O'REILLY Hey, Bill O'Reilly here. Welcome to another We'll Do It Live extended interview. And I am very pleased to have a contemporary of mine with us. His name is Steve Kroft. You know him. Thirty years at 60 Minutes. Thirty years. The man survived at CBS. I survived about eight months at CBS, he's 30 years. Anyway. Well, let's begin with older folks, Americans, and they watch CBS now, and it's not anywhere near what it was. What the deuce happened? 

 

KROFT Algorithms. That's my short answer. I mean technology. The fact that everything has gotten much more complicated. The fact it started with cable TV, and it started eroding the audience of the three major networks. And it just got down to a point where I think the people that own the networks decided to write it off, that it was not that important to them anymore, even though it still produces a huge amount of money, but that the future was someplace else. But, you know, the budgets dwindled, and people had to do with what they got. 

 

O'REILLY But it's also about performance. So, Mike Wallace, before he died, I became fairly good friends with him. He liked The Factor, he liked my, whatever you want to describe me as. He was one who really liked me and kind of identified with it. But you had Hewitt, and you had Safer, and you have Wallace, and you had all of these pros, yourself. Really knew what they were doing. And now, I'm sorry, Tony Dokoupil, is that his name? He looks like a nice guy, but he wasn't at Chernobyl like you. And so it's not, it's like a sports team that once had all these superstars and now they're in eighth place. 

 

KROFT Yeah, it's, the one thing that all the people that you mentioned, Ed Bradley and Leslie, we all had either, we had successful careers at CBS News before we got to 60 Minutes. And we had all been either overseas or in Washington, covering the White House or one of those places. And there was a level of experience that doesn't really still exist. I mean, those positions are occupied, but everything has changed. And I can remember, when when I told Jeff Fenger that I was gonna leave or that I was gonna retire. And he says, well, you know, what are we gonna do? And I said, Well, you go out and find somebody who knows how to write and is a good reporter. And he said, They aren't out there. 

 

O'REILLY It's true, there's no minor leagues. I mean, we... 

 

KROFT The local stations used to be great. 

 

O'REILLY Both of us came up the hard way. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY What fascinated me about, because I know the personnel at 60 Minutes, the tough boys over there, Hewitt and those guys, I'd say they were savages, mini-savages. 

 

KROFT Savages. I have to tell you a story. When I first looked like I might go to 60 Minutes, this is when I actually went to West 57th, and Dan Rather called me in because I had been working for Dan's show for like a long time, and he said, I think you're going to end up at 60 Minutes, and let me tell you, there's some big cats over. Take one swat with a ball game... 

 

O'REILLY But he was one of the biggest cats. It's my theory. 

 

KROFT And you're going to be limping for six months. 

 

O'REILLY And it's true. I mean, there was no civility at 60 Minutes. It was like, you're an idiot. 

 

KROFT If there were civility, you'd better check your wall. 

 

O'REILLY Right. It was hand-to-hand combat to get your stuff on the air without it being edited. I think that Rather turned CBS to the left, not in a way that was immediately noticeable because Cronkite played it down the middle. Pretty much. Would you agree with that? 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY Okay. But rather tilted it to the left. I can back it up, but this is about you more than me. And then since that time, because CBS was the leader, all right, the news leader on television, they've all gone fairly left. Would I be wrong? 

 

KROFT I don't think you're probably wrong in terms of perception. In terms of reality, I don't know. Some of it has to do, I've always thought, with geography and the fact that so many people in the media were from and the people running the news organizations were mostly East Coast people. 

 

O'REILLY Manhattan people, D.C. People. 

 

KROFT Yeah, Ivy League people, and that there was a built-in bias, as opposed to a political bias. You know, people always used to talk to me about 60 Minutes and say, oh, it's so liberal. I never really thought of it as being liberal, in part because Don and Mike Wallace were both Republicans. 

 

O'REILLY Right. They didn't play that game. 

 

KROFT They didn't play that game. 

 

O'REILLY But Rather did. 

 

KROFT But I think Dan did. Dan is also, you know, he's from Texas. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and I think was more, I mean, he gave Nixon really a hard time. I thought it was gonna end his career, that question at the luncheon was... 

 

O'REILLY He did not like Nixon, and vice versa. 

