"Back when I was making Fahrenheit, I was offered the same documents that were given to CBS but I didn't use them because we couldn't verify them," Moore said following a speech at the University of Central Arkansas.

The radical filmmaker said he also rejected other scoops that sounded "too good to be true," like the story from a woman who claimed she had dinner with Bush and the family of Osama bin Laden.

According to Alan Skorski, a former congressional candidate who's writing a book about Al Franken, Rather and Moore have something in common - a London-based reporter named Greg Palast.

In fact, Palast has claimed credit for reports broken by both Moore and Rather over the years.

In a recent screed he titled "The Lynching of Dan Rather," Palast wrote, "Dan is in hot water for a report my own investigative team put in Britain's Guardian papers and on BBC TV years ago" - referring to the story that Bush got favorable treatment in the National Guard.

On the eve of the 2000 election, Palast interviewed Bill Burkett, the former National Guard officer who would later pass bogus Guard records to Rather's news team. Burkett talked about Bush's records being scrubbed, but at the time had no documents to back the claim up.

The expatriate journalist says he's also been feeding movie-maker Moore info on Bush for years. This past May Palast wrote:

"In fact, our joke in the London newsroom is that if we can't get our story on to American airwaves, we can just slip it to the fat guy in the chicken suit. Moore could sneak it past the censors as 'entertainment.'"

Palast says Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a direct rip-off of his material, claiming in the same report:

"I know, because, with my investigative team at BBC television and The Guardian of Britain, I wrote and filmed the original reports on which Moore's new documentary are based."

Could it be that Rather and Moore actually share the same sources? Not exactly. At least Moore deserves credit for not getting conned by Bill Burkett's phony documents.

Maybe when Rather retires, CBS should replace him with the more discerning "fat guy in the chicken suit."

Editor's note: