Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Charlie Rose 20171118

This is 60 minutes. Where did it come from . It is a magazine for television. What . I dont want to do 60 minutes. Get right over here. Stop the interview for a minute. I am scott pelley with 60 minutes. I want to ask you about the tweeting. You are not popular in the country. I dont care what they say. I should probably not say it on tv. Mr. President , they are not happy with the way you are doing your job. Why is it taking so long . Right here across the bridge you can see the black flag of isis. This is what you can expect . Yes. Im going to jail for that . Only the bad ones go to jail. Only the stupid ones go to jail. Hamilton certainly change my life. Oh. Want to talk about sex . It is not 60 swinging minutes. Whoa. How did you get around that . That is a good question. You have no problem asking that question. Come on. Come on. Come on. How do do that . What is the answer . 60 minutes. I am mike wallace. I am diane sawyer. I am steve kroft. I am leslie stahl. I am katie couric. I am charlie rose. I am anderson cooper. I am oprah winfrey. Tonight, 50 years of 60 minutes. [clock ticking] charlie i am pleased to have jeff fager back at this table. 50 years. It is a chronicle of our times. How did you write the book . Jeff the most important was a list of the stories. You could give it to any loyal viewer and they would recognize stories. There are 5000 of them. I had amazing help from a fabulous producer, daughter of bob simon, knows the broadcast well, and work closely with me on a chronology. It was about memories, the thoughts that i hope this can be a book for journalism students. All the Different Things we do, all of the practices and values that we adhere to for all these years, i tried to get that in there, so it is a blueprint for part of our success. Charlie talk about the birth of 60 minutes. Jeff it was hard to get it off the ground. It took several years to sell it. Charlie the idea was . Jeff life magazine for television, a magazine that covered high and low. An interview in the same broadcast as an interview with a movie star. Charlie the way Edward R Murrow would do Migrant Workers and movie stars. Jeff that incredible mix and variety that makes it so special. Everybody is a generalist. Charlie steve does it. Jeff you have to have the ability to do every kind of story. Everybody does it in a slightly different way with different strengths they bring to the table, but he could not sell it. He got into this position because he was fired. I dont think a lot of people realize that. He had been at cbs news for 15 years, the best job in the place, the executive producer of cbs evening news with walter cronkite. Youre talking about 17 Million Viewers a night. It was huge. Charlie that was where you wanted to become a correspondent for the cbs evening news. Jeff that was the highest place you could be. He was fired. They were partners. They were the Founding Fathers really. Don watched them and learn from them, but they were not that interested in Television Come and tell they had to be. Charlie they came out of radio, rhodes scholars. Jeff Edward R Murrow had a symbol to all these people during the war. That is how the organization was born. It was born and given these values. The practices, storytelling, how we will tell our stories, in narrow ways, all the things i write about in the book that don taught us. Why the time fred friendly became president , the big job, walter cronkite, he said i dont want him there. He is too much of a showman. Charlie he admired him. Jeff he looked up to them like news gods. He really did. Charlie he was a broadway producer. Jeff he was, but he called them gentlemen correspondence. He looked up to them so much. It was a shock because he had been the director of the nixonkennedy debate. Charlie when he was 37 years old. Jeff he had been a pioneer of television. The idea that he rose to that level at cbs news and got fired, it was a shock. Charlie it is said that fred friendly called him and and said, we are going to promote you to your own documentary unit. He called his wife and said, i just got promoted. She said, it you just got fired. Jeff he didnt like documentaries. He called them hourlong snoozers because he was bored by them. He had a short attention span. I think he was right. That is how he came up with this idea. He could do shorter stories, three documentaries, cut them down to 15 minutes and put them into one hour. After fred friendly left the organization, dick came in, great president for 17 years, and was reluctant. He had said no to it in a previous iteration as president before, but word has it that someone said to him, friendly did not like this idea. You might want to do it. He said, ok and gave it the goahead. Charlie Harry Reasoner was signed on. Harry reasoner, and all of them thought just one anchor, but a couple of people suggested mike wallace should join. Charlie how did they differ . Jeff in terms of their personalities as journalists, mike, it was all about the interview, as you know, charlie. He