CBS Paints Tenet as Anti-Bush, Nets Insist Bush Said "Imminent" --2/6/2004

1. CBS Paints Tenet as Anti-Bush, Nets Insist Bush Said "Imminent"
Thursday's CBS Evening News described CIA Director George Tenet's speech as an indictment of the Bush administration. "Tonight, the CIA chief raises serious new questions about the case President Bush made for taking the country to war," Dan Rather asserted before he stressed how Tenet "did not defend the way the intelligence was used" by President Bush's team. The story by CBS's David Martin ignored how Tenet specifically denied that intelligence assessments were improperly influenced by Bush officials, a fact included in the ABC, NBC and FNC stories. Obfuscating how President Bush, during his January 2003 State of the Union address, specifically said the threat from Iraq was not "imminent," ABC, CBS and NBC went to great lengths to try to prove that Bush or his deputies had indeed warned of an imminent threat from Iraq.

2. Olbermann Dismisses Relevance of Kerry's 1992 Defense of Clinton
As leading Democrats hurl unsubstantiated charges that George W. Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard 30 years ago, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Thursday night dismissed any notion of hypocrisy since leading Democratic presidential contender John Kerry took to the Senate floor in 1992 to denounce the relevance of Bill Clinton's avoidance of military service. "One thing about comments like that from 1992 about military service," Olbermann asserted, "as somebody points out frequently, the whole world changed on 9/11."

3. On AWOL Charge, Woodruff Assumes Bush Guilty til Proven Innocent
For CNN's Judy Woodruff, George W. Bush is guilty until proven innocent. On Wednesday she didn't demand that DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe provide any proof for his allegation that George W. Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard, assured him that "I don't want to dwell on this," and she failed to raise Democratic hypocrisy since John Kerry in 1992 defended Bill Clinton's avoidance of military service. But on Thursday, she pounded away at Bush/Cheney spokesman Terry Holt, demanding that Bush come up with proof of his service. Woodruff: "Is it a problem, though, for President Bush, as a candidate up for re-election this year, that there are no records that prove that he showed up for service for approximately a year?"

CBS Paints Tenet as Anti-Bush, Nets Insist
Bush Said "Imminent"

Thursday's CBS Evening News described CIA Director George Tenet's speech at Georgetown University that morning as an indictment of the Bush administration, a harder-edged anti-Bush spin than taken by any other network or major newspaper. "Tonight, the CIA chief raises serious new questions about the case President Bush made for taking the country to war," Dan Rather asserted before he stressed how Tenet "did not defend the way the intelligence was used" by President Bush's team.

The story by CBS's David Martin ignored how Tenet specifically denied that intelligence assessments were improperly influenced by Bush officials, a fact included in the ABC, NBC and FNC stories, but also not in CNN's story on NewsNight. ABC's Terry Moran, for instance, noted how "Tenet also defended the administration from charges it sought to influence the CIA unduly." World News Tonight then played a clip of Tenet: "No one told us what to say or how to say it." Over on the NBC Nightly News, Andrea Mitchell picked up the same soundbite as she observed: "Tenet denied that CIA analysts hyped the evidence or were pressured."

CBS was way ahead of the New York Times and Washington Post in emphasizing an anti-Bush angle. "Tenet Concedes Gaps in C.I.A. Data on Iraq Weapons," read the headline over Friday's front page New York Times story. "Tenet Defends CIA's Analysis of Iraq as Objective, if Flawed," declared the Washington Post's page one story. Post reporters Dana Priest and Walter Pincus observed: "Tenet did not directly address the question of whether top administration officials went beyond the CIA's assessments as they built a public case for going to war with Iraq, as many Democrats have charged." For the Post story, see: www.washingtonpost.com

Obfuscating how President Bush, during his January 2003 State of the Union address, specifically said the threat from Iraq was not "imminent," on Thursday night ABC, CBS and NBC, picking up on how Tenet said that he never maintained the treat was imminent, went to great lengths to try to prove that Bush or his deputies had indeed warned of an imminent threat from Iraq.

In the 2003 State of the Union address, Bush contended: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late."

