Cronkite

by Douglas Brinkley

  Working with Cronkite on Universe was his old writer-producer friend Dale Minor, formerly of CBS Evening News. One episode of the show was to be shot in wild Alaska, where high-tech digital mapping was being developed by the U.S. government. It was the pre-Google era, and Cronkite thought this technology could, in the end, be an amazing tool for TV broadcasters. Betsy had gone along for the Alaska junket to enjoy the grandeur of the Denali wilderness. As a surprise, Minor helicoptered in a card table, cooked turkey, and vintage wine so the Cronkites could have a high-altitude lunch with snowcapped Mount McKinley as the backdrop. “It was our way of telling Walter thank you,” Minor recalled. “We made it this incredibly romantic lunch for them.”

  While Universe had a devoted following, the ratings were lukewarm. For one show, Cronkite flew out to Palo Alto, California, to interview the founder of a company called Failure Analysis. Although the company’s business was aimed at teaching companies how to grow, Cronkite joked that Universe should be a client. Back in New York, one of the producers wore a Failure Analysis ball cap, which generated a lot of laughs before Universe was canceled in 1982.

  A veteran of forty-five years in journalism, Cronkite was now passé. Programs such as Universe just couldn’t hack it in the Nielsen ratings sweepstakes of the Big Three networks; they belonged on PBS, where information was treated as something near-divine. “I suppose when Universe fell away, I could have said, ‘let’s have a Walter Cronkite piece once a week or once in a while,’ ” Dan Rather reflected in a 2011 interview. “But by the time Universe was finished, Socolow and Cronkite were just banging the tom-toms against me.”

  There was another door opening in 1981 where Cronkite might flourish. Cable television had been around for decades, but in the late seventies and early eighties it burgeoned into a new frontier of independent national channels. Turner Broadcasting launched the Cable News Network on June 1, 1980, a time when channels of all types sprang into existence. In 1981, when Cronkite reentered the TV journalism field, as a CBS personality on the prowl, he was competing with a far larger crowd and at a faster pace than would have been the case just five years before. What was new in television in the Reagan era was just about everything. Millions of new cable subscribers were exploring dozens of new channels such as C-SPAN, HBO, CNN, and WTBS, where formerly there were only three or four. The new world of television offered an exponential expansion on the old industry model, with hundreds of new shows and thousands of personalities. Cronkite had reentered the job market, so to speak, at an inopportune time for familiar faces. Viewers just then were delighting in unfamiliar ones.

  The Big Three networks would continue to matter in the new cablecentric world, but they would be up against a lot more free-market competition from entertainment channels like ESPN, Disney, and Playboy. John Hendricks, founder of the Discovery Channel, surmised that one reason why Cronkite was so adaptable to the birth of cable television was that he was devoted to documentary films. Cronkite believed the new cable revolution would allow for a greater number of documentaries to be seen by larger audiences. And networks such as the Discovery Channel could feature more films produced in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. The more international news programs America received via satellite, Cronkite firmly believed, the more informed the public would be. Already he was thinking about traveling to South Africa with director Ken Sable to expose the apartheid system for a CBS News documentary that would be titled “Children of Apartheid.” His anti-apartheid project aired on December 5, 1987, and won both an Emmy for “Outstanding Achievement in a Documentary” and the Overseas Press Club’s Edward R. Murrow Award for “Outstanding Documentary.” Someday, Cronkite hoped, South Africans would have their own CNN and C-SPAN, broadcasting political conditions truthfully from Johannesburg to Cape Town (two of his favorite cities) so the world could learn more about the extraordinary country.

  Although Cronkite stayed amazingly busy, he was not prepared for his retirement from CBS Evening News. He had quit too soon. While he still cut an unforgettable figure wherever he went, he no longer exuded power. A void had now entered his life that all the trips to Timbuktu or the Amazon couldn’t fill. He had never felt more hopeless. He had a partial interest in everything, without a sharp sense of mission about any one thing. When Bleckman visited the Cronkites at the Vineyard one summer, he recalled Walter holding court in the parlor, punctuating every sentence with anchorman-like authority, pontificating about world events, scarcely making a dent in his lunch. A hallmark of the Cronkites’ successful marriage was that Betsy could cut Walter down to size—and he loved it. “Walter,” Betsy sharply chided him at one juncture. “You don’t have to be the most trusted man in America anymore!”

