Mary Mapes is back?

The 60 Minutes News Producer best known for the Dan Rather segment last year on 60 minutes II on President Bush's National Guard Service which featured a fake document, has a book coming out next month. This was reported by Howard Kurtz in yesterday's Washington Post.

I feel sorry for Ms. Mapes. A year after being discredited she still stands by the story. The parts excerpted today border on the delusional.

"I remember staring, disheartened and angry, at one posting. '60 Minutes is going down,' the writer crowed exultantly. My heart started to pound. There is nothing more frightening for a reporter than the possibility of being wrong, seriously wrong. That is the reason that we checked and rechecked, argued about wording, took care to be certain that the video that accompanied the words didn't create a new and unintended nuance. Being right, being sure, was everything. And right now, on the Internet, it appeared everything was falling apart. I had a real physical reaction as I read the angry online accounts. It was something between a panic attack, a heart attack, and a nervous breakdown. My palms were sweaty; I gulped and tried to breathe. . . . The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out."

What about the suspect memos by that long-dead Guard official? "Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed -- -in some cases not once, but twice -- -was virtually impossible. The faxing destroyed the subtle arcs and lines in the letters. The characters bled into each other. The details of how the typed characters failed to line up perfectly inside each word were lost."

Poor agonized and delusional Mary. As Big Dog points out- faxes don't change the document it receives or send. Ms. Mapes if that's the best you can do, I would suggest getting some therapy.

One other note- Howard Kurtz says this book is coming out. He points to a Amazon.com site but the link is broken. This is where the excerpts came from. There are as Editor&Publisher notes some backup for Mr. Kurtz. The book is listed in audio form at amazon, book form at Barnes & Noble and still mentioned at the Publisher. Also Kurtz said he was sitting on this information for some time.

I guess we'll have to wait for the book's appearance before passing final judgment on Mary Mapes' mental state. At the moment the symptoms aren't good.

Open Post- Wizbang, Bright&Early and Stop the ACLU