"CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather escaped with his job -- at least until his already-announced retirement -- but four CBS executives, including segment producer Mary Mapes, were dismissed yesterday in the wake of an independent review panel's findings regarding last year's discredited "60 Minutes Wednesday" report about President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

The panel's 224-page report, issued yesterday by CBS, detailed dozens of journalistic missteps, including reliance on documents that were allegedly forged and a circle-the-wagons mentality that compounded the damage.

The independent investigators -- Dick Thornburgh, the former Republican attorney general and Pennsylvania governor, and Louis Boccardi, retired president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press -- said they could find no evidence to conclude that the news report was fueled by a political agenda.

Instead, they concluded it "reflected a widespread breakdown of fundamental processes at '60 Minutes Wednesday,' " which some staffers referred to as a "perfect storm."

The network's drive to be the first to break a story about Bush's National Guard service was a key reason it produced a story that was neither fair nor accurate and did not meet CBS News' internal standards, the investigators said.

The panel made a series of recommendations, which CBS adopted, including appointing one of its executives, Linda Mason, to a newly created job of senior vice president of standards and special projects.

The Sept. 8 "60 Minutes Wednesday" report cited documents purported to be from one of Bush's commanders in the Texas Air National Guard. According to the documents, the commander, the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, ordered Bush to take a medical exam and the future president did not. Killian also reportedly felt pressured to sugarcoat an evaluation of then 1st Lt. Bush.

Questions were quickly raised about the validity of the documents, with some experts saying it appeared they were written on a computer not invented at the time they were supposedly created.

Although the panel said it couldn't prove conclusively that the documents were forged, it said CBS News failed to authenticate them and falsely claimed an expert had done so when all he had done was authenticate one signature.

Bill Babcock, chairman of the department of journalism at California State University, Long Beach, said CBS "violated almost every tenet of good, basic Journalism 101."

Leslie Moonves, co-president and co-chief operating officer of Viacom and chairman and chief executive officer of CBS, issued a self-critical nine-page response to the independent report.

"There were lapses every step of the way -- in the reporting and the vetting of the segment and in the reaction of CBS News in the aftermath of the report," Moonves wrote. "The bottom line is that much of the Sept. 8th broadcast was wrong, incomplete or unfair."

Some conservatives were not satisfied with the report or CBS's reaction to it.

"This story was a political hatchet job, based on forged documents, and it was broadcast to the American public because of the liberal bias entrenched at CBS," wrote L. Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center, in a statement.

Michael Paranzino, founder of the Web site www.boycottcbs.com, said "CBS News is dominated from page boy to president with Manhattan liberals who are out of touch with mainstream America."

The panel looked at the preparation of the Sept. 8 news report as well as its aftermath that led to the Sept. 20 acknowledgement by Dan Rather and CBS News President Andrew Heyward that memos upon which the story was based could not be authenticated and should not have been used.

Moonves said the Boccardi-Thornburgh panel interviewed more than 66 people, including 32 CBS News employees.

The following employees are losing their jobs:

Mary Mapes, producer: She earlier had broken the story of the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities. It was her record that led other employees to defer to her judgement, but the panel found Mapes ignored information that cast doubt on the story. She also maintained that the documents had been obtained from a "rock-solid" source, which proved to be false.

Josh Howard, executive producer, "60 Minutes Wednesday": The panel found he participated in rushing the report on the air without thoroughly questioning Mapes.

Mary Murphy, senior broadcast producer, "60 Minutes Wednesday": She was No. 2 to Howard and charged with overseeing production of the segment. The panel found she"did not perform her important supervisory function," Moonves wrote.

Betsy West, senior vice president, prime time: Moonves described her as a representative of CBS News management with direct supervisory responsibility for the broadcast. The panel found she continued to defend the report even as it became clear it was flawed.

Rather, who narrated the report, was faulted for "errors of credulity and over-enthusiasm," but was not disciplined. Rather announced in November that he was stepping down as anchorman of the "CBS Evening News" in March 2005.