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Former CBS News employee and "insider" Bernard Goldberg breathlessly asserted on the O'Reilly Factor on Tuesday night that a source had given him a "Deep Throat type of tip" about the old Rathergate scandal, in which then-CBS Evening News anchorman Dan Rather had used forged documents to smear President George W. Bush before the 2004 election. Goldberg said the information was so important that he was putting it immediately on his website. Sure enough, he posted it at 7:58 p.m. EDT, just before he appeared on the O'Reilly show.

Goldberg claimed that 99.9 percent of the people, including O'Reilly, didn't know anything about this "lost crucial fact." O'Reilly, playing along, wanted Goldberg, a Fox News contributor, to give us his "exclusive."

Sorry Bernie. Your "scoop" is old news. It's no "exclusive." Your Deep Throat is pulling your leg. AIM had the story four years and seven months ago and everyone knows it.

This fiasco is an extreme embarrassment for Goldberg, who used to be known for incisive critiques of liberal media bias.

The blockbuster information, Goldberg energetically told O'Reilly, had been plucked out of the report of the panel which investigated the scandal. It was on page 130, Goldberg explained, emphasizing again that he had somehow been given inside information from an anonymous source. The bombshell was that the report found that Bush had volunteered for service in Vietnam, contrary to what CBS News reported.

An obvious question is why Goldberg, flashing pages from the report, had never read it until now. We had done so.

Let's go to the AIM archives, available on the AIM home page under "Search the AIM site." Here's the release (web site) we issued on January 10, 2005. It said: "Accuracy in Media said today that the newly released report on how CBS News handled the Bush National Guard story contains a bombshell that further undermines the credibility of CBS News anchorman Dan Rather and his close collaborator and associate, producer Mary Mapes. The report reveals on page 130 that Mapes, one of those fired because of the scandal, had documented information in her possession before the controversial September 8 broadcast that George W. Bush, while in the Texas Air National Guard, 'did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots.' This information is critical because Dan Rather, in the broadcast, insinuated that Bush was among the 'many well-connected young men [who tried to] pull strings and avoid service in Vietnam.'"

Notice how we emphasized the information had been on page 130.

I was quoted in the release as saying, "Mapes, who was very close to Rather and enjoyed his confidence, had the evidence exonerating Bush of this malicious charge. The report shows that there were multiple credible sources to prove that Bush did not try to avoid Vietnam by going into the National Guard and that he was in fact willing to go to Vietnam as a pilot. However, CBS News deliberately kept this information from its viewers and conveyed an opposite impression because Rather, Mapes & Company were trying to depict Bush as a coward who, as Commander-in-Chief, was sending American soldiers to their deaths in Iraq."

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