  In 1981, Kathy Cronkite published On the Edge of the Spotlight, a frank and well-rendered book on the difficulties associated with being the child of a celebrity. Fame in America was difficult enough, but being the child of an icon was a strange burden in need of understanding. Wherever Kathy went, people asked her questions, such as “What is it like to be Walter Cronkite’s daughter?” or more specific ones aimed at procuring gossip, such as “What does your dad really think of Jimmy Carter?” Using her book as a forum to let the children of celebrities speak out—including the kids of William F. Buckley, Gerald Ford, and Zsa Zsa Gabor—Kathy Cronkite pulled few punches. She let readers know how people made her feel—like a “caterpillar in a jar.”

  When Cronkite first read On the Edge of the Spotlight, he didn’t know how to feel. At a Manhattan dinner with Kathy, a couple of autograph seekers walked up to them mid-meal, thrusting pieces of paper at the CBS anchor; Kathy didn’t seem to mind. Now, after having read her book, Cronkite knew better. Having a private meal out with Dad wasn’t possible. In some ways he was annoyed by his daughter’s complaints about being the child of a media star. But upon further reflection, he digested On the Edge as a guide for better parental behavior in general. It hurt him to look in the mirror and realize he had been an absentee parent. “There were moments when reading this book that I wanted to say of it: ‘shocking,’ ‘appalling,’ ” he wrote in the foreword. “There were others, however, when I found my throat tightening and my eyes welling with the warm tears of overwhelming love.”

  Throughout the fall of 1981, Cronkite was determined to be relevant. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat—a Nobel Peace Prize winner because of his role in the Camp David accords with Menachem Begin of Israel—was watching a military exercise on October 6, 1981, when a vehicle stopped in front of the reviewing stand. Suddenly two men dressed in khaki army fatigues attacked the stand with explosives and gunfire. The fundamentalist cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman had issued a fatwa against Sadat that was carried out by soldiers loyal to a terror group called the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Reports of the assassination attempt were heavily covered by all the networks.

  Cronkite, a Sadat confidant, was invited to join Dan Rather on air at CBS. Seeking word of Sadat’s condition, Rather secured an exclusive interview with former president Jimmy Carter, who said his Egyptian sources had confirmed that Sadat was all right. Rather was treating the Carter comment as a scoop, when Cronkite broke into the discussion. “I would caution against taking too literally these early reports from Cairo,” he said. “We can be almost certain the regime is going to cover up what his real condition is.” It was a wait-and-see situation.

  CBS News senior producer Mark Harrington decided that if Sadat died, the network should have Cronkite travel to Cairo to broadcast. The thirty-one-year-old Alan Weisman, a producer, was tapped to accompany Cronkite to the Middle East. They had never been in the field together. “The Concorde leaves from Paris at two o’clock,” Harrington told Weisman. “Walter will meet you in the lounge. Do not get on the plane unless Walter is with you. He’s your responsibility. Never let him out of your sight.”

  A dutiful Weisman raced off to Kennedy Airport. While checking his baggage, news reached him that Sadat had died. Cronkite had been r
ight to temper Rather’s Carter exclusive. Pacing around like a caged animal, worried that Cronkite was nowhere in sight, Weisman kept obsessively checking his watch. Where was Cronkite? Weisman grew almost ill with nervousness. The plane’s door was about to close. When Cronkite, at last, arrived with only two minutes to spare, Weisman sighed with relief. When he boarded, everyone on the plane was abuzz. Weisman, in an unpublished diary, wrote that he could feel the happy whispers. A mega-celebrity was traveling with them. Rifling through his carry-on bag, Cronkite turned grumpy.

  “She forgot my socks,” he said.

  “What?” Weisman asked.

  “Betsy forgot to pack my socks. I was in such a rush she just forgot. The only pair I’ve got I’m wearing,” Cronkite said.

  “We’ll get socks in Paris,” Weisman assured him.

  “I’ll need three pair. Blue or black,” said Cronkite.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Weisman replied.

