and managing editor of dan rather reports on access t.v. and i'm honored to have the legendary newsman and my friend than join me has been with us many times in fact this man while anchoring the c.b.s. news would cover hurricanes for us on larry king live here in the lower level standing are very very warm of a tree dan rather than a man of our let's get right to it what do you make of the bridge gate well first of all it's an overstatement call it bridge gate and then what is sort of all this serious but if you first wrote about it this all started with watergate watergate became a shorthand word for a widespread criminal conspiracy led sort of say by the president of united states out of the oval office constitutional crisis of the country more than forty people served hard time now those who know that story to be true of this widespread criminal conspiracy tried always to soften it by saying well these things happen

all the time as bridge gate it is this gate and that gate there's only one gate and that's watergate good serious no this bridge fiasco you can call it that but as we head toward the front a better word see what i mean if there is one has to has to have some context for things in the watergate is in a whole different category now this kind of thing does happen in politics very often widespread criminal conspiracy led by a president whom happen once in a lifetime first of all i think the story has a long way to run. and what's happening to governor christie he's hunkered down like a mule in a hail storm just right now. i was going to ask you here dan rather is rushing toward christie's going through he just gave it to me well he's also admitted he would rather walk through a furnace in a gasoline suit and go through this. because partly is other here's some of your republican compatriots are turning to him like your friends of the desperate housewives turn on one another that's inevitable in these things happen i think it

is a long way to run we don't know how it's going to turn out i do not assume that it necessarily knocks christie out of the republican prison that a lot is going to find out that he knew about it more it could but it isn't here now we have to know more they've indicted the other call on people to testify or have someone turned or someone said he did know well that would be very bad news for christie indeed but you mentioned criminal charges that's one difference here watergate as they say of widespread criminal conspiracy forty people convicted felons as best i can see there's no mall been broken here in the bridge gate thing now it may turn out to be their best to getting one and they invest in their will and one but as i understand it from criminal defense attorneys it is going to be a difficult case to make but we will see what is not a widespread criminal operation i think where the trouble is really going to come down in the courts are civil cases people say listen i was put out this was unfair

and i think that they'll have some cases you covered politicians for so on the something that always amazes me and i defer to your knowledge of this whether christie knew or not let's take his top aide nixon was going to win that election what is the invading democratic headquarters looking for why you're going to win the election one mayor isn't supporting you so your staff close is of the. well you're going to win whatever are you were one whether governor christie knew about it or was involved or not we don't. no but at least his staff you have to say they were schooled in the high ninety's on a dumb test this was really dumb to do it on off from all appearances with these big good people did was they parachuted into the valley of the stupid he didn't need to do is read the first he could get them a month from now a year of now two years and it was a dumb thing to do but look who among us haven't done something dumb our lives and telling us the jersey city governor is the mayor is elected people are all going to

come down to help them he says he's not going to go as they cancel everybody down from the state to help out the city why the big politicians major politicians get petty. i can understand of the local councilman but why a governor or a governor's top aide well because nobody's perfect that's number one secondly it depends on organizations take on their personality and character from the top and not every political organization is filled with revenge and that i'm you point out the downfall of richard nixon was clearly it wasn't good enough for richard nixon to beat his opponents this is key it was either the watergate thing it wasn't just good enough for him the big his opponents he's want to destroy and that's the lion and you can say in a way that line where that line was made to determine how long this bridge situation goes because it from all appearances they sought to destroy the mayor the

democratic mayor of in support of the give this report admission i was going to discuss this later over europe now fox news channel president of into this roger ailes who's and now they've got a book coming out that really apparently really attacks him i haven't read it yet he was asked in an interview today the distinction between the news and opinionated program his exact reply was i grew up in the era when dan rather hated richard nixon he was a newsman but you knew what his opinion was the reaction well first of all of a lot of the you hated things i've never seen it just simply isn't true it isn't really really worth discussing i'm respected and continue respect the office of the president i respected richard nixon came into office what is true if we know this from the tapes richard nixon hated dan rather and c.b.s. news that's a matter of record and roger ailes was and for all of the things he's accomplished roger ailes was an operative for richard nixon use of an expected to say something like this and frankly i don't take it personally don't take it seriously do you

agree with the think that the thought that fox news channel is a actual a part of the republican party. you know what i'm pausing only because i want to give a thoughtful answer that i understand that argument i think it goes too far which is to say i think ailes is considers himself still a part of the republican party i think central far as he's able to that he wants his channel to be that way but i don't want to indict everybody at fox news channel because i know some of the pros there who are pretty good i don't want to dance around your question but i do do think that roger ailes would say this about him he is a very good businessman he's very smart about television and he built a network when i for one wasn't at all sure he could do so and has he used to do benefit the republican party yes the record is very clear on that but is it a sole operative in propaganda machine for the party and have stopped short of that

