That's right: Immediately after shaking up the journalistic establishment by filling Dan Rather's seat at the anchor desk, Couric went out to the rooftop of the Hudson Hotel in Manhattan and shook something else. Words can't express how happy it makes us to know that Couric celebrated her arrival on on television journalism's hallowed throne by taking to the dance floor and letting the DJ save her life.

UPDATE: Couric's personal publicist Matthew Hiltzik writes, "Katie had a good time dancing with her daughters—they choreographed the dance and had fun doing it." They also put it on Facebook—the photos came to us from a tipster via the Facebook page of Ellie Monahan, Couric's 18-year-old daughter, who can be seen here and here showing mommy how to throw down.

Several tipsters reported to us that the photos were taken at the after-party for her first night on the air, held on the rooftop of Manhattan's Hudson Hotel on September 5, 2006. Indeed, the New York Post reported at the time that "after the broadcast, Couric retreated to the Hudson Hotel for a party with 150 friends who had gathered there to watch the CBS Evening News."

Here's some more evidence that the photos came from that party:

This is a screenshot of her historic broadcast, in which she seems to be wearing the same grey top and black skirt she has on in the dancing photos under a white blazer. Her choice of attire received much attention in the reviews next day, as critics picked over whether she had shown too much sex appeal. For example, here's the Boston Herald:

She's got great legs and CBS knows how to use them - but women scholars are divided on whether Katie Couric should keep her sexy stems behind the anchor desk.

Wearing stilettos and a skirt, Couric's toned and taut legs made their first appearance before the first commercial break Tuesday evening during Couric's CBS Evening News debut.

This photograph was taken as Couric left the CBS News studios after her first broadcast. As you can see, she's wearing that she is wearing the same outfit, the same watch and, if you look closely at photo No. 3, the same stiletto heels.

And here's a shot (inset) of the Hudson's rooftop party space, which features the same ivy and floor pattern that can be seen behind Couric's gyrating rear-end in the party photos. You can also see in some of the party photos the mounted wide-screen televisions that Couric's friends watched the newscast on.

So that settles it for us. What makes these photos so wonderfully appropriate is that in the days after Couric became the Face of CBS News and everyone was ginning up an opinion about what her ascendance to news anchor meant for our sexual politics and the culture of journalism, she was unleashing those legs and letting them do their thing.

UPDATE: We've learned that these are from the after-party celebrating Couric's debut as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Oh, lord.

A tipster sent us these photos after finding them in a Facebook photo album called "Four Martini Mimimum" and says they were shot in 2006. We've asked CBS News for information about where, when, and why they were taken—we think it's a toss-up between wedding and bar mitzvah. Or maybe a birthday party? Whatever the event: Katie Couric, you now have a standing invitation to any Gawker Media party.

The affidavits don't reveal much new information, and recount the story as it is known: Halderman allegedly placed a packet in Letterman's car with a screenplay treatment and note threatening to reveal private details about his life:

The cops seized Halderman's computer, and seemed to suspect that he communicated about the plot via e-mail—they sought any data related to a redacted screen name and e-mail address that could be Halderman's or could be someone else's. They were also careful to seek a warrant to seize any e-mails or notes related to Halderman and "any and all Public figures," suggesting they may have suspected that Halderman had a sideline going with other targets.

The warrants also give a sense of Letterman's—referred to as "Client #1" in documents—state of mind as the sting unfolded:

On August 1, 48 Hours aired a true-crime story, produced by Halderman with Sara Rodriguez, about Sonia Rios—the "Black Widow of Lomita." Rios, a Filipino immigrant who lived in Lomita, Calif., allegedly had two of her ex-husbands murdered during visits to her home country, once in 1987 and again in 2006. Rios herself turned up dead of a bullet wound to the head in 2007.

The story originally aired in February, but the August re-broadcast was updated with new reporting based on developments in the case. It's a run-of-the-mill true-crime tale of murder and deception, but it features one detail that seems strange in retrospect: The sister of one of the victims, who never got her brother's remains from the Philippines after his murder, at one point received creepy anonymous e-mails from someone claiming to have her brother's ashes, and offering to sell them to her. From the script:

Jackson was devastated. She didn't even know where Larry's ashes were. But after her brother's murder, she received a bizarre e-mail with an offer: "It said that they would help my family get my brother's ashes back."

The mysterious e-mailer told Jackson her brother's ashes could be retrieved from the Philippines for a mere $35,000.

