Tick... Tick... Tick... (22 page)

 

K
ROFT
: Who is Gennifer Flowers? You know her?

C
LINTON
: Oh yeah.

K
ROFT
: How do you know her? How would you describe your relationship?

C
LINTON
: Very limited, but until this—you know, friendly but limited. . . .

K
ROFT
: She's alleging—and has described in some detail in the supermarket tabloid—what she calls a
12
-year affair with you.

C
LINTON
: It—that allegation is false. . . .

K
ROFT
: You've been saying all week that you've got to put this issue behind you. Are you prepared, tonight, to say that you've never had an extramarital affair?

C
LINTON
: I'm not prepared, tonight, to say that any married couple should ever discuss that with anyone but themselves. I'm not prepared to say that about anybody. . . .

K
ROFT
: You're trying to put this issue behind you, and the problem with the answer is, it's not a denial. And people are sitting out there—voters—and they're saying, “Look, it's really pretty simple. If he's never had an extramarital affair, why doesn't he just say it?”

C
LINTON
: That may be what they're saying. You know what I think they're saying? I think they're saying, “Here's a guy who's leveling with us.” You may think that we should say more, and you can keep asking the question, but I'm telling you I think that we've told—I'll come back to what I said. I have told the American people more than any other candidate for president. The result of that has been everybody going to my state, and spending more time trying to play Gotcha!

M
RS.
C
LINTON
: There isn't a person watching this who would feel comfortable sitting on this couch detailing everything that ever went on in their life or their marriage. And I think it's real dangerous in this country if we don't have some zone of privacy for everybody. I mean, I think that's absolutely critical.

K
ROFT
: I couldn't agree with you more, and I think—and I agree with you that everyone wants to put this behind you. And the reason it hasn't gone away is that your answer is not a denial, is it?

C
LINTON
: It's interesting—let's assume—let's—

K
ROFT
: But it's not a denial.

 

The Kroft interview is often cited as a foreshadowing of Clinton's conduct as president. It's worth noting that the issue that ultimately led to Clinton's impeachment was not infidelity, but rather the question of a sitting president lying under oath. In the Kroft interview, the subject on the table was whether a presidential candidate had a responsibility to affirm or deny an extramarital affair to a representative of the press. If (as Kroft and others have since observed) that interview contributed to Clinton's eventual victory that November, then voters must have rewarded Clinton's position that his private life was none of Kroft's business.

Whatever the interview did for the Clintons, it accomplished the short-term goal of another ratings triumph for
60 Minutes
and clearly established Steve Kroft as a formidable player on a still-relevant team.

 

One week later,
60 Minutes
offered up “Anita Hill,” the first television interview with the woman who'd accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice. It defined a
60 Minutes
scoop—a conversation with a formidable newsmaker who chose the broadcast to make an exclusive statement that the world was waiting to hear. In this case the scoop belonged to Ed Bradley.

In his dozen years at
60 Minutes
Bradley had perfected a deceptively easygoing but, in fact, intense conversational style that could intimidate or relax in equal measure. He had an innate sense of phrasing and intonation, and he used his hands as instruments. Perhaps it was his off-camera passion for music that enabled him to find the perfect point of emphasis in every sentence, every question. It probably didn't hurt that he had jazz music playing at all times in his
60 Minutes
office and everywhere else he could. The music relaxed him—he called it his “bliss.” And he loved skiing at his home in Woody Creek, Colorado, which he was careful to distinguish from Aspen. He didn't mind reminding a visitor once or twice that Hunter Thompson remains a friend. He went to the New Orleans Jazz Festival every year and picked all his destinations carefully. (One day recently, Steve Kroft was planning a trip to Orlando and went to Bradley's assistant, Paulettte Robinson, to ask if Bradley had a hotel preference there. “Ed doesn't go to Orlando,” Robinson explained to Kroft.)