right now or move to something more current expectations for obama in two thousand and fourteen what's going to happen in the house and the senate well if you're not as good as many times on the straight answer kind of question there's i don't know i want to discuss it with you but you know i've been around long enough to know that he who lives by the crystal ball learns to eat a lot of broken glass in iraq have even more than my share to talk about what's going to happen i would say at the present time we're talking here near the end of january in the election year i think the republicans keep control the house of representatives i would not be surprised if he's going games and seats in the house republicans keep control of the house in the senate the other things will gain seats in the house and the senate but i don't think enough to get control of the senate it is not going to be a good year for brock obama and the democrats in my judgment you easy to few months back that president obama's opponents politically want to cut his heart out and throw his liver to the dogs politically why is that still true even more today it

was when as they did do you think it's part racist. i do a point only because i know there are people jump over there but it was great it is so venomous well here's a little bit i do want to make clear not everybody who disagrees with obama not nearly everybody not everybody in the republican party but your question was is some of it is yes i think it's impossible to have the first president of color in the white house and not recognize that that some of the dislike for him in his policies or is rooted in racism no question about it but not by no means all of it and let's acknowledge that president obama has made his own mistakes he hasn't operated a perfect presidency. so it gets complicated but the answer your question is some of the races of course as an american as a journalist what are your thoughts is snowden a hero or a villain you know no human has that person who is the most difficult question i

try have to try to answer these days i come out of i think he's neither a hero nor a villain at least not on the basis of what we know because we don't know the whole story or we know they leaked or we don't they look no question about that but for example when i'm not did he get the job intending to be the leaker that he became or was the conscience stricken advantage on leaks or things like that we don't know but again i don't want to basle it but i think like most people i'm i'm a bit torn on the one that i think the information on the medium and long will it will be of value to society we stand a chance of being a better country because this information gets out in the short run i understand the organises listen the country needs to be able to keep some secrets such as who in our spy apparatus is has contacts in pakistan and other places exposed and enjoys difficult to come down on it that i think he's neither a hero nor

a villain i think those who say bring him back to this country let him. stand trial that's fine but it quickly gets in the question if you're going to put him on trial what about the head of the g.s.a. of what do you know the lawyers on the at the n.s.a. who didn't deliver to the congress what are your thoughts on the right to listen to phone calls of. domestic or foreign you know i think you want to hang around with arnold ok denies that no i think in in twenty first century reality. all that the government has to have a very constricted and very limited ability with proper safeguards built into it to listen to some calls what i'm an old really opposed to is blanket listening to calls over and there is a system in place as we know i'm not saying the system is perfect less point for cyclists is to be used that you have a court where they're supposed to go to those court and the court is supposed to be

a check and balance now some of the time they have been going to court other times it looks like the court may be the quote the fix is in but i tend i can subscribe to a theory that says the government under no circumstances can listen to no telephone calls to most it was not given the terrorist in burma which were uppity and i read how do you feel about i became totally one hundred percent would you say it's a dilemma but they've got to do what if you knew someone was going to do something or you had strong suspicions and you could prevent it you not for that yes and how would we judge any president who said well i could have known what you know what i understand it is better not to me but we write better than great dan rather coming up more right after this.

very hard. on. the other. the the poor. dramas that can't be ignored. to. stories others refuse

to notice and. say since changing the world right now. so picture of today's leaves no longer from around the globe. up to. fifty. fiftieth's the economic ups and downs in the final months day the london new york sang and the rest of the life during the day killed me every week on famed. the for.

the record dan rather lee former anchor of c.b.s. evening news and now of course with access t.v. dan i understand the president is no one from the administration though is the president and first lady going to be the limpets we think. all things considered probably the right did right call because well because there's so much going on in the soviet union including the persecution of gays and lesbians but there's only a part of it it wouldn't very difficult for him to go in my judgment but i have no doubt it was a close call on his mind because after all the olympics with most of his in the very special category you try to lift above a nation for that matter international politics but in russia at the present time

just not possible. ok we have a situation this country at present is unpopular congress is on whose popular it was a hero in america these groups well it's a good question maybe united do a book where of all the heroes on i think there are a lot of heroes and i think the cop who walks the lonely beat in a tough neighborhood by himself and my hero i think the single mother with three kids is working four jobs trying to keep her. her family together is a her on their day to day heroes all over the country in terms of transformational political leaders pretty short supply right now and you look up and down the society but we go through these periods you know larry you know i've talked about this so many times before i'm so i'm an optimist by experience but nature i love this country with a deep abiding. love and i'm up at least one feature i know there are going to go listen we're on the down whose lives were in the back side of the slope we were in

