Cronkite

by Douglas Brinkley

  417 “No, I never did that”: Author interview with Neil Armstrong, September 19, 2011.

  417 “short-haired, white athletes”: Charles J. Shields, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2011), p. 264.

  417 “This was the first—and last, for that matter—time”: Captain Walter M. Schirra Jr., with Richard N. Billings, Schirra’s Space (Boston: Quinlan Press, 1988), pp. 221–222.

  418 “Walter and his guests discussed the epochal events”: McAleer, Arthur C. Clarke, p. 227.

  418 he developed a condition “in which one’s eyeballs become uncoordinated”: Dick West, “Go West for News on the Moon,” Bryan (Ohio) Times, July 24, 1969.

  418 “were nothing short of remarkable”: Jack Gould, “The Whole World Sat Front-Row Center,” New York Times, July 27, 1969.

  419 Kuralt spoke about the spiritual aspects of Space travel: Wussler and Salant, 10:56:20 PM 7/20/69, pp. 53–54.

  419 “Eagle: Roger, understand”: Ibid., pp. 74–77.

  421 “time had stopped in Studio 41”: Arthur C. Clarke to Neil McAleer, April 20, 1990, McAleer Papers, Baltimore, MD.

  421 “Wow,” the great journalist said. “Oh, boy!”: Schirra Jr. with Billings, Schirra’s Space, pp. 222–23.

  421 “Cronkite: There he is. There’s a foot coming down the steps”: CBS-TV News Special Report (transcript), “Apollo XI,” July 20, 1969, CBS News Archive, New York.

  422 “The step on the Moon was an awesome achievement”: Wussler and Salant, Foreword, 10:56:20 PM 7/20/69.

  422 were “like colts” finding their footing: Wagener, One Giant Leap, p. 522.

  423 “Hot diggety dog!”: Wussler and Salant, Foreword, 10:56:20 PM 7/20/69.

  423 their attitude was oddly blasé: Jack Gould, “TV: Lunar Scenes Top Admirable Apollo Coverage,” New York Times, July 22, 1969.

  423 “Man has finally visited the Moon after all the ages of waiting”: Cronkite broadcast transcript, July 24, 1969, CBS News Archives, New York.

  423 He hoped someday to touch the lunar rocks: Wagener, One Giant Leap, p. 545.

  423 he never noticed the “fatigue factor”: Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, April 28, 1998.

  423 “seemingly effortless performance”: New York Times, July 21, 1969.

  423 Apollo 11 would lead to the militarization of space: Bliss, Now the News, p. 368.

  423 “History has never proceeded by a rational plan”: Eric Sevareid, CBS TV, July 15, 1969 (transcript), CBS News Archives, New York.

  424 An astonishing 94 percent of all American homes: John E. O’Connor, ed., American History, American Television: Interpreting the Video Past (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1983), p. 380.

  424 “It was a wonderful story of achievement”: Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, April 28, 1998.

  424 “I have always wished that I could have shared”: Buzz Aldrin, Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon (New York: Harmony Books, 2009), p. 54.

  424 CBS drew 45 percent of the audience: Ferretti, “Cronkite on Endurance.”

  425 “He’s more popular than the astronauts”: Bernard Weinraub, “Tense Contractors Await Splashdown,” New York Times, July 19, 1969.

  425 Cronkite shunned Face the Nation: CBS News Archive, New York.

  425 Armstrong had written, “Deist”: Hansen, First Man, p. 33.

  425 “That’s agency nomenclature”: Face the Nation, as broadcast over the CBS Television Network and the CBS Radio Network, Sunday, August 17, 1969, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m., p. 24.

  426 “Walter told me that the biggest on-air mistake he’d ever made”: Author interview with Ed Bradley, December 21, 2004.

  426 But Armstrong didn’t hold it against Cronkite: Wagener, One Giant Leap, p. 268.

  426 there just wasn’t a “one giant leap for mankind” moment: History of Manned Space Flight, NASA publication #75-24641 (Washington, DC.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1975), p. 29.

  426 astronauts’ wives watched CBS’s coverage because of the “fatherly”: Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), pp. 272–77.

  426 “He had little vials”: McAleer, Arthur C. Clarke, p. 231.

  Twenty-Five: Avatar of Earth Day

  427 he kept a framed photo over his desk: Francis French and Colin Burgess, In the Shadow of the Moon (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), pp. 310–13.

