WEBVTT - 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft reflects on his acclaimed reporting career 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:05.280 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:10.560 Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a renowned 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:15.320 journalist and former CBS correspondent for sixty Minutes. Known for 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:20.000 his acclaimed investigative reporting, Steve Croft has won five Peabody 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:24.440 Awards and eleven Emmy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Emmy 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.720 in two thousand and three. His legendary reporting career spans 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:33.080 international war coverage and major historical events such as the 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:37.080 Chernobyl disaster and the infamous nineteen ninety two interview with 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:40.960 Hillary and President Bill Clinton. Steve Croft got his starred 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:43.680 in journalism when he was drafted into the Army in 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:47.839 nineteen seventy. There he worked for the military newspaper Stars 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:52.800 and Stripes as a correspondent photographer in Vietnam. He received 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:55.760 an honorable discharge from the army a year later in 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.319 nineteen seventy one, although the war would not officially end 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.480 for another four years. I was curious if Croft had 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:05.520 any sense that the end of conflict was near when 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:06.720 he arrived in Vietnam. 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:10.600 We had a sense that it was supposed to wind down. 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:14.040 I'm not really sure I had much confidence in that 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:18.520 because it was still dangerous and actually actually nineteen sixty 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.520 nine was the bloodiest year of the war, more people killed. 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:24.560 I would have guessed sixty eight, but it was sixty nine, 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:27.280 and that was all fighting sort of geared up to 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.480 pulling the US troops out. I have to tell you 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:32.560 right now. I mean, this was the beginning of my 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.000 journalism career. Did you feel a. 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:36.840 Sense when you were there that you were managed in 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:38.640 terms of what reporting they expected from you. 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:43.199 Definitely. I mean the first ten months I was there, 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:46.600 I was with a headquarters company with the twenty fifth 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:51.160 Infantry Division, and I was in information SPECIALI Cucchi and 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.400 I did half an hour radio show for Armed Forces 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:57.760 Network every week, and one of my jobs was to 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:04.080 escort network correspondence and print correspondence in the field, and 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:06.680 we had a lot of those people come through the office, 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:10.960 and that was really what got me hooked when I 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:13.360 went in. I wanted to be an advertising That's what 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:16.240 I thought I wanted to do. Well. It was during 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:19.680 the great year of Doyle Daane burn Back and all 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:23.720 those great ideas. Yeah yeah, yeah, and television commercials were 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:26.960 the most in the newspaper magazine commercials were the most 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:31.359 interesting things and the most creative things around. I went 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:34.760 to Syracuse one of the most horrifying experiences of a 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.720 whole Vietnam. So it really took up five years of 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:41.080 my life because there were two years of worrying about 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:42.919 it and what the hell I was going to do, 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:46.880 because I was about to lose my student deferment and 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:50.040 I graduated in the sixty seven and in nineteen sixty 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:51.600 eight was you. 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:55.079 Know, they're taking everybody crazy, everybody. I got drafted in 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:57.280 the largest draft call of the war, so I had 0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.240 to figure out how I was going to deal with it. 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.280 I certainly didn't want to go to officers Candidate school 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.200 because I didn't have strong feelings about the war one 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.760 way or the other. But I knew that if I 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:10.480 was an officer, I'd have to worry about getting shot 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:13.080 in the back and shot from the front because there 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.000 were a lot of lame second lieutenants who didn't know 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:19.120 what they were doing, who led a lot of people 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:25.000 into dangerous situations and were removed. So I had a 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:28.000 friend who had been in the army. He was the 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:31.280 editor of The Daily Orange, the Syracuse newspaper, and he 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.079 for one reason or another I can't remember. Had done 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:38.320 a stint with the eighty second Airborn sort of in 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:41.200 between his college years, and he said, what you should 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:43.880 do is you should go down and enlist in the Army. 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:47.160 Because the Navy was four years, in the Air Force 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.160 was four years, all these other things. The Army had 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:52.960 a program where you could go down and enlist for 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:55.760 three years and get to pick what you were going 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:59.120 to do more or less. And it turned out to 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.200 be a great decision because I got in this field, 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:06.440 this information field, and it became my sort of survival skill, 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:08.600 and it was a great experience. 