…came from several lines in The Moon Above, The Earth Below, broadcast twenty years after the first lunar landing. In the years after that glory, a great deal of hidden information became public.

Two decades later, “Man on the moon!” was a pleasant memory rather than an awesome anniversary. Twenty years later I wrote and produced a two-hour documentary mixing old and new footage with new information. It was my last documentary for CBS News.

I had known my time at the network had to end. All my protectors had left, and though the next two presidents of the division were hesitant, I was over age. Had I been an officer of the corporation I would have had to take mandatory retirement. Since I was not, someone would have to get rid of me—or I would have to quit.

My twenty-person staff had been reduced to two: an associate producer and a secretary. The greatest loss was a budget cut that stripped me from longtime news editors who knew the ethics of editing.

The later program, The Moon Above, The Earth Below, wouldn’t cost much. The small amount of new footage needed could be done in one day’s filming.

In the twenty years between broadcasts, both CBS News and the National Space Agency changed managements several times. Within limits, NASA opened its files. The recollections of scientists and astronauts who left the space program were available.

At the time of the approach to the first moon landing, there were no live pictures, just animated simulations and live audio.

When Apollo 11 reached the moon, the world saw only animation. But here is part what it heard:

Commander Neil Armstrong: Two thousand feet (above the moon). Two thousand feet. Forty-seven degrees.
Mission Control: Roger.
Armstrong: Program Alarm twelve-oh-one
Mission Control: Twelve-oh-one. Alarm, Alarm.
Armstrong: We’re go. Hang tight . We’re go.
Mission Control: Roger. Alarm. Twelve-oh-two.
Armstrong: Four hundred feet. Nine miles an hour.
Mission Control: Roger. Alarm. Twelve-oh-two.

It was my investigation into those computer malfunction program alarms, Twelve-oh-one and Twelve-oh-two, which ended my relationship with CBS News.

Those alarms meant disaster was so close, the mission should have been aborted. Protocol demanded Armstrong and Collins fire their ascent rockets and start back to earth. No moon landing.

At the moment, two astronauts were only four hundred feet above the moon. Protocol and safety were to be over-ridden. The space program had cost $25 billion and the lives of three previous astronauts. NASA’s decision: Risk two more lives, and don’t tell anybody about it for years.

Robert Jastrow, director of NASA’s Space flight Center, later declared, “It is cheaper, not dearer, to send men to the moon rather than to go there with robots.”

The men who landed on the moon left the space program within a year. Each astronaut was paid $17,000 per annum.

From “The Moon Above, The Earth Below,” the later broadcast, I wrote:

Dan Rather: Safety had been sacrificed to the goal of beating the Soviets to the moon. NASA had four priorities. The fourth was satisfying man’s curiosity about the mystery of the moon. The third was obtaining scientific evidence about the nature of the moon. The defense of the United States was the second urgency, but America’s leadership over the Soviets was the reason for Apollo 11. Who was first in space was first in the world, two Presidents had said.

Twelve-oh-one and Twelve-oh-two meant that the computer that was supposed to land the men could not do the job. The investigation into computer failure was blurred for years. IBM had built the device. Twenty years later IBM bought my new two-hour program. They asked questions they should not have had.

In the investigation, I found a villain and I found a hero. In later days, Neil Armstrong described himself as:

“I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer. And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.”

He had also flown 57 combat missions in Korea.

Armstrong: Two hundred feet. Twenty one down. Thirty three degrees. Bring down the velocity. Down at nine.

Dan Rather: They were at nine miles an hour, forty feet above the moon, and they were supposed to abort the mission. The command to abort should have come from Mission Control in Houston. The computer whiz kid at NASA was 26-year-old Steve Bales. He was under great pressure; NASA’s 25 billion dollar pressure. The youngest man in the room was forced to make a quick decision. He said, “Go”.

Armstrong went.

There were only 30 seconds of fuel left and they were still 50 feet above the surface. Armstrong’s heart rate went to 160 beats a minute. (Armstrong later said: “I believe the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I’m damned if I’m going to use up mine running up and down the street.”)

I wrote:

Armstrong saw he could not land on the site selected by NASA and the computers. What was supposed to be a clear field was strewn with boulders the size of automobiles. It would be a fatal crash.

The computer and the site selectors at NASA had erred.

