Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. In nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: Hurricane Carla was threatening the Texas coast. A young reporter
Speaker 1: named Dan Rather used radar technology on the air for
Speaker 1: the very first time to show viewers the size of
Speaker 1: the storm. CBS network executives took note and offered Rather
Speaker 1: a job as a correspondent. CBS would become Rather as
Speaker 1: home for the next four decades. Rather built a reputation
Speaker 1: for hard nosed, in depth reporting. This reputation was called
Speaker 1: into question in two thousand four after his sixty minutes
Speaker 1: report about President George W. Bush's military service. CBS conducted
Speaker 1: an exhaustive investigation on the veracity of Rather's peace. Rather
Speaker 1: apologized and eventually stepped down truth. A film depicting the
Speaker 1: lead up to and chaos surrounding that segment on sixty
Speaker 1: Minutes is in theaters now. It stars Robert Redford as
Speaker 1: my guest Today, Dan Rather. This conversation was recorded Live
Speaker 1: as part of the Hampton's International Film Festival a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, as Dan Rather told me, his own
Speaker 1: military career started off with a lie that he was
Speaker 1: fit for service. I'm a child of the oppression years
Speaker 1: in World War Two, and when the Korean War came up.
Speaker 1: I know this sounds strange in today's environment more than
Speaker 1: fifty years later, but my country was at war and
Speaker 1: I wanted to fight. I was four f because I'd
Speaker 1: had rheumatic fever when I was a child, which was
Speaker 1: a so called disqualifying disease. I'm not proud of it,
Speaker 1: but when it came down with the Marines, I just
Speaker 1: when I told him, I didn't have any disqualifying diseases.
Speaker 1: But I have one of the shortest and least distinguished
Speaker 1: records in the whole history of the United States. But
Speaker 1: Marine Corps because they eventually found out, and so I
Speaker 1: was in the Marines for a short time. I didn't
Speaker 1: see combat. I saw nothing but southern California. But I've
Speaker 1: always been glad uh for the time I was in
Speaker 1: I think I learned alec more. Perhaps in the short
Speaker 1: time I was in the Marines. In any other such
Speaker 1: periody in my life that one of the four example.
Speaker 1: One of the things that the Marines teach you is
Speaker 1: that you can do a whole lot more than you
Speaker 1: think you can do. But any reach suffice to say,
Speaker 1: uh that I wasn't in for very long. I didn't
Speaker 1: do very much when I was in there. The most
Speaker 1: I can say is I volunteered to go, but did
Speaker 1: did a affinity for fighting men and now currently fighting
Speaker 1: men and women. Did that influence your career when you
Speaker 1: were in Vietnam? Is that what you wanted? Is that
Speaker 1: what you do? Yes? That that and the recognition. And
Speaker 1: I've made a lot of mistakes over my career, most
Speaker 1: of which are fairly obvious, and I have discard to
Speaker 1: show it. But when the Vietnam War started, uh one,
Speaker 1: I've recognized that it could become one of the dividing
Speaker 1: stories of my time. And if you're a journalist, you
Speaker 1: know your prayer every day is God to give me
Speaker 1: the big story. And since we're all greedy, right behind that,
Speaker 1: your prayer is and oh, by the way, God, if
Speaker 1: you give you the big story, please let me be
Speaker 1: at or near my best day. But yes, my going
Speaker 1: to Vietnam was partly based on my short undistinguished time
Speaker 1: in the Marines. Uh, I was remarkably unprepared to go
Speaker 1: to Vietnam. And I will say that to this day,
Speaker 1: and let's face it, I've been really lucky and blessed
Speaker 1: by being on a lot of big stories. Uh. That
Speaker 1: the honor and I used that word measuredly, the honor
Speaker 1: of covering American men and women in combat in that
Speaker 1: Green Uncle Hell, was one that obviously never forget over
Speaker 1: What period of time did you visit Vietnam? Well, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a visit. I was there for the better part
Speaker 1: of a year late nineteen assigned there and stayed there
Speaker 1: a better part of a year in late nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: til nineteen sixty six. I went back another three times,
Speaker 1: maybe four times after that, but never for that long.
Speaker 1: And when you were there to be credentialed and to
Speaker 1: get the permission to go there by the military, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming it was a lot different than than it is now,
Speaker 1: a great deal different. The biggest difference in covering combat
Speaker 1: Corres Monastery today as compared to the Vietnam era. In Vietnam,
Speaker 1: we were basically in the hitchhiking business. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: were a credential correspondence, you could go any place you
Speaker 1: wanted to go if you could get there, and the
Speaker 1: military would accommodate you. So we you look for a
Speaker 1: helicopter or a convoy going where you want to go,
Speaker 1: and you could go you where. And as a consequence,
Speaker 1: correspondence are not just myself, but correspondence in general, particularly
Speaker 1: television correspondents, because you have to get the pictures that
Speaker 1: we saw the war in every area of South Vietnam,
Speaker 1: from the DMZ all the way down to the Delta,
Speaker 1: which was rare even for people in the military. Frequently
Speaker 1: they were in one section, being the Highlands, but they
Speaker 1: didn't see the Delta. But that's all changed now that
Speaker 1: when you cover American men women in combat today, it's
Speaker 1: it's all very tightly controlled. Some people say it's tightly
Speaker 1: controlled because of you. Well, some people see that you
Speaker 1: were unearthing too much of the facts of what we're
Speaker 1: going on a viet Well, I think that's a bit much.