Bradley exhilarated and exasperated his producers. They loved using his prodigious gifts as an interviewer and relished the moments when he would peer down over his glasses at a subject like a bemused district attorney, eyebrows raised in disbelief—or when his hands would chop through the air like a knife or punctuate his points like a conductor's baton. Not interested in maintaining the usual anchorman's poker face, Bradley used an array of expressions; his eyes would widen and narrow to underscore his thinking, and no one doubted the sincerity of his smile. To top it off, he'd been blessed with a melodious voice that added weight and nuance to everything he said, with an orator's sense of just how to emphasize. He might have made an impressive politician or actor—skills that were central to a
60 Minutes
correspondent's craft.

If it was Bradley's love of music and leisure that made him such a deft interviewer, it was that same passion that made him difficult to work with. In his early years Bradley traveled constantly, but by the mid-
1990
s, his pace had slowed somewhat. Producers always had to work around his considerable and increasing need for personal time. He had a daily gym workout, and interviews had to be scheduled around his appointments with his personal trainer. Bradley also considered his Colorado ski trips an inviolable part of his schedule—this made it tough on producers trying to squeeze reporting trips onto his calendar. He didn't like to become involved in a story until it was fairly far along in the process, didn't relish long talks with his producers about interviews, and preferred to read research materials on his own time. Nor did he write drafts of his stories; he rarely set pen to paper except to rewrite the work of others. It wasn't that he was lazy—anyone looking at his list of produced pieces would have to admit that Bradley worked hard. But he refused to give over his entire life to work the way Wallace did. As much as possible his nights and weekends were his own—and sometimes, so were parts of his weekdays. And the lack of social interaction with his colleagues suited him just fine.

When it came to interviews with people like Anita Hill, Bradley brought all his talents to the table. The end result was a serious conversation that lent new understanding to the underlying issues of sexual harassment for women in the workplace.

 

B
RADLEY
: People say, “Well, I sat there and I watched her, and I wanted to believe her, but I don't understand how she could say nothing for ten years. I don't understand how she could stay with him. I don't understand how she could follow him to another job.” How do you make those people understand?

H
ILL
: I cannot make those people understand. But I can share with those people what others have experienced. One of the things that women do when this happens is to examine themselves—even to the extent of blaming themselves, their own behavior, their own actions, their own words. And so that is a factor in women not coming forward. Another thing that happens very often is that women are told, either by their harassers or by others, that they won't be believed if they come forward. And they know of enough experiences of other women where, not only were they not believed, but they were actually made to be the culprit.

 

Once again—and this time with great irony—a
60 Minutes
piece resonated not only with the audience, but with those who knew the inside story of the show itself.

 

On the Saturday morning after the Los Angeles riots began in May
1992
, Rome Hartman went into the
60 Minutes
office and was summoned to Don Hewitt's office. That was almost unheard-of; he'd always been told
60 Minutes
doesn't even have meetings. Hartman raced down and discovered people gathered around Hewitt's desk, discussing how the show should cover the riots that had followed the acquittal of four Los Angeles policemen in the videotaped beating of a black motorist named Rodney King.

In a matter of minutes, it was decided that Hewitt, Stahl, and Hartman would immediately go to Los Angeles to interview Daryl Gates, the outgoing police chief. This was the kind of crash journalism that Stahl and Hartman had been doing for years, and with Hewitt now leading the charge, it was guaranteed to deliver a reporting high. The true thrills came the next day, as Gates interrupted a roving interview to get out of his car, holding a nightstick, and brandished it at a group of youths in full view of the
60 Minutes
cameras.

