* Redstone, a declared Bush supporter, was pissed that CBS News was alienating the Bush admin, and said at a board meeting that Rather & Co. had to go.
* CBS tried to bury the Abu Ghraib story that Rather and Mapes broke.
* CBS management tried to keep Rather off the National Guard story.
* That same highly skeptical management vetted the documents that were later called into question.
* CBS origianlly told Rather they'd stand behind him and the story and then changed their mind, letting him take the fall for a story they'd vetted themselves.
* The head of the panel that investigated the story, Dick Thornburgh, was critically covered by Rather when Thornburg was Attorney General, and was a Bush loyalist.
* Rather was instructed not to follow up any leads on the story while the investigation was underway. He said he wanted to hire a private investigator to do the work; CBS told him not to, and hired one themselves, Erik Rigler. The panel never talked to Rigler about his investigation, and never mentioned him in their report. Rigler had concluded the docs were probably authentic, and the underlying story was true.
* They fired Rather as anchor before the panel's report was published.