Tick... Tick... Tick... (9 page)

S
AFER
: Pimp! The dictionary's not certain of the origin of the word, but that's not important. Everyone knows what it means. It used to be that pimps were part of the sleazy underground of every big city. But today they've come out in the open. They get interviewed in the slick magazines. Their customized cars (“pimpmobiles”) and their foppish clothes make fashion news. Almost all pimps are black. They give themselves names like Hollywood, Silky, Dandy and Snake. Who are they? How do they get women to prostitute themselves?
60 Minutes
looked into the world of the pimp—the man who would be nothing without his woman.

Moments later, Safer interviews Silky:

 

S
AFER
: This is Silky, who describes himself as having a Ph.D. in pimping. He claims to earn as much as the president: $
200
,
000
a year. He wears a $
5
,
000
watch and a $
4
,
500
ring. Pimps are nothing if they're not conspicuous consumers.
(To Silky)
You know, the word “pimp” has a certain pejorative sound. It's a nasty word. Does it bother you?

S
ILKY
: To whom?

S
AFER
: To many people. To myself, for example.

S
ILKY
: Not—not to an individual who's dedicated their life to it.

S
AFER
: You talk about it almost as though it's a very special calling.

S
ILKY
: Well, that's just what I feel.

S
AFER
: Describe a typical day—a typical day in your life. How does it start?

S
ILKY
: I wake up, decide whether to go out, or decide whether to go back to sleep.

S
AFER
: That's it?

S
ILKY
: That's typical.

S
AFER
: That's all you do all day?

S
ILKY
: Practically. . . .

S
AFER
: Would you rather be doing something other than what you're doing?

S
ILKY
: Not necessarily. Really, I wouldn't rather do anything but lay in the bed and pimp.

 

While most network TV shows rested during the summer,
60 Minutes
charged forward with stories, taking advantage of every chunk of airtime it could get. The summer of
1973
—with the Senate Watergate Committee hearings drawing huge audiences to their sets on a daily basis—provided a perfect opportunity.

In July, Mike Wallace took a break from covering Watergate to return to the pop-culture beat, interviewing literary bad boy Norman Mailer on the occasion of his new biography of Marilyn Monroe, who died of a drug overdose in
1962
. (Wallace and Mailer had met on
Night Beat
in
1957
for an interview in which Mailer had declared that then-President Eisenhower was “a bit of a woman.”) Mailer had later given Wallace's career a boost by sitting for an interview on
Night Beat
in November
1960
, the day after the author famously stabbed his wife. Their ongoing relationship gave Wallace license to probe into Mailer's psyche and point of view on the actress, for a piece
60 Minutes
called “Monroe, Mailer and the Fast Buck.”

 

W
ALLACE
: You don't believe she was murdered, though, really. Down bottom . . .

M
AILER
: If you ask me to give a handicapper's estimate of what it was, I'd say it was ten to one it was an accidental suicide. Ten to one.

W
ALLACE
: At least.

M
AILER
: But I would not—I could not ignore the possibility of murder.

W
ALLACE
: And do you believe Bobby Kennedy was there, had been with her that night?

M
AILER
: It's possible.

W
ALLACE
: I'm asking you again.

M
AILER
: I don't know.

W
ALLACE
: Handicap it.

M
AILER
: I'd say it's even money.

 

Five seasons in, the correspondents made it look easy. Wallace and Safer were rapidly becoming well known—though perhaps not as much as Hewitt wanted—for the way their personalities and approaches shaped the stories they told. Stories always included long shots of the correspondent in conversation with his subject, even though in those days only one camera was used—meaning the cameraman had to shoot reverse angles later to incorporate the correspondent. Still, it was impossible to imagine a
60 Minutes
interview without Mike or Morley nodding or shaking his head. Unlike most TV reporters, they were allowed—indeed, encouraged—to promote the notion with viewers that they were the primary reporters of their stories, gathering the information and telling it as though they'd devoted weeks of their life to each
60 Minutes
segment.

It wasn't true, of course.