Speaker 1: But I do think that the military speaking in general,
Speaker 1: felt that they learned out of Vietnam that if you
Speaker 1: let correspondence and news organizations go anywhere in each other place,
Speaker 1: then the control the narrative, that you do not control
Speaker 1: the narrative. And the military, regardless of whose military it is,
Speaker 1: they're always eager to control the narrative. Now we can
Speaker 1: spend the rest after you're talking about it, but it
Speaker 1: will make one point that doesn't begin with the military.
Speaker 1: That begins with the White House and the Defense Department.
Speaker 1: They want to control the narrative. Therefore they have the
Speaker 1: military and make the rules saying, don't let these reporters
Speaker 1: go everywhere they want to go and do whatever they
Speaker 1: want to do. Oh, they have a system called embedding,
Speaker 1: which is to say, you're assigned to a certain unit
Speaker 1: or a certain area and you have an escort, but
Speaker 1: an escort. There are some exceptions to that, but very few.
Speaker 1: But that's the biggest change between today and who was
Speaker 1: the part during the period of time when you were
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. You were stationed in Psychon for that year
Speaker 1: that was what year? That was sixty five and sixty
Speaker 1: So so this was McNamara and Johnson. That's correct, But
Speaker 1: they always felt they had made a mistake by allowing
Speaker 1: the press to do that. But footnote bottom of the page.
Speaker 1: When the U. S. Military did its own analysis of
Speaker 1: what happened in Vietnam and what went wrong. They addressed
Speaker 1: the question of, quote, did the press lose the war? Unquote?
Speaker 1: And this is the military's own analysis are written in
Speaker 1: the Midden late nineteen seventies, eighties, I think. But anyway,
Speaker 1: they concluded it was not the press that lost the war.
Speaker 1: It was a lack of strategy and a lack of
Speaker 1: proper strategy and transparency with the American people, and the
Speaker 1: lack of transparency with the American people led to a
Speaker 1: diminution in support for the war. You were assigned as
Speaker 1: the White House correspondent when I first came to White
Speaker 1: House in January of nineteen sixty four. This was just
Speaker 1: after the Kennedy assassination. As you know, I was in
Speaker 1: Dallas with the Kennedy assassination. And when President Johnson ascended
Speaker 1: to the presidency, I came. I covered the White House
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four. Then I went oversee including the
Speaker 1: time of Vietnam, and I came back in very late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six and was there until roughly nineteen seventy six. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're you're covering the White House that period of time.
Speaker 1: So there's how shall we say there's Uh, they changed
Speaker 1: a lot more than the drapery at the White House
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight. And what was that like for you?
Speaker 1: Was to cover the new administration. Well, you know, when
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight came, the country was in such turmoil.
Speaker 1: I'm just we don't need to review the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But Robert Kennedy had been assassinated. Dr Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: had been assassinated. They were race riots in the country
Speaker 1: and rose from the dead politically. So when President Nixon
Speaker 1: was elected in nineteen eight, I had met him and
Speaker 1: had covered him, but only briefly. And I frankly thought
Speaker 1: at the time, well, you know, um, independent politically, but
Speaker 1: this may be good for the country. Uh that we've
Speaker 1: had eight years of a democratic administration. Things are not
Speaker 1: all that good. So here's a new breath of air.
Speaker 1: But I quickly learned that the Nixon people, including President Nixon,
Speaker 1: they had such a deep and abiding hatred. And I
Speaker 1: used that word measuredly for the press that for example,
Speaker 1: shortly as they came on a man named hr Bob
Speaker 1: Haltelman he later became a figure in the Watergate things. Uh,
Speaker 1: I met him, he came in and he no, sooner said.
Speaker 1: Then he said, we know who you are and what
Speaker 1: you are. I was saying to myself, well, that's more
Speaker 1: than I know about myself. Tell me what you know.
Speaker 1: So I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well,
Speaker 1: you know you were died in the world. This is
Speaker 1: a paraphrase, but a pretty close paraphrase. You're dying the
Speaker 1: will liberal, borderline socialist Lyndon Johnson Democrat, which astonished me
Speaker 1: to hear him say it, but it was replatory, and
Speaker 1: then it revealed to me the first time we have
Speaker 1: a problem here. And of course the Nixon presidency of
Speaker 1: it got off to a reasonably good star. If you remember,
Speaker 1: he promised that he had a plan to in the war,
Speaker 1: when in fact he had a plan to expand the war.
Speaker 1: But things quickly went from bad to worst, not just
Speaker 1: with myself but with the press scer in general, both
Speaker 1: print and electronic, because they had this this deep and
Speaker 1: abiding hostility, at least borderlinding on hatred towards the pression.
Speaker 1: When when you're there, I mean, this is my opinion,
Speaker 1: you are someone who is viewed by conservative forces in
Speaker 1: the country as being liberally biased. They always tried to
Speaker 1: tire you with that way you sell. You seek the
Speaker 1: truth about Nixon's activities, you seek the truth about Iran contract,
Speaker 1: and you're always being labeled as a liberal as being
Speaker 1: liberally biased because you really wanted them to actually answer
Speaker 1: your questions. Do you see it that way? I do?
