It's been four years since Memogate, and countless time and energy has been devoted on Dan Rather's part to battle CBS, along with $2 million of the anchor's own money.

But it looks like dollars do talk, especially when all the secret memos come out that show that CBS really did have a conservative agenda when it came to investigating their former employee. The most recent evidence of G.O.P. play was that list of the "objective" panel CBS wanted to use to study Rather's blunder: it included Matt Drudge and Roger Ailes.

Now there is further evidence that Rather may be something other than an irate ex-employee of CBS: he is an actual threat.

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If anyone is keeping abreast of Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit against CBS, you'd know that recently there was a firestorm of previously non-public information that was just shitted upon the media by Rather's attorneys. It includes internal memos, documents, and transcripts that went down during Memogate in 2004, when 60 Minutes put some documents up about George Bush's military service in the Air Force that later turned out to be forgeries.

So that's a lot of stuff to wade through, but what's turned up so far is the revelation that the "independent panel" CBS was forming to review Memogate — and how the Bush story aired on CBS without being thoroughly fact-checked — wasn't so much "independent" as it was "slanted to the right by ridiculous levels." You know, so they could adequately defend themselves from right-y criticism regarding their findings that, hey, maybe CBS was in the clear.

Except, maybe CBS just wanted to insulate itself before throwing Dan Rather under the bus by staffing up on some very conservative names to make up the panel?

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Since ouster from CBS in 2006, after getting kicked off the CBS Evening News in 2005 after Memogate, veteran journalist Dan Rather has busied himself with two schemes. The first is running and hosting Dan Rather Reports, the HDNet news magazine. And second, it's suing his old bosses at CBS for some $70 million, claiming wrongful termination and accusing Sumner Redstone & Co. in engaging in a smear campaign that branded him unemployable by other networks. (Not HDNet, apparently.) Now, wouldn't it be great fun if that pair of projects could somehow come together. They just might, in this way: A source who was contracted by Rather says the news anchor has yet to pay him some $22,000 for work completed for his HDNet show. Is Rather just refusing to pay, or does he need some of the proceeds from this CBS lawsuit to pay his bills?

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Dan Rather, the cranky former CBS Evening News anchor who's toiling away at HDNet, continues to stay newsworthy thanks to his ongoing $70 million lawsuit against CBS, which the court system refuses to shut down. In the latest round of testimony, Rather's lawyer Marty Gould claims CBS — which ousted him following Memogate — cost his client millions of dollars in compensation because of, drum roll please, fraud!

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Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit against CBS was cut down dramatically by a judge, who threw out Rather's claim that the station engaged in fraudulent behavior in the last days of his contract. But! The case is still allowed to proceed with the 7-time Peabody winner's complaint that CBS breached his contract by pulling him from the news in 2004, after Rather had reported on some maybe-true (probably true) story about George Bush Sr. pulling some political strings to keep his son out of Vietnam.

The strange part of this dignity-custody battle is how both sides think they are kicking ass:

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Tommy Lee Jones as Dan Rather? Laura Linney as Mary Mapes? Paul Newman as Sumner Redstone? Three brilliant casting ideas that should be sent directly to Casting Society of America members, and producer Mikkel Bondesen, as ideas for the Dan Rather movie. Of course, we're going to need an actual news anchor covering the saga to appear on a background television, a score of sleuth bloggers punching away at their keyboards, and Tom Selleck as former CBS News president Andrew Heyward.

From the same think thank that might as well have brought you cineplex disaster Meet Dave comes word that Dan Rather's legacy might hit the big screen. Hollywood producer Mikkel Bondesen (of USA's Burn Notice) and screenwriter James Vanderbilt (of Zodiac and Spider-Man 4) are working to bring to life the book from Rather's former CBS News producer Mary Mapes, who defends the current HDNet anchor and slams her CBS bosses for their behavior during Memogate. Supposedly, all of CBS/Viacom's dealings make for a nice White House conspiracy theory. They also thought that about Vantage Point. So, yeah, no.

In the months ahead, Dan Rather is going to get to throw down with former CBS News president Andrew Heyward, current CBS head Les Moonves, and maybe even CBS grand poobah Sumner Redstone. The first two are scheduled to give depositions in Rather's wrongful termination suit against CBS, where he's claiming the network so tarnished his reputation in the aftermath of Memogate that he was unable to get hired at NBC, ABC, or CNN. Rather, of course, has since found work in the nether regions of the cable dial on HDNet, where he receives less exposure than his court filings.

Rising through the ranks of CBS, from reporting for Houston's affiliate and then the White House in the early 1960s to being named anchor of the CBS Evening News some twenty years later, Dan Rather has always put himself in the center of controversy. Saying he "volunteered" to do so might be an overstatement, but past incidents, like claiming to have seen the JFK's Zapruder film, though misreporting its details, have pit him at the center of more than one WTF moment.