By
1973
there were at least a dozen full-time
60 Minutes
producers who traveled the world to report stories on behalf of the high-profile correspondents. Since Wallace and Safer were each responsible for upwards of
25
stories a year, in some cases they had only a few days to contribute to the production of a piece. The producer not only did all the background reporting; he also sometimes wrote the script (especially for Wallace) and typically supervised the editing. Many story ideas were generated by producers, too—leaving the correspondents to function, in some cases, as on-camera performers, reading from a script or a prepared list of questions.

Nevertheless, when the piece aired, it was always Wallace or Safer front and center. The only credit given to the producer was his name imprinted on the opening “book” that gave the story its title, and functioned as a backdrop to the studio opening that preceded each story.

Which is why, shortly after the Herbert piece aired in February
1973
, a group of producers, led in part by Lando, asked for a meeting with Hewitt and the correspondents to debate the issue. It was a stormy meeting. In the Herbert story, Wallace in his studio introduction had given Lando additional credit for his reporting; some producers felt that kind of credit belonged on more pieces, arguing that for the show to continue to represent itself as a bastion of truth and integrity, it needed to clearly reveal its own inner workings to its viewers. It was fundamentally dishonest, they said, for Wallace and Safer to imply, by omission, that they'd done the reporting for a piece when in fact they usually had not.

“The show is a soap opera about people pretending to be reporters,” Lando angrily said to his bosses.

“People are tuning in for Mike and Morley,” Hewitt heatedly told the producers who gathered in the show's screening room. “They don't watch for Barry and Joe and Bob. If we tell them how it's done, it destroys what makes the show special, that it's the adventures of these two reporters.” Besides, said Hewitt, none of the show's producers had the skill to appear on camera, whereas the correspondents could do a producer's job just as well if they only had the time.

The producers fought back with the only argument in their arsenal—that to falsely represent the process was to engage in exactly the kind of duplicity the show shredded its interview targets for. They understood Hewitt's argument, of course; they just didn't agree with it.

Having little choice, the behind-the-scenes reporters accepted the reality that the adventures of Mike and Morley would continue without modification, though not without a bad aftertaste in the mouths of some of the show's finest producers.

Chapter 7

Actually, It Was Oscar Katz's Idea

By the
1970
s, Hewitt was on his second marriage; he and Mary Weaver had gotten a Mexican divorce in early
1963
. In June of that year he'd married Frankie Teague Childers, a fellow divorcée who had been public relations adviser to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, and staff director of the Senate Committee on Juvenile Delinquency. Frankie Hewitt was president of the Ford's Theater Society in Washington, D.C., and spent a good deal of time traveling between the two cities. Hewitt's three children from his first marriage—Jeffrey, Steven, and Jilian—were now in their twenties; he and Frankie had a daughter of their own, Lisa, born in
1967
.

From the earliest days, Hewitt was known around CBS as something of a ladies' man. He had a flirtatious, old-world nature, and he thought nothing of turning his charms on a female coworker, no matter where she ranked in the chain of command. In an occupation heavily populated by straight-laced men in business suits, Hewitt—with his loud, plaid jackets and turtleneck sweaters, bushy hair and toothy smile—stood out from the crowd.

Which is how it came to pass that Hewitt found himself in London one day in November of
1973
, making a pass at a beautiful, blonde former
Washington Post
reporter named Sally Quinn.

In a moment of ratings-induced weakness, Richard Salant had agreed the previous winter to hire the stylish writer to cohost the
CBS Morning News
with veteran newsman Hughes Rudd. It proved to be an ill-fated venture, and Quinn was savaged from all corners of the media establishment. Aaron Latham—coincidentally, dating the beautiful, blonde CBS Washington correspondent Lesley Stahl at the time—did a hatchet job on Quinn, insinuating that she'd used her looks to get ahead. CBS was anxiously looking for any way possible to defuse the situation.

One idea was to send Quinn to London in November for the wedding of Princess Anne to Captain Mark Phillips, a high-profile assignment that would pair her with the producing talents of Hewitt, who had years of experience with special-events coverage, and with managing difficult talent.

