Dan Rather stood by the faulty 2004 "60 Minutes" segment on George W. Bush's Air National Guard service in a Good Morning America interview Monday:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You pull no punches. I said this to you just before we cam on: You pull no punches in the memoir about the controversy that blew up, really, around your leaving CBS. It really centered around two different stories; the one that really created the most controversy, this whole story about George W. Bush and how he handled his National Guard service in Alabama back in the 1970s. You maintain he did not, simply, show up, and believe that is true today. But some of the documents you used were called into question. But you have no regrets.
DAN RATHER: No. You know, George, my attitude is, in recent years, that sometimes things in journalism go badly for the correspondent. But it’s important not to get baffled, not to be afraid, and to never quit. I have a passion for covering news. I love covering news. Particularly when you do investigative stories, not everything is going to go well. I’ve had my ups and downs—I’ve seen rain, fire, I’ve seen starry nights. But I’ve never lost my passion for doing what I do.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And it seems seems like one of the things that most upsets you is that you felt that your team at CBS—and its corporate ownership at Viacom—didn't back you up in that pursuit of the news and the truth.
RATHER: Well, that was a situation particularly at the top, the top corporate. You know, hard investigative reporting needs an ownership at the doesn't back down, doesn't back up, and backs its reporters.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Even when mistakes are made, though?
RATHER: I'm not acknowledging mistakes were made, but even if they were, absolutely. Ben Bradlee with the Washington Post and the Watergate story, go right down through. And the tradition at CBS News had been, "We go into investigative reporting together, we do it together, and we stick together way through." That had been the CBS News tradition. We reported the true story. I’m not at CBS now because I and my team reported a true story. It was tough story. It was a story a lot of people didn't want to believe, and it was subjected to a propaganda barrage to discredit it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: There's no way to know the entire truth, is there, without the documents?
RATHER: Well, what story does anyone ever know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? But, we reported the truth. And that is that President Bush, later President Bush, when he was in National Guard service, he was at least AWOL and we had a top general in the army saying, on the record, he was a deserter. Everybody makes mistakes. I made some; President Bush obviously made some. Because we reported that story, they put heavy pressure on the corporate entity and the corporate entity folded. Now, a lot of it is in the book. I left eight years ago. This happened eight years ago. We go through it in great detail.
STEPHANOPOULOS: One word, the Bush team would point out that he was honorably discharged. That raises questions about if he was a deserter.