had been in a prominent place on a new york talk show where he perfected that. Charlie night beat. Jeff tough questions, the famous parody is someone sweating. I think sid caesar did it. That sort of direct approach. Don who had a vision for the broadcast and was a great editor and writer, people dont realize this about him. He would fix our copy and help us with lines. He had an amazing eye for a story. That mix of the two of them i think, it just had an imprint on that broadcast that lasted, and i think its a huge part of the success come up that it did not take off until seven years in. Charlie morley safer came in after Harry Reasoner. Jeff harry decided to go to abc. Don thought kuralt, charlie kuralt, would be the right person. He was a consummate storyteller. Don knew he needed stature from cbs news who could tell the story and be a counter, the white hat to mikes black hat. Charlie kuralt said no. Charlie he worked with walter cronkite. Jeff he had famously covered the war in vietnam brilliantly and got in trouble for it with the white house. The line Lyndon Johnston used because morley safer had captured soldiers lighting huts on fire. Charlie they burned the village to save it. Jeff the line he is, what is he some kind of communist . Get him fired. They wanted to fire him. Charlie what makes Mike Wallaces interview so compelling. You dont trust the media. You dont trust whites. You dont trust jews. Jeff he said it best here on your program charlie i think i have it here somewhere. Jeff it is so instructional in terms of how do you get the truth out of people. Charlie with good research, you can embarrass anybody. You can do it. If you are really after illumination of an interviewees character, qualities, substance, if you are really after that, you can ask very pointed questions, sensible questions, to get them to talk. You can establish what you do so well, a chemistry of confidentiality. That is what comes across at the table with you which you, you dirty dog, have done with me in the past. Why . You get to people who know a little bit about the same subject. If the interviewee has respect for the interviewer and feels the interviewer is wellprepared, you can ask anything and you will find the interviewee will be a coconspirator with you. Charlie and that is what wallace does. Jeff he said that that night. Charlie at this table. I treasure it. And because he was a hero of mine. When i came to 60 minutes, he wrote me a handwritten note. Jeff he was so happy when you join. This is the mature mike wallace. This is the mike wallace out there doing it who was ambushing people in the 1970s and early 1980s and became ashamed of that. He really perfected it and became the best interviewer that broadcast journalism had known. He recognized that. I think he grew from all of those years of going in that direction as morley safer called it, mike jumping out of a closet. He teased everybody. He was a rascal fulltime, fulltime rascal. He was that way on our floor. Charlie how did he get along with morley safer . Jeff that was a tough relationship. What happened is he was shocked because mike wallace stole a couple of his stories right out from under him, and morley safer is coming from london. Well, that is not 60 minutes. Welcome to my program. In a way, that helped us because morley safer was driven to find his own path. He had such a great way with words. He was able to come up with these interviews, whimsical adventures. Arthur millers play death of a salesman, once in my life he said i would like to own something out right before it is broken. I am always in a race to the trunk yard. I just paid for the car and it is on its last leg. They time those things so that when you finally paid for them, they are used up. The trouble really is that nothing these days is built to last. A motor car best represents the fact that we have most of our lives in a junk society. No, it is against company rules. Do you like that one . Jeff he did that with his partner over many years, his producer. I think that is an important genre for us, and became that. That is part of the mix, a regular part of the mix. Charlie it took that long to do what, build an audience, find a home . Jeff to find a home. How can you tell . Just on the technical factors. A judgment call . No, sir. Jeff dan rather joined at that point which was important because you have an ensemble of reporters. That first broadcast in december 1975 at 7 00 on sunday, they had been off the air all fall. It was the beginning of the modern 60 minutes. Charlie part of the successes the mix . Jeff i think so. Charlie you dont want three investigative reports. Jeff no, but if there are three Important News stories ready to go and are perishable, we would put all three on. We feel strongly about that, that the mix is not the most important thing. Covering what is important is the most important thing, but if you have the chance and the ability to have a little of everything for everybody, i think it is the most viable. It gives you a chance to lighten up a little bit. The world is not such a