The gall of CBS News is cosmic.

CBS Says Probe Results Unlikely Until After Election.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An external review of how CBS News came to use disputed documents in a report on President Bush’s military record will probably not be concluded until after the November election so as not to interfere with the presidential race, a top executive said on Tuesday.

Les Moonves, the co-president of CBS parent company Viacom, told an analyst meeting that the review of the CBS “60 Minutes II” report being done by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and retired Associated Press chief Louis Boccardi had no timetable for completion. But he said he did not want it to interfere with the Nov. 2 election.

“Obviously, it should be done probably after the election is over so that it doesn’t affect what’s going on,” he told a Goldman Sachs media conference in New York.

Right. But a news story based on fraudulent documents, timed to impact the elections in the most blatant, egregious way—that’s fine.

And this means that all those people—Mapes, Heyward, and Rather—who were responsible for this utter fiasco will still be reporting the news, right on through the elections. What a joke.