Stahl's interviews were just as revealing as the camera work. Her style as a questioner reflected her own aggressive and somewhat intimidating nature; she had little patience or tolerance for mistakes, either by those she was interviewing or those who worked for her. In a matter of months, Stahl had become known around the
60 Minutes
offices as a tough, demanding boss. She ran her life according to a precise and rigorous schedule—determined, as she was, to make her mark on
60 Minutes
just as she had in Washington. Inevitably, producers who didn't enjoy the experience of working with her or according to her rules dubbed her a “bitch.” Other producers praised Stahl's style, citing her determined work ethic and personal compassion for their family issues. Many ultimately found her to be a generous and thoughtful boss in ways that mitigated the impact of her demanding temperament. Still, some felt Stahl had an overdeveloped ego and was excessively concerned with her appearance on camera; others resented her detail-heavy demands, including a requirement that all papers be assembled for her with paper clips, not staples.

Even her detractors had to admit that Stahl had a natural rapport with the camera and an instinct for making news. Soon after the Gates piece aired, she followed up with scoops for
60 Minutes
that included a June
1992
interview with Russia's president, Boris Yeltsin, and one in October of that year with Ross Perot—interviews that revealed not only Stahl's stern side as a rugged questioner but also her talent for nailing down truths from evasive public figures. She had quickly shown Hewitt that she fit in perfectly with a dysfunctional group of correspondents who'd become as famous as the stories they covered and used their celebrity to further the cause of their show. It was only those behind the camera who occasionally felt they were handling a newly minted and temperamental movie star, rather than a network news correspondent.

Chapter 19

Reporting, Not Crusading

It had been another great season for
60 Minutes,
ending in June
1993
as the number one show on television for the fourth year in its history. That tied it with
I Love Lucy
and
Gunsmoke
and left only
The Cosby Show
and
All in the Family
ahead of it on the all-time list. On an average Sunday, more than
31
million people watched
60 Minutes,
which by then had broadcast
2
,
299
original segments.

The show had just survived a momentary scare: Ed Bradley threatened to quit and join a new ABC prime-time newsmagazine. At the last possible moment, during a boat cruise around Manhattan to celebrate a successful season, he told his producers he'd changed his mind. That flirtation with another network eventually netted Bradley a salary increase that put him at the level of Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt—both thought to be making in the vicinity of $
4
million a year.

In the
1992
–
1993
season, the show had reached a
21
.
9
rating and was number one; by
1994
, though it remained in the top ten, its ratings were starting to slip. The blame was put on football. In a clever counterprogramming move, Fox, which now owned the broadcast rights to the NFL, was scheduling Sunday games to end at
7
:
30
, cutting into
60 Minutes,
still CBS's top-rated show. But there was also a glut of newsmagazines, more than ever before: NBC had finally launched a successful one,
Dateline NBC.
ABC had added
Turning Point
(the show Ed Bradley was to have hosted) to
Prime Time Live
and
20/
20
. CBS now offered both
Eye to Eye
With Connie Chung
and
48 Hours.
All this competition led to an increase in tabloid topics; this, at least, gave
60 Minutes
an exclusive hold over viewers who liked their newsmagazines to contain some actual news.

CBS itself was facing new challenges; the median age of its audience was rising just as advertisers were putting an increasing premium on the
18
–
49
market. Even with the ongoing success of
60 Minutes,
there was no ignoring the fact that its audience (and, of course, its cast) was aging rapidly enough to create some long-term concerns. In the fall of
1995
, as speculation grew that Laurence Tisch was considering the sale of CBS, NBC decided to challenge the supremacy of
60 Minutes
directly by programming an hour of its profitable new newsmagazine,
Dateline NBC,
on Sunday nights at
7
:
00
P.M.
Other shows that had tried to go head-to-head with Hewitt had left the lineup battered, but given his show's recent ratings decline, it seemed like a propitious time to take him on again.

 

One day in the spring of
1993
, Wallace producer Lowell Bergman opened the door of his house in Berkeley, California, and discovered that someone had dropped a bundle of tobacco industry documents on his doorstep. Bergman, a big bear of a man, was considered one of the best investigative producers ever to work on
60 Minutes
—good enough for the show to allow him to live
3
,
000
miles away from his bosses.

