Remember "Rathergate," also known as "Memogate"? The charge that anchorman Dan Rather of CBS had used forged documents to support the claim that Bush had failed to meet his National Guard obligations? As the claim was aired on 60 Minutes, the Right was ready to pounce. Within hours questions were raised on the web as to the documents' authenticity. When it came out that CBS had less-than-sterling authentication of the documents, the story was effectively discredited, even though it was based on a number of sources other than the documents.

September 8 was the first anniversary of Rathergate, and Dan Rather was interviewed recently on C-SPAN, which is where retired anchormen go to tell their tales. Don Kaplan of the NY Post reports that Rather still wants to investigate Bush's National Guard duty but CBS won't let him—

"CBS News doesn't want me to do that story" .....

"They wouldn't let me do that story," he said during the shockingly frank interview with former NBC newsman Marvin Kalb.

Rather continues to insist that the story was correct and suggested in the interview that he and the network may have been set up by some outsider.

"There are some strange, and to me, still mysterious things," he said. "Certainly unexplained things that happened about how it got attacked and why, even before the program was over," Rather said.

Memo to Dan Rather: You've made all the money you need to make at CBS and you've been demoted. Time to leave the network. "They won't let me" is a pathetic excuse from a man of your age and supposed venerability.

Related post
Dan Rather vs. Carl Cameron (updated) (corrected) (10/2/04)