government at a time. in the interview i did with him he was being very gracious, as people are when they're trying to sell something, and he said is there anything i can do for you, anything you would like to see in my country? they just completed the first road over the high himalayas. ..

camp and another--one helicopter to another base camp and then an alouette french helicopter, the only helicopter that can operate at 18,000 feet--at that time anyway--to take us up to the top. and it was two-man helicopter into which they crowded not only me but my cameraman, who was crouched in the back of this machine with the lightest camera he could take. and we made it. it was the most incredible helicopter flight i've ever made. i love helicopter flights, but this was in the valleys of the himalayas, getting up into the snow line and then up to the peaks themselves. just incredible sightseeing. we

landed on this very top, where the pa--where the little pass was, where the road came. the road was all blocked, as they expected it to be, by landslides. it was going to be years before that all quit and they cleaned them up. i don't think they have yet and that was 10, 15 years ago. anyway, we got to the top and the pilot, a very well-spoken oxford graduate, pakistani airline--air force captain, and he said, 'now when you get out, move very slowly. at 18,000 feet, you're going to have trouble breathing. and really, we should have oxygen masks at this height. we don't have those individually. just move very slowly or else you may pass out.' so we were following these instructions to move very slowly. we didn't have very far to move anyway. this little, tiny platform on which we landed and the direct fall away into

the deep valleys below. from this site you can see the soviet union and india and pakistan, afghanistan. incredible. and the--and it was a very clear day up there, fortunately, for the helicopter flight. but as we started to move away, the engine was still running and the--my cameraman said to the camera--pilot, 'would you turn off the engine, please. we really can't hear over that engine roar.' and he said, 'oh, no, no. i can't turn it off.' he said, 'if i turn it off, i'll never get it started again at this altitude. and--and we only have one other helicopter that would get up this high and it's down for repairs. so i can't dare turn it off.' well, my gosh he hadn't told us that. now we moved as far as we could and i shouted over this helicopter noise. actually, the film wasn't worth anything

because the noise was too great. but as he--as we were standing there shooting, the en--engine made that helicopter noise it does when it's shutting down. my god, here we see the pilot rush--reaching down, punching buttons, pulling levers, and we hurried back despite all the admonitions about hurrying to get aboard that helicopter and get it off before it failed. and we did, obviously. had a very successful flight back. it was a great experience. unfortunately, the film wasn't very good. c-span: what year was that? >> guest: that was--must have been about 1981, '82. c-span: now this book came out right before christmas and you hit the road. what was it like on the tour? >> guest: you know, i love

my--the people at knopf, who edited and publicized this book and did a beautiful job of it. but i really must say, quite honestly, that in arranging these tours, these book tours, they--most of the lessons they've learned have come from the manual of the iranian terrorists, i think. the--the book tours are pretty frightful. they book you so you end up with four and a half hours sleep between the morning show one day and the late night show the night before that they've done. and can--incessant group of interviews and book signings. it's rather interesting. it--i found it quite fascinating. the book signings were particularly interesting. everyone, i think, must accept the kind of--w--with pleasure, the kind of adulation one gets with a whole line of people coming up to buy your book and say nice things about

you. c-span: were you surprised that it was on the best-seller list as long as it was? >> guest: oh, i was very surprised. very surprised. c-span: do you have any idea how many books that have sold? >> guest: i know how many were published. as you know, with books, until they get all the returns from the--all the retailers, why, they never know precisely what were sold. but over 800,000 were printed. and they have ha--had a feeling that the returns weren't going to be very high. so, apparently, it sold quite well. i was dumbfounded. i thought i--my real hope was that it might be good enough to make the best-seller list and stay there for a week or two down at 14 or 15, down at the bottom of the list. instead, in the first week it jumped into number one and stayed there for several weeks; stayed on the list for, i think, 19 weeks. c-span: was there much that you

wrote that was left out? >> guest: well, yes. my marvelous editor--and i would say that even if i didn't think i might write a sequel--ash greene, a great editor, he told me from the very beginning, 'write as much as you want, but let's--let's just get it on paper. and once you've gotten it on paper, if it's too much, we'll trim it down.' well, i did that. i just wrote. and it turned out it was about a third more than he thought would sell as a book. and, unfortunately, kay graham had another editor at knopf about the same time, and he let her get by with 400 pages; only let me get by with 300 pages. but she's still on the best-seller list, so it must mean something. at any rate, about a third of the book was cut. c-span: where was this picture taken?