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.840 I was very lucky. Carl Bernstein said to me, not 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:17.000 too long ago, you had a good war. But it 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.200 was also a great You know, my boss was like 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:22.800 on the staff at the general of the division, and 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:25.880 it was right next to command headquarters, and you would 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:28.640 see people coming in all the time from the battalions 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:30.960 and companies in the field, and you had a good 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.719 sense of how the war was going not all that well, 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:37.720 and you had a sense of what was being reported. 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:41.520 And I remember my boss having just shouting matches with 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.159 this guy named George Esper from the Associated Press, arguing 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:49.120 over battles and great reports that had come in. Now 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:52.840 there it was clear that I had that I was 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:56.360 doing the bidding of the twenty fifth. That was my job. 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.359 The difference in going to Stars at Stripes was was 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:04.160 that I had much more freedom to report, and it 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:09.080 was the newspaper of the Pacific Command and my boss, 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:11.560 my ultimate boss, who I used to care for when 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:14.720 he came to Vietnam was John McCain's father, who was 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.920 the Commander of Chief in the Pacific. There you could write, 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:19.919 You could get away with a lot of stuff, and 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:22.520 we didn't have to send it to the censors. We 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.640 had editors in Tokyo that looked at it, but I 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.719 didn't have to like send it down to Saigon for 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:30.599 the military censors to go through. 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:34.440 But you're somebody at sixty minutes, your career marks that 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:39.240 dedicated section. Yeah, the Steve Croft years are the years. Well, 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:41.279 I'm parked in front of the TV and it's sixty minutes. 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:44.480 Chinese food for dinner would arrive at the apartment right 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:46.800 the Sopranos. That was my Sunday every night. I was 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:48.000 a boomer representative. 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:51.200 When I first came there, I used to joke, I 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.279 said you know that you can divide this show into 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:58.160 two categories, the people who like rock and roll and 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:03.919 the people who think it's a passing fad. So I 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:05.320 was the first of the baby boomer. 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:07.560 Well, when I would watch the show, what I'm getting 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:09.320 to is that, you know, you were always somebody who 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:13.760 what came across effortlessly. Here's a guy that's reporting, and 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:16.719 inside and threading into that person is the person, and 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:18.360 therefore the reporting was your conscience. 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.159 Yeah, you bring a lot of conscience to your work. 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:23.320 Yeah, people knew you were going to be fair and 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:27.320 not just progressive, lefty whatever. And you know, taking that stance, 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:29.680 you were going to be smart and fair and your 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:30.280 conscience was going. 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:32.839 Fair is important word. But then you then you can't 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:37.120 consider so much important anymore. Well, it's bag it's baggage. 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:40.120 But the thing is that when you're there, I'm assuming 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:42.200 there wasn't a lot of things you wanted to report, 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:43.560 un that they told you not to do that. 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:46.839 There wasn't much of that was there. The best story 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:49.960 that I ever covered for Stars and Stripes was not printed. 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:53.679 I was up in quang Nam Province outside the nang 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:57.120 and we were going out with what they called the 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:01.520 Rough Tough Unit sort of Vietnamese farmer who were militiamen. 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:04.560 And it was a very nasty area and we knew 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:07.520 going out that we were going to get hit, and 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:11.360 we did. And the Arvin, you know, they came in 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:16.480 and were the Vietnase commanders and pulled some women out 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:19.800 of the hooches and took one of them down and 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:23.520 tortured her by trying to drown her in the river. 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:26.240 I took some pictures of it. I wrote the story, 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:28.800 and they said, we're not going to print. 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:28.920 This. 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:33.640 Was this after Melai. Yes, yeah, so they were sensitive 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.640 about the Yes, about the US, and they're always sensitive 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:40.320 about the allies, which included the Koreans who are now 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:42.680 fighting the Northern Koreans who are now fighting for the 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:44.240 Russians in Ukraine. 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:47.680 Now you're when you're there during this period, you're writing 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:50.480 and you're doing some radio, but no television. Well when 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:53.160 you come home, it becomes TV. You get into TV 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:55.720 pretty quickly once you get home. Yeah, why why didn't 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:58.160 you say a writer? I'd always kind of wanted to 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.080 be in television. I had taken a lot of television courses, 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:05.000 and I had done the radios thing. So the Stars 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:07.640 and Stripes was really the only print journalism I did. 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.720 And you know, I had six months of like unemployment 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:13.640 insurance coming back from Vietnam. 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:15.320 But I had to go and like go to a 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:18.600 job interview. And one of the job interviews was for 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:22.240 a television station and the person who was the head 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.040 of the Chamber of Commerce was also the head of 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:28.240 the TV station and he hired me, so offered me 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:29.960 a job, and it was hard to get. Those jobs 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:33.040 were hard to get, and I took it. So, I mean, 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:35.520 it's just why I fell into place. Yeah, that's why. 