Radio talk show host Don Imus is well-liked by the news media and Dan Rather, like many other media stars, is a regular guest. The following is a transcript of a July 19, 2001 telephone interview the day after Rather broke his boycott of news about missing intern Chandra Levy. Imus wondered why Rather decided not to report salacious news about a Democratic congressman when he had done so earlier for a Republican, Bob Packwood. When asked if he had reported the alcohol-related arrests of George W. Bush's daughters, Rather falsely claimed "we didn’t broadcast a word about it."

Imus also asked Rather to address charges made by a former CBS News colleague that he was liberally biased.

IMUS: Good morning, Mr. Rather.

RATHER: Good morning, I-Man. You gotta know, I’d rather walk through a furnace in a gasoline suit than be on this program this morning this week.

[Laughter]

IMUS: I was talking with Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and I said, "I’m gonna speak with Mr. Rather, what would you ask him?" And he said, "I’d ask him when he plans to get in touch with the rest of the world on this." So did you decide to get in touch last night, or what happened?

RATHER: Well, I’ll tell you frankly what happened, I-Man. You know, I work with some really good people. Jim Murphy , who’s the executive produce of the broadcast, and Andrew Heyward--you know, I’m gonna suck up to him here—who’s president of CBS News. And they came in and said, "Good God Almighty, Rather, you’re gonna be on Imus tomorrow?" I said, "Well, yeah. I tried to do it last week and couldn’t quite make it reach." And they said, "Listen, we gotta save you from yourself. We’re gonna run some of this stuff tonight." You know, you should feel good about it, I-Man. Because they told me, I don’t know, weeks ago, they said, "Listen, when you lose the I-Man, you’ve lost it, give it up." You know, it’s like Lyndon Johnson once said, if I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, we’ve lost the Vietnam War. But what happened, they got the willies, uh, they got the Buckwheats, uh, their knees wobbled and, um, um, we gave it up, because there was great fear that I would come on the I-Man this morning and defend something that was indefensible. So there you are.

IMUS: Well I, uh, uh, we thought about it and, not to belabor the point, but there was, on a serious note, there was a long period of time that the CBS weekend news was reporting it, your CBS Web site was, it said the New York Times, the Washington Post, even our friend Jim Lehrer. My point I guess is that this is a story hardly confined to the gossip-oriented media. And we did have the spectacle of a sitting congressman under siege, if nothing else by the media, and almost rendered inoperative in the ability to conduct his business--mixed in with a missing government intern. And it seemed to a lot of people that it did warrant, not to dwell on it like MSNBC and some of these other idiotic cable outlets do. But it seemed to me that it did--

RATHER: [Laughter]

IMUS: --warrant at least an acknowledgement that it was a story that people were interested in. And my question for you is why didn’t you think so?

RATHER: Well, uh, because the facts were so few, and they remain so few. And, uh, you know, I appreciate you touching on it and taking it seriously, but let’s, you know, I’m, I’m willing to discuss it, but I, uh, it’s important to me to keep in mind that [sigh]—you know, and I do have it very much in mind—you got a, you know, a missing person here. It’s a missing person case. But you said well why didn’t we run it? Well, first of all, the facts were so few. You’ll get rumors, speculation, gossip, innuendo, and uh, you know, we decided, I decided to exercise some restraint, you know. You know, maybe we should’ve done something with it, uh I don’t think so. Uh, I have no argument with these other journalists who’ve made other judgements, some of whom you’ve had on lambasting us while justifying their own, you know, fairly heavy play of the story. But, I, uh, in a [sigh], naturally I was disappointed in that. I understand they have to do that. It’s a competitive business and my only hope is that, you know, those who’ve really unloaded on us about this and the public will come to understand that it was and still is, you know, my judgment that, uh, um, I prefer to be extra careful in this kind of atmosphere. It’s a classic news feeding frenzy.

Now, you know, among the things that went into the thinking—and I understand that there are other views and the other views may be right. But what into the thinking was one, there’s no criminal case, no criminal case, a missing person case. It’s important for the family of the missing person. It is for all those families. There’s something like a hundred thousand missing persons cases around the country. But there’s no criminal case here. Not yet anyway. Uh, there’s no suspect. No suspect. Whatever one may think of the congressman and his behavior before and after the disappearance of the young woman, the police have said repeatedly that he’s not a suspect in any crime. Now, I know that, you know, there some people who are of the opinion that he should be charged with a crime, but my point is that he hasn’t been. Nor do the police indicate that they plan to charge him with anything. Now beyond that police haven’t even accused him of any crime, which is something police often do before they, before they finally charge it. They haven’t even accused him on any crime. You know, if, if, the congressman were accused, much less charged, he’d be entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt in a court of law. Now I think this last point can’t be emphasized too much. Maybe it went too strongly into our thinking, but it applies to every American citizen whether they’re a homeless person or a congressman. And I thought there was, and I still think there’s a real danger that an innocent person could be convicted in the court of public opinion on the basis of rumor, gossip, and speculation.

