I am willing to accept, because it doesn’t really matter to the outcome, that Dan Rather did not purposely aid the production of the false documents, and that he believed they were good documents until it was proven otherwise. Likewise with his daughter and her “friend”.
I guess there would have been a couple others working with Barnes to produce and sell the documents, but beyond that all you needed was people who were willing to believe anything.
In some ways, the conspiracy theorists here and elsewhere are a lot like Dan Rather. They see what they want to see, and are so certain the story is true that they assume all evidence that supports them must be true, and all evidence against their theory is part of the conspiracy.
Dan must have believed unknown Republicans with no access to Reserve Officer Records in the Clinton regime had somehow done something his friend Sandy, who had access to all records everywhere, hadn't done.
Dan's smarter than that.
It is easier for us to believe that Dan Rather engineered this whole deal than not!