Needing help to decipher the documents, which were a tangle of legalese and scientific jargon, Bergman went to Jeffrey Wigand, a biochemist who had been hired in
1989
by Brown & Williamson, a tobacco company that makes Kool, Lucky Strike, and other brands, to develop a “safer” cigarette. Over the next few years he became acutely knowledgeable about the addictive properties of nicotine; his outspoken opinions led to his dismissal in March
1993
. Bergman had long been interested in the dangers of smoking, and saw in Wigand great potential for a
60 Minutes
story. Wigand agreed to consult for CBS on a
1994
piece on fire safety and cigarettes, but Bergman—a gruff, obsessive, and unstoppable reporting machine—realized that if he could convince Wigand to go public with his knowledge of the inner workings of Big Tobacco, it could make a far bigger story.

The story Bergman wanted to tell—an exploration of Brown & Williamson's chemical manipulation of nicotine—was important and timely, but complex and highly technical as well. Wigand's presence in the piece—as scientist and discarded employee—would offer the perfect humanizing touch. But when he approached Wigand to talk, he discovered a man in fear. Wigand had signed a confidentiality agreement with his former employer. He claimed he had received death threats and insisted that he couldn't and wouldn't talk until at least March
1995
, when his severance package with Brown & Williamson expired. Bergman was relentless, however; he wasn't going to let the story slip away.

Finally, in August
1995
, he convinced Wigand to come to New York for an interview with Mike Wallace. After he had written a rough draft of the piece, Bergman was summoned to a meeting at Black Rock on September
5
and told to suspend work on the Wigand story for a week until he and his
60 Minutes
bosses could meet with a CBS lawyer to discuss the legal implications of the story.

On September
12
, Bergman, Hewitt, Wallace, and Phil Scheffler crossed the street from the
60 Minutes
offices to the CBS Broadcast Center and went into a meeting in the conference room of Eric Ober, then president of CBS News. There the
60 Minutes
crew first encountered Ellen Kaden, the woman who set into motion the events that made the Wigand story a crossroads in the show's history: Kaden, who was general counsel of CBS Inc., told the crew that the Wigand piece was too risky to air because of a relatively obscure legal concept known as “tortious interference.” She wanted a three-week delay (though Bergman could continue to work on the piece) while CBS sought an opinion from outside counsel.

As Kaden explained, Wigand had a contract with his former employer, as part of his severance, that prohibited him from revealing inside information about the company. Any attempt by CBS to induce Wigand to break that contract was considered tortious interference. More important, it was the stuff of a potential multibillion-dollar lawsuit against CBS News. Airing the interview with Wigand would put the entire corporation into jeopardy. If the
60 Minutes
crew needed convincing, they only had to consider the mess ABC had gotten into as a result of a tobacco investigation.

A month before, ABC News had announced settlement of two multibillion-dollar lawsuits against its own weekly newsmagazine
Day One
brought by Philip Morris and R. J. Reynolds. In that case, ABC agreed to withdraw its previously reported assertion that Philip Morris and R. J. Reynolds added significant amounts of nicotine to their tobacco. “That was a mistake that was not deliberate on the part of ABC,” were the carefully chosen words of substitute anchor Diane Sawyer on ABC's
World News Tonight
, which aired on Monday, August
21
,
1995
, “but for which we accept responsibility and which requires correction. We apologize to our audience, Philip Morris, and Reynolds.”

ABC's apology was seen by outsiders as a cave-in to the legal threat of the huge tobacco companies seeking damages that could have had a dire effect on the network's financial picture. It was also strongly rumored that CBS would soon complete a merger with Westinghouse; current owner Laurence Tisch didn't want any multibillion-dollar lawsuits gumming up the deal.

After the meeting, Bergman recalls, he, Hewitt, Wallace, and Scheffler stood together for a few tense moments in the long, narrow hallway outside Ober's office. “She has great tits,” Hewitt said finally, of Ellen Kaden. “I'd like to fuck her.”

