Tick... Tick... Tick... (8 page)

But the unlimited freedom to develop stories and the chaotic, competitive nature of the
60 Minutes
shop also led to a level of creativity unheard of elsewhere in television news.

 

Around the time the show moved to Sunday night in the fall of
1971
, a young former reporter for
Time
magazine named Barry Lando was working a dead-end assignment on the
CBS Weekend News.
He'd been brought on as assistant manager of the CBS Midwest bureau in Chicago, just in time for the
1968
Democratic Convention and its historic aftermath, not to mention the ghetto riots and campus uprisings of that period. His work in Chicago earned him a transfer to New York
.
Full of energy and ambition, Lando devoted his spare time to writing memos to Don Hewitt at
60 Minutes
, pushing ideas and stories. He made the impolitic move of fighting Mike Wallace over turf rights to a story in Vietnam and discovered that Wallace had the kind of supreme authority he lacked—and craved.

At the start of the show's fourth season, Hewitt called Lando with an offer to join a new “breaking news” team the show was forming to better cover last-minute stories. He and Phil Scheffler, a Hewitt protégé from the Douglas Edwards days, would be charged with racing around the world in search of fresh footage and unique angles on that day's news events. A challenge, Lando thought, but reason enough to grab the chance to work at the network's hottest news show.

Lando and Scheffler spent weeks trying to work out the logistics of the plan before finally abandoning it as unrealistic; given the constraints of current technology, there was no way to get film ready for air with enough time left to prepare good stories. The biggest breaking-news story of the day was in Vietnam. How would they ever be able to cover it better than the reporters on the scene?

But Lando was now a part of
60 Minutes
, and Wallace saw his arrival as another chance to sharpen the focus on investigative journalism. By then the crack team of producers ranged from young, energetic men like Lando to older, seasoned producers like Scheffler (who began at CBS as Hewitt's copyboy in
1951
) and Wershba. Wallace wanted them to chase stories that would keep shocking people and earn the loyalty of an audience grown cynical about government and power.

Right away, Lando got an assignment taken straight from the pages of the alternative press—a provocative article in
The
Washington Monthly
about government officials and legislators sending their kids to ritzy Washington private schools while supporting government-enforced busing policies. The result was a celebrated piece that contained what may have been the first truly magical moment in the history of
60 Minutes
.

 

Lando and Wallace went to the district's elite schools, including Georgetown Day School and St. Alban's School for Boys, and discovered that the parent rosters included liberals like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and Senator Edward Kennedy, as well as such commentators as the
New York Times
Tom Wicker and the
Washington Post
's editor Ben Bradlee. With Wallace as his front man, Lando tried to shame the liberals who refused to comment on camera. Standing in front of the Senate Office Building, Wallace told viewers: “We asked Senator Kennedy to talk to us, but he declined.”

The magic arrived as Lando, Wallace, and a film crew stood near Capitol Hill where Wallace was interviewing Walter Fauntroy, the black liberal congressman who represented the District of Columbia in Congress, and whose child attended Georgetown Day School. In a bit of pure serendipity, just as Fauntroy was defending his position, a group of anti-busing picketers walked by, including a white woman with an anti-busing placard who walked directly behind Fauntroy. “Mike!” Lando hissed at his correspondent. “Look over there!”

Wallace saw the woman and waved her over. What followed went directly into the piece, this way:

 

W
ALLACE
: As we were talking, nearby about a hundred and fifty representatives of anti-busing groups from across the country were protesting in front of the Supreme Court. After their protest, a group of the ladies from Texas and Michigan walked past the Capitol, where Congressman Fauntroy and I were talking.

F
AUNTROY
: Going to have to—

W
ALLACE
: May I interrupt you for just a second. Ladies, would you come over here for just a second? We had no idea that you were coming. This is Congressman Fauntroy from the District of Columbia, and we're talking about the very subject of busing at this instant. Now, is it because you are—obviously you're hardly going to suggest that you're racists—is it because it's race or is it education that you're against forced busing?

W
OMEN
: Education.

W
OMAN
: The children cannot get an education on a bus all day long. I don't care how you spell it or write it, they cannot do it.

F
AUNTROY
: The assumption is that your children will suffer because of the quality of education that is achieved through busing. And we are definitely at odds at that point.

 

At which point, Wallace tried to ask the women a question about the need for busing to accomplish the goals of integration. But they still had questions of their own.

 

W
OMAN
: May I ask you a question? Where do their children go to school? Private schools or public schools? Eliot Richardson, where does his kids go to school? Kennedy, where does his kids go to school?