Speaker 1: And beyond that, I was always proud of the fact
Speaker 1: that I was part of CBS US history and tradition
Speaker 1: and mission of CBS News, which was to take on
Speaker 1: the tough things, to pull no punches, play no favorite
Speaker 1: and the two parts elect respond to this business of
Speaker 1: you know, some liberal, politically biased person Number one. I
Speaker 1: grew up in Texas and I'm not playing humble beginnings,
Speaker 1: but my father was a distiger and my mother was
Speaker 1: a waitress. I went to nothing but public schools, including
Speaker 1: Sam Houston State Teachers College, small public school, product of Texas,
Speaker 1: product of Texas public schools. Volunteers went in the Marine Corps. Uh,
Speaker 1: what wildlining here. This is hardly the background of someone
Speaker 1: who's going to turn out to be some elite Eastern liberal.
Speaker 1: I was always amazed at the number of people who said, well,
Speaker 1: you're just another one of those ivy league of elite
Speaker 1: liberal people. Well, Sam Howson State Teacher College, which is
Speaker 1: now sayingson State University that's not in the IVY League.
Speaker 1: Sam Houston College, well I love the place, but it
Speaker 1: has about as much IVY United as your average taco
Speaker 1: bellow McDonald's. So that's number one. The number two that
Speaker 1: CBS News was was a leader in taking on the
Speaker 1: controversial issues, asking the tough questions going on the way
Speaker 1: back to Edward R. Merle and the McCarthy era. CBS
Speaker 1: News was a leader in covering the early part of
Speaker 1: the Civil rights movement, was the point person on that.
Speaker 1: It was a leader in coverage of the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: It was the leader CBS News, not just myself, but
Speaker 1: I was leader in covering that widespread criminal conspiracy which
Speaker 1: is normally shorthanded border gate. Do you take all that
Speaker 1: history now? When people don't like the way you report,
Speaker 1: what they seek to do is detigrate you. And one
Speaker 1: way to do that is hang a sign around you
Speaker 1: liberal or socialist or left that hang around I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, I think you know him pretty well. Some
Speaker 1: people will say, I mean, in my lifetime, some people
Speaker 1: will look back and reassess these periods in history, and
Speaker 1: they'll talk about a lot of the good things that
Speaker 1: Nixon did, And I'm wondering, do you re assess him now?
Speaker 1: Do you think that there was some good things that
Speaker 1: he did? And well, unquestionably he did some good things
Speaker 1: and he accomplished some good things during his presidency. After all,
Speaker 1: where did he go wrong? Uh, that's a good question
Speaker 1: to psychologist, But I do want to answer the question.
Speaker 1: I think where he went wrong for whatever reason, and
Speaker 1: I have no reason to know this. With President Nixon,
Speaker 1: he came to believe that it wasn't enough to defeat
Speaker 1: his political enemies, that he had to destroy them. And
Speaker 1: that's a there's a big difference between English. We're gonna
Speaker 1: fight like hell during the election, but once the election
Speaker 1: is over, then move shake hands and try to do
Speaker 1: some good things for the country. And I think where
Speaker 1: he went wrong was a long time before he came
Speaker 1: to the presidency, when he had this idea, Listen, it
Speaker 1: isn't enough to defeat my opponents, I have to destroy
Speaker 1: and that permeated his administration. Now as the reassessing of
Speaker 1: President Nixon, there's been a widespread and well financed effort
Speaker 1: to rehabilitate the legacy of Richard Nixon. I think that's
Speaker 1: what you're referring to, and they make some valid points. However,
Speaker 1: I don't think the history if it mentions Richard Nixon
Speaker 1: a hundred years or five hundred years from now, the
Speaker 1: inescapable fact is that he, as president, led this widespread
Speaker 1: criminal conspiracy. Keeping mind, more than forty people were indicted,
Speaker 1: many of them were convicted of felonies, and the president
Speaker 1: himself was forced to resign after being called by a
Speaker 1: grand jury an unindicted co conspiracy. When you sit there
Speaker 1: in your job and you've seen the president killed, and
Speaker 1: you see and again, would you say the you don't
Speaker 1: need to rehash the ramp up to the sixty eight election.
Speaker 1: I think it is important for people to understand in
Speaker 1: that context how seminal sixty eight was, with r f
Speaker 1: K and an MLK dying that spring, the Democratic Convention
Speaker 1: is of fiasco. You're seeing the Democratic Party unraveling before
Speaker 1: your eyes. Nixon, who you can't put a finer point
Speaker 1: on this, that Dixon was someone who he was dead.
Speaker 1: I mean he was dead, he comes back and wins
Speaker 1: the presidency of the United States. I mean sixty eight
Speaker 1: is just this is this amazing year and uh, but
Speaker 1: when you when you travel down and you get to
Speaker 1: seventy three, where even you stunned that he he had
Speaker 1: won a landslide re election, one of the greatest landslides
Speaker 1: in American history in nineteen seventy two, and a year
Speaker 1: later he resigned. He was out. We didn't even stunn
Speaker 1: you that that happened. Well it did, and I was slow.