 

A little more than two weeks later, on September
29
, Ober, Wallace, Hewitt, Scheffler, and Bergman watched a rough assembly of the Wigand story. Ober felt the piece wasn't finished; he wanted corroboration of Wigand's story from another source. But Hewitt loved it. The following week, on October
3
, Kaden's office informed
60 Minutes
that outside counsel agreed that the story was too risky to pursue—at which point Bergman was expected to stop work on the piece.

“We've got a gun pointed at our head,” Hewitt told the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on October
17
. “We've got a story we think is solid. We don't think anybody could ever sue us for libel. There are some twists and turns. And if you get in front of a jury, in some state where all the people on that jury are related to people who work at tobacco companies, look out. That's a $
15
billion gun pointed at your head. We may opt to get out of the line of fire.”

The next day, the
Wall Street Journal
published a front-page story that delved into essentially the same charges that Wigand would have made on
60 Minutes
about the chemical manipulation of nicotine. Bergman explained to Hewitt and Wallace, who felt they'd been scooped, that in the wake of the Kaden decision he had released Wigand from any obligation to
60 Minutes.
Hewitt then told Bergman he wanted him to pursue “a story about the story”—so the producer went back into his material, hoping to find some way to salvage a
60 Minutes
piece without naming Wigand. In early November, Wigand reported to Bergman that several newspapers were trying to talk to him about what he knew—and also about possible censorship of the story by CBS.

 

On Tuesday, November
7
, Bergman and Wallace screened their revised segment, set to air the following Sunday. The piece examined the way tobacco companies covered up information about cigarettes and health, but it did not include the sensitive inside information provided by Wigand.

That Thursday, the front page of the
New York Times
carried this stunning headline: “
60 Minutes
Ordered to Pull Interview in Tobacco Report.” The story, written by Bill Carter, reported that CBS lawyers “ordered the news program
60 Minutes
not to broadcast a planned on-the-record interview with a former tobacco company executive who was harshly critical of the industry.” Carter attributed the move to “an atmosphere of heightened tension between cigarette manufacturers and the press,” alluding to the recent ABC settlement and apology.

Carter reported that both Hewitt and Wallace “agreed with” the CBS lawyers' order to suppress the Wigand interview. “I'm very comfortable with the decision,” Hewitt told Carter, as definitive a statement as the reporter could have wanted; Hewitt was aligning himself with the corporation's censorship of his own broadcast. “We just knew that ABC had looked into the barrel of a gun,” Hewitt said. “The ABC lawsuit did not chill us as journalists from doing the story,” Wallace told the
Times
. “It did chill the lawyers, who with due diligence had to say, ‘We don't want to, in effect, risk putting the company out of business.'”

The story had an immediate and explosive effect. Suddenly
60 Minutes
appeared to have sacrificed a legitimate and hard-hitting piece of journalism to management bean counters. Hewitt and Wallace looked a bit like cowards—or at least could be now portrayed that way by journalists secretly gleeful not to be in their position. It was widely assumed within CBS that Carter's source for the
Times
story was Lowell Bergman. (“I have never met Bill Carter, nor have I ever spoken with Bill Carter,” is all Bergman will now say on the matter, declining any other comment about possible contact between them.) It didn't matter who leaked it; for the next
24
hours, few in the
60 Minutes
office talked about anything else. In the wake of the
Times
story everyone had an opinion, and many of them opposed Hewitt and Wallace's stance.

Steve Kroft went to talk to Hewitt, deeply concerned about morale around the office. “You've got to do something,” he said. The correspondent—who, like most others at
60 Minutes,
had only just learned the details of the Wigand story—had observed widespread confusion among producers and support staff and believed Hewitt needed to address them directly, and soon. Hewitt agreed. The next day, a Friday, he convened a rare
60 Minutes
staff meeting in Screening Room
164
, which, as usual, degenerated into screaming and walkouts.