career as an analyst for npr. daniel schorr died this week at the age of 93, cbs s bob schieffer joins us now from the set of face the nation. and bob, the nixon white house had dan schorr investigated during watergate. the fbi investigated him for leaking that house report on the cia. cbs suspended him. how was he at dealing with pressure? he was quite good at it. and when he found out he was on nixon s enemies list, he was actually on live television, and he had this report, and he started going down through it and saw his own name. i think he ranked 13 or 14 or something on the list. and my guess is that when they open dan s will they ll probably find he has a request that they put that on his tombstone. he was very proud of being on nixon s enemies list. he was just iindefatigable.
and they always say the first rule in journalism don t let them scare you, none of them, including the bosses at cbs, ever scared daniel schorr. and that s a key point. he was a reporter s reporter. he did his own work. and he loved doing it. that s a key point. he took on his own network as well as various administrations. he seemed to march to his own drummer. and you know, it s funny, he really wanted to work for the new york times but as the times acknowledged in its oeb-it at the time the editor decided there were already too many jews in the new york times. so instead he signed with cnn in 1980 and he made ted turner sign an agreement that said no demand would be made upon him that would compromise his professional ethics. he didn t trust the corporate types, did he? no. and when dan schorr wrote out something like that, he really meant it. we have a lot of showboats around who might make those kind of boasts. but that was the way dan lived his life. i can still r
cane. he d hurt his foot in some way or had some foot surgery. so he was hobbling around on this cane. and then they sent me up to capitol hill to cover some news conference. the next thing i know here s dan schorr with a cane but just pushing his way through to get up next to the microphone and kind of using the cane to clear the way. you couldn t stop him. rain, snow, a bad leg. he would go after that story. and he could always ask the question that would give you something different that nobody else had. right. and some of the challenging that dan schorr did of government came at a time before we all take it for granted now that there s this very tense, adversarial relationship between the media and people in power. but he seemed to have lived that way in earlier decades, before that became before watergate sort of changed the culture. you know, he kept cbs news in the game when watergate happened. we got out to a slow start on that. dan got into it, and he kept us
going on that story. and you know, people do kind of forget how it was in those days. this wasn t an administration that was trying to, you know, challenge us at cbs. they were trying to destroy network news because it wouldn t come to heel. and there were people in the corporation here at cbs who were very worried about that. but it never worried old dan schorr. he just kept on keeping on. and he never stopped. that was the amazing thing. right. and on that point, bob he was doing reports at npr, what, two weeks ago. that s exactly what i was going to say. he was on the program last year after walter cronkite s passing. and look, clearly he had been slowed by age but his mind was very sharp. i ve got about 20 seconds. he didn t retire. he didn t go gracefully into that good night. he kept working until the age of 93. and he ll be remembered for a long, long time, especially by the folks around here. and bob, when you turn 93, we d like to have you back on the program.