As a former pilot he took over. He disregarded computer guidance and tipped over the module so he could see what lay ahead. It was similar to landing a small plane from the side window. He glided past the crater. He directed Apollo 11 toward a field of his own choice. Ten seconds of fuel were left.

NASA didn’t know where he was.

Armstrong: Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.

My hero was Neil Armstrong, first human on the lunar surface. He disregarded a faulty computer and risked his life by landing at a site not surveyed by NASA.

It took the agency personnel some time to find him. He was four miles away from where they wanted him to land. When he touched the moon’s surface, he confused the world.

He mangled his first announcement. NASA’s public relations people had given it to him. He was supposed to say: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Instead he said: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

By leaving out “a” he confused almost everybody. It took several minutes for NASA’s PR people to correct the world’s press.

Neil Armstrong was an engineer, not an actor.

Just after he and Collins were on the moon, the Soviets tried to beat them by sending an unmanned spacecraft, Luna 15. It was to arrive on the moon and return to earth with lunar soil just hours ahead of the Apollo 11 crew. Instead it crashed just a few miles from them.

An American was first on the moon because we sent men with sense enough to override their computer.

About a billion people on earth saw the moon landing. Courtiers came to wake the Emperor of Japan and inform him of the moon landing. They did not have to wake him. He had watched a TV screen all night.

Yet some people did not care to watch. Hip and young people had been hearing about space for years. For some, space was square.

images — The Newport Jazz Festival —

Master Of Ceremonies: Hey—hey, they just landed on the moon, y’know. You might be interested. They made it. They made the moon. Anybody interested? Nobody interested. Goodbye, goodbye.

While they were on the moon, they were put through to the President of the United States, Richard Nixon. He congratulated them. There were two things the president did not tell them. The first was that his advisors had told him of the enormous risk in taking off from the moon. They had prepared a statement if Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin could not leave the lunar surface. The President would make a televised speech, and these are the words he rehearsed but never said to America:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery.…

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation… they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown…

Every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

Also, President Nixon did not tell them that the aircraft carrier scheduled to pick them from the sea on return was scheduled to be the U.S.S. Kennedy. John Kennedy had promised the nation a moon landing, and it seemed fitting that a ship named for him participate in the event. Richard Nixon vetoed the choice and requested that the U.S.S. Hornet be the rescue vessel.

Just before the two men reentered the landing module for a successful ascent, Neil Armstrong made a curious remark: “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky.” Many years later, after Mr. Gorsky had died, Neil Armstrong explained his remark. Once when he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball, which landed in the front of his neighbor’s bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, “Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You’ll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!”

They returned to earth, to ticker tape parades, to a world that feted them and honored them. Armstrong received medals from 17 countries.

What made Neil Armstrong my hero was that he refused to become a celebrity. He was urged to run for senator. He was urged to run for president. Above all, he was offered millions on millions to endorse projects. He declined. He was his own man.

Neil Armstrong opened an electronics engineering firm, and become a professor at the University of Cincinnati. Like the old Roman Cincinnatus, the hero became a farmer. Now and then he would appear at space agency affairs. As for money and politics and fame, he was never available.

The broadcast closed with:

America’s interest in space has waned steadily since the first landing on the moon. Ten other men walked there, but they are footnotes to history. For decades, no human has been out of earth’s orbit. Today we stay within the shores of earth’s gravity, much as the ancient seafarers stayed with sight and safety of land. That other America, that other country, 20 years ago— they did things differently there.

The standard ethical procedure at the network required that I call in news officers to check my work before broadcast, in this case the president and a vice president of CBS News. David Burke was cold at the screening. I had included animations supplied by NASA but David thought they were too simple. He ordered up $50,000 worth of substitutes. There were no further comments from him, or the vice president, Joe P.

Joe had a word with me. “Go to Washington and see the representatives of IBM. They bought the show and want you to answer some questions.”

“Why am I going?”

“They bought the show. They want to talk.”

Unusual. I had never met the sponsors of any broadcast news, and sponsors were sealed off by a fireproof curtain. I thought the queries might be about promoting the broadcast. They were not.

IBM built the computer that failed. I was cornered between three large-sized IBM representatives. There was no polite exchange. They came directly to the point: “You talk too much about our computer failure.”

“How do you know what’s in the script? You haven’t seen it.”

“We’ve seen it.”

”You are not supposed to know what’s in broadcast,” I said.

“We bought it and so we know.”

