Accuracy in Media is all over the other CBS News scandal, the one you haven't heard about yet.

While the media were abuzz over the release of the independent review panel report on CBS's  "memogate" scandal,  another CBS scandal was emerging. 

Coinciding with the release of the CBS report was the release of the January cover story, "Tin Soldier," in the Columbia Journalism Review, strongly suggesting that 60 Minutes Wednesday used phony Al Qaeda videotapes in its 2002 segment "Heart of Darkness."  Dan Rather narrated the segment.

The powerful Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) story was written by Mariah Blake. It follows and credits another exposi, "Operation Desert Fraud, by Stacy Sullivan in the New Yorker. Both stories say that a key CBS source was a criminal and a fraud.

The source was former U.S. Special Forces soldier Jonathan Keith Idema, who has an extensive criminal background. His latest conviction was in 2004 on counts of operating an illegal prison in Afghanistan and torture.

In January 2002 Idema sold the famous "VideoX" tapes to CBS.  The tapes purport to show Al—Qaeda camps in action and included 7 hours of footage. Dan Rather went to Afghanistan to report on site and the tapes became the foundation of a "bombshell" 60 Minutes II segment.

But Tracy—Paul Warrington, former deputy commander of a Special Forces counter—terrorism team and a civilian intelligence analyst for the Defense Department, told CJR, "In a nutshell, the videotapes are forgeries." Warrington said the tactics shown had been abandoned by Al Qaeda, and that the area where the footage was supposedly filmed was under coalition control.

Clarice Feldman   1 28 05