Glimpses of Star Reporters In A Golden Age of Investigative Journalism

In 1984, just before joining USC’s School of Journalism, forerunner of the Annenberg School, I tried to burnish my credits as “Otis Chandler Distinguished Lecturer” by interviewing some of the most prominent media muckrakers of the time.

The august title I held scarcely befit such an unworthy titleholder. Even so, the School published condensed versions of my favorite interviews. They appeared in the March 1984 edition of “The Journalist,” a USC-backed magazine designed to help students and the public better understand how the Fourth Estate does its job. My handiwork is accessible through the link at the bottom of this article.

The reportorial stars who consented to let me question them were among the Who’s Who of crusading journalism during an era spanning the end of the Vietnam war and early Reagan years. It was a period of intense social turbulence, journalistic innovation, and vigorous debate over government standards for broadcast journalism, like the Fairness Doctrine.

Here’s the list of featured interviewees:

Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice; Seymour Hersh of The New York Times (and other outlets); Mike Wallace of CBS’s “60 Minutes;” Don Hewitt, executive producer of “60 Minutes;” David Wise, best-selling author of spy-related blockbusters; Karen Burnes, producer/correspondent for ABC News and CBS News; and George Watson, Vice President and Ombudsman, ABC News.

In questioning these folks, I did not attempt to “deep dive” their careers or elicit juicy war stories. Instead my focus was on issues that plagued reporters and producers at the time, and which should have been hardwired into the amygdala of any journalism student.

I did not pretend to any real objectivity since I knew or had worked closely with each of the subjects.

During my college years at Columbia in the early 1960s, I had toiled part-time as a clerk, researcher and coffee boy for Wallace and Hewitt as they were clawing their way up the CBS ladder (and coincidentally for Walter Cronkite under whose desk I sat, feeding copy to him during marathon space-shot coverage).

Wallace and Hewitt later gave me top billing on “60 Minutes” when my CIA whistleblower’s book, Decent Interval, burst into the headlines in late 1977.

After the Supreme Court savaged me for publishing that tome without CIA approval, Wallace loaned me $500 to keep me from starving. I eventually repaid him and many years later assisted him in the Westmoreland lawsuit (triggered by a “60 Minutes” story about dubious U.S. estimates of enemy troop strength in Vietnam) and the Jeffrey Wigand litigation (involving an attempt by a tobacco company to prevent a whistleblower’s interview from being aired).

The inimitable Sy Hersh had vied with “60 Minutes” for a scoop about Decent Interval back in 1977, and had produced a story that appeared front-page, above-the-fold, in The New York Times. It was the most extensive coverage the newspaper had given any national security story since the Pentagon Papers saga. Afterwards Hersh had doggedly defended me with the best-reported follow-up stories any embattled litigant could have hoped for.

Hentoff was a staunch defender of mine during the Decent Interval litigation and covered its every twist and turn right up to the seminal Supreme court ruling against me in U.S. Snepp (upholding the enforceability of non-disclosure agreements, a precedent that burns hot today). David Wise followed my legal travails with the passion of an espionage aficionado and lent me desperately needed moral support.

I later reunited with Hentoff when Jon Larsen, former Saigon bureau chief for Time magazine, hired me to do investigative stories for The Village Voice, where Larsen had become editor-in-chief.

Both Larsen and Hentoff remained solidly behind me after I published a hugely controversial investigative series about a weird conspiracy theory known as “The October Surprise Scandal.” To their surprise and my own — and to the dismay of liberal readers of the Voice — my investigation found little solid evidence that candidate Reagan had sabotaged Jimmy Carter’s re-election chances in 1980 by secretly colluding with Iran to delay a hostage release. My biggest revelation was that the source for many of the allegations against Reagan was a provable con man.

Hentoff, a firebrand “lefty,” tossed his biases aside and applauded me for putting facts first, thus delivering an important lesson about the importance of keeping “advocacy journalism” honest.

In the early 1980s, before joining USC, I worked hand-in-glove with Karen Burnes and George Watson at ABC News. I later reunited with them as a member of the ABC News Investigative team that broke open the Iran-Contra scandal. My last outing at ABC News, which Burnes brokered, had me working at 20/20 Downtown as producer for an up-and-coming star named Chris Cuomo.

I have not been able to find any digitized archive of “The Journalist,” which no longer exists, so I digitized my only extant hard copy of the edition devoted to my interviews. I also sent a copy to my old USC friend, Professor Joe Saltzman, who was on “The Journalist’s” publication committee, and who later testified on my behalf in an ageism lawsuit I brought against my last broadcast employer, NBC.

To access the March 1974 edition of “The Journalist,” copy and paste the following link into your browser. And click.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k072TOeQL1xZ1kg-p4xmFfqTvjv38d3h/view?usp=sharing