Dan Rather Strikes Back at CBS

Rather Strikes Back
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 20, 2007; 8:56 AM

I was extremely surprised by Dan Rather's lawsuit yesterday, but not as stunned as the CBS people I called, who just simply could not believe it.

No one was shocked that Rather is still mad at CBS -- he made that clear when he left the network last year, and more recently when he took that swipe at his old show being tarted up under Katie Couric.

No one was shocked that Rather still wants to argue about Memogate -- he's made clear in a number of appearances that he still thinks the Bush/National Guard story was right, even if it wasn't fully nailed down.

No one was shocked that Rather thinks big corporations such as CBS aren't foursquare behind aggressive journalism -- he's said that a thousand times, even while he was on the CBS payroll.

But that the man who succeeded Walter Cronkite, who was the face of CBS News for 25 years, would turn around and sue, rather than moving on with his life -- that was one heck of an eye-opener. For Rather is not just taking his old bosses to court, he is reopening all the wounds from that National Guard story, which even his friends would tell you was not his finest hour.

Here is my report:

In an extraordinary move that reflects the depth of his resentment toward his former network, Dan Rather sued CBS yesterday, charging that he was made a "scapegoat" for a discredited 2004 story about President Bush's National Guard record because CBS wanted to "pacify the White House."

CBS management "coerced" the veteran news anchor "into publicly apologizing and taking personal blame for alleged journalistic errors in the broadcast," says the $70 million suit, which also names Sumner Redstone, chief executive of the network's then-parent company, Viacom; CBS Chairman Les Moonves; and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward.

Several former colleagues said they were baffled by the move. "I think he's gone off the deep end," said Josh Howard, who was forced to resign as executive producer of "60 Minutes II" after CBS retracted the story. "He seems to be saying he was just the narrator.

"He did every interview. He worked the sources over the phone. He was there in the room with the so-called document experts. He argued over every line in the script. It's laughable."

Rome Hartman, a former executive producer of "CBS Evening News" who now works for the BBC, said: "It's got to be about this lasting sense of hurt and pride. I was flabbergasted. I just don't get it."

Rather's lawyer, Martin Gold, said last night: "Dan is bringing this lawsuit to restore his reputation. He's not doing this for the money," he added, saying that Rather would donate most of any court award to journalistic causes.

After serving as "CBS Evening News" anchor for a quarter-century, Rather agreed to relinquish the chair in November 2004, weeks before an outside panel criticized him and top network executives for airing a badly flawed story charging that Bush had received favorable treatment from the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s. He said at the time that he was stepping down voluntarily, but says in the lawsuit that CBS had "terminated" his anchor duties the day after Bush was reelected.

Rather was shifted to "60 Minutes," where he had a part-time workload. When CBS refused to renew his contract last year, Rather accused the network of failing to live up to its contractual obligations and offering him little more than an office if he were to continue.

CBS brushed off the suit, which alleges fraud and breach of contract, with a single sentence. "These complaints are old news, and this lawsuit is without merit," spokesman Dana McClintock said.

Rather, 75, who now hosts a weekly program on HDNet, a high-definition channel owned by Dallas billionaire Mark Cuban, says in the suit that CBS's actions "have cost him significant financial loss and seriously damaged his reputation."

The debacle over the National Guard story, which the suit says became known as "Rathergate," turned on 30-year-old memos said to have been written by Bush's late squadron commander. Several newspapers, including The Washington Post, and conservative bloggers gathered evidence that the documents were unlikely to have been typed on government typewriters of that era.

Several document experts hired by CBS said later that they had not authenticated the memos, as the network originally claimed, and the commander's former secretary said she did not type them. The source who gave CBS the documents, Bill Burkett, initially said he got them from a fellow National Guardsman. But Burkett later admitted he had lied to the network and could not establish that the papers came from the commander's files.

CBS aired the story on Sept. 8, 2004, at the height of the presidential campaign, hours after White House official Dan Bartlett did not challenge the authenticity of the memos when asked about them by CBS. Bartlett said later that he had no way of knowing on such short notice whether the memos were real.

