One reads the report on CBS and the bogus memos - all 224 pages of it, supported by about 500 pages of exhibits - with a gathering sense of dismay.

It is not a snow job. CBS promised findings "in weeks, not months" about allegations it had aired bogus memos suggesting disobedience by George Bush in the Texas Air National Guard in1972-73. Four months and half-a-million dollars later, we have a report by two eminences (a former attorney general and a former head of the Associated Press) that amounts to the devastation of Dan Rather and CBS.

The report finds - let's see:

-Abundant carelessness.

-"Egregious shortcomings" (former AP President and CEO Lou Boccardi's words) in the realm of broadly accepted journalistic standards. ("Our report does not give CBS a passing grade.")

-A determination by CBS to rush the memos onto the air.

-"Myopic zeal."

-"Solid sources" (Rather's words) that were in truth a congeries of Democratic hangers-on, hustlers, and hacks.

-Haste.

Devastating stuff.

So, as one reads along, where does the dismay enter and gather steam?

1) Though within hours of CBS' airing of the memos their genuineness lay in tatters across the Internet and the pages of the nation's major newspapers, the panel refuses to go there. It concludes: "The panel was not able to reach a definitive conclusion as to the authenticity of the . documents."

Mountains of evidence, not least including the panel's own exhibits, show the memos to be forgeries beyond a reasonable doubt. To conclude anything else is to approach the still-held position of, among others, Dan Rather: that though the memos cannot be authenticated, they cannot be proven wrong either; besides, their content is accurate, even if they are not.

Which is ideological incoherence.

2) Rather was distracted - harried by coverage of Florida hurricanes, for instance, and anyway not deeply involved in preparation of the memos story.

The exhibits make clear Rather's deep involvement in interviews and other aspects of the bogus-memos affair. In truth, for five years he and producer Mary Mapes - who in the wake of the panel's report took the fall at CBS as principal perpetrator in airing the bogus memos - had been seeking to show Bush as a slacking, disobedient incompetent in the Air National Guard.

Rather still believes that (e.g., his words: "the facts are right on the money") - and never mind whether the memos offered to support the "facts" are fakes. This is why, although he has said he is "sorry" for being "misled" by a wacko source ("we were more trusting in [our] source than we should have been") and thus airing the memos without authenticating them. It also is why he has not yet apologized to President Bush for lying on the air - i.e., for stipulating CBS had "unimpeachable sources," and that it had authenticated the memos when it had not done so because it could not do so - and for seeking to manipulate the electoral process and affect the outcome of the presidential race. Continued...