bad place. We will give you a story that is inspirational and help you understand the world. Charlie scott had a terrific piece about a young conductor. Jeff it was brilliant. She was amazing. Wonderful. You just made that up before our allies. It is not written down. Will it never be played again . I cant remember everything. Jeff talking about taking you away, a 12yearold girl that has that ability. Some extraordinary powers that no one can explain. Charlie next in line was at bradley. Most people in this country think you are the face. They do. I am just being me. What was your reaction . I think like everyone else i thought it was a tragic event. Jeff ed had so much. We missed him also much. They each brought something unique. I really think, i loved him when he would fill in for the evening news, because he worked at it, but he was like walter that way. He had that kind of godgiven credibility. He had amazing ability. He really could do an interview. One of the things he talked about that i think made so much of what he did special is that he would wait it out. He would just wait it out. I dont have to rush in and fill the void if there is silence in this interview. Charlie let silence speak. Jeff let that come out. He would sit and wait for that to come out. Bob dylan is a great example. He sat there with bob dylan and got yeah, maybe. Just like that . Yeah. Where did it come from . It just came. Charlie eventually the silence will work for you. The interviewee will feel compelled. Jeff eventually there is a relationship that builds, and it is tween the two of you. Forget about all the other people watching. Ed did that brilliantly. It was a shock when we lost them. As it was with bob simon, just a shock, stunning development, and we i will never forget that weekend that we lost ed, and then lost bob, both of them in their 60s. Charlie cancer and leukemia. Jeff leukemia that rose up, and after he had an diagnosed, and within three weeks coming he was gone. It absolutely attacked his system. Putting together everything, a tribute to him, over a fourday period was therapeutic because you hear his boys coming out of every edit room. Charlie buffett loved him and came back. Jeff whats the line he is with lena horne . Charlie people always say what is your best interview. I would tell them the story of ed bradley, who told the story about going to heaven and being stopped, white do you deserve to be here . He said to god, have you seen my lena horne interview . Jeff a great interview. I am a rich, ready, ripe, juicy plum. Where you say that again . You can help your sexual nature. That is what that line means. Charlie he showed a side of her that the audience didnt know. Jeff part of that is what we hope to do. I did not know that. I learned something. I got something out of that. I gave him this time. Thank god they gave me something back. A lot of that is the time it goes into it, the amount of reporting. Almost everything we do is investigative because we spend so much time, even on a profile, digging into somebody and determining what is interesting. Charlie what makes them tick. Jeff yeah, and what the audience finds interesting. That surprises you. Charlie 60 minutes is more of a collaboration than anything i have ever seen. Jeff yes, it is. Charlie from the moment you focus in on the story, the process, producer and associate producer to again and decide what limits are possible. Jeff that is a huge part of the success. As you have seen people on the air, it is a highquality individual that gets to 60 minutes. We have been able to maintain that. When you get there, you realize you have made it to a place that is special, and you have to perform, you have to deliver, and people feel that pressure every time they go out on a story, but it is a collaborative effort. When there is a good collaboration, a correspondent and produce a work very well together, it shows. You can tell. You see it. There is a Higher Quality story. Charlie and when you come back in the editor understands the story. Jeff the videotape editor is a producer as well in many ways. They are looking for how to best tell the story. Yeah, there are several levels of collaboration before it gets on air, and sometimes that can be painstaking. Charlie there is the screening, which we have talked about before, the producer, correspondent, and editor have put together something and say, look, here is a beginning cut. Jeff yes. Charlie you and your colleagues that there an offer what is essentially a storytellers craft of being able to look at something and say, it works better this way. Jeff i think that process we go through, that ritual, which can be painful, but also fulfilling, is part of why a story that gets on 60 minutes looks like it belongs there, which i hope the viewer takes for granted. They come in and tune in every sunday night expecting something. Charlie expecting quality. Jeff and we have to deliver. Charlie yeah. Jeff that responsibility, diligence, and care helps to deliver stories that belong there. Charlie anybody come to you and say, i dont like this. This