F
AUNTROY
: Yes, the answer is, I believe, that all of them have their children in private schools—

W
OMAN
: Well, let's get them out—

W
OMAN
: And get us all on this socialistic trend, all on the same level.

F
AUNTROY
: I have my child in a private school. Let me finish—

W
OMAN
: Then you're discriminating against me because my child's in a public school that's integrated. . . .

W
OMAN
: Now, you are our leaders and we ask you as our leaders to provide an example. If you truly believe that a child may get a quality education in a racially balanced school, we think that you should step forward and say, “Here is my child, and I want to put him in a racially balanced school.” That's all we ask.

 

When the piece, entitled “Not to My Kid, You Don't,” aired on November
14
,
1971
, Fauntroy accused
60 Minutes
of setting him up. But Lando knew better. He'd gotten a perfect illustration, on his very first piece for the show, of the kind of alchemy that seemed to descend upon
60 Minutes
in its pursuit of stories.

Much of the creative chemistry was fostered by the absence of discernible rules. Lando and his fellow producers loved the freedom and latitude that came with no meetings, no memos, and few, if any, real policies. That may be what prompted Lando, less than two months after the Washington piece aired, to deliver a boundary-stretching piece to Hewitt on amnesty for Vietnam draft resisters. This would be the first in-depth look American TV would take at the fate of the young men who'd moved to Canada on principle and now wanted to come home—with no legal consequences.

The interviews he got were candid and provocative, but the story's first cut came in at
35
minutes—more than twice the length of a typical
60 Minutes
piece. After screening it, he returned to the editing room to search for five minutes to cut. But those five minutes couldn't be found, and Hewitt—not bound by any particular rules about length—agreed to run it as it was. Thus Lando's second story was another in classic Hewitt form, a dramatic collection of interviews that together told the story of these embittered afterthoughts to the Vietnam nightmare, including this extraordinary emotional conversation between Wallace and Gertrude Duff, the mother of a deserter seeking amnesty.

 

W
ALLACE
: What do you say, what is your feeling about the, I suppose, the millions of Americans who are saying to themselves at this moment, “Look, they turned their back on this country, they turned their back on their duty. Let them stay up there and rot.” Mrs. Duff?

M
RS
. D
UFF
: That's a tough question because that's the way I felt, but if nothing else comes of this, I think my son has caused us to open our minds a little bit, which on—I think was pretty closed on this issue. Red, white, and blue, that's me, that's what I've always been. . . . But basically, the way our son feels, basically, it's the same as we feel. But it's a whole new different way of looking at things and doing things. Sometimes I look at him and I think he has more moxie than I would ever have had at that age. I know at that age I was—always had dreams. I dreamed of great things, but I never really carried them through. But I think he has a dream, an idea, and I think he's doing something about it.

W
ALLACE
: And to the mothers and fathers of the kids who fought and some of them were wounded and some of them died, what do you say to them?

M
RS
. D
UFF
: Oh, I put myself in their place and it's—

 

At that moment, Wallace had signaled to the cameraman to stop filming. It was clear to everyone at the interview that Mrs. Duff was about to start crying. What was less apparent was that legendary tough-guy Mike Wallace—the father of two sons, one now deceased—was also on the verge of tears. It turned out there was only so much Wallace's black hat could hide.

Chapter 6

Is There a Question in There Somewhere?

Up until the fall of
1972
,
60 Minutes
used its investigative muscle to champion the point of view of the little guy—the man with the beer and the Barcalounger who lived in Hewitt's head. Exposés, profiles, and investigations were all geared toward protecting those without the clout of a network news division. There were no sacred cows. But ultimately, how could that square with Hewitt's need to be a player—to be inside the power structure? As the successful and prominent executive producer of a prime-time series entering its fifth season, Hewitt wrestled increasingly with this dilemma, trying to strike a balance between his personal desire for acceptance by those richer and more powerful and his professional commitment to tough journalism.

The Nixon administration quickly crystallized this conflict—for Hewitt and for Wallace, who continued to admire the man who'd only a few years earlier offered him a job in the White House. By late
1972
, when the rest of the news media had begun to cover the Watergate scandal as an ongoing story, their ambivalence was starting to show.

60 Minutes
had never directed its editorial efforts toward aggressive coverage of Nixon. Wallace had scored an early coup in getting Vice President-elect Spiro Agnew to sit for an interview in January
1969
, before his inauguration—and the result was a gentle chat. (Agnew memorably used the occasion to predict that after the first year of the Nixon presidency, he would prove so crucial to the workings of government that “it's going to be very difficult for the people who are attempting to cast me in the role of the Neanderthal man to continue to think that way.”) On May
26
,
1970
,
24
-year-old Tricia Nixon took Wallace and Reasoner on an embarrassingly sycophantic tour of the White House's private quarters. (When Wallace gently probed as to whether the cigars in a White House humidor might be Cuban, Tricia replied: “No, I don't think they're Cuban cigars because Fidel Castro hasn't been here on a state visit for a long time.”) On October
13
,
60 Minutes
delivered a less than devastating profile of Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser and the architect of his Southeast Asian bombing strategy.