That's from a story Halderman was immersed in a mere 40 days before he delivered a blackmail note to Letterman's car, demanding money in exchange for silence on Letterman's sexual hijinks. The strange thing is, in the story Halderman reported, the ransom scheme goes haywire: The man behind the e-mail ends up attracting attention to himself and gets arrested for Rios' murder. Maybe Halderman got the idea that he—a producer who crafts TV crime narratives for a living—could pull off a heist like that better than any of the rubes he covers. Or maybe he wasn't thinking at all. (We should note that the onscreen credits for the Rios piece don't list Halderman as a producer, but the online credits on the transcript do, and we know from published reports and from talking to people involved in the case that Halderman was deeply involved in producing the story.)

We came across the weird synchronicity between Halderman's day job and his after-hours scheming while going through his old 48 Hours segments and looking for signs that they may have been produced by someone crazy, desperate, stupid, and/or unscrupulous enough to engage in blackmail. By and large, everyone we found who was involved in Halderman's stories speaks highly of him.

"He seemed to be a pretty nice guy," said Dennis Bourdeau, the brother of Rios' other victim. "They did a fantastic job." As a result of Halderman and Rodriguez's story—Peter Van Sant was the correspondent—Bourdeau was able to locate his brother's remains in the Phillippines after 22 years and have them brought home.

"He was a gentleman and a professional, and there was nothing out of the ordinary," said Murray Janus, a criminal defense attorney whose client, Piper Rountree, was at the center of another of Halderman's stories. Rountree was convicted of murdering her husband, and Halderman's story largely hewed to the prosecution's case. The prosecutor, Wade Kizer, had the same recollection: "I was completely surprised when I saw [the Letterman] story. He was always professional, and seemed like a pretty nice person."

We only found one person who's seen the business end of Halderman's reporting and had any complaints, and they sound more like routine—and probably legitimate—bitterness at getting screwed over by a reporter than signs of nascent extortionist leanings. Houston attorney Marty McVey, who was embroiled in the Rountree case—Rountree was convicted of murder after prosecutors accused her of impersonating her older sister and traveling from Houston to Virginia to carry out the deed—says Halderman and his CBS News colleagues did a "hatchet job."

"They took everything out of context," McVey says, claiming that the 48 Hours piece on the case implied that McVey was involved in a sexual relationship with both the Rountree sisters. "They tried to make it look like I was intimate with both those women, and it's just not true. And they never asked me outright if it was true." But everyone does that, right?

Joe Halderman's affairs were brazen, taking place both in the office and on the road, colleagues tell the Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove. He was a surly drunk, and was once thrown through a plate-glass window at an Upper East Side singles bar, one colleague told Grove. Some of his colleagues found his "cocky" aggressiveness more endearing, describing him to Grove as a "smart fratboy" and "charming rogue."

In fact, colleagues told the Observer, his limit-pushing was the key to his $200,000-$300,000 per year job at CBS News, where he worked starting in the early 1980s:

"If you said, which CBS News producer would be caught up in this thing, he would have been one of the first people to come to mind," said one associate. "His personality is one that pushes the envelope. As a breaking news producer that's what you need, but you could see how he would be living on the edge a bit."

And all the drinking and womanizing came crashing down on Halderman. His colleagues quoted in the Observer repeatedly "wondered out loud how such a smart person could do something seemingly so stupid." But it would seem he was pushed by circumstances, circumstances he himself made possible through his self-destructive spiral. Halderman met his first when wife when working in the CBS northeastern bureau, according to the Observer, only to divorce her after becoming a "star...cowboy" producer in London and re-marrying to a former CBS News translator — Russian, says Grove — who had three children of her own.

After having two kids with her, the couple divorced in 2004, a situation no doubt brought on at least in part by those "extramarital romances" colleagues told Grove about. As reported previously, Halderman was paying $6,800 and then $6,000 per month to the woman in child support payments. He went on to live with Stephanie Birkitt, a reported former lover of Letterman's, until she reportedly "dumped" him several weeks ago, as one colleague told Grove. His wife had just taken the kids with her in a move to Colorado and the breakup was, perhaps, the last straw.

As CBS producer Marcy McGinnis told Grove: "This is not a bad man. The behavior is so unbelievable, he just must have snapped."

[Previously]

(Pic: Halderman in New York Supreme Court today. Getty Images.)