Hewitt was already in London when Quinn arrived, and he greeted her at the airport with a hug and a kiss. The two had met several times before, and Quinn knew his wife from Washington social circles. She also knew about his reputation as a flirt, but never expected it to affect their working relationship—at least not until five minutes into their car ride into London from the airport. (The details of this episode come directly from Quinn's account in her
1975
memoir of her CBS experiences,
We're Going to Make You a Star
.)

“God, we're going to have fun,” Hewitt told Quinn. “London is such a great place to have an affair.”

“Oh, Don,” Quinn replied. “I couldn't think of anything nicer if I weren't already in love with somebody else.” Quinn was referring to her boyfriend, Ben Bradlee, the editor of the
Washington Post.

“Yeah,” Hewitt countered, “but he's there and I'm here.”

“Yes, but he's here with me in spirit.”

“Oh, don't give me that shit,” Hewitt said, then proposed dinner that night at a romantic London restaurant named San Lorenzo. Quinn used the dinner to explain to Hewitt her desire to remain calm and focused on this trip, after the tension she'd been experiencing in New York; Hewitt told her that “getting it” would help solve her problems. The back-and-forth continued between them; Hewitt became “very aggressive,” Quinn wrote, as the night wore on. “The whole thing was almost obscene.” Finally, in a moment of exasperation, he gave up the fight.

“Well, if you won't sleep with me,” Hewitt told Quinn, “I'll sleep with Barbara Walters.”

 

In a
1991
Rolling Stone
article about
60 Minutes,
Mark Hertsgaard reported that “according to numerous past and present staffers, male and female, various forms of sexual harassment of female employees have been a routine part of office life since the show's beginning.” One woman told Hertsgaard of an encounter with Hewitt that took place “before his current marriage,” which was in
1979
. Finding herself alone with Hewitt, she recalled him asking her “weird” questions about her personal life. “Before she knew it,” Hertsgaard reported, “he had grabbed her and started to kiss her. With great strength, he grasped both her forearms right below her elbows and ‘rammed me up against the wall—bang!—and pinned me there. I couldn't get away from him no matter how hard I tried. I was shaking. I remember he had stuck his tongue down my throat.'”

According to a
1998
Salon
interview with Hertsgaard, the woman also told the reporter (though it was cut from the published article) that Hewitt followed her into a stairwell, where she finally escaped Hewitt's clutches by “kicking him in the balls,” only to encounter him again the next evening at a formal gala. She was wearing a backless gown. Suddenly she felt someone running his fingers up and down her bare back, and turned to discover Hewitt. “Don't be scared,” Hewitt reportedly told her. “I just think you're a very attractive girl.”

Hewitt denied all the allegations—“Absolutely untrue!” he told Hertsgaard—and, according to Hertsgaard, went to
Rolling Stone
publisher Jann Wenner to try to kill the piece. (Hewitt then denied to Hertsgaard that he had spoken with Wenner.) Hertsgaard told
Salon
that Wenner later confirmed that he had spoken with Hewitt and apologized to the journalist for having done so. Hertsgaard said the story then sat at
Rolling Stone
for almost a year, until word of a
Wall Street Journal
story on Hewitt pushed the magazine to publish its scoop in a truncated form.

As for Wallace, Hertsgaard reported only that the correspondent had frequently patted women's behinds and snapped their bras. “Mike was very good at it,” one female staffer said. “He could do it with one hand. He'd sneak up behind you and suddenly—zing!—you're sagging out all over and he's giggling his way up the hall.” Wallace both admitted his behavior to Hertsgaard and apologized for it. “I have done that,” Wallace readily conceded in the
1991
article, and added that he hadn't snapped a bra in over a decade. “I guess to a certain degree it's generational, to a certain degree it's high spirits.”

 

“I would find it very upsetting,” Don Hewitt told
Rolling Stone
in
1991
, “if there is a problem of sexual harrassment at
60 Minutes
, and I would make every effort to have that person removed from the premises, because it is morally abhorrent behavior and illegal.”

In
1997
—at a time when women had been awakened to the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace, and empowered by Anita Hill confronting future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on national television—Hewitt, now
74
years old, was himself again accused of incidents of sexual harassment, this time by a female former
60 Minutes
editor, in a case that eventually reached the top corporate levels of CBS.

