When the CBS News anchor Dan Rather defended himself on camera and in interviews last Friday against questions that were being raised about documents he had used to bolster a report on President George W. Bush's National Guard service, he and network executives considered the case closed.
Rather himself said emphatically: "CBS News stands by, and I stand by, the thoroughness and accuracy of this report, period. Our story is true."
Yet there he was again, on CBS Evening News on Monday night, presenting even more experts to attest to the authenticity of several documents purportedly dating back to the early 1970s suggesting that Bush received favorable treatment in the Guard.
While Rather's initial 60 Min-utes report was considered a journalistic coup, coming in the peak of an election year and in the twilight of Rather's career, the network has found itself under unrelenting pressure from within and without to prove that the documents were genuine amid charges that they could only have been produced by modern-day word processors.
The controversy over the documents has been propelled by a volatile mix of fierce election-year rancor, daily disclosures pointing to potential weaknesses in CBS' report and the network's steadfast refusal to explain how it got the documents.
Even inside CBS News there was deepening concern. Some of Rather's colleagues said in interviews that they were becoming increasingly anxious for him to silence the critics by proving the documents' validity and as new questions about their origin arose. Most declined to be quoted by name.
CBS said the documents came from the personal files of one of Bush's Guard commanders, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian.
The memorandums indicated that Bush had failed to take a physical as ordered and that Killian was being pressured to "sugarcoat" his performance rating because Bush, whose father was then a Texas congressman, was "talking to somebody upstairs."
One of the experts CBS News said initially helped convince it that the documents were genuine, a handwriting expert named Marcel Matley, said in an interview on Monday that he believed the signature in the documents to be that of Killian.
Asked if the signature could have been lifted from an official document by Killian and pasted onto forgeries, Matley said: "Sure. But we can't draw a conclusion from a possibility."
Several CBS correspondents said in interviews that such developments were making them increasingly nervous.
One correspondent said, "I've talked to colleagues who would love to see more of a defense."
On Monday night, CBS featured computer and typewriter specialists who had called or posted defenses of CBS on Internet blogs.
Richard Katz, a computer software expert in Los Angeles who was featured on the Evening News segment, said that he had called his local affiliate, KCBS, after looking at the memos on the CBS Web site after the initial broadcast.
Comparing the CBS memos with a replication produced on Microsoft Word, Katz noticed a slight variation in the boldness of the letters -- as there appears on many typewritten documents.
"It doesn't look like you can do this very easily," he said. "If you use something like Photoshop you could come close to faking it, but why not just go out and buy a Selectric for US$75?"
Bill Glennon, a technology consultant and IBM typewriter specialist, said CBS called him Monday morning.
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