Tick... Tick... Tick... (13 page)

First, Wallace introduced Pollard—not just as an expert but as an utterly sympathetic expert, backed up by shots of the
35
-year-old former Navy man with his wife and two young sons. Wallace then moved to the heart of the matter, with a megadose of embellishment for dramatic effect.

 

W
ALLACE
: This is the nuclear power plant Bob Pollard worries about—Indian Point Number Three, up the Hudson River from New York City. When it goes into operation (if it goes into operation), it'll furnish
900
,
000
kilowatts of energy to New York City and Westchester County. But Bob Pollard says it does not meet today's NRC safety regulations.
(To Pollard)
Give me the bottom line. Indian Point is
45
minutes from my home. I have a right to know whether that plant is going to be safe when and if it goes into operation.

P
OLLARD
: In my opinion, it—it will be just a matter of luck if Indian Point doesn't sometime during its life have a major accident.

 

Several minutes later, Wallace interviewed Anders, and quickly launched a missile into the conversation:

 

W
ALLACE
: Have you ever heard of a fellow by the name of Bob Pollard, Mr. Anders?

A
NDERS
: The name does not jump to my memory.

W
ALLACE
: Bob Pollard is one of your project managers, and he resigned today. Reason he resigned was, he is not sure about the safety of your program.

A
NDERS
: Bob Pollard has never tried to contact me or any of the members of the commission. I never even heard of Bob Pollard before.

 

After some additional discussion about plant safety issues, the tension began to ratchet up a few notches, with Anders placing an on-camera phone call to Ben Rusche, the director of the Office of Nuclear Regulation for the NRC, to find out more about Pollard.

 

B
EN
R
USCHE
: Well, Mr. Chairman, I am not aware, or was not aware, of Mr. Pollard's disturbance, nor his likelihood to resign, or any indication of this. . . . I have had him at meetings in my office for a couple of times. Of course, I don't—I don't know the gentleman that well. I would have guessed that that sort of fitness report would have been an appropriate fitness report.

W
ALLACE
: Appropriate?

R
USCHE
: Yes. We have in our interactions, of course, recognized that he has a specific, what shall I say, has given very specific and acute attention to a number of the fine points of rules and regulations which appear to give him some internal problems.

 

At this point in the interview, Anders became uncomfortable, knowing that Pollard—this man he did not know—was being criticized, in the presence of Mike Wallace on
60 Minutes
, for precisely the sort of nit-picking that can be seen to save lives.

 

A
NDERS
: Well—well, that—that certainly is what people are being paid to do.

R
USCHE
: Sure.

A
NDERS
: And keeping in mind, of course, that we're—that your conversation, in case I didn't get it across to you, is being recorded—

R
USCHE
: Yes.

 

Anders clearly understood, by then, what was happening—but too late to keep the viewer from seeing what
60 Minutes
wanted them to, a government bureaucrat criticizing the courageous behavior of the story's designated hero, fearless young Bob Pollard.

 

Not everyone thought this was such great television. Foremost among the skeptics was John J. O'Connor, the
New York Times
TV critic who had been a champion of the show since arriving at the paper in
1971
from the
Wall Street Journal.
His doubts deepened once he had been given access to the transcribed conversation between the
60 Minutes
researcher and the public relations consultant to the NRC's Anders. The consultant had expressed concern that his client might be unwittingly dragged into the very kind of debate over safety that the piece ultimately became.

Before writing his critique, O'Connor visited
60 Minutes
to get its side of the story. When he was ushered into Wallace's office, O'Connor recalled, he was greeted by Hewitt and Wallace, who both proceeded to yell at him about his plan to publish a critical column. But the hard-nosed style that was so effective around the office and against the bad guys failed to dissuade the critic. He returned to his desk and filed a harshly critical commentary on
60 Minutes
and its methods.

“How, then, does a TV newsman convince a potential target of an investigation to expose himself, perhaps unflatteringly, before a camera?” O'Connor wrote in a lengthy essay for the Sunday paper's “Arts and Leisure” section. “One way, it seems to me, borders dangerously on what could be interpreted as false pretenses and entrapment.” After laying out a compelling case for entrapment of Anders by
60 Minutes
, O'Connor did due diligence by printing the show's responses, which argued that by telling Anders that the topic of that segment was “the safety of nuclear reactors,” they'd given him sufficient and fair notice. It was a powerful essay, but it had little impact compared to the
60 Minutes
piece itself, which reached a far larger audience.

Hewitt's response in the
Times
to O'Connor's argument couldn't have been more explicit: “Anyone who submits to an interview on television is fair game for anything.” He later added, “Within his field of expertise.” This echoed an earlier description of the medium's power by Wallace, its foremost manipulator. “Television,” Wallace once said, “is a thousand-pound pencil.”