the room on the standing they get and we have no over commanding heroes in our political life but you know what we'll get there we'll get there and i don't have any doubt about it great lawyer to friend of mine the way that we went away and was asked once we were not that was so pessimistic said of course i'm a pessimist unintelligible and i thought i'm not going to take the opposite view that i don't know that. compare that i wanted you to compare the controversy over lara logan's now discredited sixty minutes report and the problems you had if your national guard service report on well joy landed there but i want to make it very clear i don't want to add to c.b.s. news these problems are a local problem i know what if he was like to be in the vortex of those kind of controversies and i'm pulling for everybody at c.b.s. news. firstly and of all my life there is a great difference between their situation this is the one you mentioned and what

we do with the bush national guard story let's see clearly when our story our story was true you could argue in play you did that we reached that truth through a flawed process and there were plenty of people that they knew the story was true but they couldn't stand it so they had to make it out to be false that's what happened was he think our story was true did george bush's father use influence to keep him from going to be a nom getting him into national guard yes that's true. george w. bush there's no joint saying there's did he disappear from his national guard obligations that's a fact those things are true to our story was true we caught his own you can argue impression shoot him that the process was not pristine but i've got a clue what to come back to i'm not walking the logans use and i'm not walking sixty minutes use i'm no longer at c.b.s. on that they've got a lot to deal with this is not a way to do their problems you asked me the difference between that situation in which they have acknowledged that when they they had

a problem witness all account i told me near the end of his life that he was disappointed. that kind of a raw deal and you certainly felt when they did the fiftieth anniversary of j.f.k.'s death and tenet airbrushed you out when you reported from dallas so many reporters on that scene in that area and you feel if you finally you know what i like you any do you want to start of the grass is a great day and i said you have his work and i love it and all of that happens leaders of the day once i do i do think that. we need to see when it comes to history they can airbrush me out of the pictures they present when it comes to the history the news organizations and be trying to change history and the c.b.s. news history is whether they now like me or not like me who there doesn't you go through just this coming year and a version of tiananmen square in which we were at the union square the civil rights

movement which i covered. not to mention the kennedy assassination so to try to change history and that's very serious what they do to me doesn't matter all right you've done a lot to get a story including i told you tried heroin back in one nine hundred sixty five right so you would cover that as a you would understand don't since i've tried pot i lie like bottom fact i got a friend to smoke the because i thought i would start smoking again but part was i thought a part should be legal i've said that before. always heroine or heroines older or different things. this is the scene is the houston police station in one nine hundred fifty five uncovering the police lead heroin nobody really knew what heroin was my recollection is they had arrested some musicians it into town and they were talking about a trojan with heroin what is heroin and work in the radio stations or is it what you want to do and say well we don't know we've never tried it so what would you do

it for me this would not happen today and you can say it was a damn fool thing for me to do but there's what happened between us and what it was like number one otherworldly is the best way i can describe it i can also say it gave me a three or four day headache afterward and i came out i would say to myself i don't know what he what he sees in the stuff and i know i never want to face it again and never did and katie couric on the internet we're on the internet. what do you make of all this where's it all going well with our new words all going but it's part of the reality and going to be part of reality for a long time to come you know we went through in terms of journalism but also the society we went through the print a job newspapers that gave way to the radio era radio era gave way to the television era now the television iran might have been used in the way to the internet era it doesn't mean it's going to replace television more than television replaced radio but the internet is the future with a way largely or not now i have to think that overall in the mind the internet is

a force for good information education edition for years as they have its problems yes one of them being that with anonymity you can smear your neighbor or anybody else nobody can tell her that but nonetheless and if it isn't already true larry i think it's already true but if it isn't but true now that most people get most of their news from the internet it soon will be particularly young people now that them say people don't we visit all under the age of forty other it's only will depend on newspapers by and large for most of the news noted and on television radio. go to the internet that's where it is yeah but the young they grow up and the old get older and leave us what happens to newspapers in twenty years around i think they'll be around began having is that i'm an optimist i understand the argument that they're finished i don't think so anymore than normal going to remember radio came in everybody's that was in newspapers or that is where they were vanished when television came in is that both radio and television if it is it

