Dan Rather launched a US$70 million lawsuit Wednesday against his old employer CBS, which forced him out over the Memogate affair. Rather thinks he has evidence that will vindicate him.
Mr. Rather, 75, asserts that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005.
He also contends that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” and incomplete investigation of the flawed National Guard broadcast in order to “pacify the White House.”
Asked yesterday in his lawyer’s office why he was taking such action now, Mr. Rather said he had been unable to let go of numerous lingering questions about the Guard report and CBS’s handling of its fallout. In recent months, he said he had even assembled “a team” of associates at his own expense — he declined to say whether it included private investigators — that had turned up new information. Among his findings, he said, was that a private investigator hired by CBS after the report’s broadcast had unearthed evidence that might exonerate him, at least in part.
“I’d like to know what really happened,” he said, his eyes red and watering. “Let’s get under oath. Let’s get e-mails. Let’s get who said what to whom, when and for what purpose.”
The suit, which seeks $70 million in damages, names as defendants CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its executive chairman, Mr. Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News. In a statement CBS said, “These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit.” Mr. Heyward said he would not comment beyond the CBS statement. A Viacom spokesman said he had no comment.
What Rather seems to think happened is that CBS tossed the U.S. right wing a bone in that debacle, which dealt with U.S. President George W. Bush's murky stint in the Texas Air National Guard, and he was the bone:
Mr. Rather says in the filing that he allowed himself to be reduced to little more than a patsy in the furor that followed, after CBS concluded that the report had been based on documents that could not be authenticated. Under pressure, Mr. Rather says, he delivered a public apology on his newscast on Sept. 20, 2004 — written not by him but by a CBS corporate publicist — “despite his own personal feelings that no public apology from him was warranted.”
CBS's selection of Richard Thornburgh, a former attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration, to investigate Memogate (the controversy centred on some memos about Dubya that may have been factually accurate but were forgeries) rankled Rather:
The panel led by Mr. Thornburgh, as well as Louis Boccardi, a former chief executive of The Associated Press, did not single out Mr. Rather for the broadcast’s failures, but did fault several producers and executives for rushing the report to broadcast without sufficient vetting.
CBS fired three people outright.