Nonetheless, NBC's Mitchell, unable to find a pre-war example of anyone in the Bush administration citing an "imminent" threat, pushed a post-war comment from White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer: "When asked last May whether the weapons threat was imminent, the former White House spokesman said it was." Fleischer, on May 7, 2003: "Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their weapons of mass destruction."

(But it was Helen Thomas who used the term "imminent." Though Mitchell didn't play her question, she asked: "We went to war, didn't we, to find these -- because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn't that true?")

CBS's Martin conceded that "neither the President nor his national security advisors actually used the word 'imminent' to describe the Iraqi threat," but Martin insisted that "they said essentially the same thing."

ABC's Peter Jennings and Terry Moran nearly contradicted each other. Jennings touted how Tenet "says he never told President Bush that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat." But Moran soon explained in his subsequent story: "Before the war, the Bush administration did portray Iraq as a dire threat justifying an invasion, but they were careful not to use the words 'imminent threat,' though on a few occasions, officials did." Moran did not provide any examples.

Keith Olbermann teased at the top of MSNBC's Countdown: "Weapons of mass dispute. After months of getting the finger pointed at him, the CIA director points it back. He never said Saddam was an imminent threat -- that must have been the President."

Olbermann snidely set up a taped piece: "As the boxes of unearthed and neutralized weapons of mass destruction did not come flowing into this country from Iraq, the White House swung quickly towards a simple explanation: Our spies got it all wrong. The intelligence was faulty. I ran out of gas, I had a flat tire, I didn't have enough money for cab fare, my tux didn't come back from the cleaners, an old friend came in from out of town, someone stole my car, there was an earthquake, a terrible flood, locusts, it wasn't my fault, I swear to God!"

FNC's Brit Hume avoided the loaded political spin as he set up the story, on Special Report with Brit Hume, by sticking to what Tenet said, though the subsequent story did include time for Democrats to claim that Tenet contradicted Bush claims: "CIA Director George Tenet today delivered a spirit defense of his agency's pre-war assessments of Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction and he appealed for more time to finish its post-war efforts to find out what happened to those weapons."

The ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC stories on Thursday night, February 5 were all different from each other in what they emphasized, so below are full rundowns of what each reported, as taken down by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth:

-- ABC's World News Tonight. Opening tease from Peter Jennings: "On World News Tonight, the director of the CIA defends his agency's work in Iraq. He says he never told President Bush that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat."

Jennings led the broadcast: "Good evening, everyone. We're going to begin this evening with another round in the great debate about the quality of American intelligence in Iraq before the U.S. attacked. Was it inaccurate? Was it distorted either by intelligence analysts or the politicians who used it to justify war? Today the director of the CIA, George Tenet, defended his agency's work. Two reports from the Congress are about to be released, which are not expected to be kind. And the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq has just said we all got it wrong. Mr. Tenet said today that as far as he was concerned, the CIA got it right. Here's ABC's Terry Moran."

Moran began: "Like a lawyer arguing to a jury, George Tenet mounted a methodical case for the defense of the CIA."
George Tenet, CIA Director: "Were we right or were we wrong? In the intelligence business, you are almost never completely wrong or completely right."
Moran: "Tenet also defended the administration from charges it sought to influence the CIA unduly."
Tenet: "No one told us what to say or how to say it."
Moran: "Methodically, using previously classified information, Tenet sought to show how the CIA reached the conclusion that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of banned weapons."
Tenet: "Based on an assessment of the data we collected over the past ten years, it would have been difficult for analysts to come to any different conclusions."
Moran: "On nuclear weapons, Tenet said a top secret source came to the U.S. before the war and claimed:"
Tenet: "Saddam had recently called together his nuclear weapons committee, irate that Iraq did not yet have a weapon because money was no object, and they possessed the scientific knowhow."
Moran: "But Tenet said on many occasions, there was dissent and debate among CIA analysts about the evidence, and then he declared:"
Tenet: "They never said there was an imminent threat."
Moran: "Today administration critics pounced on those words, charging the White House misled the country."
Senator Carl Levin, Senate Intelligence Committee: "In all of their certainty, all of the statements they made, made it imminent."
Moran: "Before the war, the Bush administration did portray Iraq as a dire threat justifying an invasion, but they were careful not to use the words 'imminent threat,' though on a few occasions, officials did. In his speech at Georgetown, Tenet sharply rejected the claim by David Kay, who headed the U.S. effort to find weapons, that 85 percent of the work was done. But he admitted that so far:"
Tenet: "However, we have not yet found the weapons we expected."
Moran: "Today, Kay said Tenet's speech had not dispelled doubts."
David Kay, weapons inspector: "I think we've probably suffered a generation loss of confidence in American intelligence among our allies and publics abroad and probably here at home, too."
Moran: "There's a 'boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome.'"
Kay: "Boy who cried wolf and there was no wolf."
Moran: "But President Bush remains defiant on the subject of Iraq. He declared today in South Carolina that knowing what he knew before the war, and even knowing what he knows now, he still believes he did the right thing in ordering an invasion. And, Peter, tomorrow the President is expected to announce that independent commission that will look into this whole controversy."