And I do want to point out that, uh, you know, Richard Jewell was this guy in Atlanta. He was accused by the police and a lot of people ran hard with that story. We, we, exercised some restraint with that. And, as a consequence, when other people got sued and settled privately out of court for a lot of money for painting Richard Jewell, it was still hard for him to get his reputation back.

IMUS [laughing]: Who would that be?

RATHER: Beg your pardon?

IMUS [laughing]: Who would that be that had to pay all that money?

RATHER: Well, just run down the list.

[Laughter in background]

RATHER: And, you know, you had this the Wen Ho Lee case, uh, a lot of people ran hard with that case. Again, he was accused but, you, I, I, I just wanted to, uh, exercise some restraint and, uh, I don’t, I don’t have any apology for what we’ve done. I don’t argue that, that we’ve [pause] done anything right. Maybe we should’ve run something. But I don’t think so and I don’t, don’t, apologize for it. Somebody, I think it was Kurtz, somebody said, well, were you trying to maybe buck the trend toward, uh, sensationalizing of news. Well, yeah. I am trying to buck that trend. You know, I want the CBS Evening News to be high-road hard news and, uh, if we’ve, uh, if we’ve underdone it, um, then hold us accountable. You know, we’ll take the public caning about it and, um, maybe we deserve it but I don’t think so.

But I will say that some of the people now criticizing us for our restraint seem to have conveniently forgotten these other cases. Now for anybody who says, well, you know, it’s a Democratic congressman and so they wanna give him a break. Uh, uh, I think that’s [clears throat]. I’m not going to complain about it. But, uh, that the, when the Bush daughters had their difficulty, we didn’t broadcast a word about it [sic] and a lot of people ran hard with it. And the point is that we, we, we wanna have a record, we’ve tried to build a record of some restraint on these kind of cases. And, uh, I felt fine when everybody else was running with, the, the story of the Bush daughters and we didn’t run the line. Some of the same people internally and externally were saying, well, you know, you’ve got your head in the sand. And, well, I’ll have my head in the sand. I want us to stand for something and we’ve tried to stand for something and, uh, it didn’t work and, uh, I feel badly because, uh, guys like, you know, Jimmy Murphy I work with and other people have been, been, criticized for, I guess you could say, my, my determination—I guess others say hard-headedness, uh, you know, about this thing.

IMUS: You’ve got a lot of people watching the CBS Evening News more than we’re watching it [laughs].

RATHER: Well, I don’t know about that.

IMUS: So some of us don’t--

[Cross-talk]

RATHER: They’ve, you know, kind of fled somewhere else.

IMUS: Did you--uh, we’re talking with Dan Rather of the CBS Evening News. Did you report that, uh, the which were unsubstantiated and I guess still are allegations of drug abuse by George W. Bush when he was running for the presidency?

RATHER: No.

IMUS: Uh, did you report, uh, on the Ba—Bob Packwood situation? Uh, but then although they were accusations of sexual harassment and, uh, the Washington Post first revealed the story, I believe, on November 22 or 23, 1992.

RATHER: I think we, uh, uh, I think we did something on the, uh—on the Packwood, uh, situation in ’92. Yeah.

IMUS: So what would be the difference between the Packwood situation and the Condit situation?

RATHER: Well, uh, I don’t know that there is a big difference. We learn. Uh, I think the Packwood thing was, was, uh, another feeding frenzy and unfortunately we took part in it, uh, in a way I wish we hadn’t. I do want to come back to the George Bush thing. I’d, you know, I’ll go back to our, uh, computer files and if I’ve misstated, uh, to you, I’ll come back to you and say we’ve misstated it. I don’t think we, I don’t think I ran anything on that. Uh, I know my feeling at the time was that when somebody brings you some proof, then we’ll run with it. Uh—

IMUS: Now in the, in the past few days, the Washington D.C. police have discussed publicly possible obstruction of justice charges against the Congressman Condit. That would’ve seemed to me to have warranted some mention.