Halderman is a long-time producer for CBS News, going back at least to 1991. For at least the past eight years, he has been a staffer for 48 Hours, producing true-crime stories. He's reported from Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Sudan, and won numerous awards. Per Newsday's Verne Gay:

He was a very successful breaking news producer, and well-liked by most people he worked with - "very driven, very smart," in the words of one. He was a hotdog - a guy who could be dropped into a war zone and navigate the dangers, get the facts, and get the story together. It's an essential skill that the person who can do it well is held in high esteem at any of the networks. It is also a dangerous job, and Halderman once spoke of being detained in Bosnia, and a translator late told him that the soldiers debated whether to "kill the journalists."

He wrote, produced, and directed Three Days in September, a highly praised feature-length documentary on the Beslan School Massacre that was narrated by Julia Roberts. It was nominated for a primetime Emmy.

He lives in Norwalk, Conn., in a house he purchased for $420,000 in 2004. It's unclear from public records available online what the mortgage on the house was, but according to the Norwalk Town Clerk's office, he appears to have taken out four mortgages since 2004—two from Coldwell Banker, one from Accubanc, and one from JPMorgan Chase. According to public records databases, the latter loan was a $50,000 line of credit he took out in February of last year.

Halderman and his wife Patricia Montet were divorced in 2003; the litigation lasted five years and concluded in May of last year, according to the court docket. It appears to have been a messy parting: The docket contains orders for participation in a "parenting education program" and one motion for contempt of court. The New York Post quotes Montet's father—Halderman's former father-in-law, saying Halderman "was fooling around with a lot of women." According to TMZ, the settlement agreement required Halderman to pay $6,800 in monthly child support, an amount that was later reduced to $6,000. In 2003, the couple's credit care bills totaled $13,500. They have two children, one 18 and one 11. The Post, citing unnamed sources, says Halderman's alleged scheme was a bid to raise money for the child support payments.

According to public records, Stephanie Birkitt, the Letterman assistant who reportedly had relationships with both Letterman and Halderman, lived at Halderman's Norwalk home starting in 2005.

Here is Halderman's public Facebook listing, where the above photo was taken from. He counts as Facebook friends a host of television news producers and personalities, including 48 Hours correspondent Peter Van Sant and Good Morning America senior executive producer Jim Murphy.

Rather's $70 million suit, which claimed among other things that CBS violated his contract by "putting him out to pasture" and continuing to pay his $6 million salary after he humiliated himself and his colleagues by putting completely bogus documents on the air with literally no idea where they cam from, was supposed to be his vindication. But the New York Supreme Court's appellate term has thrown it out. We were pretty excited about the suit, mostly because once discovery got going there would be a lot of fun depositions and e-mails leaked—like the disclosure that CBS News contemplated hiring Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, and Matt Drudge to investigate Rather's story about Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service.

But it was not to be. The legal issues are arcane, but basically it all hinges on the fact that CBS inserted the words "[e]xcept as otherwise specified in this Agreement" into Rather's contract, which let them do whatever they wanted, including pay Rather not to work after he became an insufferable embarrassment to the network.

Rather's lawyer has pledged to appeal the decision, but he's going to lose, because let's face it: Dan Rather is a loser.

You can read the full decision here.

We reported a little over a month ago that the Today show had booked Blagojevich to appear on the morning he happened to be arrested by the FBI, but bumped the interview so they could flack for Jay Leno's new show. We found that out through a Freedom of Information Act request to the state of Illinois asking for e-mails from representatives of the media to Lucio Guerrero, Blagojevich's press secretary (we got the idea from South Carolina's The State, which did the same thing—to comic effect—after Mark Sanford's Argentinian Rhapsody).

The first raft of e-mails we got were from December 8, the day before Blagojevich got popped, and it included one from Today producer Lexi Dauber apologetically canceling a scheduled remote Q-and-A with Matt Lauer to make room for Leno news. We just got another batch covering the 48 hours after the arrest, and guess what? Dauber and her fellow Today producer Stephanie Siegel all of a sudden really wanted to talk to Blagojevich!

The traditional route for a reporter desperately trying to convince someone to submit to an interview when it's obviously not in their interest to do so is to drop all pretense of toughness and objectivity and lie to them: We will be your friend! Not like all those other mean reporters. While Dauber and Seigel's e-mails to Guerrero are understandably sympathetic, an internal write-up of a phone call with Siegel outlining the terms of her interview request shows what they were really willing to give up. Matt Lauer or Meredith Vieira would call Blagojevich before the interview to "go over the line of questions," and Seigel stressed that "they are sensitive."

CBS's Early Show also went the simpering route, telling Guerrero that there is "far too much hearsay going around" and offering Blagojevich an opportunity to "set the record straight" and "clear his own name." They were even willing to "rent a private space to keep him away from the rest of the media's view." We all know how annoying prying reporters can be.

