Four heads have rolled over the CBS memo-gate scandal, in which apparently fake memos about Dubya's service in the Texas Air National Guard were used in in a 60 Minutes II segment.

Here's an excerpt from the AP story carried on nytimes.com:

The network fired Mary Mapes, producer of the report; Josh Howard, executive producer of "60 Minutes Wednesday" and his top deputy Mary Murphy; and senior vice president Betsy West.

Dan Rather, who narrated the report, announced in November that he was stepping down as anchorman of the "CBS Evening News," but insisted the timing had nothing to do with the investigation.

Rather "asked the right questions initially, but then made the same errors of credulity and over-enthusiasm that beset many of his colleagues in regard to this segment," top CBS executive Leslie Moonves said.

Given Rather's apology and announcement that he was stepping down, Moonves said further action against Rather was not warranted.

CBS News President Andrew Heyward kept his job. The panel said Heyward had explicitly urged caution before the report aired.

Here's a link to the full report, which is 234 pages long (it's a .pdf file). I suspect the initial reporting has only been done using the executive summary.

Here is CBS's response, also a .pdf file.

I have to do some life maintenance stuff right now, but my initial scan is that the inquiry never established where the fake documents originated. If that's the case, this inquiry wasn't as useful as it possibly could be.

If William Burkett was telling the truth when he said he was given the memos in March at a Dallas cattle auction by someone he didn't know, then who gave it to him?

That being said, I've also said before that CBS should have used a "when it doubt, leave it out policy." They didn't, they got caught on it, and now four careers have been ruined.