New York Magazine has a fascinating piece on the “rage” at CBS News over the National Guard memo story, where insiders feel that the wrong people were punished: CBS News Revolt — The National Guard Fiasco — Dan Rather, Mary Mapes. (Hat tip: zulubaby.)

In the aftermath of that day’s traumatic events, there remains a strong sentiment among many CBS News insiders that the punishments don’t fit the crimes—and that those most responsible have gotten off far too lightly. Much internal anger has been directed at Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS and co-CEO of its parent company, Viacom. It was Moonves, after all, who spared Heyward from being fired and instead removed West, Howard, Murphy, and the story’s producer, Mary Mapes, from their jobs. And now Moonves is personally overseeing the news division’s makeover of its last-place CBS Evening News, which will be without a permanent anchor at 6:30 P.M. on Thursday, March 10, for the first time since CBS News began a nightly fifteen-minute newscast in 1948.

It’s even obvious to those on the other side of the cameras that Dan Rather let his blatant bias against George W. Bush overwhelm his concern for the truth:

Rather knew full well the story’s implications for the presidential election then only two months away. The anchorman’s experience at going after sitting presidents is well known, as is his dogged pursuit of tough assignments. But Rather’s reputation as a Bush hater, true or not, has allowed journalists to wonder whether Rather helped rush the story on the air partly for political reasons. “Elections have consequences,” the anchorman had been heard to mutter around the CBS News hallways last year, an apparent reference to his feelings about the crucial importance of replacing Bush this past November.

One fascinating, largely overlooked paragraph in the commission’s report strongly supports the theory that Rather actively pushed the story through without adequate concern for its factual basis. While Rather told the commission that he warned Heyward of the story’s “radioactive” nature, Heyward denied to the commission that Rather ever said such a thing. Indeed, Heyward—once Rather’s executive producer at the Evening News—told the panel that when he warned Rather, the weekend before the story aired, to make certain the documents were real, Rather replied simply: “Of course.” In a later conversation, Heyward recalled Rather’s saying he did not want to “lose the exclusive.” Heyward recalled getting the impression from Rather that they were trying to beat another news outlet to the “scoop.”

“Should Dan resign for his part in this story? Yes,” says one CBS News executive. “Will he? No. It’s just not his style.” It’s unclear from the commission report who bears the responsibility for the network’s ultimately foolish hang-tough strategy after the story aired, but some CBS News producers and executives increasingly suspect that Rather was one prime force behind it. (Others, such as Gil Schwartz, CBS’s executive vice-president for communications, and Jim Murphy, the executive producer of the CBS Evening News, more sensibly argued for new reporting in the controversy’s immediate wake.) Rather has remained intensely loyal to his disgraced producer Mary Mapes, but those around him feel his loyalties should have been to the truth. “The producer lied,” one longtime Rather producer told me in an unsolicited, not-for-attribution e-mail, angry that other innocent people had been wrongly punished for Mapes’s transgressions. But the commission’s report showed that it was the considerable power of Rather—in addition to Mapes—that helped lead Howard, West, and others to trust the reporting on the National Guard story in ways they now must deeply regret.

The insiders’ view on the investigative commission led by former AP exec Louis Boccardi and former attorney general Dick Thornburgh is also quite revealing, suggesting that it was somewhat less than hard-charging:

The commission itself has also come under attack, largely by supporters of those punished after its findings were released. None of those involved in the CBS panel—retired Associated Press executive Louis Boccardi, former U.S. attorney general Richard Thornburgh, and lawyers from the firm of Kirkpatrick &Lockhart Nicholson Graham—had any direct experience with investigative journalism. The commission’s interviews were conducted on the nineteenth floor of “Black Rock,” the CBS corporate headquarters on West 52nd Street, a short walk from the supersize office of Leslie Moonves. No tape recordings were made. The two commissioners and lawyers scribbled handwritten notes on the proceedings—when they were in the room, that is. At various times, either Boccardi or Thornburgh were said to be absent from interviews with witnesses. It seemed to the panel’s critics an oddly casual approach for a commission with a mandate to investigate unscrupulous journalistic practices.