by David Blum
“Come on,” Hewitt told his reporter. “It’s New Year’s. Go home. Enjoy the holidays.”
But Rather pressed repeatedly to go, despite the huge expense and great difficulty involved. In January he dispatched his producer Andrew Lack to Pakistan to find intermediaries who might take them across the border. In late February, shortly after signing his contract to take over the Evening News, he traveled to Pakistan to meet up with Lack and begin their journey into the heart of war. Because of the story’s exorbitant cost—estimated at twice the $45,000 budgeted for a typical 60 Minutes story—they decided not to let CBS management in on their plans. Rather, Lack, and a camera crew entered Afghanistan the only way possible—under cover, on foot, and dressed in native garb. Almost immediately the story they hoped they’d find revealed itself: the Soviets were indeed using napalm and gas to kill innocent civilians in a brutal war effort. The story, gruesome and dramatic, was everything Rather could wish for.
But by any standard of reporting, it was a difficult one to get. At times, the crew had no option but to sleep together in a single room or on the roadside, often for just a few hours. They’d walk, then rest for 10 minutes of every hour; after six hours of walking they would stop to sleep for four hours. At all times, one of them remained awake to keep watch. Every so often, Lack and Rather would take a sip from a flask of Kentucky whiskey Rather had brought along. They walked through rice paddies and past old opium poppy fields in a perilous search for witnesses to the atrocities alleged against the Soviets. They crossed the Kabul River by holding onto flotation devices fashioned from the inflated bellies of dead cows and water buffalo. Some of the crew contracted dysentery; gradually their food supplies dwindled to nothing.
Toward the end of the trip, as Rather and his producer realized they would need some additional shots for cutaways, Rather suggested he outfit himself with a turban. One of their guides put a turban on Dan’s head to ready him for a shot, until Lack got a good look at him and vetoed the idea—“afraid I would make an ass of myself,” Rather later recalled.
Lack—a talented producer who had been rescued from an advertising job in 1976 to work on Who’s Who—took the raw footage from the trip and turned the experience into a compelling story, with Rather and the CBS cameras as the eyes and ears of the Western world. But running throughout the piece was an awareness that perhaps this method of reporting would prove suspect to a cynical American audience—hence this somewhat defensive introduction read by Mike Wallace and written by Hewitt himself. From the beginning of the show in 1968 through his retirement in June 2004, Hewitt claims to have written every opening “tease” for 60 Minutes—the brief introductions that lead into the show itself and highlight its most dramatic elements.
WALLACE: If you want to know what’s going on in Afghanistan, there’s only one way: you go in yourself. And there’s only one way for an American to do that: make contact with a rebel group just over the border in Pakistan, disguise yourself as a native, and let the rebels smuggle you into their country. That’s exactly what Dan Rather did to cover the war Afghan rebels like these are waging in their country against the Soviet invaders.
The number of refugees from that war is staggering. Rather says the roads leading out of the country are choked with them. But then you leave the roads and start up into the mountains. Somewhere up in these hills, there’s a ridge looking down on a Soviet emplacement. It’ll be dark by the time you get there, and you’ll be out of breath from the climb. But up on that ridge, Dan Rather found the war he came to cover.
Through an interpreter, Rather interviewed a white-bearded guerrilla fighter known as Yassini—who lived, as Rather said, “on the run, moving from mountain hideouts through tiny villages of straw and mud huts to the opium fields that often provide him and his men cover from the Russian aircraft that circle continuously.” Yassini stood in for all the witnesses Rather and Lack had met and interviewed.
RATHER (to the interpreter): Has he seen any napalm?
NABY (interpreter for Yassini): Yes. You mean the one that throws down fire on us?
RATHER: Yes.
NABY: Yes. They also use gas, yes . . .
RATHER (to a doctor with Yassini): He’s absolutely sure it was some sort of gas?
NABY: He says what I can be sure of is that there was a smell, and then when—when that happened, we were all unconscious for about half an hour.
