Tick... Tick... Tick... (17 page)

 

Only a few days later came the airing of “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,” a
CBS Reports
documentary produced by George Crile, with Wallace narrating. It wasn't done under the auspices of
60 Minutes,
and Crile, who had done most of the reporting himself, had brought Wallace into the project mainly for his interviewing talents. When the
90
-minute documentary aired at
9
:
30
P.M.
on Saturday, January
23
,
1982
, it created an immediate firestorm for Wallace, Crile, and CBS News itself and only deepened the correspondent's despondency over the recent downturn in his reputation.

The documentary charged that in the period before the
1968
Tet offensive, American intelligence had altered estimates of Viet Cong troop strength to bolster the government's position that it was winning the war. It specifically accused General William C. Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam from
1964
to
1968
, of having conspired to misrepresent the size and strength of Viet Cong guerrilla forces in order to curry favor for the war effort, which was going badly. But even though Westmoreland and other top officials sat willingly for interviews, Westmoreland was quick to deny the charges; in a news conference several days later, he called the documentary “a vicious, scurrilous, and premeditated attack on my character and personal integrity.” CBS responded that Westmoreland's charges were “totally unfounded.” The news media largely sided with CBS News; editorials and reviews regarded the documentary as a powerful exposé of military manipulation.

There were exceptions, though. In a May
1982
article entitled “Anatomy of a Smear,” two reporters for
TV Guide
charged CBS with its own distortion of facts to fit its thesis. The article specifically accused the producers of having “rehearsed” an interview, contrary to network rules and then edited out points of view that didn't agree with that of the documentary. While the magazine took pains to note it wasn't challenging the essential truth of the Crile-Wallace documentary, it still managed, by use of the loaded word “smear,” to taint what had been considered a first-rate reporting job.

What made matters even worse for Wallace was the reaction of CBS News, now under new management. Bill Leonard, the executive who'd been responsible for getting
60 Minutes
on the air to begin with, had been overthrown in favor of Van Gordon Sauter, a bearded dynamo from the Midwest who (at least to the old-timers at CBS, of which there were many) seemed more concerned with the superficial aspects of news—sets, graphics, and the like—than with the serious business of news gathering. Rather than coming to its defense, Sauter immediately commissioned an inquiry into the charges against the documentary, creating what Wallace felt was an atmosphere of uncertainty about it.

The network assigned Burton Benjamin, a former CBS documentary producer and now a senior executive producer of CBS News, to look into the accusations. In July, after reviewing Benjamin's report, Sauter issued an eight-page memo that sharply criticized aspects of the documentary—and implied that Wallace had not been active enough in the reporting, creating a disconnect that should be avoided in “projects of a complex and controversial nature.”

It may not have been the reaction Westmoreland wanted—he called the report a “whitewash”—but in true military fashion he sensed division in the ranks and moved to exploit it. In September, Westmoreland filed a $
120
million libel suit against CBS; among those named in the lawsuit were Sauter, Crile, and Wallace. It would be a long, ugly, and expensive legal fight.

 

By
1983
, after
15
years on the air—with
5
of them spent among the top
10
shows—it wasn't uncommon for those involved in
60 Minutes
to take brief breaks from looking forward by patting themselves on the back. They had done a tenth anniversary show, and now a fifteenth. Mike Wallace was hard at work on an autobiography (with Rather collaborator and CBS News historian Gary Paul Gates) to be called
Close Encounters
; Hewitt had a memoir in the works, too—to be called
Minute by Minute,
with the modest subtitle,
The Best Show on TV Becomes the Best Book on TV.
May
1983
marked Wallace's sixty-fifth birthday—particularly notable in that CBS would make what appeared to be its first exemption to its mandatory retirement age by allowing him to sign another contract. Hewitt, a few years later, would be its second. (This was no mere technicality: Eric Sevareid and Charles Collingwood, two CBS stars of earlier vintage, had been forced to retire at age
65
.) Of course, as Wallace was the first to note, the decision had only to do with economics, since it would have been a reckless business decision to break up the
60 Minutes
team at the top of its game. The show ranked number one for the season, and was regularly watched by
40
percent of the television audience.
60 Minutes
had devoted
1
.
4
million minutes to nearly
1
,
500
stories, and Wallace the workhorse had done nearly
500
of them. His contract earned him more than $
1
million a year, and soon afterward Hewitt would join him at the seven-figure mark—an unheard-of sum for a news producer never seen by the audience at home.