ABC News' Diane Sawyer, on the other hand, didn't try to buddy up to Blago. To her credit, Sawyer's producer offered a fairly straightforward pitch that managed to avoid over-the-top sycophancy.

Larry King's producer relied on the rogue's gallery that has traipsed through King's studio in the past, positioning the host as the go-to guy for crooks, liars, and other humiliated figures—go with us and you can be in the fine company of Jeffrey Skilling, Gary Condit, and Bob Packwood!

King's CNN colleague Anderson Cooper wasn't even trying: His producers sent in a perfunctory, We-asked-Governor-Blagojevich-to-come-on-the-show requests that they knew weren't going to open any doors.

Likewise the producer for CNN's Campbell Brown dashed off an email that would allow her to dutifully report that a request was in.

Sometimes brevity is your best bet when dealing with a harried flack who's clearly deluged with requests. That's what Andy Shaw, a political reporter for Chicago's local ABC station, decided to go with.

That kind of approach is important when you know your target is dealing with all manner of zany proposals. Like a request for comment from "a representative for Dan Ackroyd [sic] and Jim Belushi" on their call for Blagojevich's resignation. When a press aide forwarded that message to the governor's press assistant, she responded, "What? I want you to explain."

(For the record, it looks like that was a hoax call—we can't find any evidence that one-half of the Blues Brothers and the talentless brother of the other, dead, half ever made such a demand.)

The most pathetic request comes from Pat Curry, the news assignment editor for WGN, a local Chicago station. He wasn't even asking for an interview with Blagojevich—he wanted Guerrero himself to come on, and delivered a masterwork of flattery and faux sympathy. "I wouldn't expect you to be able to comment on a federal investigation, and could easily brush that off," Curry wrote, signing off with, "Humbly, Pat Curry."

A producer for a local Chicago talk radio show hosted by husband-and-wife pair Don and Roma Wade wins the award for discretion, declining to put in writing the "incredible offer" he had for Guerrero.

We'll never know what that offer was, but guess who got the first post-arrest interview with disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich?

You can read the whole batch here. Interestingly, not one e-mail from Fox News turned up. It could be that they relied solely on the phone, or that their e-mails somehow got missed by our FOIA requests. Or maybe they figured it wasn't worth trying.

Which makes sense; when the legal-analyst-turned-social-networking-fiend decides to speak, it will presumably be through Facebook.

Oh, sure, some members of the press corps alluded to the bailout when asking why Obama kept his AIG OUTRAGE secret in an evil Nixonian coverup, whether poors have suffered/"sacrificed" enough in the recession and why the country suddenly has a deficit, out of the blue.

The Associated Press even asked why voters should trust the president's financial bailout when all the other government bailouts have gone so terribly, a decent if broad question, and one that could not prompt further substantive, non-grandstanding questions.

The press' questions avoided the issue of the day, favoring more melodramatic themes, especially those from bigwig media types still allowed to ask questions amid the niche-ification of the White House press corps.

The worst offenders:

Ed Henry, CNN. For jamming in THREE hostile questions when he should have kept to one, and then having the nerve to ask a long-winded followup, prompting a smackdown from the president. (It's at the end of the video at left.)

His questions, in summary: Why did you keep your AIG OUTRAGE secret; why does Andrew Cuomo p0wn you on this populism/public AIG flaying thing; and are you running up the deficit because you hate your daughters? Yes, he actually dragged the president's daughter into his question, just because.

Henry, you'll recall, also obnoxiously jammed multiple questions into one at the last presser. Nickname ideas? "The Jammer" seems too positive; "The Hog" seems appropriate if a bit cruel. "Mic Piggy?"

Chuck Todd, NBC News. For being weirdly sadistic toward struggling Americans, AGAIN.

He asked if "some form of sacrifice" should be made to the Wall Street gods, like maybe a homeless person? He kept asking about sacrifice among "the public" and "the American."

Yes, because economic collapse, sharply higher unemployment and looming depression are not enough. We should be starving in the street and setting ourselves on fire. "The American people are making a host of sacrifices in their individual lives" was how the president put it. Duh, Todd.

This is the same guy who asked, last time, if consumers were poised to spend way, way too much money, as they were being laid off and evicted from their homes. Strike two for NBC News' new man at the White House.

Major Garrett, Fox News. For finding a way to ask an economic question involving both the words "communist" and "socialist," and for using a White House press conference as a platform from which to pitch his idea for a dystopian science fiction TV series.

The Chinese are about to launch a global currency, you see, while European socialists are bringing about a New Dark Age by not allocating more GDP to government spending, like, uh, Milton Friedman would.

