Is this latest addition to the CBS stable of “Crime Scene Investigation” series purely coincidental timing, or is it a carefully planned bit of propaganda to prop up the free-falling Dan Rather? We report; you decide.

In the premiere episode, a CSI officer in Houston, Texas, is called to the lot of the Merde Do Well Waste Disposal Company. Protruding from a huge container of human feces is a man’s foot. They haul out the corpse, which had been stripped of any ID. He didn’t suffocate after falling in, because his head had been bashed in first. “Looks like murder!” says the officer, to rising dramatic music, leading to the show’s theme song. As with the other CSI programs, this is from The Who, in this case “The Real Me”, from “Quadrophenia”.

Unlike the other CSIs, this one is a private company. After the scandals in the Houston police crime lab, the city has farmed that task out to a corporation, Cunning Snoops Inc. In this episode they do a very smelly detailed analysis of the types and ages of bugs that flourish in portable toilets, just to figure out which site the corpse was picked up at. That turns out to be the former Houston Fat Stock Show, now officially the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Going through tapes from security cameras there, they spot the future corpse handing a large envelope to another man. Another camera at the admission booth shows that man buying his own ticket with a credit card, and a check of the records for that precise time gives them his name and address.

In a small town at the edge of the bay they find the houseboat of the man who got the envelope. He is the angry and notorious Bubba Bo Bob Brainard, a civic gadfly. He has hated the city’s brilliant young Mayor ever since they served together as deputy sheriffs years before. He claims that he doesn’t know who the other man was, but that he had been called and told he could pick up some evidence that would hurt the Mayor. The envelope contained photos, and he scanned them, then burned the originals to ashes, and emailed copies to Marvin Zindler. That televised terror of tainted restaurants, most famed for getting the Chicken Ranch shut down, has smelled a scoop and is already, in the pious tone he affects, broadcasting the scandal.

Eldredge Bonscheveux Gerry, Houston’s second black Mayor, is most noted for his very impressive corn rows, and for having run for office with strong Democratic support, then making a deal to hurt them in City Council redistricting. Rumors have persisted that his marriage is a sham to cover up being gay. The photos from the envelope, now shown on the news with portions blacked out, are supposedly of him sexually abusing male prisoners in the Harris County Jail when he was a deputy sheriff. There is mass outrage and calls for his removal. The District Attorney turns it all over to a Grand Jury. But then someone posts anonymously to an internet chat room some reasons to believe the pictures are faked. Close examination by experts confirms that they show the Mayor’s black head on a pale white body. Now the Mayor’s own supporters are screaming all in unison.

CSI finally matches the dead man’s DNA to blood left on a smashed window when vandals attacked the local Democratic party office. New laser technology is applied and brings up a fingerprint from the shards. This leads them to the victim, another former deputy himself. At his apartment they find the computer he used for faking the photos, replacing his own head with the future Mayor’s. The outcry over this totally destroys the credibility of Zindler, who has to go on TV and apologize. Brainard, in tears, improvises that he had kept quiet about his doubts over the pictures because he knew the future Mayor really had abused prisoners that way. No one believes him, and the Mayor is safe from rumors from then on. Bubba Bo Bob changes his name (to Jerry Jo Jeb), moves to Paris, Texas, and is never heard of again.

But the CSI team still wants to know who did the murder. They use a 3-D computer scanner to calculate the unique shape of the object which bashed in the victim’s head in an unfilmed alley at the rodeo grounds. It turns out to be a portable fire extingusher. Checking all those near the scene, they find one dented, with microscopic traces of the dead man’s blood. Unfortunately for the killer, he took that extingusher from the wall in a place where there were cameras.

Simple questioning with photos from the tapes finds the murderer, a concession operator at the arena. Faced with proof, he breaks down and admits he hired the dead man, a known Republican activist, to make the fakes and pass them on to Zindler. The killer had once owned a restaurant that failed after reports from that TV reporter, and had hated him ever since. This was his way to get revenge, by letting Zindler get skewered for running a phony story. He killed the faker so no one would know who was behind this.

The moral of this episode: the innocent, trusting