ABC moved on to a review by Martha Raddatz of how, as Jennings noted, there's "still no conclusive evidence for many of the claims" made by Colin Powell in his UN presentation.

-- CBS Evening News. Dan Rather's tease: "Cracking the case: Tonight, the CIA chief raises serious new questions about the case President Bush made for taking the country to war. Calls for Supreme Court Justice Scalia to remove himself from a case involving a good friend who happens to be the Vice President."

Rather opened his program: "Good evening. America's top spy broke his public silence today about the faulty intelligence President Bush used to justify the war with Iraq. The head of the Central Intelligence Agency defended himself, the agency and the intelligence it provided to the President. But Director George Tenet did not defend the way the intelligence was used, and he tried to clarify what it said. CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin has the story."

Martin began: "In his first detailed defense of the intelligence used to justify the war, CIA Director Tenet made clear that while intelligence analysts concluded, perhaps wrongly, Iraq had both chemical and biological weapons, they never claimed Saddam Hussein was about to use them."
George Tenet, CIA Director: "They never said there was an imminent threat."
Martin: "Neither the President nor his national security advisors actually used the word 'imminent' to describe the Iraqi threat, but they said essentially the same thing."
George W. Bush, October2, 2002: "On its present course, the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
Donald Rumsfeld, September 19, 2002: "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people."
Martin: "Tenet insisted the CIA was right about Saddam's attempts to build long-range missiles. But he acknowledged the national intelligence estimate of October of 2002, the document used to justify the war, inadvertently included information from a source known to be unreliable. And he highlighted what is perhaps the Achilles heel of American intelligence -- relying on satellite photos and communications intercepts to make up for the lack of spies in Saddam's inner circle."
Tenet: "We did not have enough of our own human intelligence. We did not ourselves penetrate the inner sanctum."
Martin: "Tenet insisted a final verdict on the intelligence will not be possible until the hunt for weapons of mass destruction is completed. And he contradicted the Secretary of Defense over how much searching remains."
Rumsfeld on Wednesday: "We're 85 percent down the road, and there's more to be looked at."
Tenet: "Despite some public statements, we are nowhere near 85 percent finished."
Martin: "According to the CIA, there are 20 million documents still to be translated, and thousands of sites yet to be searched. But as long as the number of weapons found remains at zero, the controversy over why the U.S. went to war seems certain to continue. David Martin, CBS News, the Pentagon."

-- NBC Nightly News. Anchor Brian Williams announced: "Good evening. It was a war launched in large part over weapons of mass destruction, but since they haven't turned up in Iraq, the heat's been turned up on the Bush administration. So, with an investigation on the way and a commission being formed, today the head of the CIA gave a rare public speech to stick up for his agency's role in all of this. We begin here tonight with NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell."