>> guest: that was a studio portrait, quite obviously, done in my office in new york for another purpose and had been held for some time, a beautiful picture. i have--the only trouble with that picture is that it's so good that i have wasted a lot of time at the mirror in the morning trying to look like that before going out. i can't quite manage it. c-span: let me ask you about some of the business terms that come up in the book. who dubbed you an anchorman? >> guest: beg your pardon? c-span: who d-- first used the--the term 'anchorman'? >> guest: there's a slight dispute about that. it was either--an--and probably--sig mickelson, who was the first head of a combined television-radio news department at cbs and was really the architect of the kind of news department it took to handle radio and television and

particularly to pioneer television news, a great man and really one of my major sponsors. he's the man i have to thank for being where i got to at cbs news. and--or--and/or paul levitan, who was a wonderful producer, the first producer of the ad lib, extemporaneous type programming: conventions, elections, things of that kind. and i was under the impression that paul first used the word, but others have almost convinced me that i'm wrong; that sig originated it. but at any rate, it was--just at the same time, i mean, i know precisely when it began. it was for the first political convention, 1952, that we covered by modern television.

the 1948 conventions were covered as well, but with rather primitive equipment and only shown on three stations, so it hardly counted. '52 was what we really think of as the beginning of the television age with politics. and it was invented for that occasion. c-span: you write near the end of the book the following--you say that, 'a career can be called a success if one can look back and say, "i made a difference."' and then you say, 'i don't feel i can do that.' why? >> guest: well, that was a poorly explained statement in the book, quite honestly. i think i failed there because others have asked the question; many have asked it with a complimentary addenda there

that, 'you made a big difference.' and i'm--i'm willing to--willing to accept that compliment, that perhaps i did make a difference in some ways. that meant specifically to refer to the rest of that chapter in the fact that the--some of the standards that i felt that we had established, not just i, but everybody at all three networks in the early years of network television -- news, have been abandoned pretty well. what i thought we had established as a--probably an ongoing standard of production and values, ju--news judgment i don't feel have lasted. and that was what that referred to as, i think, the rest of the chapter made clear. but the bald statement doesn't quite stand up, perhaps. c-span: why haven't your

standards survived? >> guest: well, a lot of pressures. i think if--perhaps if i were in television today, i would be suffering the same pressures and perhaps reacting in the same fashion that those who are running television news today have. i'd like to think i wouldn't have, but i--i very well might have. the pressures are severe. the three networks, when i was doing it, were the dominant networks on the air. there was very little competition from either the independent stations or from cable, which didn't exist--cable just coming in when i left, and it had not become a factor at all yet. satellite broadcasting, videotape--all of the divertissements, other than the three networks, which dominated and absolutely monopolized the television sets.

people had one of the three networks to go to, primarily. as a consequence, we--the three of us--shared 100 percent, really, of the audience. actual numbers were in the high 90s; 98 percent or something of the audience was tuned to the--one of the three network news broadcasts. as such, we could afford to be a lot more high-minded than perhaps they feel today. today they're under such pressure from the competition. the total network audience today for the network programs is down in the 50 percent mark, and even drops below 50 percent for the total number of television viewers on at any time. well, that's a very drastic reduction in audience since my day. as a consequence, all three network news departments are

under considerable pressure from top management to try to hold up their 1/3rd of that 50 percent and try to build on that. as a consequence, the news management, under the pressures that they're under, have gone toward trying to popularize their broadcast; and instead of concentrating 100 percent on news, have gone to feature stories. and even those feature stories--although a feature story that explains the important news of the day, could be valuable--these are feature stories, i'm afraid, of hollywood personalities, of boo writers and publishers and the gossip side of the news, the back-page sides of the news, not the front page. and i think this is a terrible, terrible waste of time when on the evening news broadcasts we really only have about 23 or 24

minutes of news copy, subtracting the advertising, lead-in, the lead outs. that's not enough to cover the day's news, let alone taking out of that time, time for feature stories. it's a--really a desecration of the responsibility that's been handed to the news departments to do that. c-span: let me ask you some terms that you bring up in your book. you have a term late in the book called 'a lens hog.' you were accused of being a lens hog. explain that. >> guest: well, i was accused of it and possibly rightly. a lens hog, as the name implies, is one who hogs the lenses, who wanted to be on camera at all times. i did insist on being on camera at times during political