  It was an uneventful flight with lots of shut-eye and a few cocktails. Once Cronkite and Weisman landed at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, they had a limo pick them up. On the way to the Paris hotel, Cronkite saw a red-light district, strip joints, and XXX video shops. “Boy,” he said. “I sure would like to stop right here. But someone might recognize me.”

  Weisman surmised that Cronkite was a “dirty old man,” but he was “too smart to let anyone see it.” After a night in Paris, Cronkite and Weisman went airborne again, stopping to refuel on the island of Crete before heading to Cairo. Cronkite said he needed to visit the tiny airport newsstand to purchase pipe tobacco. “I watched from a distance as he walked up to the stand, bought his tobacco, slid over to the magazine rack, and after making sure no one had seen him, began thumbing through the girlie magazines. For me that was another smile. ‘God bless you, Walter,’ I thought. ‘I’ve got your back. Knock yourself out.’ ”

  The CBSers took a Caravelle jet—similar to the Lear jet—to Cairo. There were just the two pilots up front and Cronkite and Weisman in the back. The charter company had installed a wire service printer in the cabin, and Cronkite and Weisman spent the flight scanning rolled-up dispatches about the Sadat assassination and his successor, Hosni Mubarak, from around the world. But the big news was that President Reagan had dispatched three former U.S. presidents (Ford, Carter, and Nixon) to attend the memorial service, along with what seemed to be half of Reagan’s State Department. As Cronkite stepped out of the plane and down the staircase onto the tarmac in Cairo, he surveyed the terrain and said, “I was here when Nasser died. There were thousands in the streets. Look at this. Nothing!”

  The CBS News bureau in Cairo was dingy. Bureau chief Scotti Williston, a woman in her thirties with large black-framed glasses, had prepared briefing books for Cronkite. Everything he needed, except socks. Cronkite interrogated Williston about the lay of the land. Cronkite was interested in interviewing all three presidents together. But he was mostly hell-bent on getting an exclusive interview with Mubarak. With amazing speed, Cronkite managed to arrange a one-on-one with the new Egyptian president. How could Mubarak say no to Walter Cronkite?

  Mubarak didn’t know that Cronkite was extremely pro-Israel—many of his New York friends were borderline Zionists. Cronkite, full of consternation, was deeply worried that Mubarak wouldn’t uphold Sadat’s peace overtures to Israel. Before long Cronkite and Mubarak, who reeked of cologne, met for the interview. Cronkite was surprised to see Mubarak dressed in a pinstripe suit, looking more like a Russian gangster than an Egyptian statesman. Cronkite missed Sadat even more.

  The interview began with Mubarak assuring Cronkite (and by extension the American people and the Israelis) that he would continue Sadat’s foreign policy, that he would honor the Camp David accords. Cronkite later joked that Mubarak was trying to tell the American audience, “I am not one of the crazies . . . I’m a moderate . . . you’ll have no trouble with me.”

  Not willing to be bought off that easily, Cronkite zeroed in on Mubarak’s brutal oppression of dissidents, book burning, and other hard-line tactics used in Cairo in the wake of Sadat’s death. “We must have discipline!” Mubarak said emphatically. “Discipline in the streets! Discipline in the factories! Discipline in the schools!” Cronkite had drawn Mubarak into expressing how he really felt. The CIA had a dearth of information about Mubarak, so what Cronkite was doing proved very helpful to Middle East watchers—which in September 1981 was the entire world.

  After about forty-five minutes, the interview ended. Weisman scooped up six videocassettes from each camera, dropped them in a carry bag, and headed into the street with Cronkite, scrambling to find their car. Weisman, feeling victorious, grabbed the two-way radio to tell the bureau mission accomplished. “Put that down,” Cronkite instructed. “You don’t know who is listening. Let’s keep this quiet until we’re ready to go.”

  Because of the seven-hour time difference between Cairo and New York, Cronkite and Weisman were able to perfectly edit the piece for the CBS Evening News. But satellite technology was still hit-or-miss in 1981. Weisman concocted three different ways to relay the Cronkite-Mubarak interview to New York. The main facility in Cairo was ringed with troops and armored personnel carriers, standard procedure in a developing country when a leader was assassinated. Through grit and persistence, Weisman got the interview patched through. “The reaction in New York was ecstatic,” Weisman recalled. Cronkite’s exclusive led the broadcast and ran about five minutes, an eternity on an evening news program.