“Go back to whoever leaked it to you and tell him to tell me.”

I was furious. I went back to Joe P. and told him that in all my years at CBS News, I had never had to get approval from the sponsor.

“It’s a money game now, at least for non-controversial documentaries. Play the game. Join up.”

It was over for me. I didn’t want to belong to an organization that had forgotten what it taught me. That earlier CBS had given me a good professional life and a generous pension. They didn’t want me, either. The parting took some time.

The Moon Above, The Earth Below had good ratings, and a fine press. An editing mistake was caught by a Florida paper, Space Times. The critic noted that the astronauts dancing on the moon were photographed in color. Color came with later flights. The free-lance editor made a mistake, and I missed it, but so did Burke. On the basis of the newspaper article Burke called in the CBS house lawyers. One later told me that every sentence was examined, every foot of film checked, and none of the attorneys could understand why so extensive a search was required. I was summoned to Burke’s office and fined $10,000. He was red-faced drunk. He threatened me physically when I tried to defend myself.

“Shut up. I can’t control my anger.” He raised his left fist and blessed himself with his right hand as if he were in church. “Such an error brings national disgrace on the narrator. There is no more Wolff unit.”

Larry Tisch, perhaps a baseball enthusiast, had sent the message. His double play was Tisch to Stringer to Burke. Wolff was thrown out at home plate. However, three months later, David Burke was thrown out too, fired for spending too much money.

I was still at CBS when Burke left. I was there when several months later as writer and producer of The Moon Above, The Earth Below, I won two Emmys and a Writers Guild Award for the broadcast. Joe P. sat at the Academy ceremony and though he looked uncomfortable, he congratulated me.

“Good job, Wolff!”

“Joe—go sit somewhere else.”

Revenge is not good when served old.

I resigned. There was no farewell party. Each successive day I brought home some files and tapes until the office was bare. Tuulikki had drawn a painting consisting of slightly grotesque heads with caved cheeks and no teeth. All talking at the same time. We called it CBS News and it now hangs in our living room. It was last to go.

I had few regrets leaving commercial television. I didn’t much like watching it. I had become a stranger in a world I never made. I came from BC, Before Cable, and I began to detest much of what I watched, until I realized that my dislike was generational. The fault was mine as much as it was the mediums. Television was responding to the sexually active, those between 19 and 49 who had money to spend. Ratings meant money. There was that flowing river, and there was that rusting pier.

The generation before mine wriggled its fingers at us, the greatest generation. Cole Porter wrote,

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked upon as something shocking
Now heaven knows, anything goes.
Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four letter words writing prose.
Anything goes.

Half a century ago, shortly after TV entered American homes in large numbers, it was attacked on the same grounds as it is today—it was destructive of morals, family life, overall decency, homework, dental hygiene, obesity, aggression, violence, reading habits and the finer things of life. The best answer I know came from David Fuchs who said, “I never restricted my children from watching television. I have four of them, and they all have Masters’ Degrees. The arguments are tedious on both sides. Leave them to the sociologists. It’s how they make their living.”

 Image         

The Moon Above The Earth Below, www.allmovie.com.

I became the CBS News specialist in black documentaries.

I knew no blacks when I grew up. None at kindergarten, none at grade school. When we became middle-middle class, Bess hired a schwarze for heavy cleaning half a day on Thursday. I paid no attention to her; she paid no attention to me.

There were no Negroes in my Chicago high school. In my sophomore year I found black, big band jazz at the College Inn in the Sherman hotel.

Each of my friends and I would carry a glass and a slice of lemon peel from home to the hotel’s men’s room. To avoid paying an entrance fee we’d sling our coats on a stall door, fill the glasses with water, add the lemons and go upstairs with false gins and tonics. We stood before the Count Basie band and marveled. Eight brass, four saxophones, percussion and piano from ten feet away. How loud, how brilliant the beat! After the full band roared, Count Basie played a few quiet notes on his piano—a trill, an open tenth, silence, silence—and once more the blast of the full orchestra.

It was at the same College Inn where “Fats” Waller broadcast a comment that ended his radio career.  He looked at the all-white dancers and said into his microphone, “Where are all the poor people tonight?” The remark was annoying to dancers who just wanted romantic relations, not race relations.