conventions and election nights, but i insist that this was a high-minded attempt to do a better job of reporting the conventions and elections than sometimes the producers would have wanted us to do by accident. excuse me a minute. i'm dry of throat today. the--you know, in a convention coverage, actually the only person--and this is one reason that i--what's also made me sound like a lens hog--always wanted to work alone instead of with a co-anchor, as huntley-brinkley, a very successful team on nbc, did. but the--that's a picture of our anchor desk with my two assistants. they weren't on the

air; they were just assistants of mine. and... c-span: in '52. >> guest: yeah, they were very important assistants. i couldn't have done it without them. but at any rate, the idea of a co-anchor or the other idea of bringing in the reporters from the floor, which were important reports to have--they added a great deal to what we understood was going on, on the floor of the convention at a time when the conventions--a lot of things happened on the floor. they don't in these later conventions, where they--they model their conventions now, the political parties, for television and we're not getting any real di--discussion of issues at all. but in those early days, those early conventions, there were--they were determined on the floor to debate between the delegations. and it was all very exciting, required a lot of explanation. but the only person in the entire operation who knew

what was going on from the podium at all times and elsewhere, from that matter, the--for that matter, the remotes we did at political headquarters, party headquarters, at the hotel lobbies, secret meetings and all of that from our other reporters--the only person in the whole shop who had a sense of the continuity of that story was me, the anchorperson. the people in the control room were so busy setting up the next shots, shouting over each other's own shouted words about where they wanted to go next, what we needed to cover at this time, what reporters had on the floor and they wanted to get on with, that they didn't know what was going on. they weren't even hearing me very clearly. so in the middle of an explanation of what the real difficult maneuvering was that was going on from the podium and on the floor, my producer would come in and say,

'go to mike wallace. go to mike wallace. he's got the carolina delegation.' well, heck, the carolina delegation didn't have anything to do with that story right at the moment, and mike ha--might have a very good story, but it didn't fit with the flow of what we were doing. so i would say, 'later. later,' you know, not on air, of course, but through one of those communicators sitting beside me: 'later. later. later,' you know? and as a consequence, the poor guys on the floor are standing there with some senator or governor that they're not going to be able to hold onto very long. they think they've got a really hot story, and they may have had. but i'm trying to keep the flow going. as a consequence, i became known as a lens hog, properly as i say. c-span: what's a 'tell item'? >> guest: a tell item is one where the anchorperson simply is reciting the item rather than going to a correspondent or tape or whatever--film or whatever. c-span: was there such a thing

as a magic number in those days? you write about... >> guest: the magic number was the number that i had for my part to the broadcast, and it was come by basically our deciding what film reports went into the broadcast from our correspondents at home and overseas and then what time was left. and the time that was left was what i would have on the broadcast. if the time left was not adequate for the major stories that i had to tell, we would then cut some of the film stories coming in. c-span: did that make correspondents mad when you wanted to up the numbers? >> guest: oh, sure. sure. it would make anybody mad. i'd--when i was a correspondent in the field--when i'd go out myself sometimes and do a story and a substitute would be sitting in at the anchor spot, even then i'd get furious that they were cutting my sp--my story instead of letting me run. of course, anybody thinks that their story's the most important of the day and that they need an extra 15 seconds or 20 seconds

or something of the kind. c-span: when did the first idea come to you that you needed an agent? >> guest: oh, heavens. i didn't think i needed an agent at all. at that--after that '52 convention and the two conventions, the democrat and the republican--both were in chicago, and with the lead-in week to each of them, we were out there almost a month ho--monopolizing the c--the schedule; for almost a month, we were on the air. and i'd gotten a lot of publicity, of course, and a very nice write-up in the newsmagazines. and the last convention, the democrats'--it was over 2:00 in the morning, and sig mickelson and i--my boss--heard--heard the news. we're walking down michigan boulevard and just kind of walking back to a hotel down the beautiful michigan