RATHER: Well, uh, I don’t, I don’t have any, any argument with it. First of all, I’m not sure that they’ve stated it quite that way. But it’s one thing, uh, for the police, you know, to come out. I don’t think the accused, he would be subject to justice. I, uh, uh, um, again, I’d go back to the transcript somewhere

IMUS: Well, I think they were—

RATHER: I think what they would have done was say that they wish he’d been more forthcoming. But here’s the thing: if they, if, if they believe he’s obstructed justice, then charge him with that and when they, when they charge you with that, uh, we’d, we’d certainly consider that news but they haven’t done that. And let me say that I’d, you know, I worked the police beat for a long time and I have great respect for the police, but I don’t, if, if, if it’s true that we haven’t handled this situation in our reporting as well as we should be, uh, should, I don’t think the Washington police have been flawless in their handling of the thing. But, you know, where I come out with this, Imus, it, look, we’ve made mistakes in the past, uh, somebody wrote the best quote, "bone-headed." Well, of course it’s, this, it’s a matter of record I’m bone-headed. Said, well, [laughter] this is bizarre. Well, of course I’m bizarre. [laughter] You don’t want me to—we’ve known that for a long time. [laughter] They said well, it was, you know—

IMUS: What’s the frequency, Kenneth? [laughter]

RATHER: I don’t know, somebody, I don’t know who put it exact this way but it said, you know, it’s a dumb-ass thing he’s doing. Well, you, know, I’ve been a dumb-ass all my life. Why would anybody expect me to be any different about—

IMUS: Well, Charles just handed me a note and it was that the congressman’s apartment—I’m not I don’t want to belabor this and we’ll drop it after this ’cuz we, you’ve made your point—the congressman’s apartment was searched, the police, uh, said they wanted a lie detector test, they took a cheek swab, that, uh DNA sample, I mean that all would have seemed, that’s pretty, I mean, you can see where they do they do these polls and two out of three people in the country say they’re following this fairly closely. I don’t know if CBS did a poll or not but, uh—

RATHER: Well, we polled everything. We probably polled that as well.

IMUS: Yeah, so, so that would have seemed to have warranted—

RATHER: Well, you don’t want to go far with that, though. I mean you don’t want to go to far in that direction. Look, uh, Jerry Springer does a lot of things on television during the day that people are interested in, a lot of people watch and [unintelligible] we don’t run it on the Evening News. It gets down to news judgment. And, uh, I’m, I’m very comfortable with us being judged on the basis of our, our news judgment. For anybody who thinks we haven’t run enough on this, uh, I’d say again, uh, I’m not here to argue and I say to them, ‘Maybe you’re right,’--you know--I don’t think so. But, you know, what I want do, Imus, uh, one of the things I admire about you is that, you know, you’ll, you’ll take a stand. You say, "Look, I don’t care what the rest of the world is doing. This is what I feel is right—

IMUS: By the way, our ratings reflect that, too, by the way.

RATHER: Well, ours do to, by the way. [Laughter] But, you know, for example, this thing this morning. There’s nobody on radio who could put on this Dr. Michael Promson [ph.] the way you did this morning. That was terrific stuff. And, Bobby, this guy’s so smart, it makes your head hurt.

IMUS: He’s [unintelligible].

RATHER: It was the best explanation I’ve heard: radio, television, or print of this stem-cell controversy which is, you know, really important. But, you know, I don’t, I want the CBS Evening News to have a reputation that, you know, we’re high-road and hard news. I want us to have a reputation that we’re hard to herd and impossible to stampede. And I didn’t want to be stampeded into doing something here that, uh, I didn’t feel comfortable with, and I hope folks understand that.

IMUS: Now, Bernard Goldberg, your former colleague in the Wall Street Journal the other day said that you possess a liberal bias that you’re even unaware of. What did you think of that? Well, first of all, do you? And second of all, what did you think of his comment?

RATHER: Uh, do I what?

IMUS: Possess a liberal bias.

RATHER: No. I don’t think so, but other people have to judge that. And, you know, he’s entitled to his opinion and that’s, [sighs] uh, [sighs] you know, I’m, [sighs] I’m in favor of a strong defense, tight money, and clean water. I don’t know what that makes me. But whatever that, if that makes me, that’s what, you know, what I am. But when you’re on television every night people are going to take their shots.

IMUS: That’s kind of a surprise coming from a Bernard Goldberg, frankly between you and me. But—

RATHER: Well, uh, he’s entitled. Uh, he’s entitled. print_file('footer'); ?>