According to the Newsweek report, the "60 Minutes" segment was to have detailed how the administration relied on false documents when it said Iraq had tried to buy a lightly processed form of uranium, known as yellowcake, from Niger. The administration later acknowledged that the information was incorrect and that the documents were most likely fake.

The Newsweek article said the segment was to have included the first on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who was given the fake documents and who provided them to a United States Embassy for verification. The documents were sent to Washington, where some officials embraced them as firm evidence that Iraq was aggressively trying to make nuclear weapons.

The most remarkable fact about American soldiers and civilians in the New Jersey campaign is that they did all of these things at the same time. In a desperate struggle they found a way to defeat a formidable enemy, not merely once at Trenton but many times in twelve weeks of continued combat. They reversed the momentum of the war. They improvised a new way of war that grew into an American tradition. And they chose a policy of humanity that aligned the conduct of the war with the values of the Revolution.

They set a high example, and we have much to learn from them. Much recent historical writing has served us ill in that respect. In the late twentieth century, too many scholars tried to make the American past into a record of crime and folly. Too many writers have told us that we are captives of our darker selves and helpless victims of our history. It isn't so, and never was. The story of Washington's Crossing tells us that Americans in an earlier generation were capable of acting in a higher spirit -- and so are we.

The campaign has backed off its claim that Goolsbee's study tells us anything about benefit levels under a Bush-style reform. They have also gotten rid of all the language that claims that today's retirees would see their benefits cut — since there's no way they can make that claim honestly. Instead, they are using somewhat ambiguous language that implies the claim. When the campaign says that he will protect seniors from benefit cuts, it's up to the reader to understand that it is referring to the seniors of future decades, not to today's seniors.

What are the Kerry campaign's assumptions? The campaign analyzes one of the three plans that the president's Social Security commission put forward and calls it the president's plan. It relies on a Congressional Budget Office study that found that this plan would involve benefit cuts if individual investors got no higher rate of return than a Treasury bond. That's sort of a no-brainer. If you're trying to eliminate the entire long-term deficit of Social Security and not to raise taxes and there are no investment gains or tax increases, then benefits are of course going to go down. But this is not the only possible outcome, and the CBO does not say that it will come to pass. The Social Security Administration and the president's commission on Social Security have concluded that under more optimistic, but plausible, assumptions, it is possible to fix the program's deficit while also leaving future retirees better off.

As I look out at these faces, these are the same kinds of times. Mothers and families distressed and torn apart over what's happening, young students wondering whether they're gonna be finding a world in which there's a draft when they get out of college or whether or not they can go to work.

New information released by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's office Tuesday shows that consultants paid with federal election funds served as his staff at Democratic political events, including a Sacramento lunch that raised money for presidential candidate John Kerry and a fund-raiser for Assembly Democrats.

"Staff activity reports" released to The Bee and other newspapers under the state's Public Records Act show that several of the consultants recorded whom Shelley met at events he attended, introduced him to people and kept track of his activities.

In a report on one of the more blatantly partisan events, consultant Jason Vega wrote that he went with Shelley to a Kerry fund-raiser at the Sacramento home of Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis. She's the daughter of millionaire developer Angelo Tsakopoulos, one of the biggest financial contributors to Democratic candidates in the country. While at the event, according to Vega's report, Shelley spoke individually with more than two dozen prominent Democrats and two people - Julie Sandino and Dan Weitzman - who have raised money for past Shelley campaigns.

For example, Jill Levine, Sacramento County's voter registrar, wanted to use HAVA funds to upgrade the training manuals for poll workers in Sacramento. By the time Shelley's office issued the application form, it was too late; Levine had already turned the final training manual copy over to the printers.

San Luis Obispo County Registrar Julie Rodewald planned a voter education program targeting first-time voters, including college students and Latino residents. She wanted to alert them to the fact that the new federal rules required first-time voters to bring identification to the voting booth. Because the application from Shelley's office came too late, she was unable to prepare materials, get them proofed and to the printers in time for the 2004 election. The money she got for that purpose will have to be returned.