Speaker 1: You know, orders get paid to be skeptical. Never cynical,
Speaker 1: but skeptical. And when the first first faint edges of
Speaker 1: what we came to know as what a gate you
Speaker 1: can do emerged, I was skeptical that it would reach
Speaker 1: the Oval office itself. That you never met anybody who
Speaker 1: had more respect for the office of the Presidency in
Speaker 1: the United States than I do every day when I
Speaker 1: walked through the White House gates to go to work,
Speaker 1: as a White House corresponded. I know it may sound
Speaker 1: on a corny and sophomoric, but I really um sort
Speaker 1: of sucked it up and said to myself, you know,
Speaker 1: this counts, this was important, and so I didn't believe
Speaker 1: that whatever crimes had been committed, even became apparent that
Speaker 1: crimes had been committed, it was very difficult for me
Speaker 1: to accept that the President himself would be involved in
Speaker 1: any way. However, as time went a long, facts begin
Speaker 1: to first whisper, then they began to speak in full voice,
Speaker 1: and then the facts began to shout. It isn't just
Speaker 1: lower level campaign opportunities, It isn't just lower level members
Speaker 1: of the administration. That this probably goes into the Oval
Speaker 1: office itself. And I felt like hell about it, And
Speaker 1: for a long time I bought it and said, then,
Speaker 1: you know, but it almost impossible to believe that the
Speaker 1: president would be involved in this. But as I say,
Speaker 1: the facts finally got overwhelming where it was undeniable. I
Speaker 1: do want to go back to uh, you said, well,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three, he had just come off a smashing,
Speaker 1: one of the most decisive victories in the history of
Speaker 1: the president. I wouldn't absolutely crushed McGovern, But I want
Speaker 1: to come back to that point, because that drove home
Speaker 1: the point, and I think this is what got him
Speaker 1: in the most trouble. They knew they were going to win,
Speaker 1: they knew they were going to win big, but that
Speaker 1: wasn't good enough. They had to destroy I don't not
Speaker 1: just beat McGovern, but they started to destroy McGovern, destroy
Speaker 1: the Democratic and so it was a classic case of overreach. Now,
Speaker 1: you you stay in the White House until seventies six,
Speaker 1: a year there through the impeachment. You're there through Ford's
Speaker 1: brief tenure, uh, and then Ford looses, of course to Carter,
Speaker 1: and then you leave. Did you leave at your own choice?
Speaker 1: Did you feel like you were done and you wanted
Speaker 1: to move on or what happened? No, I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't cover all of the very short uh forward period.
Speaker 1: I covered the very early stage of the board administration
Speaker 1: that CBS News chose to move me from the White
Speaker 1: House to New York uh, not long after President Nixon
Speaker 1: had resigned. Now, I thought at the time, and I'd
Speaker 1: be less than honest, but I didn't say I still
Speaker 1: believe that they moved me because I had become a
Speaker 1: controversial quote unquote. Now in fairness, Richard s Land, who
Speaker 1: was the president of CBS News at the time and
Speaker 1: probably the best president of the news division in history,
Speaker 1: he told me, no, damn, that's not the reason you're
Speaker 1: wrong about that. We're moving you because you think we
Speaker 1: think it's good for your career. But as I say,
Speaker 1: I didn't believe it in and I don't believe it
Speaker 1: now and you're there in New York doing what before
Speaker 1: they tapped you on the shoulder to succeed Cronkite. You
Speaker 1: succeed Cronkite? What year? I succeeded Walter Cronkite, And I
Speaker 1: appreciate you using the words succeed. Nobody replaces a legend
Speaker 1: like country. I succeeded Walter Cronkite in March of nine,
Speaker 1: I was named. So it's about five year period when
Speaker 1: I moved from the White House, having been there for
Speaker 1: a total of ten years. They moved me to New
Speaker 1: York and head of the documentary unit CBS Reports, which
Speaker 1: was the flagship documentary unit. I was there for a
Speaker 1: short while before they came and said, we're moving sixty
Speaker 1: minutes to seven o'clock on Sunday, and we need a
Speaker 1: third correspondent. They had two correspondents, Mike Wallace and Morley
Speaker 1: Safer at the time, and so I moved to sixty
Speaker 1: minutes in very early nineteen seven the six and you're
Speaker 1: there how long? I worked sixty minutes for the better
Speaker 1: part of seven years. I took the anchor chair in
Speaker 1: when you when you do that job, when you become
Speaker 1: the anchor. Is there a period of time when they
Speaker 1: come to you, when they tell you get ready, and
Speaker 1: they start to groom you, and you know what's coming
Speaker 1: months in advance. When you go home on a Friday
Speaker 1: and you come in money and you're the anchor? What wit? What?
Speaker 1: How does it? I wish that had been the case,
Speaker 1: because I might have been better at it had that
Speaker 1: been the case. But look, I was a line correspondent.
Speaker 1: I love being a field correspondent. I was a land
Speaker 1: correspondent for almost twenty years. And uh, nobody said to me,
Speaker 1: we're preparing you to be Walter Cronkite's successor. And quite frankly,
Speaker 1: until very late in the game, I didn't really consider it.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, I thought across the line, that would
Speaker 1: be nice, pays well and get your name in the paper.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't something that I thought was in my future.
Speaker 1: What do you miss about that job? I missed the people.
Speaker 1: When you work closely every day with people, remember the
Speaker 1: EV users, five days a week, every night. When I
Speaker 1: left CBS News and left the anchorage here, I thought
Speaker 1: I would miss it more than it turned up was
Speaker 1: the case. I missed every day working with the people
Speaker 1: that I've worked with tremendous people, great professionals in that
Speaker 1: camaradie of the newsroom, and missing the people that's still
Speaker 1: with me. Dan Rather misses his colleagues at CBS, but
Speaker 1: he tries not to miss a big story at three.