Mitchell began: "Under fire over why the pre-war intelligence was wrong, CIA Director George Tenet vigorously defended his agency's record."
George Tenet, CIA Director: "When the facts of Iraq are all in, we will neither be completely right nor completely wrong."
Mitchell: "Tenet denied that CIA analysts hyped the evidence or were pressured."
Tenet: "No one told us what to say or how to say it."
Mitchell: "To support his case, he revealed that a spy with access to Saddam Hussein's inner circle said Iraq was aggressively trying to develop a nuclear weapon, was stockpiling chemical weapons, and had mobile launchers armed with chemical weapons. According to Tenet, a second spy inside Iraq said Saddam had an elaborate plan to deceive UN inspectors."
Tenet: "Could I have ignored or dismissed such reports? Absolutely not."
Mitchell: "Tenet pointedly disagreed with his own former weapons inspector, David Kay, who said the weapons search was 85 percent completed. Within hours, Kay took on his former boss."
David Kay, weapons inspector: "The CIA gets into trouble and what happens? 'If you only know what I knew, you would think differently. Let me give you two great successes,' and then they draw the kimono back again and cover it."
Mitchell: "The two men also disagreed over an October 2002 intelligence document which said, 'Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons,' and if Iraq obtained nuclear fuel, 'could make a nuclear weapon within a year.' Tenet said internal debates over those claims were included. David Kay said they weren't."
Kay: "Caveats are in smaller type, they're sometimes on a different page. They just drop away."
Mitchell: "Tenet also said the CIA never described the Iraqi threat as imminent. And tonight the Defense Secretary said the same thing."
Donald Rumsfeld, on airplane: "There are a lot of things being said about what the administration said which the administration did not say."
Mitchell: "But when asked last May whether the weapons threat was imminent, the former White House spokesman said it was."
Ari Fleischer, May 7, 2003: "Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their weapons of mass destruction."
Mitchell: "And before the war, the President and Rumsfeld both sounded nuclear alarms."
Bush: "We cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun. It could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
Mitchell concluded: "If the CIA got it mostly right, as Tenet says, how did the White House get it so wrong? No answers yet. But tonight, a draft report from the Senate Intelligence Committee lays the blame squarely on Tenet and the CIA. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, at the State Department."

-- CNN's NewsNight. Aaron Brown announced: "We begin with the messy debate over possible failures in U.S. intelligence on WMDs in Iraq. The administration played defense on two fronts today and this won't be the last time because unless or until those WMDs are found questions of trust will remain. We begin with the CIA director's passionate defense of his agency reported by David Ensor."

Ensor: "George Tenet offered a combative defense of the intelligence from his analysts before the Iraq War."
George Tenet: "They never said there was an imminent threat. Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests."
Ensor: "On specifics though there were some admissions from the director of Central Intelligence that the estimates have not always been proved right on Iraq's nuclear program."
Tenet: "We may have overestimated the progress Saddam was making."
Ensor: "And on chemical weapons."
Tenet: "We have not yet found the weapons we expected."
David Kay, former CIA weapons inspector: "To me it's clear Iraq had no large stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons at the time of the war."
Ensor: "David Kay, the former weapons inspector, made that assertion again after Tenet's speech. Tenet strongly rejected the general charge that the CIA has been weak on human intelligence. He said a CIA spy led the U.S. to al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, that penetration of Libya's WMD supply network and the CIA telling Tripoli that the game was up contributed to Gadhafi's decision to give up the weapons, and that spies inside Dr. A. Q. Khan's black market nuclear network based in Pakistan led to its exposure."
Tenet: "So, when you hear pundits say that we have no human intelligence capability they don't know what they're talking about."
Ensor: "But David Kay said the CIA's capabilities, in Iraq for example, are still far too weak."
Kay: "I had at the height of the Iraqi survey group under me exactly two case officers who were fluent in Arabic. I had to give those up because of a higher priority."
Ensor: "U.S. intelligence officials declined comment on that but they do point out that the Iraq survey group also has linguists and military personnel on it, some of whom speak Arabic. On Capitol Hill, Democrats were quick to contrast the Bush administration's line with Tenet's comment that there was no imminent threat."
Senator Carl Levin: "His statements were much more cautious, possibilities, probabilities, likelihoods, beliefs, high level of confidence, medium level of confidence. That's not what the leaders of this administration said. Their statements were we're certain that he has this. We're certain that he has chemicals. We're certain he has biological weapons."
Ensor concluded: "Tenet's speech pleased intelligence professionals but by highlighting that U.S. intelligence never said the Iraqi threat was imminent it may provide ammunition for critics of the President's decision to go to war."