In a saloon on Wabash Street, I was introduced by nodding heads to a professional jazz pianist named John no-last-name. Joe Shack, a white friend and talented pianist, made the introduction. John was so talented that when Lionel Hampton, the world’s best vibraphone player, played on the upper octaves of a piano, black John accompanied him on the lower octaves. Later, Joe and I mourned John no-last-name. The black genius was a gambler, and when he didn’t pay his bets, the Chicago mob broke his fingers.

College days. There were a few blacks at the University of Wisconsin, but there was no mingling. I won the drama prize for a one-act play, Georgia on my Mind, derived from a story I read about Benny Goodman’s trio: Goodman, Gene Krupa and Teddy Wilson. Wilson, who was black. was denied a hotel room in Atlanta while the two whites were accommodated.

I imagined and dramatized the indignant conversation, particularly words by Benny Goodman, a white jazz God. (I met him many years later. He would not have been indignant about racism.) Georgia on my Mind was chosen as the best one act of the year. Unfortunately, I was in the Army when the piece was performed to a mixed audience, and nobody wrote to tell me how the Negroes felt.

My racial ignorance continued in the military service. I never saw a black in combat, even during the Battle of the Bulge. Blacks were service troops. We knew their outfit as the Red Ball Express. They delivered supplies and went back to the rear echelon. The war was white-on-white.

It was only when I returned to Chicago and produced radio documentaries on race relations that I spent time among the Negroes. I took my tape recorder into the South Side ghettos and did interviews with community leaders. Being the one white among a group of blacks always meant wariness on both sides.

A decade later, things warmed up in New York when Of Black America won so many prizes. Until then, programs on race relations won high praise and low ratings. The series was an exception.  Bill Cosby was pleased with the results. His staff joked with me, but there was no social intercourse.

For that matter I never shared a meal with Bill Moyers, the correspondent on The Vanishing Family – Crisis in Black America a documentary that won more awards than any program in the history of television. It also changed America’s welfare pattern.

Moyers had been imposed on me by CBS News’ management, which didn’t know what to do with one of the most brilliant reporters of the time. He came with a small staff of excellent producers and fine ideas for documentaries.

We were asked to examine the welfare program, always a controversial subject. I always insisted that the first paperwork describing a project should end with the sentence “CBS news will investigate.” It meant that we had formed no previous opinions other than the subject needed study. After the team had done its homework, a decision would be made as to whether or not to commence filming.

At that time, the welfare program was a subject of much print discussion. But no one had done a detailed investigation into its flaws. Our initial search took some two months. No cameras were present. The producer and her associates went into the field, into the Newark ghetto where the peril was so obvious.

There never was a budget meeting. Only the camera crews and the editors were not on staff. Six more weeks of shooting, and eighteen weeks of editing—almost a year of work for a one hour documentary. Standard practice.

I could not understand why Bill Moyers was socially distant. I was willing to be his enlisted man, but I usually had closer contact with other correspondent-stars while most documentaries were in process. Taciturn as they were, Eric Sevareid and I, and later Dan Rather and I shared matters apart from business.

After Eric retired we continued to see each other. Sevareid had done three commentaries a week on the CBS Evening News, and as I learned later, this was the job Moyers most wanted.

Every four years, as meat-and-potatoes-television, Eric and I would do a stock footage resume of previous conventions. As the years went declassified, documents became more available. Some ten years after the 1964 Conventions, Eric gained access to earlier FBI documents. His assistant sent me copies.

Lyndon Johnson and Bill Moyers

In 1964, young Bill Moyers had been press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson wanted the Democrats to nominate him by unanimous acclamation. He wanted solid hurrahs for his Vietnam policies and his civil rights legislation. He wanted no trouble with the assassinated President’s brother, Bobby Kennedy, and he expected complete loyalty from his vice presidential choice, Hubert Humphrey. There was to be no on-screen noises from the growing black power movement. The FBI was asked to conduct wiretaps on Humphrey and the militant blacks who might disturb a first ballot nomination by acclamation.

The FBI agreed to conduct the bugging. Cartha de Loach was assigned as officer in charge of the surveillance. He reported in writing to ‘Preacher.’  ‘Preacher’ was Bill Moyers.

“You will be pleased to know the Humphrey job has been successful,” De Loach wrote to the press secretary. Moyers passed on the reports and transcripts to Lyndon Johnson, who spent hours listening to the wiretaps.

Then Moyers asked de Loach to arrest some of the militant blacks. The FBI denied the request as a violation of free speech.