is not for me. I am out of here . Jeff there can be a burnout factor, the intensity can get to people. It is an intense place. It is an adult shop. You are not supervising people. You arrived at 60 minutes. We know you will bring back a quality story. Our job, my job as executive producer comest to help you be better at it from if i can, to do whatever i can to help you tell that story and report it. We will talk to the process, if they want to come and need to, otherwise that is one of the great beauties of being there. People love working there because they are adults. Charlie there are not a lot of meetings are memos. I dont like memos. Jeff i dont either. It is a reporters place. Charlie we had don, mike, harry had gone to abc, came back to cbs, had morley come in, dan come in, was it diane next . Jeff when diane left is when steve came. Charlie he came in for a couple of years. Jeff she went to abc. That is when steve came in. That was a Huge Development as well. How long do think this will take . We will push and people hope to have their power in january, maybe february. Jeff talk about a pillar of the broadcast, 30 years. He and i joined together. Charlie you were his producer for a while. Jeff i produced his first story for 60 minutes. That was a good experience. We were really nervous about that. At least i was. Steve was confident. Mike Wallace Charlie another magazine show on cbs. Jeff mike wallace came to our screening. Charlie he has no reason to be there. Jeff it never happens. You dont find correspondence to come to screenings, but he wanted make sure we are good enough. It scared the hell out of me. They gave us a round of applause. It was because they were relieved. Charlie that you did not screw it up . Jeff that we had a story you could put on air. I learned so much from him just watching him. A year later, i had a terrible expense where we brought in a story about the berlin wall falling and poland shifting towards capitalism and we finished showing the piece, lights came on, and don said, where do you want it, kid . Right between the eyes . Charlie what came out of that was a better piece . Jeff absolutely. And that is how you learn. He showed us how to make that a better piece, and we were happy. Charlie leslie stahl was next. I understand the fbi was running a staying on the bushquell campaign . I dont know anything about that. Jeff another pillar of the broadcast. She was two years after steve. It is amazing. She came with more experience than anybody had. One of the things she brought come as they all have, was an amazing work ethic. People look at it and say how many stories is she doing. That requires a time. Every correspondent who works at 60 minutes does every single interview. That means a lot of travel, road time, and a lot of late nights trying to get a story together. Charlie that me catch up with your journey. Born in massachusetts . Jeff yes. Charlie started in television there . Jeff 1977, graduated from college and got a job as a kid to help out basically. Charlie ended up in San Francisco . Jeff got a job as a news writer in San Francisco. Charlie when did you come to cbs . Jeff 1982. I was producing the 11 00 news at kpix and they needed someone who could produce a broadcast live. Charlie nightwatch was live for the first couple of years. Jeff it was. I was 27. It was an amazing entry into cbs news. Charlie it became a cult favorite. Jeff when you took over. Charlie then you went to london. Jeff london was the best experience because of the variety of stories. It was hard, challenging, a great bureau, still is. Charlie pretty good place to live. Jeff it is. I was not there much. I was primarily cbs evening news. You are on the road most of the time. We had a couple of kids at the time, and i was gone 60 of the time. You cover just about everything imaginable. The level of expense for someone who had just turned 30 was remarkable. Also, another adult job. I loved that about it. It was amazing. Charlie there for three years, then came back to 60 minutes . Jeff 48 hours, and i was there for a year. My family stayed in london. My wife did not want to come back to the u. S. , so i did a lot of the first episodes and we added them in london. It was great, and amazing opportunity. Charlie how long had you been pointing at that thing . Jeff for me, it was a dream. I could not imagine what happened, but a year in i started talking to morley safer about a job and i had worked in steve croft in london for the evening news. He got the job and boom, he asked me if i wanted to come with him, and i sure did. Charlie how long before they ask you to go over . Jeff five years. I produced three years for morley, two years for steve, and learned a ton from don so that i thought i was at age 40 ready to be an editor myself. That was a great thing about 60 minutes and my trajectory. I had so much time out covering every kind of story. I think there arent enough editors in the world who spend enough time out in the world to experience what it is that people go through when they are covering stories. I think that helped