Audition (63 page)

The future of the Panama Canal was the top story of the time. Everyone wanted to hear from Torrijos. Roone Arledge had dispatched me to try to get him to do an exclusive interview. It was an important assignment, but I was conflicted about being away from New York at what was a pivotal time for me and for ABC News.

Roone was about to alter the face of the news radically. It was obvious that Harry and I were not going to make it as dual anchors. Something had to be done to relieve us of our mutual discomfort, which was getting closer to agony. So Roone’s very creative solution was to abandon the idea of two anchors or even one sitting behind a desk. Instead, he said, the position of a sole anchor was dead. (It was not, but his proposal then seemed to placate the naysayers.) He was going to have not one, not two, but
three
anchors to bring the news from their separate locations. He would have as the primary anchor in Washington the very experienced and professional Frank Reynolds and in Chicago he would have Max Robinson, the first African American network news anchor. The new boy in town, Peter Jennings, would be based in London. The name of the broadcast would be changed to
World News Tonight
.

As for Harry Reasoner, he was going back to CBS. After much deliberation, Roone had decided that I had a greater future at ABC than Harry did, so he released him from his contract. Roone was betting that I would earn my salary and, although some in the company felt he was making a mistake, Roone had his own vision—and that vision included me. He gave me a new title, not just “roving anchor” but “chief correspondent for special events,” with the authority and, he hoped, the ability to travel the world and land the big newsmaker interviews. Roone was trying to work out the timing of this important announcement about the changes in ABC News, and I was very nervous about exactly how this would affect me. In the meantime Roone sent me off to Panama.

When I arrived I immediately sought out Torrijos’s advisers and pressed my case that, as with Fidel Castro, Sadat, and Begin, I would be best able to bring the most attention to their general and his cause. They agreed and promised a brief interview before the Senate vote. That was the best they could do. At the moment Torrijos was on the resort island of Contadora, where he went to relax and where, by the way, the deposed shah of Iran was brought a year later for temporary refuge after he was forced into exile.

I was told to be ready at 7:00 a.m. to fly to the island in Torrijos’s private helicopter. I landed slightly flustered from lack of sleep and with bloodshot eyes. But Torrijos didn’t seem to care, and although he didn’t speak a word of English and I speak no Spanish, we obviously got through to each other in more ways than one. In the interview the general warned Congress that he would not take lightly a defeat of the proposal to return the canal to Panama. But the big question was, What would he do if the vote did
not
go his way? Torrijos would not tell me. The U.S. Senate vote on the canal was scheduled for the next day, April 18, and because Torrijos was so, shall we say, taken with me, I asked him then and there for a second interview right after the vote. He agreed.

We were certainly off to a good start. There were hundreds of journalists in Panama all vying for Torrijos’s exclusive attention, and we’d gotten it. Justin and I felt quite smug as we choppered back to the mainland. Our smugness didn’t last.

We waited all the next day for our promised interview with the general. Nothing. The Senate debate was dragging on and on, postponing the vote, and our exclusive interview. The word finally came from one of the general’s aides that he’d changed his mind and there would be no interview. Swell. That left me with nothing for the evening news, so we did the next best thing. We did a stand-up in front of the house where it was thought Torrijos was listening on the radio to the debate.

That’s where the adventure began.

A uniformed man suddenly appeared. “The general wants you to join him in the house,” he directed.

I looked at Justin. “Go,” he said. “I’ll feed this piece back to New York and catch up with you.”

Immediately I was escorted past an incredulous and unhappy group of correspondents from NBC and CBS into the house to spend the rest of the day and most of the evening in the company of General Torrijos.

There were no other women in the house. Only I and Torrijos’s inner circle of military aides and friends. They were all listening to the debate in Washington. The general’s interpreter was translating for him, and it occurred to me that if the vote went against Panama, Torrijos might not be very pleased with his now-favored American correspondent. What might he do with me? Hold me hostage? Not a happy thought. But not a crazy one. I was by now fervently hoping that the vote would favor the occupants of the room, especially the general, who made sure that I was by his side. We were inseparable through the rest of the debate and then on the ride to the Panamanian television broadcast center, where he was going to monitor the actual vote.

I searched for Justin in the crowd outside the broadcast center, and to my relief saw him waving at me. I also saw the amazed faces of reporters from around the world who were patiently waiting for a simple statement from Torrijos, while I was being firmly escorted inside the building by the general himself. We went into a conference room where, again, I was the only woman. The vote was being broadcast in Spanish by Panama radio. Torrijos and his men hung on every number. Most of the time they cheered, so I knew the vote was going as they had hoped. Their cheers broke into wild applause when the result was announced. The canal would be returned to Panama.

An overjoyed Torrijos then revealed the real reason he had been keeping me so close to him. He told me, through his interpreter, that if the vote had ended up going against Panama, he had instructed the Panamanian army to destroy the locks on the canal. He had planned to take me up with him in his helicopter to witness the canal’s destruction! That would have been quite a coup for me, but one I am glad I didn’t get. Who knows how my own country would have reacted? But the agreement was passed, and I felt that I was now free to find Justin and do my big report.

The general, however, wasn’t through with me. Taking my hand, he led me outside through cheering, jostling crowds to the National Guard Headquarters, where he gave a press conference. Then we went on to several other celebrations. I don’t know how Justin did it, but every time I emerged from some building with Torrijos, Justin was there. At one point the crowds were so huge that I found Justin waving at me—halfway up a tree.