Chapter 14

See You on Television!

For
15
years
60 Minutes
had managed to maneuver its way into great stories and high drama with little second-guessing of its techniques. Sure, there'd been the occasional article or analysis, but for the most part the show had remained immune, both critically and legally, to those who would challenge its basic methods or threaten its approach.

But that was all about to change, thanks to a slander suit against the show and its now-departed correspondent Dan Rather. It was a minor case involving a December
9
,
1979
, piece called “It's No Accident,” about insurance scams in which spurious medical claims are filed in reference to faked auto accidents. In the story, Rather had reported that Dr. Carl Galloway, a California doctor, had signed a fraudulent medical report; Galloway claimed that though his name was on the report, it was not his signature—and that
60 Minutes
and Rather hadn't made adequate effort to prove that it was.

When the case came to trial in the spring of
1983
, it offered the public a rare glimpse behind the curtain of the TV newsmagazine. For the first time in its history, the news-gathering techniques of
60 Minutes
would themselves go on trial, in what became something of a media circus—with Rather taking the stand for three days in his own defense in a Los Angeles courtroom. But what really mattered to
60 Minutes
—over and above the embarrassment of having its former star on trial—was one crucial part of Galloway's defense, which (thanks to a favorable court ruling) enabled him to introduce interview outtakes that cast Rather or
60 Minutes
in a less than flattering light.

During the Galloway trial, audiences learned how
60 Minutes
obtained what was known as the “reverse” shot, in which the correspondent was filmed asking a question—sometimes repeatedly—after he'd already heard the answer. Because the reporter was essentially the star, he could redo his questions as often as he liked, until he got it right—a freedom not afforded those answering the questions. (The
1987
movie
Broadcast News,
written and directed by a former CBS News writer named James L. Brooks, did much to malign this particular technique. In one sequence, correspondent Tom Grunick, played by William Hurt, used the “reverse” shot to insert a shot of himself crying during an interview with a victim of date rape; it was later revealed that Grunick had filmed the crying after the interview had been completed.) Overall, the exposure of raw, unedited footage did little to enhance the reputation of the anchorman or of
60 Minutes.
In one instance, someone trying to get away from an unwelcome CBS camera was yelled at by a raucous Rather: “Adios! See you on television!”

A jury ultimately ruled in favor of Rather and CBS; the case went away. But the fallout from the public's peek backstage into the process tempered the victory.
60 Minutes
later instituted a requirement that all interviews be shot with two cameras, in an effort to lessen the public perception that its correspondents were not so much reporters as well-rehearsed actors reading from a script. (However, two decades later CBS News standards still do not explicitly require two cameras to be used for interviews. “There may be times when the reporter or producer feels that reaction shots and reverse questions made out of real-time sequence are necessary,” the rules state. “In such cases, the subject must be made aware of what we are doing and why, and, if questions are to be repeated, the subject or his or her representative is to be given the opportunity to be present during the recording of those questions.”)

