From WNYKR's in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield. And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

The investigation reported by Dan Rather on 60 Minutes 2 earlier this month was indicting to say the

least. Based on taped interviews, Pentagon records, and newly surfaced documents, CBS concluded

that President Bush had not only benefited from political connections to get into the Texas National Guard in the midst of the Vietnam War, but failed to meet his guard commitments and ignored direct orders to do so.

The smoking gun, copies of memos from Bush's commanding officer complaining of political pressure to go easy on the son of a Republican big shot.

Three decades later, this may or may not deserve to be a big campaign issue.

With a bloody war currently raging and vast social and economic problems to deal with,

maybe the events of 1972 don't much matter, but truth always matters.

And the CBS investigation, following similar revelations by the Boston Globe, the Associated Press, and U.S. News and World Report,

paint an unflattering portrait, a candidate for presidential re-election who, when his country first called,

abused political privilege and his comrades' trust, and has been hushing up the facts ever since.

And it took only one day for all hell to break loose, not putting the president on the defensive,

but rather, rather. The poster

child for liberal media bias had to deal with the very plausible accusation that the smoking

gun memos were fakes. Are those documents authentic? As experts consulted by CBS News continue to maintain,

or were they forgeries or recreations,

we will keep an open mind and we will continue to report

credible evidence and responsible points of view

as we try to answer the questions raised about the authenticity of the documents.

That was rather on Wednesday, only two days after

categorically vouching for the memos on the CBS evening news.

As of Friday, the authenticity question had yet to be definitively answered.

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