Speaker 1: Rather regularly reads six newspapers a day and still hosts
Speaker 1: his own show, The Big Interview on Access TV. Explore
Speaker 1: the Here's the Thing archives, you'll find my conversation with
Speaker 1: Dick Cavitt, another person comfortable with asking tough questions. He
Speaker 1: admits there are some words you'll never hear him say.
Speaker 1: I swore to God recently that I would never say
Speaker 1: the word awesome and my life and if we could
Speaker 1: only make that true everyone in the world, that would
Speaker 1: be swell. They can go along with iconic and closure
Speaker 1: and like of course, and a few others. Amazing. We
Speaker 1: all are saying amazing all the time. Now I've got
Speaker 1: five amazings and watching morning television for about forty minutes
Speaker 1: the other day. Amazing gas, amazing gas. We have it's
Speaker 1: amazing script. It's just amazing. I was amazed by career. Amazes. Man.
Speaker 1: Take a listen, and here's the Thing dot org. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: The new film Truth, starring Robert Redford as Dan Rather
Speaker 1: and Kate Blanchette as his producer Mary Mapes, explores the
Speaker 1: most controversial point in rather His long career. The movie
Speaker 1: chronicles the before and after of his now infamous sixty
Speaker 1: minutes report, casting President George W. Bush's military record in
Speaker 1: a negative light. The documents at the heart of Rather's
Speaker 1: allegations were never authenticated. I'm not perfect. I've made a
Speaker 1: lot of mistakes. But what I've tried to do other
Speaker 1: people who have to judge how well how poorly I
Speaker 1: did it. I've tried to be a bull, no puncher's play,
Speaker 1: no favorites, lifetime reporter who's loyal to the people he
Speaker 1: works with, supports the people he works with, and Bob
Speaker 1: Redford in his film captured that essence to a degree.
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was possible, and my gratitude runs
Speaker 1: really deep to him for doing that. For those of
Speaker 1: you who have seen the film, there is a shot
Speaker 1: at the end of the stone. I mean, you can't
Speaker 1: get more licked head to toe in a movie than
Speaker 1: they lick you head to toe in this movie with
Speaker 1: that slow motion shot of Redford beaming. I mean it's
Speaker 1: almost like you're you have you're the only thing missing
Speaker 1: is they put Christmas lights on you. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's so loving and respectful at the end.
Speaker 1: But um, but the uh so mapes with somebody. You
Speaker 1: picked her, You chose her to work with you, and
Speaker 1: she chose me. That Mary Maps, whose name obviously because
Speaker 1: she was a producer on air person her name before
Speaker 1: this happened, was not that well known. But Mary Maps
Speaker 1: was by not just by majority opinion, by consensus, almost unanimously,
Speaker 1: one of the great television investigated news reporters producers of
Speaker 1: her time. Uh she not alone, but as a team
Speaker 1: operation we broke the opera grape story. She was a
Speaker 1: story hunter, a story breaker, great storyteller in the sense
Speaker 1: don't television together. So yes, I had worked with her before,
Speaker 1: and answer your question, I picked her, but she also
Speaker 1: picked me. Mary didn't want to work with everybody that
Speaker 1: she was good enough and had a good enough reputation
Speaker 1: that she pretty much shows if you came to and
Speaker 1: said work with ex and she didn't want to work
Speaker 1: with actually just say thank you very much. And because
Speaker 1: of a record, she could make that stick. We're gonna
Speaker 1: take some questions, but uh, in the film a lot
Speaker 1: of that, and people lose their job mapes of course. Uh.
Speaker 1: And everyone who knows her story knows she never works again.
Speaker 1: And in the news industry, um, you yourself are told, asked, suggested,
Speaker 1: you know whatever you want to call it, to resign
Speaker 1: from your job. And yet there are people today who
Speaker 1: I think have done certainly I'm not gonna say guilty,
Speaker 1: But there are people to day who are in broadcast
Speaker 1: news who have uh been associated with things that are
Speaker 1: as bad, if not far worse in terms of fostering
Speaker 1: doubts about their common sense or even journalistic integrity, who
Speaker 1: have held on to their jobs. What do you think
Speaker 1: has changed in terms of television news that that happened.
Speaker 1: I don't have the answer to that question. I will
Speaker 1: say that with our story, look, we made some mistakes,
Speaker 1: and if we had it to do over again, when
Speaker 1: I do some things differently, of course, but generalism is
Speaker 1: not a precise science. I did it at the time
Speaker 1: what I thought was journalistically an ethical thing to do.
Speaker 1: And this is a salient point. Our story was was true,
Speaker 1: you can argue, and this is a successful attack was launched.
Speaker 1: Owners they couldn't attack the facts. They couldn't attacked the
Speaker 1: truth of the story, so they attacked the process by
Speaker 1: which we arrived at the truth. Was the process flawed? Yes?
Speaker 1: It was flawed? Was it flawed more than it should
Speaker 1: have been? Yes? Am I responsible for some of that? Yes?
Speaker 1: And I you may want say I'm responsible all But
Speaker 1: this is the point. The story was true. It was true,
Speaker 1: then it's true. Now the process was flawed. That's a
Speaker 1: different thing than a story is proven to be wrong.
Speaker 1: That they didn't. You don't get to the truth now
Speaker 1: as to why we suffered as we did, and h
Speaker 1: raps I should use another burb rather than suffered. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: whereas other people who do stories that are untrue don't
Speaker 1: suffer the same faith. I don't have the full answer.
