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Last month, newsman Dan Rather sued his former employers CBS News and Viacom, as well as Leslie Moonves and Sumner Redstone, presidents of those corporations, and Rather's former immediate supervisor Andrew Heyward. Excerpts from his legal complaint appear below and on the following seven pages. (To read the entire complaint, click here.)

Rather, the complaint says, was hired by CBS News in 1962 and reported on "the assassination of John F. Kennedy [and] the wars in Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and … Iraq" as well as "the fall of the Soviet empire, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and  … 9/11/01" (Page 4). From 1991 until 2005, he was anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News. His career essentially ended as "one of the foremost broadcast journalists of our time" (see below) on Sept. 8, 2004 when Rather appeared in and narrated a news magazine segment on 60 Minutes Wednesday regarding George W. Bush's Vietnam-era enlistment and service in the Texas Air National Guard. 

It was hardly news that George H.W. Bush, then a U.S. representative from Houston, had pulled strings to get his son into the National Guard—a route many draft-age young men employed at the time to avoid combat. Nor was it news that Dubya had been absent during much of his time in the Air National Guard and that he probably hadn't deserved his early honorable discharge. For the first time, though, Rather and his producer, Mary Mapes, had gotten a key player—former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes—to fess up  on camera. The broadcast's biggest scoop was the existence of certain memos complaining about Dubya's kid-glove treatment, written for the file in 1972 by his commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, now deceased. Soon after the story was broadcast, however, Rather's and Mapes' source for the memos, Bill Burkett, changed his story about how he'd obtained them, raising serious questions about their authenticity. The person Burkett had first claimed to receive the memos from—whom 60 Minutes had tried and failed to contact—had, it turned out, many months before denied the story, raising additional questions about Burkett's credibility. (For a more detailed summary, click here.)

Rather publicly apologized, but on the day after Bush's re-election, he was told he would be terminated as anchor of CBS News. A review panel led by former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh concluded in January 2005 that Rather and Co., in their "myopic zeal" to be first with the memos, had aired an unverified story. On the report's release, four other CBS employees, including Mapes, were fired or asked to resign. Though he remained nominally a correspondent on 60 Minutes, Rather was shooed away from major stories. Particularly galling, the complaint says, was CBS's refusal "to send him to Louisiana to cover Hurricane Katrina" despite his being "the most experienced reporter in the United States covering hurricanes" (Pages 7 and 8). Airtime, the complaint explains, is  "the life blood for television news personalities" (Page 6).

During this post-anchor period, CBS continued to assure Rather that it "intended to fully use his talents in the near future … his reputation would be repaired and his contract would be extended" (Page 3). But in June 2006, with only a few months left on his $6-million-per-year "staff correspondent agreement" (Page 5), Rather was shown the door. Rather charges CBS News and Viacom with fraud, and with violating obligations of contract, good faith, and fiduciary duty. He asks for $70 million to offset damages to his "earned and enjoyed" reputation "for journalistic excellence and independence"  (Page 5). For its part, CBS has removed archival video and tributes to Rather from its Web site and replaced them with promotional ads and 30-second spots featuring Gwen Stefani.

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