The woman, then in her thirties, claimed she had been subjected to harassment by Hewitt while working at
60 Minutes.
The woman reportedly left
CBS News
after being unable to get a transfer from
60 Minutes
to another show and went to work at another network.

At the time of her return to full-time employment at
CBS News
in
1994
, the woman reportedly told human resources personnel about the incidents but didn't file a complaint with CBS against Hewitt until
1997
. The woman later hired an attorney, which raised the possibility of a lawsuit. Such a suit would have brought immediate media attention to her claims and caused considerable embarrassment for Hewitt, one of
CBS News
's most valuable assets. In February
1998
, despite the network's official denial of the woman's charges, CBS settled with her for a mid six-figure amount. The woman continues to work for
CBS News
as a producer.

Ironically, just as her settlement was being negotiated, both
60 Minutes
and the country were immersed in parsing allegations of sexual harassment against President Clinton; in March
1998
,
60 Minutes
got a huge ratings bump from an Ed Bradley interview with Kathleen Willey, who was among Clinton's most prominent accusers.

 

Meanwhile, back in the
1970
s,
60 Minutes
was working on a piece that was, perhaps, the first of its kind: an investigation of the news media by the news media. This proved to be an exposé that would reach to the highest ranks of modern TV journalism, the anchor desk of the
CBS Evening News
and the most trusted man in America, Walter Cronkite.

While the print media was mostly digging through government documents looking for the next big Watergate scandal—hoping for the kind of cachet that had attached itself to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein after their Pulitzers and movie deal—
60 Minutes
(and in particular the ambitious producers working for Mike Wallace) was developing an early form of what would become a staple of the broadcast in the years to come: the investigative story with a “gotcha!” component. In taking on the media itself, Wallace was wagging his finger at the men and women who were busy becoming heroes to the rest of the nation, holding them to the same standards they were applying to others. He and Barry Lando appeared to relish putting the spotlight on reporters and editors who'd been given meals, plane trips, hotel rooms, and gifts in an unspoken—but understood—quid pro quo for favorable coverage.

Wallace also seemed to get a kick out of the surprise attack. He loved the drama of springing an unexpected question or fact on an interview subject, allowing the camera to capture the discomfort that usually followed.

That emerged in an interview with Paul Poorman, managing editor of the
Detroit News,
who had himself conducted a study about the junket problem for an industry group. Wallace got Poorman to denounce journalists taking freebies from corporations, only to follow up with a megadose of his own hypocrisy:

 

P
OORMAN
: I—I think that this whole issue is greeted with tightly controlled apathy on the part of many newspapermen. But it—there is a growing concern.

W
ALLACE
: Your paper has outlawed all gifts, right?

P
OORMAN
: Uh-huh.

W
ALLACE
: Okay. What about discount prices for the press, your reporters and yourself, from automobile manufacturers?

P
OORMAN
: Yeah, that—

W
ALLACE
: Is that out?

P
OORMAN
: That's out, and—

 

At that moment, everything came to a halt—the cameraman turned to Lando and informed him that he'd run out of film and had to put a new roll into the camera before Wallace could proceed. Wallace seized the moment and turned to Lando. “Do I have to ask this question?” he asked. “Is it fair?”

Lando had seen this before—Wallace's occasional reluctance to surprise the subject with damning information. It wasn't that Wallace was afraid to drop a bomb into the interview; he knew that's what viewers wanted from him. He just wanted to be sure he was justified in doing so. Quickly, Lando persuaded Wallace that it was a legitimate line of inquiry, and by the time the cameraman had reloaded, so had Wallace.

 

W
ALLACE
: Now, I understand from somebody on your own paper that you got a new car, and that you yourself fairly recently saved several hundred dollars on the purchase of a new car—

P
OORMAN
: Yeah, three years ago.

W
ALLACE
: Okay, three years ago—and got a discount.

P
OORMAN
: Got a discount of several hundred dollars. I think that is wrong to do. I think it's just something that shouldn't be done, and I won't do it again and no one on my staff will.

W
ALLACE
: Well, I understand that some people on your staff still do, still get discounts—

P
OORMAN
: It's possible. It's a firing offense, and—and they know that.