Speaker 1: I will say this that Viacom was at a particular
Speaker 1: point where they when this story broke, preceding it, preceding it,
Speaker 1: during it, and afterward, they were in negotiation is their lobbyists.
Speaker 1: Their lobbyists were trying to get all kinds of things
Speaker 1: passed in Washington put into effect in Washington that would
Speaker 1: result in tremendous profits for Viacom. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: things I hope people take away from this film because
Speaker 1: it's so important, is the point what has changed in
Speaker 1: journalism is the involvement with large corporate power being excused
Speaker 1: my phrase, if you must, being in bed with big
Speaker 1: government in Washington, whether that governments in the hands of
Speaker 1: Republicans or Democrats. And given time now, having said earlier
Speaker 1: in our discussion, there was the time when there was
Speaker 1: a firewall between the corporation. But what was revealed in
Speaker 1: this case was when the White House and powers in
Speaker 1: the Republican Party began to scream about the story. They said,
Speaker 1: you know, rather in his crowd have made some mistakes
Speaker 1: and started demanding that we retract the story, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, the story was never retracted. We apologize for
Speaker 1: the documents, but didn't retract the story. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: the amount of influence that the lobbyists had with the corporation,
Speaker 1: which in turn influencing news division, is really stunning and
Speaker 1: that has changed. And we talked about the corporatization and
Speaker 1: politicalization of news today. See what this film truth is
Speaker 1: about it base It's less about me or Mary Maybes
Speaker 1: or even former President Georgia which what is about it
Speaker 1: at base is what's happened to the news, why it's happened,
Speaker 1: how it's happened, and why you should care Before we
Speaker 1: take a question. In my lifetime, what I've seen this
Speaker 1: is an opinion and an assessment. You know, our country
Speaker 1: is this machine that that where democracy and capitalism interact
Speaker 1: and as and in my lifetime, what we've seen is, uh,
Speaker 1: we were throwing out the democracy in order to accommodate
Speaker 1: capitalism and maintain standard of living in our political and
Speaker 1: military power around the world. And but what I want
Speaker 1: to ask you is when you go through your career
Speaker 1: and you think about Vietnam and then Watergate and then
Speaker 1: Iran Contra. Now I have my own answer to this question,
Speaker 1: but I want to hear yours. Iran Contra and then
Speaker 1: Upo Grabe and then nine eleven and our response to
Speaker 1: nine eleven and what we've done and not done over
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. Which one in your lifetime has
Speaker 1: made you more worried for the country. What a good question,
Speaker 1: maybe because it's so recent, but I'd say nine eleven.
Speaker 1: Don't misunderstand me. I was obviously far younger when I
Speaker 1: covered the early part of the civil rights movement and
Speaker 1: Dr Martin Ruth King. That was my daily, weekend, week
Speaker 1: out job that changed me as a person and as
Speaker 1: a pro in in really fundamental ways. That's a long
Speaker 1: time ago. And the reason I say with nine eleven,
Speaker 1: I think by any objective standard, the decision to go
Speaker 1: into Iraq, which flowed out of what happened of nine
Speaker 1: eleven decisions are going to rack, was a a a
Speaker 1: strategic blunder of historic proportions which continues to resonate, which
Speaker 1: continues to resonate to this day. So and answer your question,
Speaker 1: which one of those stories were causes me to worry
Speaker 1: the most about the country, But I want to emphasize it.
Speaker 1: I'm an optimist by experience and by nature, and we'll
Speaker 1: get through this period. And I do think it's almost
Speaker 1: say so, but it's just place only because I really
Speaker 1: believe it that I think the best days of the
Speaker 1: country can be and may very well be ahead of us.
Speaker 1: But this is a very difficult time because we as
Speaker 1: a people, as a society, through our government, have made
Speaker 1: some some very serious mistakes over the last decade and
Speaker 1: a half plus. Um, we're gonna take something, We're gonna
Speaker 1: go around with some mike's in this section here got
Speaker 1: a question, give us your question, shouted out Mr. Rather,
Speaker 1: do you think the reason why you and your team
Speaker 1: got in such hot water for exposing George W. Bush's
Speaker 1: less than honorable service reactor with the Air National Guard
Speaker 1: was because the Bush family used their political power to
Speaker 1: prevent this from being exposed. And before I give over
Speaker 1: the mike, I just want to point out that President
Speaker 1: Richard once President Richard Nixon once said I would have
Speaker 1: made a very good Popeye. Well, the two main as
Speaker 1: to the first part of that, uh that emphasizing the film.
Speaker 1: Truth isn't all about who did what to whom, who
Speaker 1: said what to whom, what mistakes were made. But in
Speaker 1: so far as it is about that, the two most
Speaker 1: important things are the facts. Everybody is intended entitled to
Speaker 1: their own opinion, but they're not entitled to their own facts.
Speaker 1: Fact one, it's a fact that a younger George W. Bush,
Speaker 1: his father used his political influence to get the younger
Speaker 1: Bush into the so called Champagne Unit of the Air
Speaker 1: National Guard as a way of ensuring that. But that's
Speaker 1: fact one. Fact two that after he got in this
Speaker 1: special unit of the Air National Garden. He did at
Speaker 1: least reason well, perhaps quite well as a pilot for
Speaker 1: a while, but then he disappeared for a year. Nobody
Speaker 1: disappears from the U. S Military for a year without reporting. Now,
Speaker 1: those two things are are are facts? And by exposing
Speaker 1: those facts, digging down getting those facts, what's your facts?
