8) By JACQUES STEINBERG Published: June 21, 2006 Dan Rather and CBS News announced yesterday that they had agreed to end his career at the network, 44 years after he first went to work there as its bureau chief in Dallas and five months before his contract as a correspondent on "60 Minutes" was scheduled to expire. In a news release that extended to five pages, Sean McManus, the president of CBS News and Sports, paid tribute to Mr. Rather, noting that the timeline of his journalism career — from the Kennedy assassination and the war in Vietnam through Watergate, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq — mirrored the events of world history over the last half-century. "Of all the famous names associated with CBS News, the biggest and brightest on the marquee are Murrow, Cronkite and Rather," Mr. McManus said in the statement, invoking Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, two other men who could lay claim to being the face of CBS News over the years. "With the utmost respect, we mark the extraordinary and singular role Dan has played in writing the script of not only CBS News, but of broadcast journalism." But beneath the kind words and gestures — including the network's plans to show a prime-time special about Mr. Rather this fall, and to make a donation in his name to his alma mater, Sam Houston State University in Texas — a smoldering anger was palpable, particularly in a statement that Mr. Rather issued through a publicist several hours after the network announced he was leaving. (Mr. Rather chose not to be quoted in the CBS release.) "My departure before the term of my contract represents CBS's final acknowledgment," he said, "after a protracted struggle, that they had not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work there." Mr. Rather, 74, was referring to his contention, as expressed in several interviews in recent days, that he had been given far too little to do as a reporter on "60 Minutes" since stepping down as anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News" last year in the aftermath of a reporting scandal. Though Mr. Rather had eight reports broadcast on "60 Minutes" since last fall — including segments from China, North Korea and Beirut — he argued that other correspondents had more than twice as many segments, often with better promotion. In a moment of generational transition for "60 Minutes," Mike Wallace and Mr. Rather are leaving the program, and Katie Couric and Anderson Cooper will begin contributing this fall. Mr. Rather said he had turned down what he characterized as the only offer the network had made for future employment — an office and a secretary at CBS News, but no affiliation with any programs. "It just isn't in me to sit around doing nothing," Mr. Rather said in his statement. "So I will do the work I love elsewhere." In an earlier interview, Mr. Rather said he was weighing an offer to develop a weekly interview program on HDNet, a high-definition channel that was created, in part, by Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. In his statement, Mr. Rather said he was still deciding what he would do next. Asked in an e-mail message yesterday if Mr. Rather had signed a contract that was sent to him recently, in which he would also commit to prepare a series of documentaries for HDNet, Mr. Cuban responded: "Nothing new to report." Asked about Mr. Rather's complaints that he had been effectively sidelined, Mr. McManus said he did not wish to debate Mr. Rather. "Our statement stands," Mr. McManus said. "His certainly stands." While representatives for Mr. Rather and CBS had been talking since at least 2003 about when he might leave the anchor chair — his preferred date had been March 9, 2006, which would have been his 25th anniversary in the job — his hand was effectively forced in the fall of 2004. At that time, the network announced that it could not authenticate the documents that had underpinned a report on "60 Minutes II," for which Mr. Rather had served as a correspondent, that sought to raise new questions about President Bush's National Guard Service. Mr. Rather announced, even before an independent panel had completed its postmortem on the ill-fated Guard report, that he would step down as anchor in March 2005. His contract stipulated that he would automatically become a correspondent on "60 Minutes." In his statement yesterday, Mr. Rather expressed gratitude for the work of his many CBS colleagues over the years, but lamented some of the trends in journalism, including, he said, "the 'corporatization' of news and its effects on news content." On the "CBS Evening News" last night, Mr. Rather's successor as interim anchor, Bob Schieffer, introduced a four-minute retrospective of Mr. Rather's career. Though Tom Brokaw and Lesley Stahl were interviewed, Mr. Rather — by his choice, a CBS executive said — was not. Mr. Schieffer said in an interview earlier yesterday that Mr. Rather would be forever known as "one of the major figures in American journalism in the 20th century." "Dan was larger than life," Mr. Schieffer, a fellow Texan, said. "His successes were sometimes larger than life. And his mistakes were sometimes larger than life."