Tick... Tick... Tick... (28 page)

Hewitt nodded. “You don't go out looking for an Andy Rooney,” Hewitt said. “You have an Andy Rooney. You look for a guy. I think that's the problem. You have to start with the guy and say this is my guy, now what do I do with him?”

“Good point,” Fager said, not looking much like he thought so. Hewitt headed toward the door.

“Grodin worked really well,” Fager cracked. He knew that Hewitt hadn't thought much of Grodin, either.

“Grodin . . . Grodin was worse,” Hewitt said at the door.

“You're right,” Fager said as Hewitt left, “I can't fuck up again.”

Chapter 24

None of These Men Can Speak at My Funeral

On the afternoon of Tuesday, June
5
,
2003
—precisely two hours after Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd delivered their bombshell resignations in the
New York Times
newsroom only
17
blocks away—the entire
125
-person staff of
60 Minutes
was getting smashed at Gabriel's, the site of Hewitt's final negotiation last winter with Heyward. They'd only been here
20
minutes and already they were behaving like a bunch of rowdy teenagers on vacation, the wine pouring freely throughout the cavernous dining room. Today, for the first time in anyone's memory (and the guest list included people who remember the Hoover administration), every single member of the
60 Minutes
team was gathering for lunch. Andrew Heyward had invited the staff to lunch on the network's nickel, to celebrate the retirement of Phil Scheffler.

Now that management had achieved its goal of removing Scheffler from his full-time job,
60 Minutes
insiders worried how life with Hewitt would continue without him. The whispering at Gabriel's today revolved almost exclusively around this topic. How many days a week would Scheffler be coming in? What would it be like with Scheffler not there to stop Hewitt from going wild? Why would anyone want Scheffler to leave before Hewitt's own retirement a year from now? These confusing questions fueled a current of anxiety in the room; it was hard to say who was celebrating and who was drowning their tears. After lunch, a series of toasts from the correspondents added to the odd, disquieting nature of this boozy event.

“You never wanted to go into a screening without Phil Scheffler there,” Steve Kroft said to the crowd at Gabriel's. “That sort of became the rule for the last three, four, five years that I've been here. Because he always understood as a producer what you wanted to do. So if Don sometimes thought maybe there wasn't a story there, Phil always understood the amount of work that went into it, and had good ideas, and always meaningful suggestions on how to complete it. He's the only one who could talk Don off the ledge. Even though you sometimes didn't always agree with what he said, you were willing to put up with the occasional disagreement for the wisdom that he brought into the room every day.”

Kroft paused and looked around the room. He was ready to deliver his final valedictory, every word chosen with considerable care.

“The fact is that the show has been able to maintain its standards over thirty-five years when there is so much going on in television news that does not,” Kroft said. “And the person who I think is singularly responsible is Phil Scheffler. I don't think there's any doubt about it. He always kept his eye on the ball, he's always kept us in line, and it's the biggest loss to the show since Harry Reasoner left. And it's a challenge to everybody to make sure those standards are still here when Phil's not there.”

Kroft looked down at Scheffler, seated at a table only a few feet away, and began to cry. And as Kroft wiped the tears off his normally stoic, butcher-block face, others in the room marveled to themselves how bold and direct his comments were—how pointed and unmistakable his reference was to Scheffler's singular contributions.

Wallace's testimonial to Scheffler echoed Kroft. “Phil was the only man who could disagree with Hewitt in a screening,” he said, “and make it stick.”

Safer also agreed. “At
60 Minutes,
” he said a few minutes later, “we have ‘bad cop, worse cop,'” referring to the Scheffler-Hewitt team. He failed to specify who was who in that formation, but it wasn't a big mental leap for his audience to make the division. Soon after finishing his remarks, Safer headed outside for a smoke.

Then came Stahl, who followed the men. She appeared to have come directly from the airport, wheeling a suitcase behind her as she walked into the restaurant at
12:45,
a little late.

“None of these men can speak at my funeral,” the
61
-year-old correspondent declared, which earned her the biggest laugh of the lunch. She then went on to emphasize Scheffler's unique importance to the show; she implied that Hewitt's style was to personalize the battles that were a routine part of the show's backstage drama, whereas Scheffler kept things steady.

“We have the drama . . . we have the Jewish hysterics . . . but whatever we've gone through, my impression is that Phil maintains his sanity and keeps us on an even keel,” Stahl said. “I can't remember a time where it ever got personal. It was always about the story.”

The outpouring of love and respect for Scheffler was to be expected; after all, this was his farewell lunch, the final chance for the men and women of
60 Minutes
to express their appreciation for Hewitt's longtime deputy. It was less expected to hear these famous news stars, even in the relative privacy of Gabriel's, use Scheffler's departure as a moment to stick it to the boss. It is as though they wanted to remind those listening—including Hewitt—that there were two ways to manage the show, and that the departing Scheffler's was the one they preferred.

 

At
1
:
50
P.M.
, the door to Gabriel's swung open to reveal a terrifying glimpse into the show's mortality, in the person of a pale, limping shadow of a man barely recognizable as perhaps the show's beloved Ed Bradley.

It had been five weeks since the
61
-year-old Bradley was rushed to Mount Sinai Medical Center for a quintuple heart bypass surgery on April
29
, following several weeks of unexplained chest pains. While it wasn't unusual for the seasoned correspondents at
60 Minutes
to need medical help, the reality of Bradley's condition came as a huge shock to his friends and colleagues. A health nut known to work out for hours every day and to eat little besides fruits and vegetables, no one figured Bradley for an incapacitating hospital stay anytime soon. (“We're all quitting our gym memberships and eating donuts for breakfast,” joked then-senior producer Josh Howard a month after Bradley's operation. “I mean, what's the point?”) The surgery came suddenly in the final weeks of the
2002
–
2003
season and left pieces unfinished, interviews undone. And while no one wanted to say it, everyone at
60 Minutes
was afraid that Bradley's condition could mean an early, precipitous departure by a man who had been expected to stay and contribute to the show for at least another decade.