In summary: You're gay for France and all Soviet sympathizers everywhere, Mr. President, but where are your red friends now, mmmmmm? Least relevant question of the presser; also, the one most likely to make your target Fox News viewer do a fist-jab in his Barcalounger.

Kevin Baron, Stars and Stripes. For mumbling. Decent question or whatever, but it's not a good sign when the president asks you to repeat yourself and when you look like you're staring at your feet through most of your question.

God, it's enough to make you think these Stars and Stripes guys don't get on television much.

Here's a transcript of all questions/answers, courtesy New York Times, which posted it as the press conference was in progress.

Toobin, 13 years Greenfield's senior, is still married (with children) to Amy McIntosh.

Toobin declined to talk to the Daily News about his relationship with Greenfield, as did Greenfield herself. Their refusal to speak is sure to arch eyebrows.

Given Greenfield's advanced pregnancy, which she tracks on her Facebook profile, Rush & Molloy surely knew what their item was implying: Toobin is the father of Greenfield's child.

Greenfield, incidentally, is the daughter of CBS political correspondent Jeff Greenfield. The "brilliant and beautiful" Yale-trained lawyer has seen her 2004 marriage to an LA screenwriter dissolve, Rush & Molloy wrote.

At least now we have a clue as to why Toobin might have been working Facebook when he was supposed to be covering a a presidential debate. Double lives can be time-consuming.

(If you know more, we'd love to hear from you.)

Well, okay, Couric was in on it. Turns out Sully made the "suggestion" of granting an interview with a student journalist while negotiating with 60 Minutes. Couric thought it was such a grand idea that she let Sanmugam interview her, too!

Usually broadcast-news interview subjects negotiate for first-class airfare, hotel rooms, photo-licensing fees, Broadway tickets, and so on — but no, Sully insisted on advancing the state of journalism education in America. (We have high hopes for Sanmugam — note the four separate audio recorders on the table in front of him as he interviews Sullenberger.)

This Sully guy is too good to be true. Speaking of Broadway tickets, did you hear that he got a standing ovation just for showing up at South Pacific last week?

Matt Lauer could have told her that.

After all, Couric's former Today show colleague had a promise from Sullenberger and his people that the pilot of Flight 1549 would appear first on Today. After the Today appearance was delayed, Couric swooped in and Stole Sully for CBS' 60 Minutes.

NBC called "foul:"

"Unfortunately, people close to [the pilot] have not acted nearly as admirably [as he] over the past few days. They gave us their word, and then broke their commitment."

Now Sullenberger is running around on Couric, whose 60 Minutes had promised "the first interviews" with him and the crew. He ran into an ESPN reporter at a party for the Super Bowl, which he attended as an invited guest.Sully talked about crying with his wife, and what it was like in the cockpit:

"It was very quiet as we worked, my co-pilot and I. We were a team... But to have zero thrust coming out of those engines was shocking - the silence."

...Asked how he felt inside as his Airbus glided towards the water, the dashing silver-haired Californian said, "Calm on the outside, turmoil inside."

It's sad that a basically fine and decent human being like Sullenberger has to navigate the fierce pressures and guilt wielded by competitive TV news bookers. Outside of a small circle of industry people, no one is going to care that he effectively bumbled through the process of giving interviews to the press. People just want to hear what he has to say.

Wintour's reputation is not only that of a ruthless office dragon, but also as a something of a hissing serpent when cornered by reporters. She's been notoriously hostile toward reality television and apathetic with regards to the internet.

And yet there she was at Sundance, not praising but then again not tearing to shreds or, worse, ignoring the documentary film she allowed shot this fall in the Vogue offices. The whole thing — allowing the movie shot, making a series of comments in front of video cameras at a film festival — brought more attention than one would expect the aloof editor to allow.

Now 60 Minutes is apparently following her around. The show's cameras have been to at least one glitzy New York fashion event; the profile has been in the works since December or earlier. It's not clear what the airdate is, or if one is even set. (Know anything? Email us.)

Wintour's rivals at baby Vogues in France, Russia and Italy have garnered praise for running more provocative magazines than the U.S. flagship; Wintour, meanwhile is criticized as bland and overly commercial. In the cold light of financial reality, though, Wintour is not commercial enough — it is reality-show darlings like former Project Runway partner Elle that threaten Vogue's ad pages, along with, long-term, Web publications.

Maybe Wintour finally decided the cameras and masses are surer, more potent allies for her at this point in her career than avant-garde critics.