Rick B

There are a small circle of producers and editors who had to have met with Rather in preparation for this fiasco

I don’t know . . . I have a friend who is a long-time producer for Peter Jennings, and I don’t get the sense that the producers are in a position to ride herd at all. The hierarchical nature of the relationship seems pretty absolute to me, judging from afar (way afar).

I could be completely wrong about this, but I have just never gotten the sense that when you’re talking about a “Star Anchor” like Rather, Brokaw or Jennings there’s any kind of normal relationship of authority.

My guess would be that if the “unimpeachable” source is somebody important and/or famous enough to get to Rather directly, rather than through a staff member, no one on the CBS Evening News staff would insist on knowing who it was if Rather didn’t want to say.

Assuming for the sake of argument that that’s the case, it’s a Big Fat Clue: it means that the source of the forgery was someone Big.

Big enough to get Dan Rather on the phone.

Lot of assumptions there . . .