CNN and Time's bogus scoop -- in which April Oliver and Peter Arnett claimed that a 1970 U.S. military raid in Laos, Operation Tailwind, involved a deadly nerve-gas attack on civilians -- continues to unravel. As Eric Felten reported in these pages last week, CNN's key eyewitness, Robert Van Buskirk, recovered his memory of the nerve gas under the expert questioning of CNN, while his 1983 memoir told only of the use of tear gas. Moreover, CNN ignored expert scientific testimony it had gathered confirming that soldiers' accounts of Operation Tailwind accurately described the symptoms produced by tear gas, but were utterly inconsistent with any use of nerve gas.
Meanwhile, Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times reported on Friday that another of CNN's oncamera sources for the story, retired sergeant James Cathey, was not a participant in Operation Tailwind as claimed but instead was serving as an air-traffic-control supervisor in South Vietnam at the time of the operation. Cathey, as it happens, is a friend of Van Buskirk's. Van Buskirk told Felten that the two men didn't meet until years after the war, at a prison where Van Buskirk was ministering and giving a talk on his army experience. Cathey is also a Baptist minister in North Carolina.
There have been no apologies yet from Ted Turner's media empire for its irresponsible smear. At this writing, Time has published only an acknowledgment that doubts were raised about the story and has promised to "keep reporting this story." CNN, for its part, has taken the curious step of hiring famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams to conduct an investigation of its story -- curious because no one has suggested suing CNN, which is the usual reason for hiring a lawyer.
On the other hand, in view of the embarrassing "scoop" that has transformed the debut of NewsStand: CNN & Time from journalistic triumph into corporate calamity, THE SCRAPBOOK can well understand why CNN executives might lack confidence in the investigative skills of their own employees.