Mary Mapes

Early life

Mapes was born on May 9, 1956, in Burlington, Washington and grew up there with four sisters. Both of her parents were Republicans. After graduating from Burlington-Edison High School in 1974, Mapes studied communications and political science at the University of Washington. After earning her degrees, she worked at CBS affiliate KIRO-TV in Seattle during the 1980s. While a producer there, she met her future husband, KIRO reporter Mark Wrolstad, and they married in 1987.

At CBS

In 1989, Mapes went to work for CBS News in Dallas, Texas. She was hired by CBS in 1999 as a producer assigned to Dan Rather and the program 60 Minutes Wednesday.

At 60 Minutes Wednesday, Mapes produced the story that announced the US Army's investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the story that exposed Strom Thurmond's unacknowledged bi-racial daughter, Essie Mae Washington, winning a Peabody Award in 2005 for the former.

Killian documents controversy

Mary Mapes produced a segment for 60 Minutes Wednesday that aired criticism of President George W. Bush's military service, supported by documents purportedly from the files of Bush's commanding officer, the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B Killian. Those documents had been delivered to CBS from Bill Burkett, who was a retired Lt. Colonel with the Texas Army National Guard. During the segment, Dan Rather asserted that the documents had been authenticated by document experts, but ultimately, CBS could neither confirm nor definitively refute their authenticity. Moreover, CBS did not have any original documents, only faxed copies, as Burkett claimed to have burned the originals.

The 60 Minutes report charged that Bush, the son of an ambassador, congressman and future president, had received preferential treatment whereby hundreds of other applicants to the Texas Air National Guard were unjustly passed over in favor of his own. Then-Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes said he had made phone calls to get Bush into the Guard.

After the report was aired, it was immediately the subject of harsh criticism, especially when a key document could not be authenticated. As a result of the controversy over the use of the documents, CBS ordered an independent internal investigation. The panel in charge of investigation was composed of Dick Thornburgh, former governor of Pennsylvania and United States Attorney General in the George H. W. Bush administration, and Louis Boccardi, retired president and CEO of the Associated Press. The Thornburgh-Boccardi report said that some of Bush's former instructors or colleagues had told Mapes that Bush told them he wanted to go to Vietnam, but that he could not go because there were others ahead of him with more seniority.

Mapes was criticized for failing to air them in the 60 Minutes report to balance the allegation that Bush had applied for service in the Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam. Mapes was also faulted for calling Joe Lockhart, a senior official in the John Kerry campaign, before the piece ran on the air and offering to put Bill Burkett in contact with Lockhart. However, Mapes stated that Burkett had asked her to give his phone number to someone in the Kerry camp to discuss the Swift Boat campaign for which she had asked permission. She has said, in retrospect, she would not have done it. Lockhart and Burkett also stated that the conversation had nothing to do with CBS's report or the documents, but had to do with the Swift Boat campaign.

Book and film adaptation

In 2005, Mapes' book Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power was published. It was adapted into the 2015 film Truth, about the Killian documents controversy, starring Cate Blanchett as Mapes and Robert Redford as Dan Rather.

Writing career

In the aftermath of the CBS scandal, Mapes started work as a writer and a consultant, contributing to the news magazine The Nation in 2007 and 2008.

In the May 2016 edition of D Magazine, Mapes wrote a story about Henry Wade's 1954 conviction of Tommy Lee Walker.