Kerry just made two moves that I think are tremendously boneheaded mistakes. The left and the right agree that Iraq is Issue One, that you cannot be elected president unless the American people think you handle this difficult and important mission over there. Kerry came out as the anti-war candidate this week, and I thought that was a much stronger position than his "well, I support the troops, but not the mission, sort of, but, you see, this, but that", etc.

But if you want to be the next president, and the Prime Minister of Iraq comes to Washington to address a joint session of Congress, where should you be?

In the U.S. Capitol chamber!

Not in a Columbus, Ohio firehouse!

Senator, if you win, you're going to have to work with this guy - or his successor. Kerry should have tried to get a meeting with Allawi himself, to try to make the challenger look like Bush's equal (when foreign leaders come to the U.S., they often meet with leaders of both parties on Capitol Hill. It's just common courtesy and protocol).

Major mistake number two: Even if you can't be there, you don't take a jab at Allawi.

It is also not the first time that [Mary] Mapes has agreed to be a go-between in a controversial setting. FOX News has obtained a letter written to Mapes by the warden of a high security federal prison in Colorado.

He accused the CBS producer of concocting a scheme to help secretly pass information between convicted white supremacist Peter Langan and another federal prisoner, a violation of federal regulations.

"Phone monitoring reveals that you agreed to this request," the letter reads. "Your attempted misuse of the special mail privileges placed members of the public at risk."

The warden of the prison then revoked Mapes' correspondence, telephone and interview privileges with the high security inmate.

Millions of U.S. citizens, including a disproportionate number of black voters, will be blocked from voting in the Nov. 2 presidential election because of legal barriers, faulty procedures or dirty tricks, according to civil rights and legal experts.

...

Millions of other votes in the 2000 presidential election were lost due to clerical and administrative errors while civil rights organizations have cataloged numerous tactics aimed at suppressing black voter turnout.

"There are individuals and officials who are actively trying to stop people from voting who they think will vote against their party and that nearly always means stopping black people from voting Democratic," said Mary Frances Berry, head of the U.S. Commission on Human Rights.

Vicky Beasley, a field officer for People for the American Way, listed some of the ways voters have been "discouraged" from voting.

"In elections in Baltimore in 2002 and in Georgia last year, black voters were sent fliers saying anyone who hadn't paid utility bills or had outstanding parking tickets or were behind on their rent would be arrested at polling stations. It happens in every election cycle," she said.

In a mayoral election in Philadelphia last year, people pretending to be plainclothes police officers stood outside some polling stations asking people to identify themselves. There have also been reports of mysterious people videotaping people waiting in line to vote in black neighborhoods.

SENIORS

45% drop in benefits

Cost over ten years to the treasury - 2 trillion dollars

SOURCE: UNIV. OF CHICAGO

The study does indeed find that administrative costs would amount to a huge windfall for Wall Street. Proponents of private accounts are sure to argue that [Study author Austan] Goolsbee's estimate of those costs is too high. But the study says nothing about benefit cuts for current retirees (or even future retirees). Goolsbee tells me he's surprised the campaign is citing him to predict a 45 percent cut for 45 million people. "That's weird," he says. "I don't know how they got that." His paper, he says, didn't deal with benefit levels.

A local soldier back from the war in Iraq said he was beaten at an area concert because of what was printed on his T-shirt, NBC 4's Nancy Burton reported.

Foster Barton, 19, of Grove City, received a Purple Heart for his military service in Iraq. He almost lost his leg last month after a Humvee he was riding in ran over a landmine.

Barton said he was injured again Friday night in a crowded parking lot as he was leaving the Toby Keith concert at Germain Amphitheatre. The solider was injured so badly that he can't go back to Iraq as scheduled.

"I don't remember getting hit at all, really," said Barton, a member of the 1st Calvary Division. "He hit me in the back of the head. I fell and hit the ground. I was knocked unconscious and he continued to punch and kick me on the ground."

Barton and his family said he was beat up because he was wearing an Iraqi freedom T-shirt.

"It's not our fault," Barton said. "I'm just doing a job."