  428 The Apollo program had been designed to visit the Moon: Ibid.

  428 NASA employees developed “a new environmental appreciation”: Author interview with George Abbey, June 6, 2011.

  429 ended up canceling Apollos 18, 19, and 20: David R. Williams, “Apollo 18 through 20—The Cancelled Missions,” NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, December 11, 2003, nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_18_20.html (accessed December 2, 2011).

  429 “Of all humankind’s achievements in the twentieth century”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 27.

  429 “The North American continent seemed ringed by oil slicks”: Walter Cronkite, Eye on the World (New York: Cowles, 1971), p. 10.

  430 “When Walter said ‘God damn it,’ things happened”: Matusow, The Evening Stars, p. 116.

  430 “We wanted to grapple first with air pollution”: Author interview with Ron Bonn, June 1, 2011.

  430 Cronkite and Union Carbide as sponsor: Author interview with Jon Wilkman, January 8, 2012.

  430 “Earth, you understand, wasn’t in the palm”: Ibid.

  431 The Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 had become a rallying point: Los Angeles Times, January 28, 1989, p. 123.

  431 the “environmental crisis” was “eclipsing student discontent”: Gladwin Hill, “Environment May Eclipse Vietnam as College Issue,” New York Times, November 30, 1969.

  431 The time had come, Cronkite intuited: William O. Douglas, “The Public Be Damned,” Playboy, September 1969, p. 209.

  432 “Once Cronkite got on the environment”: Author interview with William Ruckelshaus, August 2, 2011.

  432 “Walter was almost a nutcase about the environment”: Author interview with Sandy Socolow, May 28, 2011.

  432 “Uhmm, could we call that thing something else?”: Schieffer, This Just In, pp. 270–71.

  433 “This planet is threatened with destruction”: Oliver S. Owen, Natural Resource Conservation: An Ecological Approach (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 859.

  433 “Science can reveal the depth of the crisis”: Barry Commoner, Science and Survival (New York: Ballantine Books, 1970), p. 157.

  433 “devoting extensive time and energy”: Gaylord Nelson to Frank Stanton, April 7, 1971, Nelson Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

  434 To hear Cronkite bemoan the “littered Earth”: Walter Cronkite, “Earth Day: A Question of Survival,” CBS News, April 22, 1970.

  434 “I noticed that the mail increased”: Matusow, The Evening Stars, p. 173.

  434 “The affiliates went crazy on Walter”: Author interview with Sandy Socolow, June 5, 2011.

  434 When the anchorman started talking about bloodshed at Kent State: Sean Kirst, “Kent State: ‘One or Two Cracks of Rifle Fire . . . Oh My God,’ ” Syracuse Post-Standard, May 5, 2010.

  435 Michener, with Cronkite spurring him on: James Michener, Kent State: What Happened and Why (New York: Random House, 1971).

  435 “We must not reject those among us who dissent”: “Dissenters Should Listen, Be Listened to—Cronkite,” Columbia Daily Tribune, June 3, 1970, p. 1; special thanks to Ron Kucera for bringing this to my attention.

  436 “The 1960s, when we first launched humans into space”: Walter Cronkite, The Infinite Journey: Eyewitness Accounts of NASA and the Age of Space (New York: Discovery Books, 2000), p. 1.

  436 “how deeply interested Walter was in the environment”: Author interview with William Ruckelshaus, August 7, 2011.

  437 “That is not doomsday rhetoric”: Cronk
ite, Eye on the World, p. 1.

  437 The Greening of America advocated “choosing a new life-style”: Charles Reich, The Greening of America (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 350.

  437 “Every year American power plants pour”: Cronkite, Eye on the World, p. 3.

  438 in 1980 he would get to collaborate with Peterson: Roger Tory Peterson et al., Save the Birds (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989).

  438 the airing of occasional “Can the World Be Saved?” segments lasted until 1980: Author interview with Ron Bonn, June 1, 2011.

  438 more than one thousand environmentally minded citizens stood up: Ruth A. Eblen to Walter Cronkite, November 2, 1989, File: One Earth Award, Box: 2M609, WCP-UTA.

  439 “It’s about your own relationship with Mother Nature”: “Cronkite Talks of Regrets and Doing ‘The Job,’ ” Lancaster (PA) New Era, April 12, 2000.