Although Sevareid had sent me the documents, we decided not to use them in the broadcast. Eric said, “That was years ago, and Moyers was the President’s loyal press agent. Anyway he was just a kid in his 20s.”

I was more troubled. Moyers’ essays on public morality did not square with his ordering of secret wiretaps. Somehow, years later, Bill Moyers was told I had the de Loach transcripts. Maybe that’s why there was coolness.

Yet, when he went into the field and reported on The Vanishing Family, his work was brilliant and impeccable. At the beginning, he and I thought the thrust of the report would be that the welfare system needed only fine-tuning. But the deeper the investigation, the more inept an inept government program called Aid to Dependent Children became apparent. The aid went to the mother and child. The father was relieved of responsibility; thus the program destroyed the black family. Moyers followed our research and discarded our preconception of fine tuning the existing government program. Impeccable journalism.

The producer, Ruth Streeter, led us. For weeks, she and her associate, Kate Krull, went into the darkest part of the Newark ghetto to choose the subjects for Moyers to interview. We chose Newark because it was closer to us, and because there were no doubt that the conditions there were similar to those in other inner cities.

It was risky work. The crime rate was so high, the streets so obviously dangerous, that the cameramen asked for physical protection for themselves and their equipment. Ruth hired a Newark cop, Shahid Jackson, to organize and help us pay for a protective guard.

Detective Jackson was raised in the slums of Newark. He told the camera that as a young man he “was lucky I didn’t get caught for some of the things I did. I grew up in the streets, and I still have some of the street in me.”

Shahid spoke the backbone of the documentary. He and Moyers were watching the women of the ghetto at the post-office on the day they called ‘Mothers’ Day’—the day the welfare checks arrived.

Jackson: “They know their food is going to be there, because with the welfare check come the food stamps. Welfare is what they are married to. They’re more married to welfare than to the guys lying in bed with them ‘cause he’s just a physical thing. The whole backbone of the family is coming out of government offices.”

Moyers: “And the men?”

Jackson: “A lot of guys I know just goes around lookin’ for welfare mothers. They may have six and make a little money from each of them. That’s their job, that’s their hustle.”

Ruth Streeter found one of the hustlers. Astonishingly, his name was Dickensian— Timothy McSeed. He had been imprisoned three times and hadn’t had a job in years.

The Father to be (McSeed): I ain’t thinking about holding up my sex, my man. If a girl she get—carrying a baby, that on her. I’m not going to stop my pleasures because of another woman.

Moyers: “What about birth control? Condoms?”

McSeed: “Girls don’t like them things. They don’t like them things. They tell me you take the things off. They figure you saying they filthy or they dirty or something.”

Moyers to another mother: “Why didn’t you want to get an abortion?”

Mother: “Because I wanted his baby. I liked his legs.”

Moyers: “His legs?”

Mother: “I got a thing for bow-legged boys. I just love them.”

Moyers to the mother: “Did you think about birth control?”

Mother: “No. I didn’t think about birth control. I was afraid of birth control because I always heard birth control give you cancer, and all that stuff. I wouldn’t want no man holding me down because I think I could make it as a single parent. Male figures aren’t important in family.”

Moyers to the father: “How many children do you have?”

McSeed: “Six. (laughs) I got six kids by four women.”

Moyers: “He’s twenty six. He had two additional children by two other women, but one died in infancy and the other was aborted.”

Moyers (to McSeed ): “How did it feel to have those kids?”

McSeed: “Well, you get to see…if it’s something you’ve done…like carpentry…like artwork. Like they might grow up to be doctors or actors, and you can say, ‘Look that’s my boy or that’s my girl. You know there’s some people can’t have children at all.”

Moyers: “Doesn’t it make you feel bad that you can’t support your kids?”

McSeed: “Well, the majority of the mothers are on welfare. And welfare gives them the stipend for the month. So what I’m not doing the—the government does.”

Moyers: “On Father’s day, mother and father had their third son.”

Mother: “Fat-faced little baby! You hungry?” (Offers breast)

McSeed: (Looking at his newborn) “I’m the king! I’m the king! I got strong sperm. Most women say, ‘McSeed , you a baby-maker!’”

Moyers: “Why don’t you get married?”

