Dan Rather is angrier than a rabid raccoon trying to scratch its way into a closed garbage can, accusing his former bosses at CBS of trashing his reputation and using him as a “scapegoat” for a flawed report on President Bush’s days in the Texas Air National Guard.
In a $70 million Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit, the mad as hell and not going to take it anymore former CBS Evening News anchor says the network used him and then hung him out to dry during the infamous “Memogate” scandal, and canned him because his bosses were trying “to pacify the White House.”
“Since the fall of 2004, CBS has continuously acted to Mr. Rather’s detriment by directing him to publicly apologize, and thus accept the blame, for CBS’s mishandling of the broadcast, despite his blameless conduct,” says the suit, which was filed yesterday.
The filing says the network intentionally sought to hurt Rather’s “stature and reputation,” and has “greatly damaged” a journalist who spent 44 years with CBS. They also whitewashed a finding that the controversial report that led to Rather’s ouster was “certainly accurate,” the suit says.
“Such wrongful acts also have damaged and diminished the independence and quality of CBS News and the important journalistic functions it performs,” it says.
A spokesman for CBS, Dana McClintock, said, “These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit.”
The suit also names CBS president Les Moonves, former CBS News president Andrew Heyward, the network’s then parent company, Viacom, and its head, Sumner Redstone.
At the center of the legal battle is a Sept. 8, 2004, CBS report that President Bush, who was running for re-election at the time, had used connections to get into the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, and then skimped on his service.
The report was backed by documents that were later found to be fakes.
The suit says the “well-organized attack on the authenticity of the documents [that] immediately followed the broadcast” was “led by conservative political elements supportive of the Bush administration” and aimed at deterring any more “unfavorable” news from getting out.
Rather, whom the suit describes as simply having been the “narrator” of the story, says he was “coerced” into “publicly apologizing and [taking] personal blame for alleged journalistic errors in the broadcast.”
He says his bosses asked him to keep quiet until their investigation into the case was concluded, but he was removed from his anchorman job before that probe concluded – and one day after Bush was re-elected.