boulevard, 2:00 in the morning, and sig said to me--he said, 'well, walter, you're going to need an agent.' and i said, 'what do you mean i'm going to need an agent?' i said, 'i--i'm a newsman. i don't need an agent. you mean a theatrical agent, that kind of person?' he said, 'yes, exactly that kind of person.' i said, 'well, why in the world, sig, would i want an agent?' here's my--here's my boss telling me to get an agent. and he said, 'well, walter,' he said, 'you know, you're going to want a raise now.' i said, 'well, i hadn't really thought of that.' well, actually, i think i was making $150 a week or something at the time. and he said, 'well, that's ridiculous. you--you're going to abso--i know you're going to want a raise. and there's somebody for you to negotiate with, my business manager. i don't negotiate. a business manager negotiates for cbs, and you ought to have your business manager type do that. so you're going to need an agent.'

-- well, i had never thought of that in my life. i didn't have any idea of anyone to get. and even--and sig ended up giving me a couple of names, and i checked around on them and selected a very fine fellow, tuck sticks of the firm sticks and goude. and that was 1952, and he's been my agent ever since. c-span: were you the first in television to have an agent? >> guest: oh, i don't think so. no, i think i... c-span: in television news, that is. >> guest: yeah, yeah. no, i think even those in the news department probably had. but i was very naive about it. i hadn't even thought about it. c-span: more than once in the book you talk about an 800-pound gorilla. why? >> guest: well, that got to be a phrase used in television to describe me and, i think, other anchorpeople. and it can describe, as well, the headline--headliner off a newspaper, the top correspondents who

move in on a story when it breaks overseas, and the poor stringer's been handling it; now this fellow comes in. the other phrase for that is 'bigfooting,' coming in as a bigfoot, taking over the story. with the 800-pound gorilla, the story comes from the fact that--the old story of 'where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep?' the answer is, 'anywhere he wants to.' and the thought is that the anchorman, the "stars" in television news, have become 800-pound gorillas; whatever they want, they get. where do--where do they want to s--f--where do they sleep? they sleep where they want to sleep. c-span: but w--i--is that still the case today? >> guest: oh, sure. sure. absolutely. it's unfortunate, i think, that the star system has come to television news or--or to any news operation,

really, but to television news particularly--the exceedingly high wages they earn. bu--but i think it's inevitable. it's nobody's fault. nobody deliberately set out to develop it. it's just a fact that if you're operating in the environment of television, which is a show business environment, no matter how much we would like to deny that--if you're competing in that environment for viewers, you're bound--and your face is hanging out there, you're bound to become a "star" in the sense of a public personality. and a star value raises your value to the network. and i remember when barbara walters became the first television newsperson to get $1 million when abc lured her away from nbc to become the

first woman co-anchor on abc. and i--none of us were making $1 million at that point, and somebody asked me--some newsperson called and asked me, 'is barbara walters worth $1 million?' and my answer was, and still applies today, 'compared to what?' compared to a rock 'n' roll singer on television with whom she's competing for time and--on air? absolutely, she's worth a lot more than $1 million. compared to a high school teacher? certainly not; she's not worth $1 million. it's a code of values here that we're dealing with that you can't be com--can't compare apples and oranges. and that applies today. the fact that the anchorpeople are making huge amounts of money--they make in the multimillions of dollars a year--i think, is perfectly

proper in the area in which they work. it's--along with their salaries have gone up the salaries of most of the staff, people on air. it's still disproportionate, but that's the way it's going to be under a star system, and they operate in a--in a medium where the star system prevails. c-span: you say in the early days--get the quote here--that--"in the beginning golden days of television and of television news, that the rules were bent as we found our way." what's--what happened first: that you bent the rules or that the rules were created after you bent them? i mean, what--why do you say they were bent? >> guest: well, i think they were best primarily because--and this shows a certain prejudice on my part from my own background--they were built on

the basic old rules of print journalism. all of us at that time, practically, were out of print with--i don't mean out of circulation, but we came out of the print medium. and we brought with us the ethics of print journalism. we--well, we were simply concerned with the ethics of the craft: honesty, fairness, accuracy, crediting of all the sources of information, that kind of thing--s--things today i'm afraid even the print journalism has slipped in doing. the business has sort of deteriorated, perhaps, because of television leadership. i just felt that--i still feel that we were a little bit more

of--cognizant of the old principles of journalism than the younger staffs today, most of whom have not had print experience at all. not entirely their faults; there are not that much opportunities to get print experience. if--it's part of a vicious cycle; radio and television have driven so many newspapers out of business that we've--only have monopoly journalism--most cities--united states. and that doesn't provide enough jobs for people to be trained there before going to broadcasting. so it's become kind of a vicious cycle. c-span: you say, though, when you were in print journalism and you were with the houston paper--houston post, you're quoted as saying, "we res"--i think it was--it may not have been houston--"we resorted to the--all the dirty tricks ever devised in the game." you remember making that statement? >> guest: oh, yeah. sure, i made the statement, and i--i'll stand behind it.