Chapter 10

Too Much Profit

Behind the one-way mirror were CBS cameraman Walter Dumbrow and producer Barry Lando; inside the closet was Mike Wallace. And in the front room of the ramshackle storefront on Chicago's Morse Avenue,
60 Minutes
had set up shop with the local Better Government Association. The mission: to catch laboratories in the act of setting up Medicaid kickback arrangements by using an ersatz “medical clinic” staffed by two BGA investigators. A Senate subcommittee was already investigating clinical labs that paid money to doctors and medical clinics to get their business, in return for the lucrative reimbursements from Medicaid for blood and urine tests. And some doctors had reported that labs were even offering to pay their rent and overhead in return for their Medicaid testing.

But
60 Minutes
wanted to document this for itself—and Lando decided the best way to do so was by using a hidden camera, something never before done by a TV news organization. It was a sort of entrapment, to be sure, yet it was all within the confines of Illinois law and all done for the benefit of a viewer whose eyes might glaze over at the thought of a story about Medicaid fraud.

It was January
1976
, and the show was just beginning to show signs of ratings strength. Now more than ever, the goal of Hewitt, Wallace, and everyone else at
60 Minutes
was to get the audience to come back every week. Lando loved to use Wallace as the surrogate for an outraged public—and to milk the dramatic effect of his presence for everything it was worth. But Wallace wasn't sold on the Medicaid scam story right away. When he landed in Chicago to begin the final phase of the reporting, he huddled with Lando. “Are we sure this is a crime?” he asked.

Lando, having spent the better part of two months reporting the story without the cameras in the room, was able to lay out for his correspondent the laws being violated, the millions of dollars involved, and the potential result of exposing the fraud on
60 Minutes
.

Wallace was convinced.

The next day, with BGA personnel Doug Longhini and Geraldene Delaney behind a desk in the seedy office (and Wallace, Lando, and Dumbrow safely out of sight), the clinic was officially “opened” and a parade of visitors from numerous labs began. Longhini and Delaney were careful to never indicate that they wanted kickbacks in return for lab referrals. Of the
11
labs that came,
9
made kickback proposals in front of the
60 Minutes
camera. Several were invited back for a second meeting; at that time, Wallace was ready to make his move. Dumbrow's camera recorded the conversation as Wallace narrated.

 

W
ALLACE
: First to arrive—two men who said they were the owners of North Side Clinical Labs. North Side's Medicaid business has rocketed from $
28
,
000
a year in
1974
to almost $
1
million a year by
1975
, an increase of
3000
percent in one year's time. As we said, Illinois law prohibits secretly recording a person, so we taped only one side of the discussion—just the questions of the BGA investigators, who this time included Pat Riordan playing the role of the clinic doctor. Standing behind the wall in the back, I could hear what was going on in the front office. Part of the North Side Lab offer was that if the Medicaid business the clinic sent them amounted to more than $
1000
a week, they would return
50
percent of that money to the clinic by leasing a small space in the back.

R
IORDAN
: So I could get $
500
a week?

W
ALLACE
: In other words, by renting a few square feet in the clinic hallway to the lab, the clinic could earn from that small space alone more than four times the rent of the entire clinic.

R
IORDAN
: We'd be getting in rent for that hallway $
2000
?

 

At which point Wallace opened the door to the closet where he'd been hiding and walked into the room, holding a microphone.

W
ALLACE
: Pardon me just a second, fellows.

Wallace explained that he was “recording for broadcast,” though he failed to give his name or mention that he was with
60 Minutes
—none of which was required by law but might have been of interest to the parties being exposed to Dumbrow and his camera. What followed was what Wallace described as “a pretty frank discussion” about kickbacks, in which the visitors more or less admitted to wrongdoing in front of the
60 Minutes
camera. Emboldened, Wallace and his team kept going, and the encounters kept getting more interesting. Wallace continued to tell people only that he was “recording for broadcast.” It wasn't until his final grand entrance—after hearing yet another promise of kickbacks from “Mr. E—— of DJ Laboratories”—that someone reacted to him as something other than an odd intrusion.

 

W
ALLACE
: I want to interrupt, if I can. I'm recording this for broadcast, and I just heard you say that you will give back
25
percent in a kickback,
25
percent on a rebate. Is that correct, Mr. E——?

L
AB
R
EPRESENTATIVE
: Well—wait a minute. You look familiar to me.

 

Wallace didn't respond by identifying himself. Instead, he simply reminded the gentleman that he was “recording for broadcast,” at which point Dumbrow left his hiding spot to film the goings-on.

 

W
ALLACE
: Mr. E——, tell me something. How much in the way of kickbacks and rebates do you get involved with, and why?

L
AB
R
EPRESENTATIVE
: I—I don't give—I don't give kickbacks.

W
ALLACE
: You just—I heard you right in here. You offered
25
percent in a rebate to these two gentlemen, to this new clinic.

L
AB
R
EPRESENTATIVE
: Well, I—I didn't mean it that way.