me a lot in running the evening news. Charlie dan rather was your anchor . Jeff yes, a wonderful experience. I loved working with him. Charlie then the idea of 60 minutes ii came up . Jeff les moonves presented the idea to the correspondents. He had just inherited cbs as head of entertainment. He had nothing to work with. News magazines were proliferating and he thought, why wouldnt we copied the best one, so he got them together and they were upset about it. Charlie they wanted no part. Jeff he said it was like arguing with mount rushmore. He had huge respect for mike and morley and ed. Charlie and don . They thought it would be an imitation. Jeff they thought it would be watering it down. They got used to the idea it was going to happen and would be better off if you choose someone charlie they rounded up some good correspondence. Jeff the compromise was i would run it. Charlie first you, confidence in you . Jeff yeah, and the evening news had gone well because i was using the traditional values. Charlie and your belief in hard news. Jeff and covering what is important. Very little frills and not many tabloid stories, so it started incredibly well. Youre one of the first people i went to, charlie. Charlie i wanted to keep this show. Jeff he did not think i should hire you if you werent willing to show up. It is funny because morley, forget that. Bring charlie in. Charlie thank you. One of the things i take great pleasure in. Morley would let the cigarettes burn until the end, all these marks, and you see pictures of his office. Its like someone threw 150 books on top of the desk. He was also a painter. Jeff really talented. The work he had done, he gave me so many pieces. Charlie including one with your head. Jeff my head on a platter. I was quoted at the start of 60 minutes ii when someone asked me if i expected to win the ratings. My minister had talked about it that sunday, but i quoted john the baptist saying it is ok to be number two. We all know who number one is, so morley came in the next they with my head on a platter, and under it said the punishment of saint john the baptist. Charlie dan rather, scott pelley, me, bob simon. Jeff that was it. It was a great team. Charlie we were there five years . Jeff six years. Charlie when don retires, when did you know you would succeed him . Jeff i did not think about it until two years before it happened. They started talking about the possibility. We were doing great and i was very happy and i did not think in my mind that, i thought don would always be there. It became apparent that it was time for a change. He was getting on and they needed something fresh at some point, and i think most of the correspondence recognize that. About a year and a half before he retired, i knew. Charlie a year and a half before it happened . Jeff yeah. Charlie you know they say come you dont want to follow the guy who is the legend. You want to follow the guy who follows the legend. Tim cook succeeded steve jobs and needed that kind of challenge. How did you meet the challenge . He knew you. It was not somebody plucked from another network. That would not have worked. Jeff i dont think so. Everything we did at 60 minutes ii, all those correspondents were working. They were all working there. For me, i was confident i would be able to do the job well. I had learned from don so much. I love what it was. I thought we could be newsy. We did. My job was really to show everybody i could help them make their stories better period, one story at a time. The person i was closest to, steve and morley and mike, and ed, but ed was the most nervous. Charlie about you . Jeff yes, and is this really going to work. It took two serious story collaborations to convince him, and once he was on board, he was great. He was just great. Charlie what makes a great 60 minutes segment . Jeff its funny, we tend to judge ourselves charlie story is a better word. Jeff we tend to judge ourselves by how good our investigations are. Im not sure thats how a viewer judges us. This year, impact is a better way to put it, if you look at this season, the 50th, it has been an interesting mix of stories, beginning with your steve bannon interview. Charlie why do you do this interview . It is important to get the message out about president trump. Charlie never interviewed, everybody knew, but did not know, even more controversial in person than he was from a distance. Jeff he really surprised us. He came to play. Talk about impact. I dont remember an interview with one person weather was so much talk. There were legs. Week after week after week, quotes from it in so many stories. Charlie the White House Press secretary spent the entire day on monday answering questions about steve bannon. Jeff yes. The monday after you hope for that. I think impact. We have had so many stories in these past two months. The one that stands out to me is the story about the Opioid Crisis and the dea being hobbled in terms of not being a good crack down on illicit sales. That was a collaboration with the washington post, and talk about legs. That thing hit hard. It