Free Tick... Tick... Tick... by David Blum Page A

sure he wanted to give it up for such a long-odds gamble. He got CBS’s assurance that if 60 Minutes got canceled, he could have his old job back. Safer spent just one night in that London house before accepting the job on 60 Minutes and moving to New York.
    By this time, Wallace had firmly established his reputation as maniacally competitive; his aggressive and often flamboyant approach to the show meshed seamlessly with Hewitt’s. He, too, loved the spotlight—Reasoner’s fame had gotten in his way, and once he was gone Wallace saw no further obstacles to becoming the lead correspondent of 60 Minutes . He and Safer had met only once before—in London, when Wallace and his wife went to the theater one night with Safer and his wife, Jane—and he’d come away thinking that Safer wasn’t going to be a threat. Safer’s position as newcomer would allow Wallace to exercise his muscle as senior partner, and become the most famous face on 60 Minutes .
    Safer, of course, had other ideas. The competition began immediately, resulting in fierce fighting over ideas, producers, and position on the broadcast and raging battles between the two men, with hallway screaming matches, of the “Fuck you!” “No, fuck you!” variety, alternating with extended periods of angry silence. Both men still readily acknowledge their history of battles, though describe each other now as friendlier adversaries, if not friends. “We went a couple of years without speaking,” Wallace says. “It was unpleasant,” agrees Safer. Hewitt merely shrugs at the memory of those days, perhaps recalling his own steady diet of raging conflicts with both men.
    On March 16 , 1971 , Safer and his producer Joseph Wershba (a distinguished alumnus of the Murrow era, who had produced the famous See It Now broadcast about Senator Joseph McCarthy) delivered the first major 60 Minutes investigation of government corruption: “What Really Happened at the Gulf of Tonkin?” On August 4 , 1964 , a reported attack on two U.S. destroyers, the Maddox and Turner Joy, was used to justify the first bombing of North Vietnam. Their report, six years after the fact, raised doubts about the attack, strongly suggesting that the Pentagon may have altered facts about the events. The piece would earn 60 Minutes its first Emmy award in the fall of 1971 .
    In April 1971 , Wallace and Hewitt traveled to the LBJ Ranch for an interview with the former president, a conversation in which Wallace had been forbidden to ask Johnson about Vietnam, only to have Johnson bring it up himself and make headlines.
    J OHNSON : Throughout our history our public has been prone to attach presidents’ names to the international difficulties. You will recall the War of 1812 was branded as Mr. Madison’s War, and the Mexican War was Mr. Polk’s War, and the Civil War or War Between the States was Mr. Lincoln’s War, and World War I was Mr. Wilson’s War, and World War II was Mr. Roosevelt’s War, and Korea was Mr. Truman’s War, and President Kennedy was spared that cruel action because his period was known as Mr. McNamara’s War. And then it became Mr. Johnson’s War, and now they refer to it as Mr. Nixon’s War in talking about getting out. I think it is very cruel to have that burden placed upon a president because he is trying to follow a course that he devotedly believes is in the best interest of his nation. And if those presidents hadn’t stood up for what was right during those periods, we wouldn’t have this country what it is today.
    After three seasons on Tuesday nights, CBS programmers moved 60 Minutes to Sunday at 6 : 00 P.M. CBS News president Richard Salant, among many others, fought the switch, believing that the network wanted to dump its best prime-time news offering into the “ghetto” of Sunday afternoons. Public affairs programming always took that slot. While it