes. They have alot of viewers. It should be seen.

I think it's a travesty that CBS is so gun-shy now. And I tend to agree with the post above that alot of time and energy was wasted talking about chim's service record instead of hammering stories like this.

if I sounded harsh...

We're all passionate which is why DU ROCKS!!!!!!!!


:smoke:

Why has no other news organization created a similar expose with this material and these interviews?

Are these interview subjects refusing to speak to the rest of the media? Does CBS have exclusive right to this subject?

still some forces at work in a death struggle. Right now it seems the dark side is winning...I have to hope that there are other tricks up the sleeve on our side we don't know about.

FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism

http://www.fair.org/activism/cbs-niger.html

ACTION ALERT:
60 Minutes: Shelving a Story to Boost Bush?
CBS puts Niger expose on hold as boss endorses Republicans

September 28, 2004

In an outrageous politicization of journalism, CBS announced it would not
air a report on forged documents that the Bush administration used to sell
the Iraq war until after the November 2 election (New York Times,
9/25/04). A network spokesperson issued a statement declaring, "We now
believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the
presidential election."

The 60 Minutes segment was ready to air on September 8, but was bumped in
favor of the now infamous report that relied on supposed National Guard
memos whose authenticity CBS now says it cannot confirm. The furor over
the Guard memos has created a situation where CBS executives say "the
network can now not credibly air a report questioning how the Bush
administration could have gotten taken in by phony documents" (Newsweek
online, 9/22/04).

Of course, what's really inappropriate here is CBS allowing its PR
problems to suppress a news report on an important issue until after it no
longer matters. The shelved 60 Minutes story deals with the origins of
documents purportedly showing that Iraq under Saddam Hussein tried to
obtain uranium from Niger-- documents that turned out to be forgeries.
The story, according to the Newsweek online report, asks "tough questions
about how the White House came to embrace the fraudulent documents and why
administration officials chose to include a 16-word reference to the
questionable uranium purchase in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union
speech."

Though such questions are clearly relevant to a presidential campaign that
largely revolves around Bush's decision to invade Iraq, CBS intends to
keep the answers to itself until the election has passed. Could there be
more than the embarrassment over the Guard story behind this decision?

Sumner Redstone, CEO of CBS's parent company Viacom, made an unusual
political statement at a gathering of corporate leaders in Hong Kong
(Asian Wall Street Journal, 9/24/04):

"I don't want to denigrate Kerry... but from a Viacom standpoint, the
election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the
Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in,
deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people.... But from a
Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration
is better for our company."

Redstone repeated these sentiments in an interview with Time (10/4/04):

"There has been comment upon my contribution to Democrats like Senator
Kerry. Senator Kerry is a good man. I've known him for many years. But
it happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe
that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a
Democratic one."

According to a write-up by Forbes (9/23/04)-- the sponsor of the
conference where Redstone issued his endorsement of Bush-- the CEO
asserted that "he never gets involved in any aspects of the network's news
coverage." But that claim, hard to believe when made by any media
industry chief executive, seems particularly dubious given Forbes' report
that "Redstone said he has been talking daily to top CBS officials and to
Viacom board members about the controversy" over the Guard memos.

It is journalistically indefensible for CBS to withhold a story due to
embarrassment incurred by another, unrelated piece. It is particularly
unacceptable when the shelving of a story benefits a candidate that CBS's
boss has just publicly endorsed. If CBS wants to restore trust in its
news judgment, it can begin by applying journalistic standards, not
political calculations, to the decision on when to air its report on the
origin of the forged Niger documents.


ACTION: Please contact 60 Minutes and urge them to stand up for
journalistic principle by airing the report on the Niger forgeries. And
call Viacom and CBS executives and tell them to allow 60 Minutes to report
the news without political interference.


CONTACT:
CBS
60 Minutes
524 West 57th St.
New York, NY 10019
mailto:60m@cbsnews.com

Phone: (212) 975-3247

Sumner Redstone, Chairman, Viacom
(212) 258-6000

Les Moonves, Chairman of CBS; co-President & co-CEO, Viacom
(323) 575-2345


As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if
you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your
correspondence.

Rather twice supporting him for TANG story. Felt I shouldn't send them something else because it would look like "spam" from the same individual.

If enough of us here support the "FAIR" action maybe we can FREE 60 MINUTES! I might ask Skinner if he would do a Koppel type "DAY XX of 6- Minutes Held Hostage" on the front page here of DU....

FAIR alert, I guess I'll post it separately.

Yes, I called and wrote CBS a number of times recently, but I just called again.

so more might see it? And thanks for posting!

may be the key to winning the November election. This case is part of the Plame and the neocon/Israeli front spy scandal. It has the potential to reach the mainstream, middle-of-the-road voters who will decide the election. It shows the corruption of the Bush administration in a clear-cut manner.

I urge people to do more than e-mail CBS: contact every news source that you know of. Letters to local newspapers, phone calls to news stations, e-mails to the national medias.

on DU Front Page with a countdown of "Niger Story Held Hostage." I asked him if Bloggers might do it in cooperation.

This needs to get out...before the election.

Here's my e-mail...for those who need somewhere to start:

Dear 60 Minutes,

It's very upsetting as a viewer who was aware of the "Forged Documents" way back, to know that the rest of the American People won't be able to view it before the Election.

What if Americans had known the seriousness of "Watergate" break in before they voted Richard Nixon in for a second term. Wouldn't our country have been spared much pain having to see a President resign because of impending Impeachment.

Don't the American people deserve to know a President and his Cabinet lied to the American people to lead them into Invading another country against the wishes of the UN, many of our most trusted allies and a portion of the American people who already knew that the information wasn't holding up that they had given us?

The actions of this administration in leading to hysteria in this country that Saddam Hussein was involved with BinLaden and planning to attack us when we were so vulnerable after 9/11 is shocking!

Americans need to see this information contained in the 60 Minutes Feature which is already available in Salon.org and on many other sites on the Internet. The news is out there...please free this report so that ALL of us can be told before we make up our minds whom to vote for on November 2nd.

It's your duty as fellow Americans to do this.

Sincerely,

After they were caught using questionable documents, they should jump at the chance to show that bush did the same.

Are there any protections provided to the public from influences not in the national interests?

:kick: