CBS lawyers are scoffing at Dan Rather’s idiotic lawsuit, which claims that CBS’s independent investigation was a “sham.”

Dan Rather’s conspiracy theories about CBS make about as much sense as a two-story outhouse, the network says.

Rather and his old bosses were facing off in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday, where the former Evening News anchor was seeking documents he says will prove his storied career there was sacrificed to appease the Bush administration. …

“We allege this was a sham investigation on be half of CBS so they could mollify the right” and get rid of Rather, who’d been a thorn in Bush’s side, Gold said.

In their court filings, CBS states, “Rather’s position defies logic and common sense.”

“Rather’s theory is that CBS News commissioned a costly panel, in order to criticize itself, exonerate Dan Rather, and give themselves cover for doing something that it had a contractual right to do anyway,” which is remove Rather from his anchor seat, the filing says. CBS lawyer Jim Quinn said that while the report found Rather did nothing wrong, it “excoriated CBS.”

“If that’s a sham, it’s the dumbest sham I’ve ever heard of,” Quinn said.

I actually agree partially with Rather here. It was something of a “sham,” but not because they were trying to “mollify the right.” It was a sham because it didn’t conclude what any objective observer could see was the truth—that the documents in question were obvious frauds. To admit that would have opened a bigger can of worms, and called into question CBS’s basic journalistic integrity.

Instead they issued a sort of “graywash,” that came to no firm conclusion about the veracity of the documents. This left the door open for other news media to continue pushing the falsehood that the memos were never really proven to be fakes — and saved them all from confronting the ugly truth, that these documents were intended to skew a presidential election at the last minute. It was nothing less than an attempted media coup.