c-span: but what were the dirty tricks? >> guest: there were--there were many in the game. and i don't mean to say that journalism was pure in--in all the print days. as a matter of fact, the best--the purest, i think, that newspapers have ever been were post-world war ii in a--in a period of about--about 20 years there from 1945 to--to 1965 or something in those ye--years. before that, there were a lot of sleazy practices before world war ii in newspapers, particularly among the graphic newspapers, the tabloid-sized papers. picture-stealing was one of them. the theory was that we always wanted to get a picture of the victims --or the perpetrator or whatever. and, frequently, to get a picture of

that individual, you would try to get it from the survivors, from --their home. and any old subterfuge would do if you could get the picture. i found myself, at one point, with the houston press at that point being sent out to get a picture of a young lady who had died in a scandalous accident, the car being driven by a prominent businessman in town late at night, back from a--obviously, a motel outside of town. and it was a--quite a scandal at the moment. i went out to the young lady's home and got there and found that there was no one there. the door was open, as they--they were in those days. people left their doors open. only the screen door was there, and you could look right into the house. and they

didn't answer the knock, and i looked in, and there on the piano was a picture of what clearly was the young lady, and--seemed to me from the description of her that we had. and since nobody answered, i just opened the screen door and went in and took the picture --off the piano and--obviously going to return it. possibly, we'd even get it back before they got back home, just take it to the plant and get it reproduced. and i did that. and, indeed, we had the only picture of her that afternoon in the afternoon papers. the only problem was it wasn't of her. i'd gone into the neighboring house in--instead of the house i was supposed to be knocking the door--at the door of. the--it turned out--and the only thing that saved my job was that the city desk had given me the wrong address. it wasn't really my fault. but that was a pretty nefarious thing, this picture-snatching. it was

clearly a case of burglary, going and picking up a picture of that nature. but at the moment i was very proud of myself. i got all kinds of accolades from the city desk for my enterprise. for this the c-span: you write in your book that--'i can't believe any news broadcaster today can possibly enjoy the work as much as we did.' why do you think that? >> guest: well, simply because that--to me, there was simply more to a news--getting a newspaper out than there is to getting on the air. the--on the air, you're still very much at the hands of the technicians. now they have become very news-oriented and understand what is needed and getting the picture on and the film on the air and the tape on the air and

the still pictures on the air and integrating all of this. they do an exceedingly good--a marvelous job of it in the little bit of time they have to organize it. but to me, that isn't putting out a newspaper. with the newspaper, it just seemed to me that the news department was in control throughout the process. the people who did everything were so keenly part of the process, rather than sitting in some kind of isolated splendor over here in the television, an assignment editor, for instance, who might not be able to write his name or her name, but was good at deciding who should go on what stories and--and made those decisions. i--oh, i don't know, a communications head that was in charge of being sure that the lines were in from wherever

the guy was going or the woman reporter was going, that kind of specialist. in the old newspaper days, it seemed to me, everybody was a writer, a reporter; they just happened to be on rewrite that day or they happened be on makeup that day. you were close to the whole production. when the doors swung open to the makeup room, you could hear the clatter of the linotype machines; you could smell the printer's ink; you could smell the pulp paper. the building shook when the big presses started rolling. and it was all part of the bloodstream. to me, television, radio--because probably you're in a business that is a--you are an adjunct to a much bigger business; news is not the major function of the business of