On November
24
, Wallace finally managed to at least touch on a small bit of controversy, with an edgy profile of embattled Interior Secretary Walter Hickel, who had famously written a letter to the president urging him to become more responsive to student protesters. But then the episode of February
2
,
1971
, returned to the softball treatment with an inside account of the preparations for a White House state dinner. A year later, on February
13
,
1972
, viewers were treated to a tour of Air Force One. Clearly, if there was one American institution that didn't panic when
60 Minutes
called, it was the White House.

It wasn't until April
2
,
1972
, that even a hint of federal government scandal turned up on
60 Minutes
. Dita Beard, a lobbyist for International Telephone & Telegraph, had been linked to a memorandum that implied a connection between the company's contribution to the
1972
Republican Convention and the settlement of three antitrust cases with the company. Wallace had known Beard from his days as a political reporter, and almost a week after testifying to a Senate subcommittee from her Denver hospital bed, Beard consented to slip out to meet secretly with Wallace. A two-column headline on page
75
of the next day's
New York Times
—“Mrs. Beard Defies Her Doctors to Give an Interview to CBS”—revealed the growing stature of the show, at least as measured by its ability to generate headlines.

With the unfolding of the Watergate scandal, and the stories that swirled around Nixon during the fifth season of
60 Minutes
, the basic contradiction of Hewitt's character became more pronounced even as his show became more successful. The straddle became more painful and awkward: the rest of the media was going toe-to-toe with the establishment just as Hewitt was becoming so much a part of it.

 

The show worked best when it shined its spotlight on human-scale corruption—as Wallace demonstrated on February
4
,
1973
, with a chilling expose of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Herbert, a Vietnam War veteran and hero who had charged his commanding officers with covering up war crimes.

Herbert had claimed for years that he was removed from his command because of his efforts to call attention to the crimes. Those charges had gotten considerable play in the news media, where many reporters had found fame by reporting on wartime atrocities. However, dogged investigation by Wallace's producer Barry Lando discovered that Herbert's claims could not be verified, particularly some of those in
Soldier,
a book he'd written recounting his Vietnam experiences.

This led to one of the great theatrical stunts in the early years of
60 Minutes,
in which Wallace, in the middle of his interview with Herbert, announced that a fellow officer who'd served in Vietnam, Major Jim Grimshaw, was waiting in the next room ready to refute Herbert's account. Wallace, looking serious if not gloomy, brought no theatrics whatsoever to the interview, the substance of the moment offering plenty.

 

H
ERBERT
: Bring him in.

W
ALLACE
: Fine. . . .

H
ERBERT
: Good. And ask him the same questions.

W
ALLACE
: You can ask him whatever questions you want to. Here he is right now. (
Grimshaw enters.
)

H
ERBERT
: Hello, Jim.

G
RIMSHAW
: Hi. How are you doing?

H
ERBERT
: Very fine.

W
ALLACE
: Jim, have you heard what's been going on between the Colonel and me?

G
RIMSHAW
: Yes.

H
ERBERT
: Okay . . .

W
ALLACE
: Have you read the book? Have you read the book?

G
RIMSHAW
: Yes, I have read the book.

W
ALLACE
: Do you think it's accurate, by and large?

G
RIMSHAW
: Well, before the incidents—we have to talk about the incidents that I'm personally involved in.

W
ALLACE
: All right. Sure.

G
RIMSHAW
: So now we're talking about three incidents when you get right down to it.

W
ALLACE
: And you've told me—

G
RIMSHAW
: I'm telling you two-thirds, then, are not true.

 

It was a stunning television moment, the kind of journalism
60 Minutes
was best at—exposing cons pulled on the news media and, by extension, the American public. The story made more headlines after Herbert decided to sue
60 Minutes
for libel, in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Ultimately the court ruled in
1979
that Herbert, as a public figure, had the right to examine the internal motivations—the state of mind—of the journalists who had sought to ruin his reputation. The case became a landmark of libel law. In years to come, some believed it contributed to a pall cast over investigative journalists. In
1986
, a federal appeals court threw out Herbert's suit, saying he had no grounds for his libel claims against Lando, Wallace, and CBS.