The piece contained many such stirring interviews, and dramatic news—news perhaps even to the American government, which was ill-informed about the events inside Afghanistan. But the extent to which Rather himself dominated the images of “Inside Afghanistan” was unprecedented, even for a program designed to showcase the further adventures of Mike, Morley, Harry, and Dan. The reaction was nothing like he’d hoped it would be.
Tom Shales, the Washington Post TV critic, eviscerated the piece and Rather in his day-after review, with the memorable moniker “Gunga Dan” contained in the review’s headline and the following lead:
Your assignment, Dan, should you agree to accept it, is to penetrate the Afghanistan border, gain the confidence of resistance fighters there, let your beard grow a few days, wear a funny hat, and file a story for 60 Minutes that will have Roone Arledge absolutely chartreuse with envy. . . .
We may never know precisely how dauntless Don Hewitt, producer of 60 Minutes, and daring Dan Rather, crown prince of network news, plotted the slightly sensational Afghanistan war repost seen on CBS last night. But the result was in the best and worst ways typical of the program and its enterprise: punchy, crunchy, highly dramatic, and essentially uninformative.
Except that, yes, we knew something about the war against the invading Soviet troops before 60 Minutes, but, and this is important, did we know how the war was affecting Dan Rather?
The Post critic went on to describe Rather’s outfit as something out of Dr. Zhivago. “Vanessa Redgrave wearing the same outfit would have been welcomed at any chic party in Europe,” Shales wrote. “Somehow one got the feeling that this was not so much Dan Rather as Stuart Whitman playing Dan Rather. Or Dan Rather playing Stuart Whitman playing Dan Rather. Perhaps it’s all part of the New Reality.” Shales concluded by wondering “whether Murrow is smiling down approvingly or spinning in his grave.”
Murrow might also have been a bit skeptical in the summer of 1980, when for the first time Hewitt and CBS dared to rerun old segments of 60 Minutes instead of producing new ones. The notion of news as something with rerun value was yet another pioneering Hewitt idea and, as usual, one that sparked controversy. CBS justified it as a practical development, giving the producers and correspondents a chance to take time off. “They’re like good racehorses,” Hewitt explained, giving his tiger metaphor a brief break. “They just have to be rested.”
As was often the case, Hewitt’s old nemesis Fred Friendly surfaced in high dudgeon over the idea. “These are important, complicated times,” Friendly told Tony Schwartz in the New York Times. “How can the highest-rated and best news show on television put on a rerun of an interview with Johnny Carson, or a story about panhandling, when there is so much going on in the world?” When Schwartz pointed out to Friendly that his own CBS Reports had run repeats during the early 1960s, Friendly replied, “I don’t hold myself up as a model of virtue,” adding that “I would hope we’ve made some progress in twenty years.” One area in which there had apparently been no progress during that same 20 years was in the relationship between Friendly and Hewitt.
It was a van, ordinary in all respects and unlikely to be noticed by anyone, unless you were looking at it carefully enough to have your curiosity piqued by the drapes over the back windows, and colored gel over the sides. On the roof of the van was a sign that said Emergency Service, and it was hoped (by 60 Minutes cameraman Wade Bingham and producer Marion Goldin) that would be enough to keep the police from disturbing the journalists inside, who were there on a mission: to photograph a Los Angeles physician as he walked from a parking lot to the clin
ic where he worked. The physician in question was being investigated for Medicaid fraud—which, in light of the success of the 1976 “Clinic on Morse Avenue” piece, made him perfect fodder for a team working for Mike Wallace. It was Bingham’s job to shoot film without the doctor realizing it, as part of an October 1979 exposé undertaken in a manner 60 Minutes had practically invented—the hidden-camera investigation.