It was all very exciting but embarrassing. Here were all the networks and the world press chronicling this historic moment and there was I, smack in their lenses. But there was nothing I could do about it.

I begged the general to do an interview with me then and there. He didn’t want to but promised to do one with me the next day. What I had to do then, and as soon as possible, was to get the story of this day on the air, especially his threat to destroy the canal. I finally did, late that night. The other correspondents in Panama were quick to discredit the story, claiming that it was impossible to blow up the canal, and that I’d made it up. That really stung. Especially because they inaccurately reported my words. What he had said, and what I reported, was not that he would have blown up the canal, but that he planned to blow up the locks controlling the entrance to the canal, thereby flooding it and rendering the canal useless.

I’d barely gone to bed that night when it was 5:30 a.m.—time to get up to report live for
Good Morning America
. Once again I was sleep deprived when we left on a small military plane to fly back to Contadora, Torrijos’s Camp David by the sea. I was so anxious about the press conference Roone was holding that very day in New York at “21” to announce the change in format for the nightly news that, en route, Justin and I considered patching a phone feed through Torrijos’s house to the restaurant so I could participate in some way, but we gave up the idea as impractical and disruptive. So, instead of being greeted by my colleagues at “21,” I was greeted by Torrijos, in a jumpsuit, lounging in a hammock under his shaded portico.

His staff had prepared a breakfast that even “21” couldn’t equal—fresh orange juice, mounds of mangoes, pineapples, and grapefruit, eggs however we wanted them, ham, bacon, muffins, coffee. All this against the backdrop of the waves breaking on the beach, a bright blue sky, warm sun, and a balmy tropical breeze. I just wanted to stretch out and sleep for three days.

But I was there to work and we did the interview, during which I asked him to confirm the threat I’d reported.

“General,” I asked. “When you said you would destroy the canal if the treaty were not ratified, were you serious?”

“Yes, I spoke seriously,” he replied. “It was a decision very painful, but there was no other alternative to take.”

I asked him how he intended to do that. “It is very simple,” he said. “The canal is as indefensible as a newborn baby. We know every critical point of the canal.”

“And you were going to take me with you last night if you had done this, so I could watch?”

“I thought of taking you along so that they would have proof that we did it,” he said.

I was vindicated. And very eager to get back to New York. The
New York Times
had tracked me down in Panama to ask me about Roone’s pending reorganization. I didn’t want to jump the gun on Roone’s press conference, but I did make clear that what I didn’t want to do was to be anchored to a news desk and what I did want to do was what I was doing at the moment—covering stories and doing reporter’s notebook pieces. “I was very unhappy last year coanchoring with Harry,” I told the
Times
. “This year I’m very happy.” My idea of happiness, however, did not jibe with that of General Torrijos.

“Stay here for a few days,” he said through his jolly interpreter.

“I can’t possibly,” I said. “I don’t even have a bathing suit.”

“We will get you one,” he countered.

“I have a flight to New York,” I said.

“Stay,” he insisted. “Later I’ll have my plane fly you back.”

It’s hard to argue with someone who has his own country, including the bathing suit concession and a fleet of planes. I thanked him for the invitation and the offer of a private plane to return me to New York but explained that for business reasons, I simply had to get back to New York right away. I was so insistent that he relented and actually made it possible.

I would never have made the Braniff flight I was booked on without his help. Not only did Torrijos send me off in his private plane, he called the airport and had the commercial flight to New York delayed. The general’s plane landed, taxied right up to the Braniff plane, I rushed from one to the other, and we took off. That was the last contact I ever had with the romantic dictator, who died in a mysterious plane crash three years later.

W
ORLD
N
EWS
T
ONIGHT
debuted three months later on July 10, 1978. The new three-anchor format worked well. Within a year the broadcast was tied with
NBC Nightly News
. ABC was doing just as well in the morning.
Good Morning America
was closing in on the
Today
show and trailed my old alma mater by just 1.06 rating points.

More important to me was the debut in June 1978 of an ABC newsmagazine program called, you guessed it,
20/20
. Roone Arledge had put
20/20
together to challenge
60 Minutes
on CBS, but it didn’t get off to a good start. The inaugural broadcast, hosted by journalist Harold Hayes and art critic Robert Hughes, was a disaster. Much too highfalutin. But from disaster rose a solution. A desperate Roone, who had uncharacteristically paid little attention to the initial program, was in a panic. Would
I
want to be the anchor? he asked. If I hadn’t just gotten over my own recent anchor disaster, I might have said yes. But I just couldn’t bear another audition and perhaps another disgraceful defeat.

As luck would have it my old colleague Hugh Downs, who was semi-retired (he was doing a program on public television for senior citizens called
Over Easy
), was substituting for a day as the host of
Good Morning America
. There he was for Roone to see, perhaps a bit bland but experienced and, most of all, available. By the end of the day Roone had hired Hugh Downs to host
20/20
. The opportunity for me to anchor the program went away, or so I thought. As it turned out I would eventually join Hugh as cohost, and together, we would preside with great success over
20/20
for fifteen years, and I would continue on the program after he left.

At first, however, I was not officially attached to
20/20
or any specific program. In a way this was a very good thing. I was able to do a variety of stories that appeared on
World News Tonight
,
Good Morning America, 20/20
, and for the first few years,
Issues and Answers.
(
Issues and Answers
would be replaced by
This Week with David Brinkley
in 1981 when David came to ABC from NBC to host what became the most popular Sunday-morning TV program.)