Dan Rather Sets Record Straight

Dan Rather is the first person to admit that he has made mistakes. The former “CBS Evening News” anchor practically leads with it.

On the surface, it’s impossible to blame him. The 83-year-old’s career—which has included covering the Vietnam War from the field, to Watergate, to 9/11, as well as interviewing every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower—was famously tarnished following the “60 Minutes” investigation into George W. Bush’s military record, which cost him everything: his anchor desk, his coworkers, his reputation.

James Vanderbilt’s directorial debut, “Truth,” which opened the 23rd annual Hamptons International Film Festival last Thursday, October 8, revisits the scandal, with none other than Robert Redford portraying Mr. Rather and starring opposite Cate Blanchett, who embodies producer Mary Mapes.

“To say the least, I was pleased when they chose Robert Redford to play the role,” Mr. Rather said during his “A Conversation With ...” discussion with interviewer Alec Baldwin last Saturday at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. “I did not say to [Mr. Vanderbilt], but I did sort of say to myself, I’m more likely to become the Pope of Rome than they are to get this movie made. I never thought they could do it.”

When the film begins, Mr. Rather is already an established news anchor—not a young boy growing up in Texas, whose father was a ditch digger, his mother a waitress. He was not the teenager trying to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps, only to be discharged when they learned he had rheumatic fever as a child.

“I told them I didn’t have any disqualifying diseases. I’m not proud of it,” he said. “I had one of the shortest and least-distinguished records in the whole history of the United States Marine Corps because they found out. I wasn’t in for very long, didn’t do very much when I was in there. The most I can say was I volunteered to go.”

He also was not the remarkably unprepared reporter in the throes of the “green jungle hell” that was Vietnam. And he was not the White House correspondent on his way to becoming the face of CBS News, despite the early controversy surrounding him.

“When people don’t like the way you report, what they seem to do is denigrate you,” he said. “Hang a sign around you: liberal, or socialist, or left-wing ...”

“I know the signs they hang around you,” Mr. Baldwin interrupted. “Trust me.”

“I think you know pretty well.”

“Please continue,” Mr. Baldwin said.

“I was proud of the fact that I was part of CBS News history and tradition and the mission of CBS, which was to take on the tough things, pull no punches, play no favorites,” he said. “Reporters get paid to be skeptical, never cynical.”

During his tenure, he reported on Watergate, despite how difficult it was for him to accept President Richard Nixon was involved in any way. “You never met anybody who had more respect for the office of presidency of the United States than I did. Every day, when I walked in the White House gates to go to work—I know it may sound kind of corny and sophomoric, but I would say to myself, ‘This counts. This is important,’” he said, and added, “Facts began to shout that this isn’t just lower-level administration. I felt like hell about it.”

After a decade of reporting from the Oval Office, CBS moved Mr. Rather to New York—the network said it would be good for his career, though the journalist said he still doesn’t believe that was the reasoning—and succeeded Walter Cronkite in 1981. He had officially landed.

“To journalists, your prayer every day is, ‘God, give me a big story,’” he said.

And, most recently, in 2004, it happened.

A series of memos critical of President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered—the crux of the story Mr. Rather and his team reported, which questioned his political connections that landed him in the “Champagne Unit,” as Mr. Rather called it, as well as a year-long hiatus. When the documents were called into question, particularly their authenticity and the means by which they were obtained, Mr. Rather and his team fell into hot water.

“Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but they’re not entitled to their own facts. And by exposing those facts—no matter what you think of the documents—those are the things that got us in trouble,” Mr. Rather said. “I did, at the time, what I thought was journalistically, ethically, the right thing to do.

“This was the point: Our story was true,” he continued. “A successful attack was launched on us. They couldn’t attack the facts. They couldn’t attack the truth of the story. So they attacked the process by which we arrived at the truth. Was the process flawed? Yes, it was flawed. Was it flawed more than it should have been? Yes. Am I responsible for some of that? Yes. You may say I’m responsible for all of it. But the story was true. It was true then, it’s true now.”

To that point, the story was never retracted, Mr. Rather pointed out, though he discovered soon after leaving CBS that the network was slowly erasing him from its history, as if he was never there.

“I didn’t want to sue CBS. I had moved on,” he said. “Whatever mistakes I made—and I’ve made plenty—you are what your record is. And I had a record at CBS and I was rightly proud of that record and still am. When I realized they were trying to erase me from that record, at that point I said, ‘You’re in a classic fight-or-flight situation. You either have to fight them, or you’re going to disappear.’”

Ultimately, CBS won the lawsuit on appeal, Mr. Rather said. “They didn’t win on the facts of the case. But some things are worth fighting for, even if you lose.”

He said he still believes in the power of news. He currently anchors and manages the television news magazine “Dan Rather Reports,” and strives to read at least four newspapers every day. Yet, he admits that he is still struggling to let go of the past.

“I do want to end by saying this—and this is an opinion,” Mr. Baldwin said. “Whenever I see you privately—the handful of times I’ve seen you, and I guess this is your Depression-era Texas upbringing—you’re very humble. You talk about the mistakes you’ve made, the mistakes you’ve made, the mistakes you’ve made. And I want to say, the mistakes you’ve made, in terms of the subject in the film, though they may be, I think of you as your integrity. What you have done with your life in the last 50-plus years [infinitely] outweigh the mistakes that you’ve made.”

The audience burst into applause.

“In fact, I would prefer that you not mention the mistakes that you’ve made anymore,” Mr. Baldwin said. “Dan Rather, everyone.”

Gratitude washed over Mr. Rather’s face as the newsman watched the packed house rise, his eyes wide, his ego seemingly still unaccustomed to his legacy.

He placed his left hand over his heart and mouthed, “Thank you.”