Deep Read: Dan Rather in 'New York'

If you think Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit against CBS is woefully wrongheaded, you're in good company: The former anchor's wife and longtime agent tried to steer him away from suing, according to the cover story in this week's New York magazine.

Joe Hagan, the reporter who handed Katie Couric plenty of rope to hang herself with in a July profile, gives Rather a chance to make the case that his downfall was the result of a Viacom-White House conspiracy, and not of his own faulty reporting.

But Rather doesn't have much more to offer than his own hunches. You know your case is thin when you have to resort to quoting from a book by discredited celebrity biographer Ed Klein. Rather, who says Sumner Redstone is "the heavy" in all this, cites a passage showing the Viacom chief ordering a purge of anyone associated with Rather to aid passage of a corporate tax bill the company wanted. But Hagan has another source who says Klein's anecdote was bogus.

Rather does have a witness on his side, a person who claims to have watched as George W. Bush's military service records were shredded (lending credence to Rather's theory that the documents he showcased on 60 Minutes II were not fakes but authentic copies). But the witness won't allow himself to be identified until the case goes to trial.

That leaves Rather to point to circumstantial evidence, like the settlement that CBS reached with his former producer Mary Mapes, and the fact that he was told to vacate the anchor chair the morning after President Bush was reelected.

It's not much, but then Rather may not need much to attain a victory of sorts. Conspiracy theories aside, he only needs to show that CBS violated his contract by not giving him regular airtime on 60 Minutes.

But CBS can counter this by arguing that Rather's segments weren't up to 60 Minutes standards. "It's a meritocracy," says executive producer Jeff Fager of why so few Rather reports made the cut. And it's easy enough to believe that the man who wore a T-shirt reading "F.E.A." (for "Fuck 'Em All") under his suit on Evening News, and who had taken to making bourbon-soaked midnight phone calls to colleagues instead of sleeping, wasn't doing his best work anymore.

Lately, says Hagan, Rather's been pouring his energy into writing a book about "the principles at stake" in his dispute. He's already banged out 14 chapters. "The court action has at its core the rights of journalists...to safeguard the liberties of us all by preserving one of the indispensable elements of responsible government, which is the right to report freely on the conduct of those in authority," reads on passage.

But Rather has always been allowed to report freely. He's still doing it, albeit for the small HDNet rather than huge CBS. No one's freedom has been abridged. That being the case, the court action seems to have at its core the right to report freely on those in power, and to get paid millions of dollars for it, and to reach millions of viewers, and to be allowed to do so in perpetuity, no matter what mistakes you make.