is those kinds of stories that we try for. Everybody who works there wants that. Charlie in the news, relevant, timely, and have an impact so that the president of the United States is forced to respond. Jeff yes, yes, and the man who has been appointed drug czar has to step out. One of the great things working at 60 minutes, you can do something totally different. The next are you had was the emir of qatar. I steve what croft did this year. It was one of his favorite interviews. Jeff no matter how well you knew him and read every book, you got a feeling from him. You understood him. You had seen him through his words. Now you saw him through his own voice. That is what 60 minutes can do. Jeff three weeks later, steve is in puerto rico doing a story about the disaster there. When you say puerto rico is a colony of the United States, what do you mean . It is a colonial territory. We are possession of the United States. Congress has full power over puerto rico. What is to stop the congress from saying, im sorry, but you know we have california and florida and texas to take care of them and you are just a u. S. Possession . What will happen is that fast majority of Puerto Ricans will catch a flight and moved to one of those states. Jeff another thing we try to do that we are proud of, to help our viewers better understand what they saw. That is another thing we try to do. There are stories that can have an impact on an individual viewer by helping them better understand the world, but then there are stores and have an impact on the greater good. Charlie you can explain something to people that people dont know much about, but no it is important. Artificial intelligence, immunotherapy, scott pelley went to duke. Jeff and you have done some Artificial Intelligence stories that have been important. Charlie this is looking at the front tier of science and where it is going and finding the people who are doing the things that will make the difference, win the nobel prizes, who will infection are you the way. Jeff some of those stories are complicated and difficult to tell on television. That is a challenge and source of pride for us as well. In terms of the business world, the great crash of 2007 a year later, we did a story on credit default swaps. Oh, my god. Most people in the Television News business would not go near that. These investment banks were not only selling securities that turned out to be terrible investments, they were selling insurance on them . It made it easier to sell the terrible investments if you could convince the buyer that not only were they going to get the investment, but insurance. When homeowners begin defaulting on mortgages and wall streets high risk Mortgage Backed securities begin to fail the big investment houses and Insurance Companies who sold the credit default swaps had not set aside the money they needed to paid off all the insurance contract they had written. Jeff that challenges us. It goes against conventional wisdom of what is supposed to work on television. The viewer did get a much better sense of what created that horrible recession and crash and sent shockwaves through the financial world, and at the same time, you know, really had a feel for it and the audience was huge. It is one of the biggest audiences of the fall, so there is a hunger for it in america for that kind of reporting. Charlie what is the culture like, people who see every sunday coming up, and you watch it at home because you want to be where the viewer is. Jeff i watch it every sunday at home. Charlie and don does the same thing . Jeff yeah. I dont like to be invited somewhere on sunday. It is just one of those things where i feel like you have to watch it, like everybody is watching it, even though i have seen the story so many times. Charlie can you define the culture . Jeff of 60 minutes . Yes, i can. Without sounding too hokey, i think everybody who works there thinks of it as a calling, that there is a responsibility, that you have an opportunity here to reach the biggest mass audience for a news program in america. Charlie how many . Jeff there were probably 13 Million People watching, early october, 1314,000,000, and that is about what we get this time of year. It goes up to 18 million, but there is that drive in our broadcast to do something important and to really be better than last sunday. That is a big part of the culture too. I am so busy thinking about next sunday, i can barely remember what happened last sunday, which is what made writing the book so interesting. Charlie you can look back. Jeff you can look back and see that you touched a lot of stories. Charlie a couple of things that you have done that make accessibility more easy. One is the 60 minutes app and something called 60 minutes over time. My model of businesses the beatles. They were for talented guys who kept each others negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other. The sum, the total was greater than the sum of the parts, and that is how i see business. Great things in business are never done by one person. They are done by a team