Olbermann Dismisses Relevance of Kerry's
1992 Defense of Clinton

As leading Democrats hurl unsubstantiated charges that George W. Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard 30 years ago, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Thursday night dismissed any notion of hypocrisy in how leading Democratic presidential contender John Kerry took to the Senate floor in 1992 to denounce the relevance of Bill Clinton's avoidance of military service. "One thing about comments like that from 1992 about military service," Olbermann asserted, "as somebody points out frequently, the whole world changed on 9/11."

Without quoting a syllable of what Kerry said 12 years ago, Olbermann opined on the February 5 Countdown: "And a measure of just how close we may be to the November corner, courtesy of the Bush/Cheney re-election staff. An e-mail sent directly to reporters pointing them to an article about Senator John Kerry today. A tactic, until today, used almost exclusively by the Democrats. The Columbus Dispatch story highlights comments that the Senator made defending Bill Clinton's lack of military service. One thing about comments like that from 1992 about military service, as somebody points out frequently, the whole world changed on 9/11."

CyberAlert didn't get the Bush/Cheney e-mail, yet knew about the Columbus Dispatch story anyway. The February 5 CyberAlert noted how all the networks but FNC missed it: "OpinionJournal.com's 'Best of the Web' column on Wednesday picked up on the Ohio paper's story, so major media outlets had no excuse for missing it, and FNC's Brit Hume caught that and, on Wednesday night, highlighted Kerry's 1992 comments."

That CyberAlert ran an excerpt from the Dispatch story and provided a link to a National Review Online posting of the text of Kerry's 1992 remarks. See: www.mediaresearch.org

An update: OpinionJournal.com has posted the text of Kerry's comments delivered the Senate floor on February 27, 1992. OpinionJournal.com's headline: "Lead, Don't Divide; 'I am saddened that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign.'" The Editor's Note up top: "Sen. Kerry delivered this speech on the Senate floor Feb. 27, 1992. The previous day, Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, spoke in Atlanta, where he criticized fellow candidate Bill Clinton for his lack of military service during Vietnam." See: www.opinionjournal.com

On AWOL Charge, Woodruff Assumes Bush
Guilty til Proven Innocent

For CNN's Judy Woodruff, George W. Bush is guilty until proven innocent. On Wednesday she didn't demand that DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe provide any proof for his allegation that George W. Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard, assured him that "I don't want to dwell on this," and she failed to raise Democratic hypocrisy since John Kerry in 1992 defended Bill Clinton's avoidance of military service (see item #2 above). But on Thursday, she pounded away at Bush/Cheney spokesman Terry Holt, demanding that Bush come up with proof of his service. Woodruff: "Is it a problem, though, for President Bush, as a candidate up for re-election this year, that there are no records that prove that he showed up for service for approximately a year?"

MRC analyst Ken Shepherd noticed the contrasts between her approaches on the February 4 and 5 editions of Inside Politics.