McSeed: “Well, see, I’m old fashioned: I want a big wedding, that’s that. And my uncles and my aunts, you know, they all had their little tuxedos and I’m going to have mine, too.”
No writer would dare compose such grotesque dialog. A year earlier, in emotional fiction, Alice Walker had written The Color Purple. Her theme was the same: homes without men, child-women who had to be both mother and father, men who would neither father their children nor honor their women.

The broadcast brought hundreds of reviews and one sobering statistic. Of the 67 prime time hours on the three networks that week, The Vanishing Family rated 64^th.

Naturally, the broadcast was repeated. But the local stations always resented low-rated documentaries that led into their local news. The hold-over audience was small and the local ratings dropped, and cut into their advertising revenue.

The good statistic came from Washington, DC. There the show had rated tenth. Legislators on both sides of the aisle requested copies, and California paid for three thousand tapes.

Within CBS, a committee of black women went to management and pointed out their families had not vanished, and the implications of the broadcast smeared all black women. Nothing was said to me.

The Vanishing Family won several Emmy Awards, as well as three Peabody’s, the Columbia Journalism School citation for the Best Broadcast of the Year, the Polk award, and I won a Writer’s Guild plaque.

I went to the Columbia Journalism award and accurately said I was just the coach. I refused to go to the others. Ruth, Kate, and Bill had been in the field. I had stayed safely in the CBS building and helped with the verbal and picture editing. The prizes were theirs, not mine.

I learned later that Moyers was hurt because I did not attend the other honoring ceremonies.

Timothy McSeed went back to prison several times on drug and robbery charges. He called Ruth Streeter several times from jail and asked for help she could not give. One of the women died. We lost touch with all the principals.

Years later, changes were made in the welfare program, based in part on The Vanishing Family, the nickname of the revised Aid to Dependent Children bill when it was in committee hearings.

After I left CBS, I attended a lunch honoring the most important man in the history of television news, Frank Stanton. On the dais were the correspondents and executive producer of 60 Minutes. Bill entered late. There was no room for him on the dais. The only seat available was facing me. He sat down, looked at me, got up and left.

 Images

The Vanishing Family, YouTube

Lyndon Johnson and Bill Moyers, Eve’s Magazine

Walter Cronkite

I was the executive producer of The Selling of the Pentagon. Broadcast scholars now say that program was the most important documentary in the history of electronic journalism. I spent tense hours in the editing rooms working with the producer, Peter Davis. The scope of the First Amendment was tested by the war in Vietnam and by The Selling of the Pentagon.

America lost the war in Vietnam. Sensible people knew it was over years before the ruling class in Washington would own up to defeat. The United States government had long maintained a branch of Hollywood on the Potomac paid by taxpayers. The Selling of the Pentagon was an investigation into the public relations films and shows done by the military and underwritten by tax dollars.

The Selling of the Pentagon

Based primarily on an almost unnoticed book by Senator Fulbright and directed by Peter Davis, this CBS News documentary was investigated by the government. Many books, doctoral theses and essays were published in the years following. The broadcast had flaws, but in the main it nailed the Pentagon and forced it to change its propaganda.

Davis’s work was brilliant.

• He caught the Army staging elaborate demonstrations with live ammunition of military weapons for invited VIP civilians.
• He found the Pentagon had sent five of its own film crews to Vietnam to stage a battle in which our forces were triumphant.
• He found further demonstrations in which children were encouraged to fight with each other and play with military weapons.
• Compared to the amount spent by the Pentagon before the war, the public relations budget increased by fifty times.

Television had done so many Vietnam documentaries that the original ratings of The Selling of the Pentagon were low. After the military and its hangers-on in the press attacked the show, it was rebroadcast a month later to larger numbers. The House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce (today the Committee on Commerce and Energy), whose chairman represented a district flushed with military funds, led the attack. He was the same Harley Staggers who had investigated Project Nassau. His ally was another congressman from Louisiana who came from a district similarly endowed. Once more the legal argument was that the outtakes and notes could be turned over to the government. It was a replay of the Haitian story.

There was a storm within CBS. William Paley, chairman of the board, went behind the back of Frank Stanton, president of CBS. Paley tried to make a deal with the Speaker of the House. The Speaker said he did not have the power to overrule Staggers’ Committee.

Dick Salant, the president of CBS News, and I discussed the outtakes. I told him I had taken a reel of small trims home so that not all of the outs could be sent to the government. (I had done the same with trims from Project Nassau.) Salant thought that was a good idea. He took seven reels and hid them in the trunk of his car. We agreed we would give up the scraps only if Stanton asked that we do.