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:38.120 That's why I are. You do s Yr But then 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:40.520 you go down to Florida. Correct? Why I went off 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:43.840 to Columbia, I'm sorry, a graduate degree at JO Why 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:45.079 did you want to do that? You were working? 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:45.360 Why? 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:47.800 I wanted to do it to get out of Syracuse 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:50.280 because I was finding it difficult to make a jump 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:53.080 to a major market, and I thought that the Columbia 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:56.360 thing would give me a little bit more credibility in 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:58.160 New York if I wanted it, because I wanted to 0:08:58.360 --> 0:08:59.679 ultimately go to the networks. 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:01.920 Yeah and so, and they did give you the credibility 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.240 because you just work you're in Jacksonville, you're in Miami. 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:09.200 Both those stations owned by the Washington Post Company. What 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:11.040 was your just someone connection with them? Had you worked 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:13.560 for them? I didn't, but it was a great company 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:15.760 to work for Back then. I got hired to go 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:18.520 down to Jacksonville. I had a friend at CBS and 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:20.720 he says, why don't you go down talk to Jim Snyder, 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:24.360 who is the head of WTP, the CBS affiliate in Washington. 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:28.320 He runs Post newsweek stations. You know. I went down 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:30.600 and I talked to Jim, and Jim said, I've got 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:34.520 this investigator reporter's job opening Jacksonville. You know, I'd like 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:36.680 you to go down and talk to the news director 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:38.880 and we can put you in there because I've done 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:42.720 some investigative reporting at WSYR. So I get down there 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:47.400 and it turns out that everybody in town, all these people, 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:49.880 you know, the news director says, oh, we've got some 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:52.680 great stories down here. The town was run kind of 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:57.440 by independent authorities. It was like all these businessmen were 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:00.480 running the town. There was support authority, the electric all 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:05.040 of this stuff, and our license. Both stations were being 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.960 challenged by a group of very rich Republicans who had 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:13.240 gotten in trouble. If you may remember when I think 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:16.640 it was Bernstein or Woodward called up John Mitchell, who 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:20.040 was the Attorney General of the United States at the time, 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:24.080 and asked him a couple of questions about Watergate. Woke 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:27.280 come up and woke him up, And Mitchell's response was, 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:30.200 Katie Graham's going to get her kit in her ringer 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:33.400 if you print this story. But what they did was 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.800 they challenged the licenses of the two most profitable parts 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:40.280 of the Washington Post want the TV stations in Jacksonville 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:42.720 and Miami. So I was there and it ended up 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:44.560 I didn't know this at the time, but I was 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:47.440 doing stories on all the people that were behind the 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:51.120 license channel challenge. I wanted something about journalism that day. 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:52.040 They didn't prevail them. 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.240 They didn't prevail, right, And you were there for how 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:57.199 long in Florida before because eventually come to New York 0:10:57.240 --> 0:10:58.280 after that two years? 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:00.920 I was there in Jacksonville two years and two years 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:01.480 in Miami. 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.440 What was your where had you spent even during your 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:06.640 su days and then of course during your Columbia days 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:08.800 you're uptown? But what did you think about when you 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:10.840 first came to New York. Did you see it potentially 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:12.520 as a place you were going to spend the rest 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:16.000 of your life? You being from Indiana, Yeah, and I 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:19.360 also been from Chappaqua. I graduated from high school at Chapequa, 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:22.400 so I knew it by taking the Harlem Line into 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:23.920 Grand Center and going to play. 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:26.560 You're familiar with New York obviously, Yeah, But did you 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:27.200 love New York? 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:28.800 Did you think you did you know it was going 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:30.520 to be I thought it was a big time, you know, 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:31.520 And I thought, here I am. 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:35.000 I'm working for CBS and a network correspondent. I'd got 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:37.360 in my dream the whole thing. It was absolutely the 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:41.199 most junior person at CBS at the time and worked 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:42.839 in the Northeast Bureau. And I did a lot of 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:45.800 crap work, a lot of stakouts. You know, you take 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:47.800 a camera crew and you wait all day waiting for 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.400 somebody to come out. Maybe they won't come out. I 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.959 don't know how many days I spent standing outside the 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:57.120 hospital where they thought the show of Iran was but 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:00.559 he was not there. Ever there and I spent two 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:02.960 miserable days in the rain outside the DA Code after 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:06.160 John Lennon got shot. Now and I got sent to Dallas, 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.880 and I said, we're making you a correspondent, because everybody 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:14.000 started off as a reporter. We're making a correspondent. That's 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:15.760 the good news. Bad news is we're sending you to 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.880 our Salvador. So I went down there and spent a 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.719 couple of months in our salad, which actually was more 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:26.679 dangerous for me than Vietnam. 