CBS-- Rather Pushy?

Dan Rather's prolonged protestations against his firing by CBS have longed come across as a major case of sour grapes. He was always a bit quirky, and all this unseemly bitching and moaning about a CBS conspiracy to push him out the door hasn't helped enhance his legacy in my eyes-- but all the work being done by his lawyers may end up vindicating the former Texas anchor.

Rather has long believed that an independent investigation paid for by CBS to assess his flawed 60 Minutes report on Bush's National Guard service wasn’t actually independent at all, but heavily influenced by CBS executives and effectively a corporate cleanup operation meant to placate the White House.

According to Joe Hagan at the Daily Intel, CBS sought advice from Republican operatives in its search for a panelist who would placate right-wing ire against the network; and the president of CBS News at the time, Andrew Heyward, may have had foreknowledge of, and input on, the investigation even though he was himself supposedly under scrutiny.

Newly released CBS memos from 2004 show the network did in fact use a political litmus test to pick a key panelist for its independent panel. After considering a laundry list of GOP pundits, executives, lobbyists, and lawyers, CBS News chose former attorney general Dick Thornburgh to co-chair the panel:

Mr. Thornburgh, who served as attorney general for both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, was named a panelist by CBS, but only after a CBS lobbyist “did some other testing,” in which she was told, according to [CBS News vice president Linda] Mason’s notes, “T comes back with high marks from G.O.P.

CBS News president Andrew Heyward himself was a subject of the investigation because he’d been directly involved in the 60 Minutes report and its aftermath. Therefore he wasn’t supposed to have any input on the “independent” panel report other than his own testimony. But a newly-discovered e-mail between Heyward and CBS News vice-president Linda Mason suggests Heyward was being kept abreast of the internal machinations of the investigation and offering input almost two weeks before he was supposed to know what was in it:

In the e-mail back-and-forth, Mr. Heyward and Ms. Mason appear to be engaging in a bit of preemptive damage control. “Even if they had to expand the summary, we should consider this option if the big doc is too destructive,” wrote Mr. Heyward. “[A]nd I wouldn’t hesitate to put that back on them — that they exceeded the mandate or violated our instruction to leave the organism alive after the cancer is removed.

Clearly, Heyward didn’t consider himself part of the “cancer” to be removed by the panel, which was evidently acting on “our instruction.”

Rather may be a bit of an old Texas coot, but these revelations certainly give some credence to his claims. Maybe CBS should have thought twice about taking on a former investigative reporter.