Speaker 1: Whatever you think of the documents plus minus or don't know,
Speaker 1: those are those are the things that got us in trouble.
Speaker 1: Where the those who found the facts inconvenient, to say
Speaker 1: the least for idiological, political, or some of the reason.
Speaker 1: They couldn't attack us on the facts, they attacked us
Speaker 1: on the process by which we arrived at the truth.
Speaker 1: And they succeeded in those attacks. They're right there with
Speaker 1: hand up, thank you a day, And I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you a question about looking into the future a
Speaker 1: little bit. And with the network news ray eatings dropping
Speaker 1: every day, with the audience getting older, um, and with
Speaker 1: the advent of immediate social media news, where you know,
Speaker 1: I could use this thing in my hand to get
Speaker 1: all the news, and uh, I don't need to wait
Speaker 1: till five thirty to find out what happened that day
Speaker 1: because it's old news. Then what do you see as
Speaker 1: the future of where you came from and where it's
Speaker 1: going to go. Well, I'm gonna try to answer the question.
Speaker 1: But when we talk about the future, I learned a
Speaker 1: long time ago that he who lose by the crystal
Speaker 1: ball learns to eat a lot of broken glass. And
Speaker 1: I've eaten more than my share. But the question is good, naturally,
Speaker 1: because I have a passion for reporting and journalism. I
Speaker 1: think a lot about it. This much, we know that
Speaker 1: the Internet, if it isn't already, I think the Internet
Speaker 1: in general already is the dominant place where most people
Speaker 1: get most of the news first. Now I've lived long
Speaker 1: enough to live through the print era, of the radio era,
Speaker 1: the television era, and moving forward, the Internet will become
Speaker 1: if it isn't already dominant, it will be dominant and
Speaker 1: be completely dominant. But that doesn't mean that television news,
Speaker 1: as pretty much as we know it, is going to
Speaker 1: completely disappear anymore than radio news disappeared when television came along.
Speaker 1: To answer your question, we're into the digital era now
Speaker 1: and the the essential thing, and I don't need to
Speaker 1: be preachy about this, but as citizens, as consumers of news,
Speaker 1: I think you should think about right now, as the
Speaker 1: television era fades and the internet era begins to dominate,
Speaker 1: there's been a tremendous shrinking in two really important areas.
Speaker 1: One is first class international reporting, what we used to
Speaker 1: call foreign news. The amount of quality foreign news reporting
Speaker 1: has swunk, I think, dangerously low. The other is deep
Speaker 1: digging investigative reporting that the market for it, if you will,
Speaker 1: has sunk. And here's the reason. Those are two of
Speaker 1: the most expensive forms of journalism, covering international news and
Speaker 1: doing investigative reports. And because one because they're expensive, it
Speaker 1: takes a lot of money to do them, and too,
Speaker 1: particularly the second investigative reporting causes controversy. Uh No one
Speaker 1: has come up with a new business model, if you will,
Speaker 1: that will only sustain, basis, pay for finance the kind
Speaker 1: of international reporting and investigative reporting we had not long ago.
Speaker 1: So I think that's something to watch looking forward. How
Speaker 1: do we come up with the business model? Having said,
Speaker 1: I'm an optimist, I think somebody will come up with
Speaker 1: that business model, but up to including now, they haven't.
Speaker 1: And I do think you will continue to see declining
Speaker 1: audiences for television, you know, looking at the television said
Speaker 1: increasing audiences for internet use, Um, we have time for
Speaker 1: just a couple more kers of our time. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go to this corner over here, you sir, I think, well,
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting things about the film Truth
Speaker 1: was that for the people that are my age or older,
Speaker 1: the buzz around is that we all thought we knew
Speaker 1: that story. When you just sort of thought you knew
Speaker 1: that area, you lived through it and you heard the story,
Speaker 1: and it's you watched the movie is simply not true.
Speaker 1: So I think, Uh, I don't know how I would
Speaker 1: feel to sort of have my career curtailed and sort
Speaker 1: of not have my story told. But thank god it's
Speaker 1: been told. But the thing, um, I don't understand is
Speaker 1: how how things keep getting the story keeps getting co opted.
Speaker 1: When you say they uh couldn't attack you on the
Speaker 1: facts that they attacked on the process, who are they
Speaker 1: because that they keeps getting the story and they keep
Speaker 1: doing like, Okay, let's that's a fair question. The emails
Speaker 1: and that's a fair question. And the day to which
Speaker 1: I refer are those uh people, the people in the
Speaker 1: White House, people in the Republican Party. But not confined
Speaker 1: to the Republican Party. There plenty of people who found
Speaker 1: fault with us, who were non Repolican party, those who
Speaker 1: see themselves as invested politically, ideologically, or otherwise in a
Speaker 1: one political direction. You call it conservative, you want a
Speaker 1: reactionary or whatever. Uh, and and their corporate allies. Those
Speaker 1: are the day, hope that's grammatically correct. Those are the
Speaker 1: day to which you refer that the same people who
Speaker 1: and you say, well, who are these people? Are people
Speaker 1: who were in the White House at the time the
Speaker 1: story broke, People who were who were in the positions
Speaker 1: of power in the in the Congress at that time. Uh.