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:31.760 Journalist and news correspondent Steve Croft. If you enjoy conversations 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.440 with world class journalists, check out my interview with Dan Rather. 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:39.160 When the first faint edges of what we came to 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:42.200 know is Watergate begun to emerge, I was skeptical that 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:45.360 it would reach the Oval Office itself. You never met 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:48.199 anybody who had more respect for the office of the 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:51.199 Presidency in the United States than I do. It was 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.080 very difficult for me to accept that the President himself 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:58.120 would be involved in any way. However, as time went along, 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.920 facts began the first wisp. Then they begin to speak 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:04.360 in fou voice, and then the facts begin to shout. 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:09.440 It isn't just lower level campaign operatuies, It isn't just 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:12.840 lower level members of the administration. That this probably goes 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.080 into the Oval Office itself. 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:20.679 To hear more of my conversation with Dan rather go 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:24.520 to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Steve 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:28.680 Croft tells the story of being attacked while reporting on location. 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.679 I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. In 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.760 Steve Croft's final interview for sixty Minutes, he told fellow 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:51.400 correspondent Leslie Stall that in spite of interviewing intimidating figures 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:55.400 and traveling to dangerous places, he was never afraid while 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:59.920 doing an interview. The only exceptions Croft cited were interview 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:04.040 was in Beirut and Zimbabwe. I was curious what made 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.800 him nervous during those two particular stories. 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:10.440 Well, in Zimbabwe, we were attacked by a group of 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:14.040 black quote unquote war veterans who were trying to drive 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:18.400 the white farmers out of South Africa. I was doing 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.040 a story on one of the farmers and I thought 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:23.920 that was going to be really hairy. They had big, 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:29.240 huge clubs and they were very upset. But we got 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:32.720 out of it. In Beirute just because it was brute. 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:35.960 I mean there were buildings blowing up every fifteen minutes 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:40.000 and you had to really pay attention to where you 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:42.600 went and what you were doing. The place was out 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:45.840 of control. Are you a religious man? Do you think 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:49.080 you're alive because of a lot of war coverage? For you, 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:52.200 I did intense, intense period of this kind of very 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:53.840 dangerous reporting. Yeah. 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:55.920 I mean, other than being lucky, what else do you 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.840 attributed to You just had an eye for what to do. 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:04.760 He had a sense it's very exciting, Okay. Churchill said, 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:07.840 there's no feeling in the world. The most exhilarating feeling 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:10.160 in the world is to be shot at without result. 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:14.160 And it was. There was a lot of adrenaline, and 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.200 it was a great way to advance your career, and 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.000 because you were always going to be on the air 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.600 and I liked it. I liked it for a while, 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.360 and then the chance came to go to London and 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:30.680 I decided to do that. That's where I ended up 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.360 in Beirut when I was working in the London bureau, 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:36.080 which was I spent three years there and I was 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:39.200 traveling all over the world and that was really the 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:42.040 best time I had at CBS. I love that why, 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:45.320 because that's the reason I wanted to be a correspondent. 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.720 I wanted to see the world and learn about things. 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:53.560 We traveled in those days, first class, and you stayed 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:56.680 in the best hotels, and it was you were like 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:00.520 a dignitary. It was a different world for journals expect then. 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.920 Yeah, now when you finally land at sixty minutes, you 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:05.880 join sixty Minutes in what year? 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:07.560 Is it eighty nine? 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:11.440 I think eighty nine, So eighty nine, fifty six plus 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:15.480 years after it started. Sixty Minutes is better and more 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:19.120 substantive than any other TV news program today, not just 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:21.640 in prime time, but still the gold standard. 