 

The show's first Watergate-related piece showed up on May
20
,
1973
, shortly after print reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein collected their Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Watergate break-in and cover-up for the
Washington Post
. Called “Teapot Dome,” this “explainer” piece reviewed the scandal that had rocked the administration of President Warren Harding, in the early
1920
s—meaning it as a kind of precursor of current events.

At around the same time, Hewitt had fired the hugely entertaining Nicholas von Hoffman as a
60 Minutes
commentator. Von Hoffman, an unabashedly outspoken liberal, described Nixon one week as “a dead mouse on the kitchen floor that everyone was afraid to touch and throw in the garbage.” Whatever Hewitt's politics might have been, any visitor to his office knew how much he treasured the moments spent inside the greatest office of them all: the Oval Office. His walls were plastered with pictures of Hewitt standing alongside several American presidents, including Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy.

In the absence of fresh reporting by Safer and Wallace, the investigative strengths of
60 Minutes
were largely not in evidence during the Watergate period. Instead, the show found its Watergate voice during a June
1973
Wallace interview with John Ehrlichman, Nixon's former chief domestic adviser, shortly after Nixon fired him and chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, his hand forced by numerous disclosures concerning their role in the Watergate cover-up. Wallace had pursued both men for interviews. Ehrlichman was the first to agree, a decision he would come to regret.

Like most public villains who appear on
60 Minutes
, Ehrlichman believed he had a better shot at redemption if he “chatted” in America's living rooms than if his remarks were on the printed page. This turned out to be naive. It was in the Ehrlichman interview (which aired on June
29
,
1973
, in the midst of the Senate Watergate Committee hearings) that Hewitt and Wallace made most effective and memorable use of the tight close-up camera technique first used on Wallace's old
Night Beat.
Every bead of sweat on Ehrlichman's face was visible—this was enough to make even the most innocent of men appear nervous and guilty—and Wallace peppered him relentlessly with tough questions about the break-in and its aftermath.

 

W
ALLACE
: You sent some pretty sloppy guys to do that high security work.

E
HRLICHMAN
: Well—

W
ALLACE
: Agreed?

E
HRLICHMAN
: I certainly—can't disagree with that in terms of that—that break-in business. There's no way to—to condone that.

 

And later:

 

W
ALLACE
: Did you see Senator Weicker enumerate a list of the illegal or unconstitutional or unethical acts committed by various persons, either in the White House or employed by officials of the White House?

E
HRLICHMAN
: No, I didn't.

W
ALLACE
: Let me read them—a list of acts committed by people in the White House or employed by people in the White House or employed by people in the Cabinet, you know what I'm saying: Breaking and entering. Wiretapping. Conspiracy to foster prostitution. Conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Destruction of government documents. Forgery of State Department documents and campaign letters. Secret slush funds. Laundering money in Mexico. Payoffs to silence witnesses. Perjury. Plans to audit tax returns for political retaliation. Theft of psychiatric records. Spying by undercover agents. Bogus opinion polls. Plans to firebomb a building. Conspiracy to obstruct justice. And all of this by the law-and-order administration of Richard Nixon.

E
HRLICHMAN
: Is there a question in there somewhere?

 

Despite high-profile stories and better-than-average critical reception, the show continued to bottom out in the ratings. One day in the spring of
1973
, a recently hired
60 Minutes
producer named Harry Moses (brought in by Hewitt and Wallace on the basis of a freelance piece they'd seen) took advantage of the free-for-all atmosphere by pitching a story based on a single word: pimps. Moses, a wiry young man with an inventive mind and an acute TV sense, had no particular idea what he wanted to say about them, or where he would find them, or whether there was anything to report about them at all. Nevertheless, all he had to do was nail Hewitt in a hallway. “Hey, Don,” Moses said to Hewitt one morning on the way to the bathroom, “how about a story about pimps?”

“Kid, that sounds great, let's do it,” Hewitt replied. That was all it took for Moses to devote the next several weeks to the seamy world of prostitution. Operating without supervision or limits, Moses then had the latitude to craft the story any way he wanted. The result, which aired on Friday, August
31
,
1973
, was energetic and just a little wild, more like something from a counterculture
1960
s newspaper than a
1970
s network news show. In fact,
60 Minutes
had been influenced as much by contemporary print media as by anything else then on national television. While
Life
magazine was Hewitt's stated model, more often the show resembled the weekly city publications that became popular across the country in the late
1960
s. The show's fascination with rip-offs and restaurants, drugs and sex, echoed the alternative press, or even
New York Magazine,
at that moment a hot new weekly under the leadership of its own innovative editor, Clay Felker. Even Safer's writing bore the imprint of the new journalism (with a bit of the dandy Englishman thrown in) as it dove straight into its dicey subject.