which--to which you're attached. you are a tail of that dog. and with the newspaper publishing, you are the dog. c-span: you interviewed dwight eisenhower, after he was president, for 13 hours. you interviewed lyndon baines johnson for how--how many hours? >> guest: it was almost the same, i think, about 12 hours, something like that. c-span: did you do it with richard nixon? >> guest: no, i did not do nixon--nixon's memoirs. c-span: did you have to pay dwight eisenhower? >> guest: yes, we--we paid both of them, as far as i know. c-span: do you remember how much? >> guest: no, i don't. i'm not sure i was ever even aware of how much precisely. the--we had a very strong, very rigid rule about paying anybody for an eyewitness story, any participant in the story or eyewitness to a story. but memoirs, i always felt and

agreed with management, were a vastly different story. if-- we were doing something that was the equivalent to an individual writing their memoirs, they owned that history; they owned that out--autobiographical information. they're entitled, it seems to me, to ac--ac--to get a fee for it. i never had any argument within myself with that or with anybody else. and i don't think we ever had any real concern about it--paying for a memoir. c-span: you did one of the last interviews with john kennedy... >> guest: yeah. c-span: ...in 1963 about--and one of the things you talked about was vietnam. what was the setting for that interview? >> guest: well, the--we were the first of the networks to go to the full half-hour broadcast from 15 minutes. believe it or

not, news broadcasts were 15 minutes for quite a number of years until--till that year of 1973--'63. and we went to the half-hour, and in doing so, we--i asked the president for an interview--if he'd sit still for an interview for the network's first half-hour broadcast, which he agreed to do. it was over the labor day weekend, and he was up at hyannis port, so we went up to hyannis port to his summer home and did the interview there. c-span: you say in your book on page 243, 'and i have always believed that if he had lived, he would have withdrawn those advisers from vietnam, although his secretary of state, dean rusk, later wrote he never heard the president mention this possibility.' this is a--that's--particular interview seems to come up in a lot of books we do here on vietnam. why

do you think he would have pulled american troops out of vietnam had he lived? >> guest: i th--i sensed that he was fed up with vietnam at that point. he was fed up with the leadership--the civilian leadership in vietnam, remarked upon it at some length. and it just seemed to me that he was too bright to have wanted to remain in a circumstance where it meant that we were going to have to take over that war and run the war in an environment which quite clearly was going to require a great deal more effort, more dedication of men and material than it would--had ever been planned. and i just feel that --he would have gotten out. c-span: let me just show you that--the same quote from your interview that chris matthews had in his book where--and it's just a shortened version and

you'll see it on the screen here in just a second. in this he talks about the winning or losing--i don't know where it is. we don't--i guess we don't have the quote. but i wanted to show you that quote where y--and you have it in your book where you say, 'they are the ones who have to win it or lose it. we can help them. we can give them equipment. that war can be won out there. in the final analysis, it is their war.' then he said a week later--and i don't have--i don't know if we have the quote ready or not but it was a quote that was made on the david brinkley and chet huntley program. or i guess david brinkley had an interview with him. and if we can see that quote, i'll show mr. cronkite--i guess we don't have it. anyway we're at the point in that particular quote--that's not the quote. anyway, i'm sorry. we don't have it. the idea was that he said in another interview that he doesn't see us getting out of there for a long time. >> guest: well, i think that there--this was a result of considerable unhappiness in his

official family over the comment on our broadcast. they reacted to that with considerable concern that he had tipped the fact that shortly thereafter--well, there was an assassination, as you know, of bod zem, the emperor leader of vietnam. and the united states cia was very much involved in the plot to depose zem. th--there are various representations of what precisely happened in the actual murder of zem. the attempt is made to disclaim any american responsibility that it got out of hand, the entire revolution--coup d'etat, which was supposed to get rid of bod zem but not cause his death.

others maintain that the cia involvement--the american embassy's involvement was much deeper than that and that actually we went along with the assassination. that has never been proved one way or the other as far as i know. but in his statement there to me, it was interpreted by some people right away that he had tipped the fact that we knew what was going to happen out there and that there was great concern that he would be held liable, as people examined that statement later, to have him plan the assassination--zem. because of that pressure, i think he was backing off of the statements the following week when nbc jumped on the bandwagon and also went to a half-hour

and he duplicated his effort with us by giving huntley-brinkley an interview. and i think that's what happened. years later--the keepers of the flame after kennedy's death, which was only a couple of months after our interview--the--we're still out trying to cover up the tracks, if you please, to doll up history a bit. and pierre salinger, who's a good friend of mine who had been his press secretary, wrote a piece in the new york times magazine, which accused us at cbs of having edited that statement of his to make it appear that he was against the administration of bod zem when h--when actually he had praised the administration in parts we cut out. well, that was a vast