As usual, Fred Friendly—who'd become an éminence grise to the industry, often quoted as an unassailable critic of network news practices—weighed in on the latest
60 Minutes
imbroglio. “We put our cameras on an awful lot of people,” he remarked to the
New York Times
after the verdict came in. “I think the fact that we are accountable that way can't help but be good for all of us.” That said, Friendly conceded that the presence of Rather on the witness stand had only helped bolster the anchorman's position. “Viewers have seen Dan Rather in a new light and a good light, not just the talking end of a TelePrompTer,” Friendly said, “but as someone who is able to cope with a very difficult problem, willing to face his accusers.” In the end, the case proved the principle of
60 Minutes
yet again—that the show depended heavily on the performance skills of Hewitt's tigers to keep audiences coming. It would always be the correspondents who turned good reporting into great storytelling.

 

By the fall of
1983
the other networks had tired of ceding the Sunday night at
7
:
00
time slot to CBS and were at last gearing up to challenge
60 Minutes.
ABC was bringing in James G. Bellows, a onetime print journalist and now managing editor of
Entertainment Tonight,
to come up with a competing strategy—maybe even starting a new show at
6
:
30
to give it a head start. Meanwhile, at NBC, the plan was to move
Monitor,
its own newsmagazine, to the Sunday-night-at-
7
time slot.
Monitor
had launched the previous March with Lloyd Dobyns as the host, on Saturday nights at
10
:
00
, and quickly plummeted to the bottom of the ratings. NBC News president Reuven Frank promised an overhaul of the show—new music, new sets, new correspondents, even an investigative unit—to draw viewers away from
60 Minutes,
which still owned first place in the ratings.

Hewitt, as always, had nothing but public sarcasm for his would-be competition. “I have seen Lloyd Dobyns maybe once in my life, maybe twice,” he told a
New York Times
reporter. “We have lived in this neighborhood for
15
years. It is a nice neighborhood. Mr. Disney used to live across the street. Father Ripley lives down the block. [Hewitt was referring to Ripley's
Believe It or Not!,
the latest family fare thrown up against his show.] I don't imagine a nice man like Mr. Reuven Frank would do anything to ruin our neighborhood.”

Behind the bluster, Hewitt was always looking for ways to retain his edge and stay ahead. Not that he feared getting beaten, but just in case, it couldn't hurt to heap a little more star power onto his enterprise. Fortunately for him, CBS News had the perfect piece of talent to give his show the adrenaline boost it might one day need.

 

Back in
1969
when she was a
23
-year-old weathergirl at WLKY in Louisville, Diane Sawyer, having nothing to show for herself but a well-honed sense of gumption and poise, dialed up CBS and asked the switchboard operator to connect her with Don Hewitt of
60 Minutes.
Minutes later, Sawyer was talking with Hewitt—who has always made a habit of answering his own phone. They made an appointment for Sawyer to see him on her next trip to New York. When that day came, Sawyer was granted a
45
-minute audience with the executive producer, after which she was politely informed that she would not be immediately joining the cast of the number one show on television—although the meeting presumably did go on far longer than most of Hewitt's interviews with weathergirls from local stations.

“We'll get back to you,” Hewitt said at the end of their chat.

It wasn't all that surprising that Hewitt found himself in a room with Diane Sawyer so early in her career. Sawyer, born December
22
,
1945
, had been brought up to be the best, the brightest, the first. Growing up in Louisville as the daughter of a Republican county judge and a schoolteacher, Diane had singing lessons, walking lessons, and dance lessons. She and her sister, Linda, had looks, height, talent, and charm, and their mother was determined to exploit that in full—without much credit to them. “She's not pretty,” Mrs. Sawyer once said of Diane. “My daughter's not the least bit pretty!” That harsh standard still pertains; Sawyer's mother, Jean, routinely calls from her Kentucky home to criticize her daughter's appearance on
Good Morning America.
“To this day,” Sawyer said in a
2002
interview, “I get messages about clothes that didn't look good or how I didn't sit in a ladylike position. She thinks that if she just says the right thing, one day I'll get it right.”

As the girls grew older and their training program progressed, they entered numerous beauty pageants—Linda winning the Miss Kentucky pageant and Diane later earning the Junior Miss crown in
1963
. Her winning essay compared the music of the North and South in the Civil War. Sawyer has said she aspired to a career on the stage, devoting what little spare time she had as a child to practicing show tunes.

