Mary Mapes
So, Fox News said last night that Memogate has not been Ms. Mapes first little ethical flub.
It seems she has gotten into trouble before with a Colorado Prison Warden. As the story goes, she promised to smuggle out secret communiques from one prisoner and get them delivered to another prisoner in another prison without going through normal prison channels. Turns out this is illegal. What's more, the warden of the Colorado Prison has her on tape as having agreed to this. See letter here and here. By the way, these documents look much more real than those obvious forgeries.
In a Nov. 20, 2001, letter to Mapes and her boss, Jeff Fager, J.E. Gunja, warden at the federal penitentiary at Florence, Colo., complained:
"Recently, an investigation determined that the above named inmate requested your assistance in circumventing Federal Bureau of Prisons mail procedures."
"Phone monitoring reveals that you agreed to this request. ... By agreeing to assist this inmate in circumventing federal regulations governing correspondence between confined inmates, you attempted to violate those federal regulations. ... Your attempted misuse of the special mail privileges placed members of the public at risk." (But she's a member of the press, she can't let this bother her!)
Warden Gunja then revoked Mapes' correspondence, telephone and interview privileges with the high-security inmate. Thank goodness.
Scooby-doo would say, "RA-roh!"
Can you identify the scapegoat in the lineup? Anyone? Anyone?
