Was he nervous? "Who wouldn't be? I was glad when it was over. I thought, 'We're through with that. Now we can settle down and go to work.' "

But there was no settling down. From his testy face-off with Vice President George H.W. Bush, during a live "Evening News" interview in 1988, to such bizarre incidents as his mysterious 1986 mugging (which plugged "Kenneth, what's the frequency?" into the pop-culture phrasebook), Rather became news, not just delivered it.

Even as he prepares to sign off today after 24 years at the anchor desk, he is reeling from the aftershocks of last fall's discredited "60 Minutes Wednesday" report on President George W. Bush's military service.

Four CBS News colleagues lost their jobs. In the midst of the uproar (although he and CBS execs denied any connection), Rather announced that on reaching his 24th anniversary he would leave the "Evening News," to work full-time as a correspondent for the "60 Minutes" newsmagazines.

"Am I leaving under a cloud? I recognize that a lot of people see it that way," Rather says. "But I don't. This is a continuum. I'm not retiring, I'm changing jobs. I see myself as a reporter, moving to what is basically another reporting job.

"Right now, I'm healthy, feel invigorated, have a hunger to do great journalism."

So, on greeting a visiting reporter, Rather pulls up a chair beside his own at the anchor desk, and reflects on what it has meant to sit here.

"Reporting is important," he says. " And anchoring 9/11 or election night or any other big breaking news is, in some ways, the prime test of an anchor: Take air, hold air, be the honest broker of information coming in from a lot of different places."

Rather anchors his final half-hour "Evening News" at 5:30 p.m. At 7 p.m., CBS airs a one-hour retrospective with the telling title "Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers" — not "Anchor Remembers."