Mary Mapes

Mary Mapes is an American journalist and former television news producer. She was a Peabody Award-winning producer for the American television show 60 Minutes (on the CBS network), from which she was fired for her part in the Killian documents scandal.

Early life

Mapes grew up with four sisters in Burlington, Washington where her family had lived for generations. She graduated from Burlington-Edison High School in 1974 and studied communications and political science at the University of Washington. In the 1980s she worked at the KIRO-TV in Seattle. There she also met her husband Mark Wrolstad when she was a producer and he was a reporter. They married in 1987.

Work at CBS

She went to work for CBS News in Dallas in 1989 and joined 60 Minutes Wednesday in 1999, working exclusively as a producer assigned to Dan Rather.

At 60 Minutes Wednesday, Mapes produced the story that announced the US military'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.

2004 election, Killian documents controversy

For months prior to the 2004 US Presidential election, Democratic candidate John Kerry's record in Vietnam had been subject to fierce criticism from a group called Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth. In response, Mapes produced a segment for 60 Minutes Wednesday that aired criticism of President George W. Bush's military service,...
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