Is This Heaven's Gate?

Black Rock, Viacomville New York
40°47' North; 73°58' West

No.

This is Rathergate.

And Greg Palast has the inside scoop on the paragons of virtue (ie. the 'independent' review panel) that you won't see anywhere in the SCLM.

All you need is the lead:

"Independent" my ass.

CBS' cowardly purge of five journalists who exposed George Bush's dodging of the Vietnam War draft was done under cover of what the network laughably called an "Independent Review Panel."

The "panel" was just two guys as qualified for the job as they are for landing the space shuttle: Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi.

Remember Dickie Thornburgh? He was on the Bush 41 Administration's payroll. His grand accomplishment as Bush's Attorney General was to whitewash the investigation of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill, letting the oil giant off the hook on big damages. Thornburgh's fat pay as counsel to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, the Washington law-and-lobbying outfit, is substantially due to his job as a Bush retainer. This is the kind of stinky conflict of interest that hardly suggests "independent." Why not just appoint Karl Rove as CBS' grand inquisitor and be done with it?

Then there's Boccardi, not exactly a prince of journalism. This is the gent who, as CEO of the Associated Press, spiked his own wire service's exposure of Oliver North and his traitorous dealings with the Ayatollah Khomeini. Legendary AP investigative reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger found their stories outing the Iran-Contra scandal in 1986 stopped by their bosses. They did not know that Boccardi was on those very days deep in the midst of talks with North, participating in the conspiracy....."

Not many sounds of bells or angels getting their wings there is there.

No sir.

In fact, you might conclude that the folks 'Standing at the Gates of the West' are getting more and more sinister everyday.

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Update: Reader B.A.D. points out that Disco Dickie T. is also the guy who is doing his best to screw Canuckleheads everywhere with that apparently illegal softwood lumber countervail.
Double Secret Probation Update: That's Big Audible (not Audio) DynOmite, so there's no relation to Mick Jones, although there apparently is a passing resemblance to Jimmie 'JJ' Walker