  Having hit a home run with Mubarak, Cronkite and Weisman wanted to hit a triple—the exclusive interview with all three U.S. presidents.

  “Weisman,” Sandy Socolow said, “you deliver that and you get a week in Paris on our company.”

  “Deal,” he replied.

  When Cronkite and Weisman approached the Cairo hotel where all three former presidents were congregating, they were swamped by a mob of reporters and camera crews. Everything was cordoned off. Cronkite, puffing his pipe, told Weisman to follow along. Playing Moses, he walked determinedly straight ahead; the seas parted. The Secret Service, with earpieces and wires, smiled and stood at attention for Cronkite. “Good evening, Mr. Cronkite,” one said. “So nice to see you again.” Another asked, “How are you, Mr. Cronkite? We haven’t seen you in a while.” Cronkite replied, “Fine, just fine, fellas. Still climbing the stairs. Nice to see you too.”

  The Secret Service agents acted like little boys in awe of Cronkite—not the ex-presidents. Carter’s former press secretary Jody Powell came racing up to Cronkite, clutching an “extra” edition of the English-language paper with the exclusive Mubarak interview bannered across the top. “You did it again!” Powell exclaimed.

  Cronkite was easily able to get President Ford to agree to an interview. But he hit a snag when he broached the idea with President Carter. When Rosalynn Carter saw the anchor emeritus, she blanched. “It was a killer look,” Weisman recalled, “one of utter disdain.” She was still bitter about Cronkite’s sign-off as anchorman during the Iran hostage crisis. President Carter reluctantly agreed to do a one-on-one interview with Cronkite, but not with Nixon and Ford. It saddened Cronkite a little that the Carters held a grudge against him.

  To Cronkite’s utter astonishment, he got the warmest reception from Richard and Pat Nixon. “Walter,” the former president said with genuine warmth, “How are you?” Cronkite was amazed at how tanned, rested, and ready Nixon looked. “Walter!” he gushed. “Do you remember when you and I and President Sadat sailed down the Nile? Wasn’t that a time!”

  It was astounding. No bitterness over Watergate or differences of opinion about Cambodia, no bad blood after Agnew’s venom and Colson’s dirty tricks. Cronkite and Nixon bonded in Cairo. They were both veterans of American history, worn down a bit, but still gladiators who had struggled in what Teddy Roosevelt called “the arena,” where men are “marred by dust and sweat and blood,” but who nonetheless “s
trive valiantly” onward.

  At the funeral dinner for the U.S. delegation, Cronkite was the only journalist present, seated at the head of the table along with Henry Kissinger, three former presidents, and their wives. After the program, Cronkite hopped in a car with Weisman to ride back to the Cairo bureau to do some work. That night, even a shot of Maker’s Mark couldn’t help him get to sleep. Worn out by his restlessness and the interminable memorial, Cronkite was anxious to fly back to France. This time Cronkite and Weisman arrived early and boarded their own private Caravelle. Cronkite was famished, having barely eaten since they’d arrived in Egypt, fearful that the food would make him sick. Suddenly, an Air France truck pulled up beside Cronkite’s jet and the pilots produced a tray of smoked salmon and caviar along with several magnums of champagne. “Whoa!” Cronkite exclaimed, raising his famous eyebrows above his glasses. “Where are the dancing girls?”

  Cronkite had done an incredible job for CBS News in Egypt. But assignments to contribute to Rather’s Evening News dried up after Sadat’s funeral. Even though Cronkite worked his Middle East sources, scoring the huge Mubarak interview, the Rather team cut the wire. The exemplary caution that Cronkite had displayed during CBS News’ early Sadat assassination coverage now became his new calling card: Wise Man of TV Journalism. “It was very clear to me,” Connie Chung recalled, “that Walter had grown bitter at Dan. He blamed CBS dissing him after the Sadat funeral on Dan. But Walter kept the aura of sage.”