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:25.600 Why do you think they maintained that authority because it 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:29.600 was a very good show. It came in generally followed 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:32.960 the NFL football games on CBS, which gave us a 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:39.240 huge leading, particularly among males. And it had a genius 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.240 and Don Hewett was the executive producer and sort of 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:45.080 the inventor of the show. And it had Mike Wallace 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:48.680 and Morley Safer and Ed Bradley and Leslie Stall and 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:52.840 you know the best. You know, all these people had, 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:56.640 like myself, gone out and done all the stuff that 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:59.400 I had done. And I think that was one of 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.400 the reasons why I was under consideration. You know, I've 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:05.920 been overseas and knew how to handle myself. I could 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:08.560 was a good writer, but I think that the success 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:13.840 for the show was I think that people felt smart 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:18.639 watching it. We would take on very difficult subjects, but 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:21.640 we never talked down to the audience, and we would 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:24.959 go to great links to try and give the story 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:28.719 context and explain what was going on and why we 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:32.520 were doing this story. And people just they like that, 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:37.000 I think, and they learned something from it, and I 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:40.840 think that's really important. I mean television today and television 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:44.119 generally talks down to people. They don't give the audience 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:47.800 much credit for being smart, and I think sixty Minutes 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:51.280 did that, and I think the audience appreciated it. Also. 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:53.920 I thought people always thought sixty Minutes was a really 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:57.000 liberal show, and I don't think it was liberal. I 0:17:57.040 --> 0:17:59.720 think that it was we did. There's no show in 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:03.080 tell Vision that did more stories about the waste and 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:06.520 dysfunction of the US government right than sixty minutes. 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:09.359 Right now, when you're working for the network prior to 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:12.359 the appointment to sixty Minutes, you're running against some of 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:15.000 these guys in a lot of headbutting with your competitors, 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:16.760 if you will, I mean the other guys on the show. 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:19.680 Reisner safer. You guys don't want to cover the same story. 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:22.439 Yeah yeah, And that was even before sixty minutes when 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:24.359 your correspondence or no, yeah, no. 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:27.240 I had some huge fights with Morley when I was 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:30.160 in London over who is going to do what story? 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:32.560 Whether you know, I'd be I'd been working on it, 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:34.840 and he wanted to do the story with John Tiffin, 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.879 who is a very powerful producer, and we would, you know, 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:41.320 take the gloves off and have at it and have 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:41.720 at it. 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:43.360 And then when you got on the show, the same 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:45.520 thing when it's sixteen minutes, same thing, A lot of competition. 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:48.720 Who's going to do what story? Yes, now you do it. 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:50.760 And one thing that was mentioned to me was you 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:54.280 interview me obviously every president during your term there and 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:57.960 their term you and you interview Obama several times. To me, 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:01.159 the presidency is you you have to have a special 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:03.600 land in your body to want to do that job 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.720 and believe you can succeed, especially the contemporary presidence, let's 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:10.840 say since nineteen eighty and as monolithic as the budget 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:12.840 is and everything, what was it you got from each 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:15.119 of them that you interviewed that you thought was the 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:18.520 reason they won? Name each president won by one that 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:21.960 you interviewed. Most of them I interviewed were just short, 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.280 short interviews, no long profiles, no long profiles, not sixty minutes. 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:30.480 The two presidents that I interviewed for sixty minutes were 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.880 Clinton several times and Obama many times. I think Obama 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:39.040 was a bit a class by himself, simply for the 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:44.000 fact that he was so knowledgeable and he was very articulate. 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:46.800 When you go down and interview with somebody in Washington, 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:49.800 whether it's the president or whatever, there's a lot of 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:52.399 things you ask them that they don't know, and they 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:55.760 constantly have to check with their aids, and they always 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:59.000 have them in the room. In all the times I interviewed, 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:03.280 Obama never stopped to ask any questions, and I never 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:07.200 had anybody maybe one time somebody from his staff called 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:10.919 and wanted to correct a small factual era. He knew 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:15.560 what he was talking about, and he was able to 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.879 give people, I think, a sense of what it was 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.760 like being in that job, which is why I liked 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:24.639 so much about interviewing. The reason we interviewed him so 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:27.000 many times. What sense did you get? What was his 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:27.720 view of the job. 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:30.600 Did he enjoy it? I think he enjoyed it less 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:36.040 over time. I think his wife never really she didn't 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:38.439 want him to run. Originally, the first time I interviewed 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:44.040 was the week before he declared, and she was very successful, 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:48.920 had her own career, and she had lived through time 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:50.879 in the Senate and he was gone all the time. 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:54.640 She hated that. I think both of them took great 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:57.400 solace in the fact that it was going to be Basically, 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:00.600 they had a place to live and he was going 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:03.040 to be there, so this will be together. Yeah, So 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:06.160 from a family point of view, it worked out very well. 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:08.760 I think he was ready to leave when he left, 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:13.120 and I think that I know that they had a deal. 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:16.080