According to a Columbus police report, six witnesses who didn't know Barton said the person who beat him up was screaming profanities and making crude remarks about U.S. soldiers, Burton reported.

"Do I think they're forged? No," Rather said. "But it's not good enough to use the documents on the air if we can't vouch for them, and we can't vouch for them."

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I made it clear, we must succeed. We must succeed for the war on terror. We must succeed for our troops who've put their lives on the line. We must succeed for the future.

In an interview, Mr. Rather said that Mr. Burkett intially refused to say who gave him the documents, but after being pressed by CBS, gave the name of another former guardsmen. Mr. Rather said this other guardsmen, who he declined to identify "was a real person who would have been in position to have gotten the documents." But CBS was unable to track down this person to verify the papers and when the backlash against the story began, CBS and Mr. Rather went back to Mr. Burkett, who told them this past Thursday that the guardsman wasn't the real source. [emphasis added]

We at FactCheck.org are now satisfied that the memos were indeed faked, and so they can tell us nothing one way or another about Bush's Guard service. [emphasis added]

Reporter: Scott, do you believe that the Kerry campaign had anything to do with releasing these documents? You had stated that before, but the president said he didn't know.

McClellan: Well, actually what I said, in terms of the questions here, those are questions that need to be answered. In terms of who is responsible for being the source of these documents, the original source of these documents. The one thing that is not in question is the timing of these recent attacks on the president. It is clear that there has been an orchestrated effort by Democrats and the Kerry campaign to try to tear down the president and use old, recycled attacks. And that's what this is, it's just an old, recycled attack. In terms of the actual source of the documents, CBS has said that that may be something they may address later. That they're looking into this matter, they've got an independent committee that's going to look into this. But Bill Burkett, the source of who gave them these documents, was previously claimed to be an unimpeachable source by CBS. And in fact he is not an unimpeachable source. He is someone who has been discredited in the past for telling things that simply were not true. And someone who has had a lot of contacts and involvement with Democrats.

Same Reporter: But Scott, you don't dispute, actually, the contents of the documents themselves? The fact that when Lt. Bush was suspended from the Texas Air National Guard on August of 1972 that did occur and it connected to missing flight training.

McClellan: Actually all those questions have been asked and answered in the previous campaign and in this campaign. It's been documented that the president fulfilled his obligations and that's why he was dis... It's been documented that the president fulfilled his obligations and that's why he was honorably discharged.

Same Reporter: So, it's not the contents of the documents that you're taking issue with, you're just saying the source of the documents has been discredited...

McClellan: No, all these questions, I disagree with that. These questions have been asked and answered each and every campaign that the president has run. The president fulfilled his obligations, it's been documented, and that's why he was honorably discharged from the National Guard. And he's proud of his service in the Guard.

STATEMENT FROM DAN RATHER:

Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

CBS News plans to issue a statement, perhaps as early as today, acknowledging that it was misled on the purported National Guard memos the network used to charge that President Bush received favored treatment 30 years ago.

The statement would represent a huge embarrassment for the network, which insisted for days that the documents reported by Dan Rather on "60 Minutes" are authentic. But the statement could also help defuse a crisis that has torn at the network's credibility.

It is not clear whether the acknowledgement will include an apology for a story now believed to be based on forged documents, although that is under consideration, sources familiar with the matter said. The sources said they could not be identified because the network is making no official statement.

The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.

The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, "Giacomo".

His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents - France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.

Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.

John Kerry has been very clear on Iraq.

As they continue their investigation into whether they were hoaxed, CBS officials have begun shifting their public focus from the memos themselves to their underlying allegations about the president. Rather said that if the memos were indeed faked, "I'd like to break that story." But whatever the verdict on the memos, he said, critics "can't deny the story."

As the days begin to blur for Josh Howard, he embraces the same logic: "So much of this debate has focused on the documents, and no one has really challenged the story. It's been frustrating to us to see all this reduced to a debate over little 'th's."

REPORTER: Do you feel like you were duped at all?

RATHER: I'm very glad to see you. Do you feel like you were duped at all by the way, working at Fox as you do? You feel that way?