Gold, Rather's lawyer, maintained that "nobody's proved the documents were forgeries. The way we look at it, it's more than likely the documents are authentic."

An outside panel, appointed by CBS and headed by former attorney general Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press chief executive Lou Boccardi, accused the network of having "failed miserably" to authenticate the memos and of making false and misleading statements in defending the story afterward. Three top executives resigned under pressure, and Rather's producer, Mary Mapes, was fired.

The uproar hastened the end of Rather's remarkable 44-year career at CBS, which stretched from covering the assassination of John F. Kennedy to conducting the last Western interview with Saddam Hussein. It also revived criticism that he was a liberal who was biased against Republican presidents dating back to Richard M. Nixon.

Bernard Goldberg, a former CBS correspondent and a sharp critic of Rather, said yesterday that the former anchor is a great reporter, "but the dark side is that he's unwilling or incapable of accepting responsibility. . . . This is the man who signed off his newscast with 'courage,' and now he's alleging 'they made me do it, they just put the words in front of me.' This is ridiculous on so many levels."

In the suit, Rather says he "played largely a supervisory role" in producing and vetting the story because he had been instructed to concentrate on his anchoring duties and covering a Florida hurricane and the Republican National Convention in New York.

Said Howard, the former executive producer, who is now a CNBC executive: "You can't have it both ways. He wasn't forced to read the script. He pressured us to put the story on the air."

Twelve days after the story aired, according to the suit, Heyward, then the news division chief, "instructed" Rather to read an apology on the "Evening News," despite Rather's "own personal feelings that no apology from him was warranted." In those on-air remarks, Rather called the story a "mistake" and added: "I want to say personally and directly, I'm sorry."

Those words, the suit says, caused the media and public to blame him for the bungled story. Heyward declined to comment yesterday.

The outside probe was "designed to give the appearance of fairness," but "its conclusions were preordained," the suit charges, noting Thornburgh's role in the George H.W. Bush administration and as a Republican Senate candidate.

To buttress Rather's charge that CBS wanted to mend fences with the White House, the suit points to a Time interview in the fall of 2004 in which Redstone said Bush's reelection would help Viacom.

"They sacrificed independent journalism for corporate financial interests," Gold said.

Asked why Rather would sue more than a year after leaving CBS, Gold said the former anchor was "a bit appalled" at new information he said had emerged involving a private investigator, Erik Rigler, who was hired by the network during the 2004 controversy. Rigler, a former FBI agent, "was trying to dig up dirt on Dan and Mary Mapes," Gold said, declining to elaborate.

When CBS came under fire over the story, Gold said, Rather told Heyward he wanted to hire an investigator at his own expense, but Heyward responded that CBS would retain such a person. Gold said, again without providing evidence, that Rigler concluded that the Guard memos were authentic and the story accurate. He was interviewed by the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel, which accused Rather and CBS of a "myopic zeal" to rush the story to air five days after obtaining the disputed papers.

Reached by phone, Rigler declined to comment last night.

Lynne Bernabei, a Washington lawyer who specializes in employment disputes, called Rather's suit "a hard case to prove" but said he might mount a credible argument that CBS had breached the contract by minimizing his airtime. Still, she said, "the fact that he made an on-air admission that he made mistakes makes it hard for him to prove some of the other claims that they misled him."

When Rather was transferred to "60 Minutes II" and, after its cancellation, the original Sunday "60 Minutes," CBS paid him $6 million a year under his contract but "allowed him to function in a very limited capacity," the suit says. Rather did about 10 pieces over a year for "60 Minutes," including stories from North Korea and China.

As further evidence of CBS's abandonment, the suit said, the network did not respond to criticism of Rather by "60 Minutes" veterans Mike Wallace and Andy Rooney, among others.

Rather clearly intended to make a splash with the suit: He has agreed to appear tonight on "Larry King Live."



Now he can resume looking for the real killers.