The question at CBS News no longer concerns the authenticity of

documents used in the “60 Minutes” report on George W. Bush’s service in the

Texas Air National Guard. That issue is settled. Instead, the question now

is: Which heads will roll? Judging by news leaking out of the network’s

headquarters, efforts at finger-pointing and buck-passing are in high gear

as CBS News prepares to admit that it based its report on forged documents.

At the very least, top management seems ready to axe “60 Minutes” segment

producer Mary Mapes. Their rationale will be that, during the

extraordinarily rushed production of the Bush/Air National Guard piece,

executives asked Mapes a series of questions about the documents and relied

on her confident answers in deciding to go ahead with the segment. The

question then will be whether CBS News executives make the calculation that

they can get away with firing just one person in the decision-making chain.

CBS News officials certainly remember the “Dateline NBC” scandal which

brought down not only the producer of the offending segment, but the on-air

reporter for the segment, and, ultimately, the president of NBC News. In

this case, the president of CBS News is Andrew Heyward, the executive

producer of the “60 Minutes” program in question is Josh Howard, and the

on-air reporter is Dan Rather. All were closely involved in the decision to

air the Bush piece, and all have vigorously defended the documents’

authenticity in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And there

appear to be forces inside CBS — the network at large, not just the news

division — who are laying the groundwork for the removal of at least some,

if not all, of them. Today’s New York Times reports that, “The seemingly

unflappable confidence of Mr. Rather and top news division officials in the

documents allayed fears within the network” when doubts arose about the

documents’ authenticity. That can be read as coming from executives at

CBS/Viacom, which oversees CBS News. In an argument that will mirror the

rationale Heyward and others will likely use in getting rid of Mapes, top

CBS/Viacom officials could argue — in this case, with some good reason –

that that they were misled by CBS News officials who expressed confidence in

the “60 Minutes” story.