At around 1 P.M., the show’s producers—along with Hewitt and several 60 Minutes correspondents—turned up with bottles of champagne to toast the fallen news executive. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” Hewitt declared, “in 55 years of working for CBS News.”

Soon afterward, boxes of personal effects in tow, Howard left the 60 Minutes offices for the last time in his life.

In the aftermath of that day’s traumatic events, there remains a strong sentiment among many CBS News insiders that the punishments don’t fit the crimes—and that those most responsible have gotten off far too lightly. Much internal anger has been directed at Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS and co-CEO of its parent company, Viacom. It was Moonves, after all, who spared Heyward from being fired and instead removed West, Howard, Murphy, and the story’s producer, Mary Mapes, from their jobs. And now Moonves is personally overseeing the news division’s makeover of its last-place CBS Evening News, which will be without a permanent anchor at 6:30 P.M. on Thursday, March 10, for the first time since CBS News began a nightly fifteen-minute newscast in 1948.

Heyward has reportedly told associates that he came “this close” to being fired by Moonves himself, supposedly holding his thumb and index finger less than an inch apart. Insiders speculate that he will remain in the job at least for a matter of months; at the moment, there’s no logical alternative. Moonves isn’t likely to reach outside the company at such a fractious time, and no strong internal candidates have emerged.

“I’m here to put a human face on today’s sad events,” the CBS News president said solemnly. “Then why didn’t you get a human being to come over here and do it?” one producer was heard to mutter.

But the fact is that Moonves has never gotten much in the way of inspired ideas from Heyward, known among CBS producers and executives for his “tin eye”—his lack of skill at spotting and developing on-air talent. In a decade at CBS News, he has never found anyone with the star quality to rival that of Katie Couric at NBC or Diane Sawyer at ABC. Instead, his track record includes a $25 million, five-year deal in 1997 to lure Bryant Gumbel from NBC, and his hiring of such illustrious television talents as former U.S. representative Susan Molinari and MTV correspondent Alison Stewart.

But Heyward does have one crucial gift: He has proved himself an adept budget-cutter, reducing the overhead at CBS News so that profit margins remain high. The lack of stars has saved CBS News hundreds of millions of dollars, in contrast to ABC and NBC, whose bloated star contracts cut deeply into potential profits. Heyward delivers substantially to the network’s bottom line, and for that he has been richly rewarded.

Some at CBS remain particularly upset by Rather’s conduct, both before and after the story aired. The anchorman lent his enormous credibility to the story, and seemed to have pushed his normally sharp reportorial instincts aside to get it on the air. The vague public statement from Rather that followed the commission’s findings failed to contain any apology, and he has continued to defend the piece despite ample reason to doubt it.

Much has been made of Rather’s failure to see the piece before it aired, but that fact isn’t very meaningful; he’d read multiple drafts of the script for the story (written by producer Mapes), done most of the interviews, and had a thorough knowledge of the story’s content and point of view. He was hardly the uninformed mouthpiece portrayed in the media.