With the ascent of Wallace wannabe Geraldo Rivera on ABC’s 20/20, the hidden camera and “Mike jumping out of closets” (as Morley Safer referred to the technique) wasn’t quite as fresh as it had been three years earlier. But Bingham, who had become something of an expert in such matters, continued to strive for fresh angles and techniques, hiding cameras in all manner of containers. He’d used large women’s pocketbooks, schoolbags, and suitcases, all of which had to be soundproofed to obscure the noise a film camera made when it was turned on. Plus Bingham would typically have to cut a hole in the side of the bag, big enough for the lens to poke through. Despite his experience, it was still a shady new world for Bingham, who’d come to 60 Minutes after a distinguished career shooting stories all over the world for CBS, from Pakistan to Hawaii to Tokyo. He’d been brought back to New York by no less a figure than Edward R. Murrow and later shot film for Hewitt on documentaries that included that famous hour with Frank Sinatra in 1965.
The “gotcha!” technique had been refined by Wallace, his producers, and cameramen since the Medicaid kickback piece. In May 1977, an investigation into child pornography had taken producer Barry Lando and cameraman Larry Travis undercover into a Los Angeles pornography store, acting like customers in search of kiddie porn. Examining movies being sold under the counter, Travis (his camera buried inside a shoulder bag) filmed this exchange:
CLERK: This is Lulu. Beautiful.
LANDO: How old is she?
CLERK: Thirteen.
LANDO: Thirteen?
CLERK: Uh-huh.
It was juicy stuff, even though Travis had been forced to go outside every so often and reload his small hand-held camera, which couldn’t hold more than 30 seconds of film.
By 1979 the technology had advanced to the point where Bingham could shoot extensively to get the shot he wanted. And by the time “Edward Rubin, M.D.” aired on October 21, 1979, how-we-got-that-picture had become the story; Wallace seemed almost as interested in telling the viewers about the subterfuge as he was in explaining the allegations against the doctor: complicated charges, including the possibility that he’d received cash payments from patients as well as reimbursements from MediCal (the California version of Medicaid) and that he was getting back part of the fees for x-rays and other tests he’d ordered. Wallace did a series of interviews with Rubin’s detractors, then set up shop in front of Rubin’s clinic, with this narration over the footage shot by Bingham.
WALLACE: This is Dr. Edward Rubin. He ignored our letters and telephone calls requesting an interview. Nonetheless, we did manage to photograph the silent Dr. Rubin coming to work.
Cut to a shot of Wallace approaching the doctor with a microphone in his hand:
WALLACE: Dr. Rubin, I wonder if I could talk to you for just a moment, sir. Dr. Rubin?
Rubin ignored Wallace. Thus what in a newspaper story would have been a simple sentence—“Dr. Rubin declined to comment”—had become the most compelling visual aspect of the story. Rubin’s encounter with the dogged Wallace would be what viewers remembered and talked about the next day—as opposed to, say, the heinous crime of Medicaid fraud.
But for all of Wallace’s success, some careful observers were worried that his work might be slipping. The swelling ranks of Wallace imitators was contributing to a sense that his style of journalism, once fresh and original, was in danger of becoming predictable. Hewitt was among those determined to ensure that Wallace remained in a class by himself—understanding better than anyone the correspondent’s unique role in the success of 60 Minutes.
Which is what led Hewitt to find himself one day in the spring of 1980 in conversation with Ira Rosen’s mother.
Rosen was then a 26-year-old producer for Channel 9, a local New York television station, where he had his own weekly newsmagazine show modeled after 60 Minutes. He’d been a journalist from his late teens in Pontiac, Michigan, where he covered the Mafia and sports for the local paper, but he’d taken a liking to television, particularly the style of journalism in vogue at CBS with correspondents like Wallace. He’d even done his own modified versions of the pieces he admired, including a story about secret films at the Pentagon with its own “gotcha!” elements.
One day that spring, a 60 Minutes projectionist ran into Hewitt in the company cafeteria. “I saw this piece last night on Channel 9,” he said. “It was just the kind of piece Mike Wallace used to do.” Incensed that anyone believed Wallace had stopped doing great stories, Hewitt tore back to his office to find out exactly who’d done this reportedly brilliant segment. He got a copy of the tape, then tracked down Rosen’s home number—and reached Rosen’s mother.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hewitt,” Rosen’s mother told him, “but Ira already has a job,” and hung up on him. That sealed it for Hewitt—he would make it his mission to wrestle Rosen free from the clutches of Channel 9. In a span of weeks Rosen went from local television to 60 Minutes, where he produced for Mike Wallace. In 1989, after nine years at the show, Rosen left to become a senior producer for ABC’s Prime Time Live, where he introduced hidden-camera and other 60 Minutes investigative techniques to the show, cohosted by 60 Minutes alumna Diane Sawyer. Then, in the spring of 2004—in the wake of a Prime Time shakeup—Rosen returned to 60 Minutes as a producer for Steve Kroft.