overstatement by pete's--vast overstatement. indeed, there was a statement in there which was on the broadcast which said something nice about bod zem, about the administration. there were a couple of other statements that said something nice. we cut those out only because of time, but in no way did we alter the impact of either his praise of bod zem or this business of getting out. and i think that this was just another attempt to preserve camelot on pet-pierre salinger's part. virgo c-span: around that subject of vietnam you say this: 'i was proud of the degree to which we had kept our evening newscast free of bias.' and as you know not everyone agrees with that. you... >> guest: no. c-span: ...over the years. i have a question. why in the midst of keeping the newscast free of bias did you have one person, eric sevareid, be the spokesman for cbs news? >> guest: because--well, actually, eric was not the spokesman for cbs news. we never represented him

as such. as a matter of fact, we represented that these were his own opinions. the--and they were. frequently, i'm sure that they were--they were not those of bill paley at the top management of cbs at all. eric was far more liberal than the management of cbs was. and there was constant strain between the two. but--w--well, he was not selected as a spokesman. he was selected as an editorialist; that we felt we needed someone trying to put the--the focus where it belonged on these very complicated national and international stories. and eric was a superb essayist in that regard.

c-span: but why didn't you just have another voice in there on the other point of view if people were criticizing at that time so people could hear the other side? >> guest: you mean another point of view other than eric's? c-span: yes. >> guest: well, i don't think it was thought that we were setting up a debate. we were setting up a--an opinion by an editorialist, if you please. we tried to avoid and--eric's having an opinion. when i say an opinion column, an editorial column, i am stretching the co--the point. we used to make the point--i used to make the point that he was an analyst, not an editorialist and not a commentator. those three all were different. the commentator commented on the news. an editorialist suggested action on the basis of their opinion of the news. and an

analyst simply took the pieces out of the--the complex picture and tried to show you where they--how they fitted together. and i--that's what eric tried to do most of the time. he slopped over into editorializing, i must admit. and it was basically liberal. c-span: in the last couple of minutes i want to ask you about this person right here. you mention her often in the book. and you talk about her sense of humor. that's betsy. how long have you been married? >> guest: we've been married 56 years and i'm--say that they've been 56 mighty wonderful years. betsy maxwell, which was her maiden name, is a woman with one of the great senses of humor of all time. there she is with her mother and our firstborn, nancy. the--her mother had a sense of humor as

well. the fam--the whole family did, the maxwell family. see, my wife had a new knee replacement not too long ago. and i must say, with all the pain at the hospital, all the doctors and all the nurses says, 'my gosh, what a sense of humor that woman has.' it was passed around the hospital immediately that she was a wit. c-span: what's nancy, your oldest daughter, doing today? >> guest: nancy is in real estate in martha's vineyard. my other daughter there they are with the beatles. they were the--they got to meet the beatles on the first trip to the united states backstage at "the ed sullivan show." and my other daughter is kathy. she lives in austin, texas, with her lawyer husband and her two children and travels a great deal, lecturing on mental health, which is a subject of her second of two books.

c-span: what about chip, your son? >> guest: she's working on a third book now. i beg your pardon? c-span: your son, chip? >> guest: and chip is the third child who is not in that picture. he's a little baby then. he's a television producer, i'm happy to say; works with me in new york in our own company. c-span: and are you going to come out with a second book? >> guest: well, i don't know about that. i must admit that a lot of people are reminding me of a lot of stories that i had forgotten about, didn't get into this book. i've got about a third of a book already done that ash greene ordered me to cut out of this one. so the temptation is there. i don't promise a sequel but there might be one. c-span: walter cronkite's our guest and the book is called "a reporter's life." and thank you very much. >> guest: thank you.

the door more information of the life of zouamg zjap zouamg, visit c-span.org or you will find a link to video archives on c-span professor alf fyfe