  439 “this little lifeboat floating out there in space”: Ed Bark, “The Eyes of History: Cronkite Shares Thoughts on Life in TV Journalism,” Dallas Morning News, December 6, 2000.

  Twenty-Six: The Nixon-versus-CBS War

  441 “ ‘This will tear the scab off those bastards!’ ”: Author interview with Patrick Buchanan, June 20, 2011.

  441 “that the networks were made more responsive to the views”: Spiro Agnew speech, “On the National Media,” November 13, 1969, Des Moines, IA.

  441 President Nixon wasn’t the first president to feel persecuted: John Tebbel and Sarah Miles Watts, The Press and the Presidency: From George Washington to Ronald Reagan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 500–513.

  441 “This administration’s antagonism had been”: Powers, “Walter Cronkite: A Candid Conversation.”

  442 “their whole objective in life is to bring us down”: Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (New York: W. W Norton, 1990), p. 175. “great vigor”: Richard Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 74.

  442 “dripped with vitriol”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, pp. 221–22.

  442 “To people in broadcasting, the picture of”: Bliss, Now the News, p. 409.

  443 “Perhaps we didn’t react enough”: Cynthia Lowry, “Agnew Assailed by TV Analysts,” AP, November 6, 1969.

  443 “gravest implications”: “CBS Head Warns of Press Threat,” Bridgeport Post, November 26, 1969.

  443 “implied threat”: “Cronkite Says TV Won’t ‘Pull in Horns,’ ” AP, November 22, 1969; Christopher Lydon, “Burch Supports Agnew; Shift in F.C.C. Role Seen,” New York Times, November 15, 1969.

  443 “dangerous to democracy in America”: Walter Cronkite, “Speech,” International Radio and Television Society, May 18, 1971 (transcript), CBS News Reference Archive, New York.

  443 “They said I had no proof that the campaign”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, pp. 223–24.

  443 “A nothing!”: Reeves, President Nixon, p. 137.

  444 Whether the informant was telling the truth: John Cook, “FBI Files Discuss Cronkite Aiding Vietnam Protesters,” Yahoo! News, May 14, 2010, old.news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ 20100514/ts_ynews/ ynews_ ts2067 (accessed January 1, 2011).

  444 The FBI had also monitored Cronkite’s work: Ibid.

  445 “Nixon truly saw the press as the enemy”: Author interview with Patrick Buchanan, June 20, 2011.

  445 a White House travesty called “The Enemies List”: Kenneth Franklin Kurz, Nixon’s Enemies (Los Angeles: Lowell House, 1989).

  445 “Nixon thought I was his number-one enemy”: Brinkley, A Memoir, p. 192.

  445 “Was this so-called ‘anti-media campaign’ ”: William Safire, Before the Fall (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), p. 341.

  446 CBS reported in December 1969 that it had never received so much: “Public Split on Television News Coverage,” New York Times, AP, December 17, 1969; Daniel Schorr, Clearing the Air, p. 40.

  446 “there would be revolution in the streets”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 278.

  447 “I never got called on it”: Ibid.

  447 Lines like “people feel that”: Ibid.

  448 “The Cronkite-Schorr charge against my brother was false”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 222.

  448 “Concentrate on NBC”: H. R. Haldeman to Jeb Magruder, White House Memorandum, Internet Archive, February 4, 1970, http://www.archive.org/ stream/presidentialcamp10unit/presidentialcamp10unit_djvu.txt.

  448 “news coverage now seems to reflect an eagerness to please”: Untitled editorial, New Yorker, February 28, 1970.

  448 “I feel that perhaps subconsciously”: Nathan Miller, “Intimidation Succeeds: Anti-Nixon TV Curbed,” Editorial Research Reports, March 31, 1970.

  449 “We broadcast the original story”: “Film of Atrocity in Dispute Re-Run,” New York Times, May 22, 1970.

  449 Fulbright described incidents staged by the Department of Defense: Lee Byrd, “Sen. Fulbright Demands End to War Films by Pentagon,” AP, May 23, 1970.

  449 “an aggressive Communist tide has spread”: “The $$$ Selling of the Pentagon,” Capital Times (Madison, WI), March 15, 1971.

  450 “get that piece out of there”: Mudd, The Place to Be, p. 263.

  450 “it would have been a part of the ammunition hurled”: Leonard, In the Storm of the Eye, p. 164.