-- Wednesday, February 4. Woodruff: "Well, even as the Democrats continue to choose their candidate to face off against President Bush, the two parties already are going at it tooth and nail. As you heard on Inside Politics yesterday, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie had some tough words for his Democratic counterpart after Terry McAuliffe referred to the president as, quote, 'a man who was AWOL from the National Guard.'"
Ed Gillespie, RNC Chairman: "Well, look, Terry McAuliffe, unfortunately, has become the John Wilkes Booth of presidential character assassination. You know, what I just said, Judy, Terry McAuliffe also said that I questioned Senator Kerry's patriotism and I distorted his record. Terry McAuliffe is flat dead wrong."
Woodruff: "Terry McAuliffe joins us now from Chicago. He's Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. 'The John Wilkes Booth of presidential character assassination?'"
McAuliffe: "Well, Judy, it's sad to see poor Ed Gillespie embarrass himself on national television. The facts are you've seen it in the newspapers this week. George Bush was supposed to have shown up in the Alabama National Guard. He didn't show up. He then went back later and said he made up his time when he went back to Texas. But I'd like you to tell the National Guardsmen today who are in Iraq, who didn't have an option of making their time up later, that they're actually there now, defending our country and they had to be there. George Bush has a lot of explaining to do. As I said before, when they go after our candidates, when they go after our potential nominee, we are going to fight back harder. You punch us, Judy, we're punching back harder. And we're going to do it with facts. And I know they're embarrassed about it, but the facts are what they are."
Woodruff: "I don't want to dwell on this but I do want to ask you one other question about it. They point out the President received an honorable discharge. Their point is that wouldn't have happened if he were missing from appointments at his -- at the National Guard."
McAuliffe: "Judy, the facts are that George Bush skipped over 100 people to get in the Texas Guard because his father was a member of Congress. For him to go out and get an honorable discharge later, had that been an ordinary citizen whose father was not a United States congressman, I doubt that the circumstances would have been the same. He didn't show up. Let him answer that. The commander this week reiterated that the entire time he was supposed to show up in the Alabama Guard, he wasn't there. He said he made it up later. But you know what, you don't have that option. When you're supposed to serve our country, you're supposed to be there."

Woodruff moved on: "All right, Terry McAuliffe, let's turn to the Democrats now. How do you size up the Democratic race?"

-- Thursday, February 5. Woodruff, after asking Holt how concerned the campaign is "about these polls that right now, as of now, show that John Kerry not only was beating President Bush but show the President's approval rating below 50 percent?," suggested that calling Kerry a liberal might not work: "Let's talk about John Kerry. There's an article in the New York Times today quoting some folks in your campaign, perhaps at the White House, saying that the main line of attack against John Kerry is quote, unquote 'Massachusetts liberal.' But at the same time the Kerry people are saying, hey, in essence, 'bring it on. If that's what you're going to try to suggest about John Kerry, you'll find out we're gonna fight.'"

Woodruff soon arrived at the subject she had assured McAuliffe the day before she did not want to "dwell" on: "Let me go back to this whole question of President Bush and the National Guard comments. And the reason I'm raising this is yesterday I interviewed Terry McAuliffe, Chairman of the DNC. Let me just read you a small portion of what he said about the President's service in the National Guard. He said, quote, 'He didn't show up. Let him answer that. The commander this week reiterated that the entire time he was supposed to show up in the Alabama National Guard, he wasn't there. He said he made it up later, but you don't have that option when you're supposed to serve our country, you're supposed to be there.' What do you say to Terry McAuliffe?"

Woodruff followed: "Is it a problem, though, for President Bush, as a candidate up for reelection this year, that there are no records that prove that he showed up for service for approximately a year?"

And again: "But in terms of records that he showed up for weekend or monthly obligations?"
Holt: "Well, according to the National Guard, he made up service during a period that was appropriate and well within the guidelines that allowed him to have an honorary [probably meant "honorable"] discharge from the military."
Woodruff: "So as far as you're and the campaign is concerned, that's the end of it?"
Holt: "Old story, dead story, move on to the issues that matter to the American people."

What are the chances the media will move on in this case?

# Update: The Web site for the Late Show with David Letterman has added a RealPlayer video clip showing the entirety of Senator John Edwards presenting his "Top Ten" list, the "Top Ten Things Never Before Said by a Presidential Candidate." The February 5 CyberAlert featured a link to the "Big Show Highlights" page with a clip of Edwards presenting only part of the list. Letterman's "Comedy Clips" page has RealPlayer video of the entire list which Edwards announced on the February 4 show. See: www.cbs.com

The taping of Thursday's Late Show was suspended, and CBS aired a repeat last night, after a guest, snow-boarder Tara Dakides, had an accident while performing a stunt on the show, falling 25 feet off a ramp and onto the pavement of West 53rd St outside of the Ed Sullivan Theater. Apparently, she's okay. The AP's story on the incident: story.news.yahoo.com

"Dave's TV Stunt Horror" screamed the front page New York Post headline today: www.nypost.com

-- Brent Baker