CBS Producer Spent Years On Bush Record
By BROOKS BARNES and JOE FLINT Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
After she uncovered photos of abuse at Iraq's Abu Gharib prison, "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes told a newspaper interviewer that she'd "never had a story that reverberated like this."
Now, four months later, Ms. Mapes is experiencing reverberations of a different kind. Forensic document experts, lawmakers and numerous media outlets continue to question the authenticity of documents that formed the core of a "60 Minutes" report last week questioning President Bush's National Guard service.
CBS News continues to try to prove they're not fakes -- without revealing its sources. Meanwhile, in some quarters, the debate has switched from the president's service record to whether anchor Dan Rather was duped.
Mary Mapes produced CBS's Bush story.
Mr. Rather has taken the heat and defended the documents several times on air and elsewhere. But the opening image of the original "60 Minutes" episode that aired on Sept. 8 contains the words that appear right above Mr. Rather's head: "Produced by Mary Mapes."
Much like Mr. Rather, Ms. Mapes, 48 years old, is a workaholic who spends years developing and nurturing relationships that might pay off in marquee scoops. CBS News executives say she spent two months reporting the Abu Gharib story before it was ready for broadcast. She spent close to five years digging into Mr. Bush's National Guard history. The Sept. 8 segment was the first report to result from that effort.
Ms. Mapes also produced Wednesday's follow-up segment in which CBS -- after a week of dismissing calls for an internal investigation and defending the documents as authentic -- said it was aggressively investigating the source of the documents and acknowledged there was a legitimate chance they could be forgeries.
Marian Carr Knox, who was the secretary to the purported author in the 1970s, told Mr. Rather on the segment that she did not believe the documents were authentic, but were an accurate depiction of what was going on with Mr. Bush at the time.
Ms. Mapes, through a CBS News spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed. Attempts to reach her at her Dallas home and office were unsuccessful.
Hers is not a household name, but Ms. Mapes is one of the show's star producers. At the venerable newsmagazine, it is producers such as Ms. Mapes who pound the pavement in search of scoops and celebrity anchors like Mr. Rather who get all the credit -- or blame. The on-air personalities participate in the reporting to varying degrees -- Mr. Rather is known for being very involved -- but the producers do the heaviest lifting.
In a statement Wednesday, CBS News touted Ms. Mapes's credentials in defense of its story, and CBS confirmed the journalist played a key role in securing the four memos that are now being decried as bogus.
Ms. Mapes has extensive experience with politically sensitive news stories. Aside from the Abu Gharib story, her résumé includes persuading the biracial daughter of Strom Thurmond to talk on television for the first time and award-winning stories on the aftermath of 1991's Desert Storm.
In her first month at CBS News, she churned out 29 stories for various programs, says Jon Klein, a former high-ranking CBS News executive. "She's the last person you'd ever expect to be in a controversy about credibility," he says. "She is one of the most credible people in the industry."
She shepherded the first post-impeachment interview with Hillary Clinton, and although she is known to shy away from celebrity stories, made an exception for a profile of George Clooney.
In 1999, Ms. Mapes emerged from behind the camera when she refused a district judge's order to turn over a videotape and transcript of an interview Mr. Rather conducted with Shawn Allen Berry, one of three white men later convicted of dragging a black man to death behind their pickup truck in Jasper, Texas. Twice found in contempt of court orders, Ms. Mapes narrowly avoided jail time when CBS agreed to publish a full transcript on its Web site.
Mike Raiff, a First Amendment lawyer in Dallas who represented Ms. Mapes in the dragging case, described her as a careful and courageous journalist. "She stood by her journalistic standards in dealing with subpoenas and attacks against her," he says.
Steve McGonigle, a reporter at the Dallas Morning News, which also employs Ms. Mapes's husband, Mark Wrolstad, says he sought Ms. Mapes's advice when faced with a similar situation. Ms. Mapes told Mr. McGonigle not to surrender his notes. "You gotta stick to your guns," he remembers her telling him at the time. "She has a lot of moxie."
Ms. Mapes grew up in rural western Washington and landed her first big news job as a producer at the Seattle television station KIRO, where her husband worked as a reporter. Together the couple covered an incendiary regional story about a heavy-handed Seattle police drug raid that ended in a shooting.
John Carlson worked with Ms. Mapes at the TV station from 1986 until she left in the early 1990s to work for CBS. Now the host of a conservative talk show on Seattle's KVI-AM, Mr. Carlson says Ms. Mapes, even early in her career, was "a maestro in the editing bay."
He remembers a story she wanted to do about the potential safety risks of hydroplanes on the eve of a popular Seattle boating festival. "I remember joking with her, 'They're only boat races, Mary. Relax."'
Ms. Mapes joined CBS News in 1989 and worked mostly for the Evening News. She joined the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes" 10 years later.
Mr. Rather, a Texan, immediately clicked with Ms. Mapes. Mr. Rather said she has a "demonstrable record of sound news judgment" and that "she has more than earned the trust and respect of her colleagues, and of sources who know that she is a person who keeps her word. And let this be clear: Mary most certainly has my trust, respect, and admiration.
--James Bandler contributed to this article.