To this day, I am not aware that either the network or Dan Rather have ever owned up to the fact that these documents were forged.
And they were. As a career technical writer with experience in page layout and copy editing, I can tell you for sure that the evidence is damning...they were caught red-handed.
I have to wonder if Rather and the network just weren't tech-savvy enough to understand how incontrovertibly they'd been busted.
AP was similarly implicated in the scandal but skated away without a damaged reputation. Dan Rather jumped the gun on airing the documents to beat AP to the punch. NEITHER acknowledged the controversy regarding authenticity for several days (the questions began DAY ONE).