I was given warning by Peter’s wife, Josie Mankiewicz Davis, herself a brilliant writer. “You aren’t letting Peter do all those crazy things are you? Peter thinks that anyone who wears khaki becomes a fascist by osmosis!”

I trusted Peter Davis, but when the storm broke I was told to review everything once again. I called for the original transcripts of the interviews. I matched the original typescripts against what had appeared on the air. It was a tedious job, and I asked two researchers to help me. There were some forty hours of synced sound and a few errors became apparent.

• An official had said “no” as an answer to a question, but the editor had entered a “yes” instead.
• The same question had been asked several times, and the editor had made a composite answer from different takes.

To its credit, this time the network refused to turn over the material. Frank Stanton ignored his boss, Bill Paley. He refused to answer the subpoena. He was charged with contempt with the threat he could be imprisoned.

The contempt recommendation was sent to the full House of Representatives. The House had never before rejected a similar request. For the first time in its history the full House rejected its committee’s demand. The practical result was that from that day on broadcast journalism had the same protection as print journalism. Nothing was written, but the electronic news people were told to act as if they worked for a print medium. Stanton had accomplished his goal. The Supreme Court would never have the opportunity to rule on the subject.

For me, the most serious problem was within our own house. A few years earlier Walter Cronkite, the anchor of the CBS Evening News, had blindly read the narration for a crude Pentagon propaganda film. The film showed a red tide flowing out of Russia and spreading down over the Western world. The film was entitled The Eagle’s Talon.

Cronkite read:

Starting in WWII the aggressive Communist tide had spread in Europe and Asia to engulf its neighbors. Communist China even now has plans to dominate Asia by mass murder…Our army is face-to face with communist threats around the world. To meet immediate threats on any threat we must build-up our land forces at home and overseas.

The Red Tide oozed from the North Pole through Canada and down to Texas. Crude, even for the times, but embarrassing. So much so that I suggested the Cronkite section be cut from The Selling of the Pentagon. The cut would protect Walter and CBS News. It could not be done because we would have faced the criticism of self-aggrandizing. None of the viewing committee could ask Davis to make the cut.

The Eagle’s Talon had been sent to community and church groups for screening. Before we knew what the result would be, I went through all the transcripts to check if the edits had been made fairly. Immediately I found a number that were questionable, but I needed the help of two researchers assigned to the documentary. But they had been sent into the field to see how many times The Eagle’s Talon narrated by Mr. Cronkite had been screened.

Cronkite was furious with me.

From then on the most trusted man in journalism mistrusted me.

The correspondent who headed the CBS Evening News was more than a voice. Cronkite sat on the planning meetings, indicated what stories he preferred to have covered or not covered. There was a code in the newsroom, WW, meaning Walter Wants.  WW was top priority—scurry without questions. One WW just before airtime was, for example, “How long is Greenland?” There was nothing Arctic in the whole newscast. He made journalistic decisions, including the final wording of the scripts. Although he was surrounded by vice-presidents, executive producers and producers; the anchorman was more powerful than the officer class. He never fired anybody directly, but he could have people sent to the brigs and stockades.

I don’t know why Cronkite fixated on me instead of complaining to the administrators above us, but I surmised it had to do with our troubles on Airpower fifteen years earlier. I had forgotten, but obviously he hadn’t.

The following year was an election year. On election night, the CBS set looked like a Roman amphitheater with rows of monitors and correspondents. I was in the pit. During a rehearsal checkout a vice-president approached me.

“You have to move, Wolff.”

“Why?”

“You are in Cronkite’s line of sight.”

Ten years later I stepped into an elevator. Cronkite was alone. He saw me, glared, exploded a growl and said something I didn’t catch. He stepped out to take another car.

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Walter Cronkite, lyndacwatts.wordpress.com

The Selling of the Pentagon, museum.tv

Jay McMullen, writer and producer of Project Nassau

I was coach or player on some two hundred documentaries. I faced polite competition within CBS News, particularly from the newsmen who reported on a daily or weekly basis. They called themselves “hard news” and because documentaries took more time, the phallic overtone was obvious.