>> pull it caymen, who was iris

chang? >> iris chang was known from the 97 bestseller that was the book, the rape of nanking, and it did huge things to raise awareness about japanese atrocities during world war ii and that was only nan king but in great detail about the massacre there there raise awareness about atrocities throughout asia, so it became a whole movement rather than just a book. it in the late 90's. >> who is she a historian? >> she was both a historian and a journalist, so-- you did not see them as mutually exclusive, so she was good at being a historian, a big tool of hers was archives and she spent days and days buried in the national archives and other archives but then she also went out, confronted people face to face so she used all of those methods. >> where was she from? >> she was from urbana illinois. we actually met in college in

the illinois in the mid '80s that we were friends since then. >> what kind of relationship did you have as friends? >> at first i didn't know what to think of her, she was many steps ahead of me but there was a few internships and every time there was one she would get it. before i thought of implying to if she would have got it. she was always so far ahead of us. she had the idea to write "the new york times" as the u.s. by correspondent. she just call them up and soon she had stories in the front section of "the new york times." who does that? we did not know what to make of her. i saw what the real talent back up this incredible nerve and i decided to try to emulate her instead of seeing her as a rival we were both sounding boards. she became a huge role model of

what it meant to be a successful author. >> what happened to her? >> this is the reason why both the book because it was one of the most shocking things i had never experienced. she committed suicide, which seemed for no apparent reason head in 2004 when she was 36 years old. there were lots of rumors swirling everywhere that the right-wing japanese head assassinated her. she had a lot of enemies. >> because superbug? >> yes, and she was very vocal in criticizing the history books and the political leaders. there's also rumors that the u.s. was somehow behind it, that she was very active in trying to get veterans of the bataan death march, to sue japan for their enslavement in the state department wasn't so happy about that but it turned out that she fed a lot of manic depressive

illness or bipolar disorder that got worse after she had her son which often happens with women, and it was exacerbated by a lot of real pressures that were all around her. >> so, what was our last conversation with her? >> she called me just three days before she killed herself and that was the first time i ever said something was seriously wrong. i realize now it was a bike call and then it seemed like a strange, bizarre thing. i did not know what to make of it but that was the first time i had noticed her as really depressed and disconnected from reality. she was so depressed it was hard to get the words out. and, in retrospect she was explaining to me why she was about to do this and she talked about a lot of guilt in ways that she had raised her son.

she talked about a lot of fears that she had, and that i had been a good friend to her and yeah, it was very, very disturbing but as disturbing as it was i did not think her life would end a few days later. >> so, what did you find about iris chang? >> she was very very complex. there was a lot behind this tamir of perfection that all of us basically saw her as having the absolutely perfect life and being the perfect person that we did not even want to share our problems with her because she would not expand-- understand having problems are what that was like. she was incredibly, incredibly driven and that is what helped her to uncover all these tough parts of history and atrocities in japan. with the mental illness she did not know when to stop and she didn't know about any kind of limits that she had come so she

was inspiration in her drive not saying let's but ultimately it was the weakness and not getting treated for the mental illness, so you know she refused to accept that she had it. >> is there a astigmatism with mental illness in asian-americans? >> in every culture there is a huge stigmatism but in asian culture it is really extreme. agents are of much less likely to get treated with therapy or medication and when they do go for treatment is usually at the 11th hour when they are already at the psychotic stage, when it is really hard to reverse what happened so that is what happened with irs. she began seeing a psychiatrist two weeks before her death and that was because of family forced her and she was not compliant with what he was telling her to do. >> what china does have you made in your life because of iris

chang's suicide? >> no one has ever asked me for that-- that before. i appreciate living, a lot of it is corny, i appreciate living in a moment. i am having my second child in several months and, just i am looking a lot toward the lighter things in life and enjoying them. i'm going to return to writing about tough topics, but just to know my limits and to take time off and not be so driven every second of the day. >> besides this book, but other books have you written? >> i have written three other books. the one before this was all in my head, about an 18 year migraine and i wrote on "new york times."com about a year ago, and that is about women and chronic pain and how it is seen as all in our heads and how

recent research shows it as neurological. i rode to feminist books. when i was 24 called feminists fatale. that was like the first post boomer feminist book and a one that is related to that called her way about young women and sexual attitudes about having more status and education in society is affecting their personal lives. >> we have been talking with author paula caymen about your buck, finding iris chang. >> pulitzer prize winner edward humes profiles the multimillionaires who are trying to take the planet green. after words sunday on c-span2's booktv. >> the secret memoirs of former chinese communist party premiere and secretary general, zouamg zjap zouamger