I've been going through the CBS report. Part VII (starting on page 43) gets interesting. This part describes Mary Mapes's history on the Bush TexANG story. It seems that she started investigating it in 1999. At that time she was unable to find anyone who could or would say that favoritism had been involved. In fact, she was told that there was no waiting list for the unit (page 46). Rather than take this at face value, she assumed that this meant that spots were being kept open "to take in children of propelled . . . while maintaining deniability." She admitted to the panel that she never found any proof for this theory.

Major General Bobby Hodges, the group commander at the time, even told her that they were hurting for pilots.

This matches something I had heard when the story broke (I probably have a link but I don't feel like searching my archives) - that flight duty was a tough dangerous assignment and that, at minimum, you had to have a degree in order to get in. Consequently, there was no waiting list and no need for favoritism. Mapes was told this but refused to listen.

Later (pages 61-62) the report talks about credibility problems with Lt. Colonel Burkett but says that Mapes was too busy at the time with other stories to have noticed them. She failed to do a Lexus-Nexis Google search on Burkett to check his credibility.