R
IORDAN
: What was the
25
percent in reference to?

L
AB
R
EPRESENTATIVE
: I think I better not say anything now.

 

Later, Wallace, Lando, and Dumbrow went to the office of DJ Labs to investigate further. After they'd spent time asking questions of one of the lab's owners, its attorney stepped in front of the
60 Minutes
camera, jostling it. What followed on screen was the appearance of a camera being moved about, with the back of the lawyer's head filling the frame.

 

U
NIDENTIFIED
L
AWYER
: Sir, you have no right to be here. I ask you to leave. . . . Don't touch me. . . . You're interrupting a business and—

W
ALLACE
: No, no, no—

U
NIDENTIFIED
L
AWYER
: I'm sorry, sir, you have no right—Don't touch me, and don't you dare take my picture without permission!

 

Once again—and while adhering to the letter of the law—Wallace and Lando had pushed the form into a new narrative direction. “The Clinic on Morse Avenue” aired on February
15
,
1976
, using a style of storytelling more akin to movies than to a news program—which was precisely why
60 Minutes
was attracting more viewers than ever, suggesting to Hewitt and his team that their formula might have caught on at last.

 

By June, the show was established in its Sunday-at-
7
time slot as a perfect counterpoint to the family programming offered by the other networks—
The Wonderful World of Disney
on NBC and
Swiss Family Robinson
on ABC—attracting more than
23
million viewers who had few alternatives in the no-cable universe of network television. The show had acquired a polish and style that reflected its seven years on the air and the now-considerable experience of its correspondents and producers.

The team of Wallace, Safer, and Rather had a potent effect on viewers; the three men quickly became stars in their own right. When Rather went out on the road to report stories, producers noticed a Redford-like following for the correspondent among starstruck locals. He was the show's glamour boy, while Safer and Wallace added weight and wisdom. By that fall they'd been scrutinized in
The New Yorker
and on the front page of the
Wall Street Journal.
The
Journal
headline (“‘Sixty Minutes' Mixes News and Show Biz to Provoke and Amuse”) went right to the heart of Hewitt's philosophy, and the piece quoted Hewitt as saying, “We try to present and package reality as attractively as Hollywood packages fiction.”

The success of the show was finally prompting others to find fault with the
60 Minutes
formula. By this time, O'Connor of the
New York Times
had become a voluble critic of the show he'd once championed. In the
Wall Street Journal
article he spoke of
a “seeming anxiety to construct production values for a ‘hot' story,” which he said raised “unfortunate but legitimate questions” about the journalism on
60 Minutes
. Charges of “managed news” came from prominent (and bruised) targets such as Charles Luce, the head of Consolidated Edison, whose power plant had been the target of Wallace's piece about the disillusioned Pollard. The article in the
Wall Street Journal
also marked the first of many times in Wallace's career in which he suggested the possibility of burnout at his job. “I'm tired,” he told the
Journal
. “I can't keep this pace up much longer.”

But the criticisms paled by contrast to the financial bonanza created by the show's success. A
New York Times
story reported that rates for a
30
-second commercial on
60 Minutes
leapt from $
12
,
500
in the early
1970
s to a top price of $
50
,
000
—equivalent to the cost of a commercial on a hit CBS series like
Barnaby Jones
. One CBS News producer recalled hearing Richard Salant, the president of CBS News, tell correspondent Eric Sevareid that because of the financial success of
60 Minutes
, he could no longer represent the news division as a money-losing entity: “There's just too much profit.”

Meanwhile, the roaring success of
60 Minutes
gave Hewitt unprecedented clout for the producer of a news show. He'd gone from a pariah of the news division, a decade earlier, to its hottest star. To capitalize on the success of
60 Minutes
, CBS News executives approached Hewitt in
1976
with a plan for another newsmagazine, to be called
Who's Who.
They'd recruited CBS News producer John Sharnik (who had worked with Rather at
CBS Reports
) and, with his and Rather's input, they had come up with a weekly series that would focus more on personalities than stories. They auditioned several women as cohosts—including Jessica Savitch of NBC—before settling on Washington writer Barbara Howar, who'd recently published a gossipy best-seller,
Laughing All The Way
.

Just as
60 Minutes
had been based on
Life
magazine, this show would use Time Inc.'s new baby,
People,
as its creative model. With its slick stories on show-biz entertainers balanced against human interest stories of personal crisis,
People
had cleverly tapped into the pop culture obsession of a society recuperating from the social upheavals of the previous decade. Cover stories on celebrities like Joe Namath and Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton made
People
a guilty pleasure for millions, and CBS was determined to do the same with
Who's Who
—though with a stronger,
60 Minutes
–style emphasis that included cultural icons like author Lillian Hellman and conductor Leopold Stokowski. Hewitt would be involved in overseeing the production. Howar and Rather were to concentrate on the celebrities, while Charles Kuralt, contributing a weekly essay, would handle the human interest angle.