Josh Howard, the executive producer of "60 Minutes Wednesday" that is being forced to resign, isn't leaving without making some noise first.  The guys over at RatherBiased.com along with The Drudge Report are previewing a New York Observer article that claims Howard is demanding that CBS President Les Moonves retract certain remarks in regards to the scandal, retract the original Bush Air Guard story, and clear Howard's name.

According to Drudge, Howard also wants CBS to disclose to the public the role upper management had in the story, and is threatening to subpoena emails, documents and place Moonves on the stand himself if he is forced into a lawsuit.  Two other employees that were asked to resign, execs Mary Murphy and Besty West, are refusing to resign, and have threatened legal action as well.

I've read the report, and although I felt Howard was in the wrong by not initially telling White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett about the documents so he'd have enough time to examine and respond to them, I would like to see how this will turn out.  To me there were some holes left by the report in regards to what Rather, Heyward and others have done to help aid in the report.  I was also disappointed that there wasn't more quotes by Mapes and Rather.  There has also been some criticism levelled towards the investigators due to conflict of interest and sloppiness of the gathering of evidence.  I doubt if Howard wins, but it'll be interesting to see what new information arises.
UPDATE:  RatherBiased found Howard's worries about the memos on page 162 of the Investigation Report:

By early on Friday, September 10, it was clear that the controversy over the Segment had not abated but had increased. Not only had ABC News continued to cover the story but The Washington Post (page A1) and The New York Times (page A17) ran lengthy stories on the controversy on September 10.94 Thus, as of early on September 10, CBS News needed to decide how it should respond to the controversy.

Howard had developed concerns about the September 8 Segment on September 9, and acknowledged that the bloggers and other matters, such as the differences in the superscript “th” in the official Bush records as opposed to the Killian documents and the ABC News Nightline report that he found “credible,” had shaken his confidence. Indeed, when asked by the Panel if he found the events of September 9 unsettling, Howard stated: “Yes, that is an understatement.”

Thus, in an e-mail sent at 4:53 a.m. on September 10 to West, Howard proposed a media strategy that would acknowledge the possibility that 60 Minutes Wednesday had been the victim of a hoax:

I wonder if it’s time for us to take the offensive and say, look, we think we’re on solid ground, but we’re not just sitting on our hands. We’re continuing to investigate, and if we were the victims of an elaborate hoax, no one would be more anxious to get to the bottom of it than CBS News.

A statement might say:

There have been allegations that the documents on which we reported were either forgeries or re-creations. Nothing we have learned over the past 48 hours leads us to believe that. We remain enormously confident in the thoroughness and accuracy of our reporting.

If indeed one or more of the documents is not authentic, it would mean that CBS News was the victim of an elaborate hoax. We have no evidence that that was the case. But we are continuing to aggressively investigate, and should we find that anyone - the Kerry campaign, the Bush campaign, or anyone else – – was responsible for circulating fraudulent documents and orchestrating a hoax, no one would be more anxious to break that story than CBS News.

The point would be to shift the conversation from CBS did something wrong, to something wrong was done to us and we’re mad as hell.

West rejected Howard’s suggestion via a return e-mail at 8:39 a.m.:

I think we need to defend ourselves specifically [and] not even concede that we think it could be a hoax.

Later on September 10, Howard would again express concerns to West, Mapes and Heyward about the Segment after speaking with Peter Tytell, an individual with extensive typewriter experience. At that time, Howard’s concerns again were not acted upon and thereafter Howard did not have a major role in the Aftermath, with West apparently taking the management lead and Mapes taking the production lead on follow-up stories that defended the Segment.

I don't think this clears Howard, as others are suggesting.  Howard sounds like he's trying to cover CBS's butt instead actually coming clean about the documents.  The statement, "The point would be to shift the conversation from CBS did something wrong, to something wrong was done to us and we’re mad as hell." suggests Howard wanted to point fingers at others to serve as a distraction from CBS's shoddy journalistic practices.  There's nothing in that piece that warrants any kind of sympathy for Howard, at least from me.

Here's my beef with Howard, from pages 116 and 117 of the report (same link as above):

By Tuesday, December 7, Dan Bartlett had heard that 60 Minutes Wednesday was working on a story involving the TexANG, and Ben Barnes and wondered whether anyone from the show would ask him to comment about it. Accordingly, Bartlett asked his assistant to reach out to 60 Minutes Wednesday to determine the status of the story.

Bartlett told the Panel that his assistant called Howard around 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday and said that the White House had heard about the story from sources outside of 60 Minutes Wednesday. Howard said that he could not confirm that the Segment was going to air the next night. Bartlett also said that his assistant told Howard that if the Segment was going to air, it was unfair that 60 Minutes Wednesday planned to give the White House only a few hours to respond.

Bartlett said that Howard left a message for him at 6:50 p.m. to inform him that 60 Minutes Wednesday did indeed plan to air a report involving Barnes, but Howard did not mention the
116

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TexANG documents. Howard told the Panel, however, that he recalled that the person from the White House who initially called him about the story knew that 60 Minutes Wednesday had documents.

Howard spoke to Bartlett later that evening. Howard told Bartlett about Ben Barnes'
"side" of the story. Howard also told Bartlett that 60 Minutes Wednesday had obtained new documents from the personal files of President Bush's commanding officer in the TexANG.

Bartlett said that he told Howard that this was "new news" to him and asked Howard what the documents said. At that point, Mary Murphy read the documents to Bartlett over the telephone. Murphy's impression was that Bartlett took notes about the documents' content as she spoke.  Bartlett also recalled that Howard told him that 60 Minutes Wednesday had someone on camera verifying the documents.

Bartlett asked Murphy to fax the documents to him that evening. Murphy and Howard
did not want to give him the documents that night, however, but made arrangements to get the documents to Washington Bureau Chief Leissner so that she could have them delivered to the White House by seven the next morning. The four documents provided to Bartlett were the four used in the September 8 Segment.

Hence, Howard and Murphy wanted to jump the White House with this story, and IMO didn't want them to even look at the documents.  I also don't believe Howard had any intention to let Barlett know about those documents, as Bartlett was surprised when they told him about the documents Tuesday evening.  Howard lied when he told Bartlett "he could not confirm" that the Segment was going to air Wednesday, as all plans were go.  On top of that, they couldn't fax copies of the documents Tuesday night????  Why not?  That's how CBS obtained the documents in the first place!

So, pardon me if I don't shed a tear for Howard or Murphy.  They deserved to be fired.