And then there was Memogate, leading to his ouster in 2005. He's since resurfaced, anchoring a show for HDNet and suing his former employer. And those are just two of his soapboxes. Elsewhere, he's become a vociferous critic of the media. And that's put him squarely in Scott McClellan's camp.

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The judge who dismissed some of Dan Rather's claims against CBS also allowed (invited?) him to resubmit those charges. So yesterday, Rather did.

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In moving forward with his $70 million lawsuit against CBS, Dan Rather gets to quiz a fact checker hired to check out his story about President Bush's Air National Guard service. [UPI]

"I reached out to her right after it was announced that she was taking the job. Nothing ever came of that - I reached out to her and had a conversation with her and that was the last I've heard. I do want to make clear that I never have had, nor do I now have, any animosity toward her - I thought I could help her because frankly, I didn't think she had any idea that she knew what she was stepping into - all the problems with infrastructure that had been severely damaged over the past few years." — Dan Rather on whether he bothered to bond with his replacement Katie Couric [HuffPo]

A judge has dismissed four of the seven counts in Dan Rather's $70 million wrongful termination lawsuit against CBS. Gone are charges of fraud; remaining is the contract dispute, where Rather argues he wasn't used appropriately in his final months as a 60 Minutes correspondent. And this wouldn't be a Rather lawsuit if it didn't have counsel battling over what actually happened. Says Rather's counsel: "Justice Gammerman issued a decision today which leaves in place the entire essence of Mr. Rather's lawsuit against CBS and Viacom, including both contract and tort claims. Although not every legal theory of the case survives, as a result of the decision, the Court has permitted discovery and a trial of all of the factual issues that form the basis of Mr. Rather's lawsuit, including his $70 million claim for compensatory and punitive damages. The defendants' statement that all that is left is a 'garden variety contract dispute' is simply inaccurate."

Since he didn't need any extra sleep after the 48 Hours anniversary party, a rested Dan Rather took to The View this morning, where Barbara Walters prompted him about his $70 million lawsuit.

Ready to dish, Dan carried on his conspiracy theory about the government's role in big media, and just how much the public doesn't know. How many more times will he have to repeat it before we start believing?

At last night's 20th anniversary party for 48 Hours, CBS chief Leslie Moonves, CBS News president Sean McManus, 48 Hours exec producer Susan Zirinsky, former CBS president Sir Howard Stringer, and former news president Andrew Heyward were all in attendance to toast the show's two-decade mark. Not in attendance: Dan Rather. Though he was the show's launch anchor, his little $70 million lawsuit against the network might have kept tensions too high to offer an invite.

CBS would very much like to keep its dealings with Dan Rather a secret, thank you. Yesterday, the network asked the court overseeing Rather's $70 million suit against it (for allegedly violating his contract in firing him) to keep documents related to the Memogate scandal under wraps, even though CBS originally said it would make them public. Naturally, the move caused Rather, currently appearing on HDNet and wire copy, to go off the deep end, accusing his former employer of working under the table with the government: "It is a fact that corporate overlords working in secret collusion with the powers in Washington are intruding far too often in far too many newsrooms." Also, black helicopters will be landing here soon to "take you to lunch."

A New York Supreme Court judge made a preliminary ruling to deny CBS’s motion to dismiss ex-anchor Dan Rather’s $70 million lawsuit against them.

The judge, Ira Gammerman said, "I concluded there was enough in the complaint to continue with discovery (pretrial research).”

Rather’s lawyers want access to internal CBS emails, which could get uncomfortable if their office is anything like ours, where NSFW links and derogatory remarks are sent around constantly.

CBS is pretending to be happy that the judge is still (only a little bit) considering dismissing the case, and released the following statement

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Dan Rather’s 1972 Emmy for his coverage of the shooting of Governor George Wallace on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite sold on eBay for $2,500. Rather maintains that he had nothing to do with the sale.

On one hand, that’s more than the possibly fake Britney Spears tank top and jeans went for.

On the other hand, no one who could win an Emmy for news coverage has the means to buy one on eBay.

Earlier this week, we told you Judith Regan pulled a Dan Rather by suing News Corp. over what she claims is a giant conspiracy orchestrated by high-level Republicans. Today, CBS' lawyers filed a motion to dismiss Rather's aforementioned precedent-setting lawsuit, claiming to be "mystified" by Rather's "bizarre allegations" and arguing that the suit is merely "a regrettable attempt by plaintiff Dan Rather to remain in the public eye, and to settle old scores and perceived slights, based on an array of far-fetched allegations" and is "time-barred because of a one-year statute of limitations."

No telling yet which way the courts will decide, but we have a sneaking suspicion News Corp's legal counsel will be, as they say, quick to follow suit. Expect their own motion to dismiss within the next few months.

Senator Clinton and her staff are trying to create an aura of inevitability among both voters and journalists to suggest that she's the Democratic frontrunner [and] you'd better get on board … beware of the inevitability.

–Dan Rather, at the 2007 American Magazine Conference in Boca Raton, Florida [FishbowlNY]