  450 “The Selling of the Pentagon” was the price he paid: Garth S. Jowett, “The Selling of the Pentagon: Television Confronts the First Amendment,” in John O. Connor, ed., American History/American Television: Interpreting the Video Past (New York: Ungar, 1983).

  451 “one of the anchormen most careful”: Jack Gould, “TV as a Free Medium,” New York Times, March 25, 1971.

  451 “There are a couple of hundred correspondents in Vietnam”: Walter Cronkite before the Economic Club of Detroit, March 2, 1970.

  452 “the definitive observation on Dick Nixon”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 221.

  452 They sometimes arranged for all three: Author interview with Chip Cronkite, April 4, 2011.

  453 “Dad explained to me all about how television works”: Kathy Cronkite, On the Edge of the Spotlight, p. 58.

  453 They were like a gigantic National Geographic field trip: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 325.

  453 “Dad loved to snorkel and swim”: Author interview with Chip Cronkite, April 4, 2011.

  454 “Walter had broken a ‘no, no, no’ rule”: Author interview with William Small, May 17, 2011.

  454 “Walter Cronkite was one of the first people to come forward”: Dawn Withers, “For the Love of News,” NewsWatch.com, February 13, 2002.

  454 “In doing my work, I (and those who assist me) depend”: Steven V. Roberts, “News Techniques Stressed in Trial,” New York Times, April 5, 1970.

  455 “that President Nixon can escape responsibility for this campaign”: Roy Reed, “Agnew Finds Nixon Foes Unremitting,” New York Times, May 19, 1971.

  456 “because of those years of indoctrination”: Pat Buchanan, Right from the Beginning (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), p. 40.

  Twenty-Seven: Reportable Truth in the Age of Nixon

  458 “Seventy-five percent of those group hate my guts”: Herbert S. Parmet, Richard Nixon and His America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), p. 585.

  458 Just how appreciative other journalists were that Cronkite stood up: “A Times Reporter Wins a Polk Award,” New York Times, February 17, 1971.

  458 The Polk Award coincided with Paley’s announcement: “Cronkite to Do Saturday TV Show for Children,” New York Times, March 22, 1971.

  458 “I decided I would stop concealing that myself”: Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Penguin, 2002), p. 291.

  459 “I don’t want to hear it. Victory is not near”: Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, p. 637.

  459 “A line kept repeating itself in my head”: Ellsberg, Secrets, p. 272.

  459 Colson started spreading rumors that Ellsberg was a sexual perve
rt: Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 385. See also Parmet, Richard Nixon and His America, p. 591.

  459 “Colson is a liar”: Author interview with Daniel Ellsberg, January 23, 2012.

  460 CBS Evening News covered the story heavily: “Injunction on Times Studied,” AP, June 17, 1971.

  460 Another reason NBC said no was that its news division was in flux: Jack Gould, “N.B.C. News Ending Anchor-Teams Era,” New York Times, July 19, 1971.

  460 “We wanted to interview Daniel Ellsberg”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 248.

  460 Frank Stanton was facing serious legal consequences: James Reston, “The Unfairness Doctrine,” New York Times, April 14, 1971.

  461 Stanton, in a heroic First Amendment stand, refused: Author interview with William Small, May 18, 2011.

  461 Manning arranged an exclusive interview: David Rudenstine, The Day the Presses Stopped: A History of the Pentagon Papers Case (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 252.

  461 Cronkite remembered the advance work differently: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 334.

  462 “I was proud of Cronkite for his Vietnam stalemate report”: Author interview with Daniel Ellsberg, January 23, 2012.

  462 “homosexual pickup”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 248.

  462 “There were many amateurish aspects to the plot”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 335.

  463 “present at some length to a prime-time national television audience”: Ellsberg, Secrets, p. 400.

  463 “We are seeing 1964 all over again”: Walter Cronkite interview with Daniel Ellsberg (transcript), CBS Reference Library, New York.

  463 A better question was how could Cronkite find Ellsberg: Reeves, President Nixon, p. 336.

  464 “It is the anti-Nixon CBS-Establishmentarian”: National Review, July 23, 1969.

  464 “Never have I seen men so dedicated”: L. F. Williams, letter, Kingsport (TN) Times, April 16, 1971.

  464 The News Twisters begins by excoriating: Edith Efron, The News Twisters (Los Angeles: Nash Publishers, 1971), pp. 1–2, 173.

  464 the book concluded that 31 percent of the material: Efron, The News Twisters, p. 102.