of people, and we have that here at pixar, and we have that at apple as well. That is what lets me do this. When the beatles were together, they did truly brilliant come innovative work, and when they split up, they did good work, but it was never the same. I see business that way. It is always a team. Charlie we were all with producers who come together to write, producers often write a first draft, then you work on that, and then show it to you. I think this is what a great story editor does. We are trying to tell the story, and then you will say, your remarkable colleague bill owen will say, this is a story about a were you dont know about. It is the idea of asking yourself, how do i reach the viewer . I want to tell you a story about a war you may not even know about and a place you have probably never been, but is having huge consequences in the middle east and not lead to something that might lead to something horrible. Jeff so, what is also a big part of our culture is to tell a story not in newspeak the way reporters tell stories. I have a board in my office that has forbidden words, news speak, words only reporters use, and as an example, the word clear, which is the most overused word in news television. You hear all the time. Nothing is clear. We dont talk like reporters on tv think they are supposed to talk. Charlie we talk like storytellers. Jeff yes, we like to speak and write in the spoken word. It is easy to follow and so important that it is not overwritten and understated rather than overstated. We hate hype. I think the viewer feels that as they watch it, just easier to take in, and we always follow this principle that you cant go back and read that paragraph again. You better make that understandable, and that is part charlie it is also for the ear, not the eye. Jeff it is also for radio. That is not the driving force. We are on the radio as a simulcast because it works so well. Charlie has there been a more difficult time for 60 minutes than the tobacco story . Was that the biggest crisis . Part of that happened here at this table. Jeff it did, and that is where interrupted. Charlie yes, it was. Jeff it was tough and difficult. It was cbs saying you cant run that story because the Tobacco Companies will sue us. He was the whistleblower, saying they understand nicotine is bad here it was addictive and the secret and everything in it would kill you, but they kept saying it wasnt. He came on to say it wasnt. They feared, and this to me is a little bit of sanity, a lot of sanity, that when the Public Health is at stake in terms of reporting, nothing is more important, so how can a company sue us when we are trying to report the truth about a Public Health hazard that is killing millions of people . It was the perfect 60 minutes story, but when the company blocked it, and in the days of larry tisch, i dont know the exact reasons, but they owned a company that was part of it possibly. Charlie his company being the owner of cbs and the largest holder of stock and ceo. Jeff yes, so forbidden to put the story on the air, what are you going to do . But when adversity i think arises in a situation where everyone is working closely, and yet competing against each other, which is part of how the place is set up, it started to get tense. It did break out at this table when morley was assuring you, charlie rose, and your viewers that everything was on the up and up. He was a pure whistleblower, when he had been paid a consulting fee on a previous story, not on the story in question at the moment. And, he had been promised by some kind of Insurance Protection from that, so morley was so upset when he found out. He wrote you a letter of apology. Charlie they say they never threatened to sue and they never had any contact with cbs, correct . As far as i know, they didnt. Charlie what indication is there that Brian Williamson would have sued cbs if they went forth with this interview . Wouldnt they raise this with you . The lawyers, and to you and don we raised it with them. Charlie and they said . They said this is our judgment. This is our judgment. Charlie our judgment as they have not threatened or contacted, but our judgment is they may sue or will sue . I am told it is a fairly litigious company. The Tobacco Companies generally speaking have been litigious. What they do is with documents that they do not want to put to public view, they will file or send all documents that are sensitive through their Legal Department or to their outside counsel, thereby invoking attorneyclient privilege, am i wrong . 10 years ago, brown and williamson did collect a few Million Dollars from cbs which was in a libel suit coming out of chicago television. For many years, that was the largest libel judgment collected against anybody. Charlie that was part one of our twopart conversation with jeff fager, the gears of 60 minutes. Tomorrow night, part two. Emily emily chang, this is the best of bloomberg technology. Coming up, one of the biggest stock exchanges ever. Buying a big stake in the startup. 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