But despite Hewitt’s passion for the ambush interview, confrontational journalism, and “gotcha!” stories that gave the show its juice, there remained within him some uncertainty over their continued use. Perhaps for that reason, the show began its 1981 season with an unusual hour devoted exclusively to an examination of itself. Jeff Greenfield, a CBS News media critic, was brought in to moderate a panel that included Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe and Herbert Schmertz, vice president of Mobil Oil, who’d often been outspoken in his criticism of the news business. The general conclusion of the panel was that the techniques used by 60 Minutes posed serious fairness questions. Discussing the Wallace-Lando “Fake ID” story from 1975, Goodman observed: “You’re saying in pursuit of deceit, deceit is okay. What happens if this becomes pervasive?”
Hewitt found himself in full self-criticism mode—a radical departure from his typical attack posture. He conceded that the ambush approach was “a technique that has been abused” and promised that it would be used less often in the future. “It’s like trying to get a man to testify against himself,” Hewitt reluctantly admitted, caught in his own “gotcha!” moment.
In June 1981, in preparation for the upcoming season, the support staff of 60 Minutes was handed a Herculean logistical challenge: to get the entire cast of 60 Minutes in New York at the same time to pose for a picture. As the number one show on television, 60 Minutes needed a fresh group portrait to send out each season; chances were, newspapers and magazines would print it on the covers of their Sunday television guides, and it would be used frequently in advertising and corporate promotion. It was a corporate imperative and a matter of maintaining stardom—which is why everyone had taken time from their frantic travel schedules to gather in a New York photographer’s studio to pose yet again.
The regularity of the photo shoot also had something to do with the dizzying (at least by 60 Minutes standards) changes in the cast in recent years. First Mike and Harry, then Mike and Morley, then Mike and Morley and Dan, then Harry again . . . it was getting a little hard for viewers to recall who exactly was on 60 Minutes from season to season. A new snapshot always helped.
This year, the picture would include, for the first time, its newest correspondent, Ed Bradley, hired to replace Dan Rather. Bradley, about to turn 40, stood slightly in awe of the men he was about t
o pose with—Mike Wallace, 63; Morley Safer, 49; and Reasoner, 58, were among the most prized on-air talents at CBS News. It was a heady experience to stand in such distinguished company; these guys, after all, had helped lead 60 Minutes from the depths of ratings hell to the top of the mountain. They’d also become, in the process, the biggest stars of the news business. Even for a supremely confident man like Bradley, there was something electric, something truly memorable about a moment like this in a career.
The photographer took one last look at the three reporters and said, “Smile!” At that precise moment, Wallace leaned down into hissing distance of Bradley’s ear.
“You know, if this show goes into the dumper,” Wallace whispered to his new colleague, “they’re going to blame it on you.”
Bradley was able to hide his shock as he and Wallace smiled together for the camera. The picture came out perfectly, preserving for Bradley a quintessential moment that would serve as a portent of the dangers ahead at 60 Minutes. Moreover, it was a permanent reminder to Bradley to watch his back at all times.
Almost immediately, Bradley had to contend with Wallace’s hypercompetitive instincts, which first flared in a pitched battle over the services of a valued producer, Steve Glauber, who had joined Wallace’s unit to replace the departing Marion Goldin.
When Bradley learned that Glauber had been poached from his staff, he immediately stomped into Hewitt’s office and demanded a reason. It was never Bradley’s style to be cowed by management. “Hey, I don’t have a voice in this?” he asked. “It happens like that?”
“It’s for the good of the show,” Hewitt explained.