Howard Kurtz Unravels Dan Rather's Story

In his recent lawsuit filing Dan Rather claimed he was just the talking head on the Bush National Guard story but had nothing to do with the decisions to run the piece. Howard Kurtz has a new book coming soon that contradicts Gunga Dan (h/t Drudge):

The night before the story was tentatively scheduled to air, Rather was sitting at the anchor desk, with less than half an hour before the start of the Evening News. He called Josh Howard, who had recently been named as executive producer of 60 Minutes Wednesday, and asked what they were doing to promote his story.

“We’re not,” Howard said. “We haven’t gotten the lawyers to sign off. The script isn’t finished. We haven’t even talked to the White House. I’m not going to start promoting a story when we don’t know what we have.” That was not the answer Rather wanted to hear.

“Other people are chasing this story,” he said. “We’re going to lose our exclusive. We have to get our hooks into the story.”

When Howard again refused, Rather raised the stakes.

“I’m going to give one of the documents to The New York Times to run in Wednesday’s paper,” he said. “They’ll have to credit CBS News. That way we can put our stamp on it.”

“You can’t do that either,” Howard said. “We haven’t finished vetting this.” Rather grumbled and hung up. To raise the specter of giving away a scoop to a competing news outlet was practically unheard of.

If I had to choose between the two stories, I think I'd go with Kurtz on this one. The Rather lawsuit has smelled from the start and the scenerio painted by Kurtz certainly sounds more like Gunga Dan.