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You, obviously, were more deeply involved in this issue than I. :)

Did you read the analysis of Joseph Newcomer?

I remember reading Newcomer and being deeply impressed. But there were others who seemed just as knowledgeable, just as highly credentialed, who disputed many of his points. I couldn't decide who was right...and had no desire to become an expert in the matter.

You relegate yourself to the company flat-earthers to insist that the forgery has not been proven.

Did I insist? I'm usually much more forceful when I do that. :)
I have no problem believing the documents were forgeries. I just can't say I've come to that conclusion on my own.

I remember that CBS's experts did not speak with one voice. Am I mistaken? Mary Mapes' mentality is typical of the world she belongs to - agressive, ambitious, cynical, unprincipled (Rosalind Russel describes the mentality beautifully in one of her '30s movies with Cary Grant). Not that different from practitioners of realpolitic. It's what you want in certain positions. I fault Rather for not knowing her limits, how to properly use her.

There's nothing wrong with the strong connection between the DNC and media people who support them (Both parties use the media to their advantage when they can. They'd be unprofessional if they didn't). The bottom line is that all concerned believed that Bush was guilty of the things they accused him of - they cut corners in the proof - and believing what they did they thought they were serving a noble purpose. It's a common conceit that gets lots of people in trouble.

Victory, not accuracy, was the prime directive

In politics? NO! Are you sure?

You relegate yourself to the company flat-earthers to insist that the forgery has not been proven

We're all there at some time or other on some issues. It's a risk that comes with taking a public position...or any position.

CBS lied about what its experts had said. It subsequently developed that they had submitted the documents to 3 experts. Two to look at overall authenticity, one to look at the signature. The signature guy authenticated the signature, subject to the caveat that he was working from copies. He said nothing of the overall document, though CBS tried to claim that he did. The other two told CBS the documents were not right. The family told them the documents didn't sound right. Burkett himself told them they could not go with the docs unless they got them independently authenticated - he was not vouching for them. So, in the end, what did they have to support the documents' authenticity? Absolutely Nothing. Even the secretary who was the typist in that office said they used regular electric typewriters. Such machines are incapable of producing such a document - it is simply and definitively impossible. Her statement about content is of no help to CBS. Fake but accurate is not an argument for authenticity. It is an admission they are fakes, and the game is over.

As for parsing Newcomer vs. the others, whoever they might be, (and I know of no authoritative refutation), give yourself more credit. If you work through it, the conclusion is inescapable. These documents have features that were impossible to generate on contemporary typewriters. Tytel concluded the font in question was simply unavailable on typewriters at the time. Period. End of Story. This is just not that complicated.

I have no problem believing the documents were forgeries. I just can't say I've come to that conclusion on my own.

As a teenager I had the experience of having demostrated something to Dad and having him criticze me for taking the chance. I replied, "It worked, didn't it?" Dad rejoined, "Once in a million!" My reaction was to repeat the (actually low stakes) stunt, which predictably (in my own recondite experience) worked again. Dad replied, "Twice in two million!"
The moral of the story is that:

You can always avoid a contrary conclusion if you can set the standard of proof arbitrarily high. And,
It is easy to set the standard of proof arbitrarily high - if you are Dad talking to a young son. You need power to control the standard of proof.
You claim that you "have no problem believing the documents were forgeries" and yet you set the standard of proof to infinity with your rope-a-dope "I haven't looked at it" evasion. You have not looked at it, and you will not - because it's too clear that you could not sustatin your worldview if you did look at it.
From the fact that the "memos" are patent forgeries it follows not only that Mary Mapes was tendentious but that CBS as an organization was and is tendentious with its "independent commission" which was about as independent of CBS as your left eye is from your right.
As an impartial arbiter of truth, therefore, CBS News is rotten to the core. And what follows from that? All other news organizations know it - and do not say so. They do not say so, because Big Journalism is permanently in full go-along-and-get-along mode. Competition exists among the various organs of Big Journalism - but not ideological diversity. Big Journalism defines itself as "objective" journalism. But it is not objective; no human institution is. Big Journalism defines "objectivity" as not breaking the mutual admiration society pact.
I assert that there is no ideological competion among Big Media organs, even though I do not claim that they are all controlled by the Democratic Party nor even, as some would have it, Hillary Clinton. Big Journalism is a voluntary, ad hoc "organization." Big Journalism self organizes on the principle that "you never pick an argument with someone who buys ink by the carload." That is a principle which is at once arrogant and cowardly. Externally arrogant toward the general public, and internally cowardly among each other.
Each individual journalist is not able to control the course of journalism, any more than George Bush could with a breath have controled the course of Katrina. The individual journalist is not Big Journalism; the individual journalist is a mere celebrity among many celebrities. Movie stars are celebrities, not inherently qualified to speak authoritatively on farm policy for having portrayed farmers on TV or on law enforcement for having portrayed cops in the movies. And yet the Democratic politician - whether Hillary Clinton or any other - does not control Big Journalism either. All are entrained in the dervish of whirling motion, unorganized and yet systematic. All liberal celebrities, bound up in the one idea - that nothing really matters except PR.
Those who insist on any other principle, the PR Borg vociferously punishes with negative PR. They are "extreme right wing." Most of all they are "not a journalist, not objective." Thus a Bernard Goldberg can be a journalist - until he insists on a principle which is independent of, and therefore contradictiory to, the PR principle. Bernard Goldberg writes Bias, and he is an unmade man - "not a journalist, not objective."
What is the issue between those who call themselves liberals (or who, having run that word into the ground, insist on being called "progressive," or some other virtue) and those whom those "liberals" call conservatives? Conservatives, idealists that they are, have taken for granted that the issue was truth. But reality is different. The issue is not truth; the issue is whether the issue is truth. Whether, that is, the issue is truth or power.