Speaker 1: The people who were at in die Com at that
Speaker 1: time and are still there, some in the upper reaches
Speaker 1: of CBS at the same time. And I want to
Speaker 1: make it clear because I think it needs to be
Speaker 1: emphasized for fairness. We made mistakes and we need to
Speaker 1: be accountable for those mistakes. But I emphasized again holdless
Speaker 1: responsible for what we did that we shouldn't have done,
Speaker 1: and what we didn't do that we should have done,
Speaker 1: but recognized that flawed as it was, we got to
Speaker 1: some basic truths. We got to some facts, and that
Speaker 1: they that are referred to is it whomever wherever found
Speaker 1: those facts? Found that truth inconvenient to say the least,
Speaker 1: are harmful to their interests, political or otherwise. They are
Speaker 1: the ones who attack us, and as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: or in the process of undercutting the movie to this day,
Speaker 1: as much as they can possibly do. I have no
Speaker 1: illusions about the film truth. Um, but one thing. This
Speaker 1: film has no dragons, no robots, and no sex. So
Speaker 1: it's a lot of drinking in this film. Uh. But
Speaker 1: my you know, my hope is uh that it will
Speaker 1: broaden a new conversation however one feels about what we
Speaker 1: did or didn't do. Every one feels about me or
Speaker 1: CBS News or my team of people, whatever I would
Speaker 1: it'll spark a new and broader discussion about the importance
Speaker 1: of a free and independent, fiercely independent when necessary press
Speaker 1: as part of the red beating heart of democracy and freedom.
Speaker 1: I have a question for you. You sued CBS and
Speaker 1: we went on a long uh campaign there on that litigation, which,
Speaker 1: if I read the facts correctly, you spent a lot
Speaker 1: of money invested a lot of money in that. Similarly,
Speaker 1: did you ever think about getting private investigators and people
Speaker 1: to find out to answer your questions of what happened
Speaker 1: the answer is yes. One. When in the middle of
Speaker 1: the maelstrom that developed in the wake of our story, uh,
Speaker 1: when the president of CBS News, I think, on the
Speaker 1: direction of the people in the corporate side, said stop
Speaker 1: looking to the story and orders we were continuing to
Speaker 1: investigate the story, saying well, these people are asking questions,
Speaker 1: we're gonna find out, We're gonna find out more. He said,
Speaker 1: cease and desist. We're no longer going to work on
Speaker 1: this story. Cut it off now. At that point, I
Speaker 1: said to the president of CBS News, man named Andrew Heyward, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: if you're not going to do it, then I'm going
Speaker 1: to take money out of my own pocket and look
Speaker 1: into investigation. He said, well, Dan, you know, don't do that.
Speaker 1: I'm not good what he said. He said, don't do that.
Speaker 1: Then he came to me and said, well, look, the
Speaker 1: corporation is going to hire some outside investigators to look
Speaker 1: into this case. And they did that for a little while,
Speaker 1: didn't turn out very much, turn up very much, no surprise,
Speaker 1: and they cut it off. Because that's why I was
Speaker 1: still at CBS News. Now, after I left CBS News
Speaker 1: and formed my own production company called News and Guts
Speaker 1: and you know, like a year later, more than a
Speaker 1: year later, the following thing dawned on me. And I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to be lengthy here, and I apologize in advanced
Speaker 1: but it may be important to understand I didn't want
Speaker 1: to sue CBS. I had moved on. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I would rather have gone out on the Watergate story,
Speaker 1: the Kennedy assassination, or the civil rights but this is
Speaker 1: where life works. But CBS, and I was slow. I
Speaker 1: can be dumb as a fence post about a lot
Speaker 1: of things, and I was dumb about this. That they
Speaker 1: had begun to erase me from their history, which is
Speaker 1: to say little like the Russians used to do when
Speaker 1: they had a change of in the party apparatus. They
Speaker 1: would brush brush people out of photographs. That it was
Speaker 1: as if I had never been there. Now, whatever mistakes
Speaker 1: I made, and Evan said, I made plenty of, what
Speaker 1: are imperfections I have? You know you are what your
Speaker 1: record is. And I had a record at CBS, and
Speaker 1: I was rightly, wrongly proud of that record and still am.
Speaker 1: And when I realized that they were trying to erase
Speaker 1: me out of that record, no reference any time they
Speaker 1: do something on the Kennedy assassination is as if I
Speaker 1: wasn't there at that point. I said, then you're in
Speaker 1: nicasic classic fight or flight situation. You either have to
Speaker 1: fight them or you're gonna You're gonna just disappear. Now.
Speaker 1: I lost the lawsuit. They won, They won on appeal,
Speaker 1: they didn't win on the facts of the case. We
Speaker 1: wanted to take the case to jury. Feel scored. We
Speaker 1: lost the case. But some things are worth fighting for
Speaker 1: even if you lose. And I was told going into
Speaker 1: the lawsuit, then you can't take on a power like
Speaker 1: by a common CPS. Yes, you've made fairly good money
Speaker 1: over your time, but these people have deep pockets, and
Speaker 1: besides that, there's this next deductible yours is not. But
Speaker 1: I did say to myself, no, you know, I see
Speaker 1: myself as a fighter when they have to feed, and
Speaker 1: I'd rather go down fighting than just quietly sort of
Speaker 1: slink off and have them erase the whole record while
Speaker 1: I was there. This is Alec Baldwin. This conversation was
Speaker 1: recorded at the Hampton's International Film Festival. You were listening
Speaker 1: to here's the thing the cans to to a d