In those early days, there was a common problem for all electronic journalists, hard or soft. The question was whether the First Amendment protected television news as it did print news. Unlike newspapers or magazines, where anyone rich enough to buy a printing press could publish anything he wanted, the right to broadcast in assigned frequencies had been given by the Federal Government. The government could take back its gift – or in some ways restrain what was said on the electronic highways.

The simplest answer would be to get a decision from the Supreme Court, but Frank Stanton refused to force the issue. He was afraid that the conservative court would rule against TV News. There had to be another way to go.

In the meantime, we were instructed to answer subpoenas and turn over notes and outtakes. I received such a subpoena. The language was hostile and nasty. One James Kelly, a Federal Marshall was commanded to summon me to a sub-committee hearing headed by a southern aristocrat, Harley Staggers. Staggers was highly critical of the press, including television. In turn, for liquidity reasons, some of my colleagues called Chairman Staggers, “Blind Staggers”.

I spent four days before his committee while it investigated a documentary which never aired, Project Nassau. What we did not know at the time was that the FBI, the CIA and the Coast Guard had infiltrated Project Nassau.

The writer-producer, Jay McMullen, followed a group of Haitians who planned to overthrow the government in Port au Prince. The rebels purchased guns from an arms dealer in Atlanta. They planned to bring the weapons to Florida, stow them in a boat, and take off for the Dominican Republic from which they would strike Haiti. Project Nassau would follow the insurgents.

Jay and I were watching some rushes when the face of arms salesman appeared. Coincidentally another producer, Igor Oganesoff, was in the room and saw the face. He said, “That’s Earl Warbell. He went through CIA school with me, and he is still with the agency.”

We were startled. We did not know that Warbell was anything but a gun salesman. Nor did we know the FBI had also penetrated our operation. At the time carrying, automatic weapons from Atlanta to Florida was a federal offense. When the Haitian insurgents crossed state lines, the lead cameraman called the FBI. We knew nothing about the phone calls.

The United States government was at odds with itself. The CIA wanted the rebels to overthrow the Haitian government. But if the invaders came from a Florida port, the Coast Guard would be disgraced. Part of the Coast Guard’s mission was to stop the illegal flow of arms from Florida. It was impossible for their small fleet to intercept the thousands of boats in Florida’s waters. In any case there were only twelve insurgents in an auxiliary powered sailboat.

Yet if rebels succeeded in overthrowing Papa Doc, news coverage would follow and the Coast Guard might get unfavorable press for letting the sailboat slip through. The FBI had tipped off the Coast Guard who seized the boat, arrested the conspirators, got favorable coverage and ruined the CIA’s mission.

In the middle of the mess McMullen found the cameraman had faked some footage, and the whole project was called off. CBS had invested more than $100,000 in salaries and logistics. The footage was stored.

Two years later, the House of Representatives sent a subpoena demanding our notes and the outtakes. I oversaw the packing of the film, the outtakes, and the negatives. They were put in large cardboard boxes tied securely with large copper wires. Notices were placed on the cartons: HANDLE WITH CARE & NEGATIVE FILM ENCLOSED.

I received a nastily-worded subpoena from a subcommittee of the House Commerce Committee. I was called as a hostile witness, as was McMullen. Since we were hostiles, an attorney could accompany us, but he could only be consulted if we felt our Constitutional rights were being violated.

The low point for me came from a question put by a congressman: “Mr. Wolff, you say Earl Warbell was a CIA agent?”

“Yes, we had positive identification from one of our correspondents that the two of them were in the same training classes at the CIA.”

Congressman Moss indignantly replied, “This man is not a member of the CIA, nor has he ever been. I know because I personally called the CIA and they denied he had ever been in the agency. I personally called them!”

I started to ask, “Do you think the CIA would identify one of its agents?” when the CBS lawyer nudged me violently.

Moss said, “Please don’t turn to your attorney unless you think your civil rights are being violated. “

The House Committee recommended CBS be sanctioned by the FCC, but the oversight agency refused the recommendation.

The boxes came back exactly wrapped as we had sent them. It would have taken hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars to examine the outtakes. Some rolls were so tiny that they probably could not have been spliced together. Bits of films are a lot different than reporters’ written notes.

Later, the scope of the First Amendment was tested by the war in Vietnam and by The Selling of the Pentagon, another documentary I coached.

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Jay McMullen, writer and producer of Project Nassau, cbsnews.com, Vet investigative reporter Jay McMullen dies, March 10, 2012.