Something remains puzzling about the Rathergate scandal.
 
Where is the outrage? Where is the righteous rage of Dan Rather at the forgers of faked military records of George W. Bush, who played him for a fool?

 Something is fishy here. And, indeed, the inexplicable absence of outrage suggests that there is more, much more, to this story

To understand, imagine this situation. Detectives come to the home of John Q. Citizen to inform him he has been the victim of a fraud. The hundred-dollar bills he used as a down payment on his new Cadillac all turned out to be counterfeit. The detectives then politely ask John Q. where he might have gotten the counterfeit bills.

 John Q. goes back into the house for a while, and emerges to declare defiantly: "I do not believe those hundred-dollar bills were counterfeit. I stand by them. And I will not give up my source!"

 If the detectives conclude that John Q. was probably not a victim of counterfeiters, but an accomplice, could you blame them?

 And so it is with Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, the producer of "60 Minutes." Both are today material witnesses to a felony, the enablers of a criminal conspiracy to bring down a president through the creation and dissemination of forged U.S. government documents.

 Yet, rather than acting like innocent parties of a vicious plot to destroy a president, Rather and Mapes are acting like a pair of co-conspirators, with grudging admissions and insincere apologies.

 How should CBS behave, if it is innocent of any criminality or malice? Quite simple. Rather should go on camera and read, on behalf of CBS News, a statement something like this:

  "We have discovered and concluded that the documents we used to assert that President Bush was an insubordinate officer in the Texas Air National Guard who used political influence to avoid being disciplined were forgeries. We were irresponsible in airing these documents. We now have no evidence and no credible witness to make such a charge. We hereby retract the charge and apologize to President Bush for any damage we have done to him. And we will do our best to repair that damage."

 Why have we not heard this? The answer suggests itself.

 While CBS probably did not know the documents it used were blatant forgeries, it is guilty of having aired a bigoted, misleading attack ad on George Bush masquerading as an investigative report.

 Consider what Rather left out of this "60 Minutes" story. Continued...