doesn't work out that way i think newspapers will be around i think their content will be more it will be longer longer form it is now because people who want longer form news reports and information are good news but if you miss the old days of free networks and p.b.s. . sure do of course i do something will say that journalism we have probably for our news but the journalism was better than that there are no more rose now i'm not sure that's true and i'm not sure on the best person to judge it would have to go you know i'm a i'm a child of the thirty's forty's fifty's sixty's and seventy's i do agree that there are moral stands alone this is one of the problems i had with walter cronkite mum i'm sorry for the way cronkite. was of a bible icon and legend but marone was the founding strength of electronic journalism the know it as we know it i don't think anyone has

matched moros the quality of the sustained quality of his journalism. but i'm not old friends enough to say listen the golden age was back when i was doing it back in the sixty's and seventy's there are a lot of good journalism around the day in fact the three anchors at a.b.c. c.b.s. n.b.c. a very good one to agree of for me first rate first rate and the newscasts are first rate but they're not many people as many used to watching them well i have some are going to the newscast and i think over away over adult beverage i think the three anchors would say they probably had to go through it because there is so sensitive they've always been seriously to ratings and demographics but i don't think any either any one of the three network newscasts now are as hard or as hard news as the anchors would like them to believe that they'll have to speak speak for themselves did you run a tough ship and seen you the managing editor i was so with your orders cast

there's anyone out there anywhere but come down from above than say don't drug was basically no c.b.s. at that time i can speak for you know the deal was i was an anchor and managing editor of the t.v. years which meant i had to call in every story it was a collegial process i would ask a lot of other people's opinion but in the end i decided what went in the broadcast and what didn't now answer the broadcasters over i was accountable plenty of times i got hauled into the news division president's office and said then what the hell do you think you're doing are you trying to track this thing into the ditch but that's the way it worked then only there were only two occasions in the twenty four years that was anchor managing editor of even years that a news division president. came anywhere close to commanding that we do something coverage one was the and you were a member of this case from the point for a second congressman. condit member there he the mara killing of girl in

the lantern gary renard it is very condit everybody else it was august news was late everybody was running with that story i didn't want to run with it and finally the news division president in effect that then you got to run something on this and i said it's her journalism the words she said you got to and so but by and large c.b.s. when i was there i got to make the calls on the evening news but i was accountable it was over you know i didn't make all perfectly obvious why did you ever come close to leaving c.b.s. of your own militia going to another network you know that ted turner and well a lot of first let me correct that. in my heart of hearts you know but there were times when i did carefully consider it. one when when roone arledge zero tried to get me to come to a b c news in one thousand eighty seven united eighty or it was a powerful push really really when they're they've you know well if you know what i mean and then. around the two thousand i want to say in one thousand nine hundred

ninety two thousand odd ted turner came with an offer and quite honestly i'd always wanted to work for ted i admired him from the los early on but those two times i considered but each time over money was better elsewhere and one could argue might have been better financially to go you know somewhere i've seen be as leaders tattooed on my hands. i understand and i had to find a loyalty and also not just loyalty but i thought it was the best place in the world for the twenty journalists to work no regrets on sure you always have regrets you no matter who could've should've done this that it was all came she's gone. you know i love reporter years as with fish and go i have a patient who is i believe i have a lot of laws larry many of which you know what many of which have been exposed over the years i have a lot of wounds someone's overinflated some of them still open wounds but i think

even people who disagree with me are both like me for a reason that would be there's i have a passion for covering the news always having you say working for me going is that i actually i love to get out on the story and the big stories even better and the been out front to be in the really big story is nothing my thing you know you kind of got it wakes up and says what's going to happen today absolutely might be that the floor every warry i say where's the story. under oath as thanks to dan rather for joining me on the politicking today for my views out there i want to hear from you join the conversation on my facebook page and share your thoughts on twitter by tweeting at kings things and using the politicking hash tag that's all for this week's politicking you've got a surprise guest for you next week don't go with. millions around the globe struggle with hunger each day. what if someone

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controlling the media agenda social media expands in scope and influence you tube twitter and facebook entertain and inform hundreds of millions of people every day however the same are used to promote hoaxes in mass propaganda pursuits is it inevitable that conventional media is doomed to follow the whims of those even hijack the internet.

tonight president obama urged uses curbs on the n.s.a.'s bulk phone data collection program but there's concern the surveillance isn't being scaled back enough the breaking news headline now other headlines tonight syria says it's ready to unite with moderate rebel groups in the fight against hardline radicals the country's foreign minister who's syrian moscow ahead of the peace talks. please stay britain's foreign secretary is on a charm offensive to convince undecided scots not to quit as the months take to a decisive referendum. they were giving shoes just.