First solo woman anchor Couric signs off from CBS

[onehandle]

Source: Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Katie Couric, the first woman in the nation to serve as solo network evening news anchor, ended her stint on "CBS Evening News" on Thursday, saying it had been "an incredible journey" and "an extraordinary privilege."

The broadcast included Couric's interview with another history-making woman, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who became the first former first lady to win elected office when she joined the Senate in 2001.

Couric discussed President Obama's foreign policy speech on developments in the Arab world with Clinton, who also sought the presidency in 2008.

Clinton also addressed negotiations with Israel and the Palestinians, and Washington's policy toward Pakistan in the wake of Osama Bin Laden's death in a U.S. military raid.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110520/people_nm/us_cbs_couric_3

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

1. Meh.

[Bubba Kush]

7. Whatever happened to the guy with that meh pic

Kinda miss him

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. It just killed her a couple weeks ago when CBS said she couldn't say "Seal Team 6 ROCKS!"

[Octafish]

3. Her '60 Minutes' good bye piece on Robert Gates, BFEE was amongst the worst things ever on TV.

Amazing puffery of all things mighty and no questions about anything worth knowing, apart from: "Why if Osama bin Laden is dead are we still in Afghanistan?"

The captain of CIA Team-B and Iran Contra veteran said we're near the goal line and a lot of people have died to get us there and we shouldn't quit until we can turn the country over to the good guys.

Katie never asked about Gates about his role with Poppy Bush in abandoning the people of Afghanistan, post Soviet occupation. If we'd done even a little, the history of Afghanistan would be very different.

Good bye, Katie. Good luck, America.

[PDittie]

6. Really?

I didn't think it was all that bad ...

[Octafish]

14. More on what Ms. Couric should have covered re Mr. Gates...

Dunno about you, but I don't care much for Mr. Gates or his associations with the Bush family -- personal, professional and commercial.

Rumsfeld’s Replacement: The Robert Gates File

Iran-Contra figure, regime-change enthusiast, alleged intelligence manipulator -- meet Robert Gates, the man who’s poised to be the next Secretary of Defense.

James Ridgeway
November 09 , 2006

WASHINGTON—While Donald Rumsfeld was Ronald Reagan’s errand boy to Saddam Hussein in the mid-1980s, Robert Gates, the man named yesterday to succeed him as Secretary of Defense, was at the very heart of the American intelligence apparatus, actively planning and carrying out covert operations in Central America and the Middle East.

SNIP…

According to Robert Parry, a reporter who has closely tracked this period in the CIA’s history, during this time the Reagan administration was “pressing the CIA to adopt an analysis that accepted right-wing media reports pinning European terrorism on the Soviets. The CIA analysts knew that these charges were false, in part because they were based on ‘black’ or false propaganda that the CIA itself had been planting in the European media. But the ‘politicization’ tide was strong.” And Gates, he writes, led an effort to implicate the Soviets in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. “In 1985, Gates closeted a special team to push through another pre-cooked paper arguing that the KGB was behind the 1981 wounding of Pope John Paul II. CIA analysts again knew that the charge was bogus, but could not block the paper from leaving CIA.”

Critics have long thought Gates was heavily involved from the very beginning in putting together and implementing the secret Iran-Contra war. In his book, “Firewall: The Iran/Contra conspiracy and Cover-Up,” Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation, wrote that he was skeptical of Gates’ repeated denials of having been aware or involved with the details of the Iran-Contra operations with Oliver North. According to the National Security Archive’s chronology of the day-by-day happenings in Iran-Contra, on October 1, 1985 the CIA’s National Intelligence Officer, Charles Allen, informed then deputy director Gates of his suspicion that funds were being diverted to the Contras. Gates, for his part, has insisted he first learned of the diversion one year later. “Whenever questioned, Gates had always claimed that he had first learned of Allen's concern about the diversion on the day after Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua on October 5, 1986,” writes Walsh, referring to the lone survivor on board a CIA cargo plane that was shot down over Nicaragua while on a mission to supply the Contras. “Gates said that he and Allen had then reported this to Casey, who told them that he had just received much the same information from another source.’’

In blunt terms, Walsh thought Gates was a liar. It was only for a lack of evidence that he eventually gave up trying to indict him.

In November 1991, years after Iran-Contra messily unraveled, the Senate deliberated on the nomination of Gates to succeed William H. Webster as the next director of Central Intelligence. Democrats, including former Senator Tom Daschle, Jay Rockefeller, and the late Paul Wellstone spoke forcefully, vowing to vote against the nominee. “Robert Gates became the Deputy Director of the CIA in April, 1986, after a meteoric rise in the Agency,” Wellstone said. “His confirmation hearings provided ample and credible evidence that, as the Deputy Director, he repeatedly skewed intelligence to promote the world view of his mentor and his boss, William Casey. Analysts specializing in the Soviet Union, Latin America, Africa, and scientific affairs, came forward--some at risk to their careers in the agency--to provide examples. The record further strongly suggests that Robert Gates supported--passively or actively--terribly misguided or illegal covert operations, including the diversion of funds to the Nicaraguan Contras obtained through the sale of arms to Iran. He also had a hand in hiding some of the details of these covert operations from Congress. Lastly, the record showed that Robert Gates crossed the line from independent intelligence-gathering into high-profile policymaking when he gave speeches advocating an unyielding line toward the Soviet Union and deployment of a star wars missile defense system.”

CONTINUED…

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2006/11/Gates%20Files.html

Eagle Scouts aren't supposed to lie or anything else like that.

PS: After that, the part where Gates got to fly around the world inside a mobile home taking up a C-17A cargo hold doesn't seem so extravagant.

[Purveyor]

4. Thank god! eom

[calimary]

5. Hey - she did a great service knocking sarah palin down a few hundred pegs.

THAT series of "name a newspaper" questions was devastating! Funny no man came up with those questions. Katie did!

[underpants]

8. Sarah loves the camera but they come with mics attached...and that is where the trouble begins

Katie asked her sofball questions and Sarah couldn't handle them. SNL (Fey) did one segment of five I believe in which Fey did Palin verbatim - she referenced this last weekend.

[wordpix]

9. +1 and I like how she reinvents herself

[alp227]

11. SNL did a parody of that intvw with Tina Fey as Palin, Amy Poehler as Couric

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/couric-palin-open/704042/

[provis99]

15. she threw Palin softballs.

Couric deserves no credit for Palin's abject stupidity.

[calimary]

16. Very true! palin was and is too thick even to handle softball questions.

You'd think she'd be able to pull ONE publication out of her ass on the spot like that. Hell, even Vogue magazine - or maybe Mad magazine was more her speed? Or Guns & Ammo perhaps? SOMETHING. The Wasilla Daily Something-or-Other? Sheesh!

[Rex]

10. Another worthless tool dulled and ready for the bin.

:eyes:

[alp227]

12. she was also planning a daytime talk show

Katie Couric Pursuing Syndicated Talk Show (Hollywood Reporter)

[alp227]

13. 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley will succeed Couric

Couric didn't shine out as a journalist or anchor at all. So that's why I watched ABC and NBC and PBS news instead in the evenings. But I've enjoyed watching Pelley's 60 Minutes reporting and will tune in to his opening night, June 6.