In
1963
, Sawyer followed her sister to Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she kept up with her passion for singing and the stage, performing in college productions, including
The Threepenny Opera.
She graduated in
1967
with a degree in English; with no clue how to turn herself into a Broadway star, she headed home to Louisville and found herself a job doing the weather on WLKY, the local ABC affiliate. In
1969
, her father was killed in a car crash; a year later, Sawyer decided to leave Louisville and test herself in Washington, D.C.

She met with Bill Small, an old family friend from Louisville who had become the Washington bureau chief of CBS News. He was upbeat about her chances in broadcasting; but she needed a job, not a cheerleader. Through other family connections, she landed a spot in the Nixon White House, working for press secretary Ron Ziegler. She remained there throughout the Watergate scandal, handling press inquiries and reportedly earning her nickname “the smart girl” from Nixon. During that time, she began dating presidential speechwriter Frank Gannon; it was with him that she traveled to San Clemente after Nixon's resignation, to work on the presidential papers. Sawyer was the tall blonde visible to viewers as Nixon boarded the chopper departing the White House lawn for the last time in August
1974
.

After Sawyer finished helping Nixon with his memoir,
RN
, she went back to Washington. A job had opened up at CBS News, and Bill Small had risen to CBS News management. With his help, Sawyer was hired in
1978
as a reporter in the CBS News Washington bureau. (Dan Rather, who'd gotten to know Sawyer while covering the Nixon White House, told the
New York Times
in
1981
that he'd advised against hiring her. “She proved me wrong,” he said.) Her experience working for Nixon did little to endear her to her new colleagues, and her lack of on-air experience made her an easy target for sniping. But Sawyer's solid performance covering the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in
1979
(not to mention her telegenic appearance) earned her a promotion to covering the State Department. She stayed until September
1981
, when the latest management team at CBS News—headed by division president Van Gordon Sauter—acknowledged her glamour and skill and handed her the job of co-anchor of the perpetual last-place finisher
CBS Morning News,
along with veteran newsman Charles Kuralt.

It was
1981
; Sawyer was
35
years old. That year, a
TV Guide
reporter asked Sawyer if she planned to get married. “Oh yes,” she replied. “I'm going to have the world's most rapturous, fun-filled, wise and generous marriage. And I'm going to have the most fascinating and autonomous children. I'm going to have it all.” At that time she was dating Richard Holbrooke, a former assistant secretary of state and prominent New York investment banker. But Sawyer's focus seemed to be primarily on her burgeoning career. The morning news—redubbed
Morning
—raised her stature in the industry: the minuscule rise in the show's ratings was attributed to her, and in
1982
CBS replaced Kuralt as her partner with Chicago anchorman Bill Kurtis. The switch brought no further improvement to CBS's long-standing weakness in the morning TV wars.

By
1983
, CBS News was in chaos. Under the leadership of Ed Joyce—who stepped in as head of the news division when Sauter was promoted to a corporate post—the network's morning show was one of the most visible symptoms of the news division's lack of direction. A succession of executive producers was recruited to help save the show, but they only cemented Sawyer's growing desire to leave. The last straw was the appointment of Jon Katz, a former print journalist. “The low point of my
Morning News
existence,” Sawyer recalled to author Peter Boyer, “was when I interviewed the yo-yo queen of America for about five minutes. I did that. That was a Jon Katz special, which I never let him forget.” Meanwhile, Hewitt, infatuated by her obvious star quality as well as her social connections, was angling to get her over to
60 Minutes.
She, too, had cultivated a friendship with CBS chairman William Paley and blended easily into the upper-crust social circuit to which the less-polished Hewitt aspired. Their paths didn't exactly cross, but Hewitt made no secret of his desire to have Sawyer in his company of players.