Which is why, when Bradley stepped gingerly into the Gabriel's dining room, the guests jumped to their feet and cheered their colleague with sustained applause and whooping. “I'm sorry I'm late,” he said once the ovation died down, and he took a seat at a back table with his team of producers. “I'm getting more like Don, with a short attention span.”

More laughter, more applause, before Bradley offered a few remarks that bore an uncanny resemblance to what his colleagues had already said. If ever one needed evidence that the
60 Minutes
correspondents never consult each other much about things, the similarities of these testimonials proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.

“I remember Phil for a lot of things,” Bradley said. “Among them that strength . . . that fortitude. He can say, ‘Don, you're wrong.' I can't tell you how much I appreciated that frankness. That fortitude in pointing it out so many times when he was wrong.” Bradley paused. “I'll miss him,” Bradley said finally, placing his hand over his heart. The crowd leapt to its feet once again and cheered. Bradley sat down, and then realized he had a few more words to say.

“My heart is fine,” Bradley told the roomful of colleagues anxious for an update on his condition. “My lungs aren't fine. I have lesions.” Bradley didn't dwell on his health, or reminisce much more about Scheffler, save to relate one story of the two men hanging out at a dive under a highway near San Francisco. He was clearly tired, and wrapped his remarks up quickly with an odd, off-key signoff. “Lest I forget . . . for all the trips that Patricia [Blanchet, Bradley's wife] and I have made to Italy, for all the restaurant recommendations you've given us, many thanks.” That oddly impersonal farewell may have been just a reflection of the correspondent's weakened state; but it also served as yet another sign of the emotional distance and lack of intimacy among the personalities of
60 Minutes.
The correspondents had formed no real friendship with one another over their decades of working together—all they shared was a commitment to their continued longevity and success.

 

The final testimonial of the day came from Hewitt himself. He followed the remarks of Scheffler's successor, Josh Howard, and Betsy West, who engagingly referred to herself as “management scum.”

“I had known and admired Phil for a long time,” West said, “and for a long time I thought that he admired me, too. Then I came to work for CBS as a vice president. Phil has a bit of a thing about management. Some say he derives some perverse pleasure from thumbing his nose at any suit that dares to patrol the hallowed halls of
60 Minutes.
But I have to say that despite your valiant efforts to pose as a disruptive, antimanagement, pain-in-the-ass curmudgeon, Phil, you have failed miserably.”

Howard followed up with his own recollections. “Phil Scheffler's management rule number one. When a vice president calls to speak with you, don't take the call. Rule number two. When Mike Wallace calls to speak to you, pretend you're too busy because you're on the phone with a vice president. And finally the most important sentence to remember: ‘No, Don, you can't do that.'”

Hewitt then went to the podium.

“The best way I know how to add my two cents to what everyone else has said,” Hewitt said, “is to use a word that television all by itself—with no help from anyone else in the civilized world—managed to change from a verb to a noun: the ‘get.' As in ‘
20/
20
got a get' when it got Hillary Clinton. Or ‘
PrimeTime Live
got a get' when it got Jennifer Lopez.

“I can murder the language just as well as they can,” Hewitt continued. “I got a get when I got Phil Scheffler. Many years ago I fished him out of a pond at
116
th Street and Broadway called the Columbia School of Journalism. He cleaned up after me while I cleaned up after a guy named Douglas Edwards. Among other things, what he's been doing for the better part of half a century is cleaning up after me. And making sure no one at
60 Minutes
ever used ‘get' as a noun. . . . I envy the next guy you sign on to clean up after.” As the crowd applauded, Scheffler got up out of his chair and hugged the man he'd served for his entire adult life.

 

As the final year approached—and with Scheffler mostly gone (his retirement package included the right to serve next year as a three-day-a-week consultant), the fears had increased about Hewitt and how he would function as executive producer. And none felt those fears more acutely than Mike Wallace.

After
35
years, the relationship between Hewitt and Wallace still defied explanation even by most of those who knew them well. One theory had it that Hewitt had always wanted to be Wallace's friend, and was chagrined by Wallace's ongoing, tacit refusal. Another popular notion was that each one believed he was more responsible for the success of
60 Minutes
than the other—and resented the other's claims of credit. Others speculated that Hewitt and Wallace were competing to outlast each other at
60 Minutes,
a battle to the finish line based on health and longevity. Certainly, they loved to point out each other's medical infirmities. Wallace never lost that competitive streak and used it as a weapon against Hewitt whenever he felt like it. They had become, in the common parlance of those who worked at
60 Minutes,
the quintessential “grumpy old men”—two elderly neighbors who seemed to thrive on endless battles and arguments and misunderstandings.

But underneath all that, most of Wallace's close associates believed that he'd never entirely recovered from the scars of the Wigand war. Many of their fights since then included comments about Wigand; Wallace never stopped feeling that Hewitt had resigned himself to the will of the network, and Hewitt believed Wallace had hung onto his righteous indignation for too long. Each blamed the other for the crisis that had left their show so fundamentally scarred.

The fights between them in the post-Wigand era struck most observers as more painful and personal than ever before; one producer described a battle between Wallace and Hewitt (one that began over a small issue in a piece) as having gone to such an extreme that Wallace insisted their relationship was over. “That's it,” Wallace told the producer. “Finished.” The two men then went days without speaking until finally Hewitt (characteristically the first to apologize) made an overture that Wallace accepted. Still, though, when the fights were finished, they were forgotten—at least until the next one started up.