 

KROFT Yeah. And I think some of that stuck. But I used to tell people, look, there's no operation in broadcasting that has done more stories that should have pleased the conservatives than 60 Minutes, because we reported on fraud. The waste in Washington, and all of that stuff, when not everybody was doing that, and that's a conservative issue, not a liberal issue. 

 

O'REILLY When you watch 60 Minutes today, surely you know it wasn't, it isn't what it used to be. You have to know that. 

 

KROFT Yeah, I don't know what is. 

 

O'REILLY Well, that's true to a certain extent, but let's take Scott Pelley, for example. Excellent reporter, I would say. 

 

KROFT Excellent. 

 

O'REILLY Hates Trump. Dripping. Blood dripping. Okay, as Trump once said. Okay, dripping. Hates him. Leslie Stahl, appalled by him. Isn't it our obligation to pull that back? 

 

KROFT I think some of it, Bill, is perception. 

 

O'REILLY Oh, come on. 

 

KROFT I do. I do, I think, some of is perception, I think that Leslie can be tough on anybody, and I think that Scott, the same way. Here's my theory about conservatives. What I just mentioned with all the stuff about fraud and like scandals and crooks and all of that stuff. I think the conservatives tend to look at it like, well, there's a small occasion of the truth when, in fact, it is playing it more down the middle. But I don't think the Conservatives necessarily like the middle, I think they want people to be on their side. 

 

O'REILLY Both sides do, though. Listen, that's why cable news succeeds, because they preach to the choir. I mean, they just tell people what they want to hear. You know that, everybody knows that. And that's absolutely hurt the repertorial business. We'll talk a little bit about you. I did not know this, and I should have known it. You were in Vietnam. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

So you're over in Vietnam, and you win a bronze star. You're awarded a bronze. 

 

KROFT Two, but not for combat. One was from service. 

 

O'REILLY It doesn't matter what it was. 

 

KROFT Well, you don't get a bronze star unless you're involved in combat theater. One for service and one for meritorious achievement. 

 

O'REILLY Tell me about Vietnam. 

 

KROFT Took up five years of my life. You know, I'm counting the two and a half years I was in the service and the two years before when I was worried about what I was gonna do. Because that was in 1968. I got drafted, and I got drafted. 

 

O'REILLY And you went. 

 

KROFT And I went. It's an interesting story because I didn't think I really had any choice. My parents would never have tolerated me going to Canada, and they would never have tolerated my going to jail. So the only thing I had to do, my only choice, was enlist or be drafted. 

 

O'REILLY Okay, but I mean, you came from a traditional family. Was Vietnam worth it in any way? 

 

KROFT For me? 

 

O'REILLY Just in general. I mean, you were a reporter there. You were writing for Stars and Stripes or whatever it may be. You were observing what was happening. Is there anything worthy about that? 

 

KROFT Only the learning experience. 

 

O'REILLY The actual war itself, the way it was conducted, the draft, and all of that was a negative for America? 

 

KROFT It was a negative for America, but I do think that it was instructive because I think that McNamara... 

 

O'REILLY Defense Secretary. 

 

KROFT Yeah, certainly realized, and LBJ certainly realized that you can't just send American boys off to die without having the country behind you. And I think we're revisiting some of that stuff right now in Iran. 

 

O'REILLY But it's a little bit different because of the urgency on the nuke front, whether you believe it or not. I happen to believe it. I have a fairly good pipeline into what's happening. But I know millions of Americans don't want to believe it. They hate Trump, and they think Trump's evil, and he's going to do evil things. Once you get to that point, then rationality disappears. And the reason I asked you about Vietnam was I went over after the war. But I never knew whether we were noble over there or not, we, being the United States. Were we noble, trying to save these people from communism? 

 

KROFT I think we were noble, only, and I use as proof because I've been back and they have much more respect for the Americans than they ever had for the French. 

 

O'REILLY Yeah, it's money, though now. 

 

KROFT I think it was a little bit more. I think that the French were, you know, they were the colonial power and that had been going on for really a long time, but I think that particularly the Japanese or the Vietnamese military people, Jap and those guys had a tremendous amount of respect for the Americans. 

 

O'REILLY What we fought for. 

 

KROFT Yes. 

 

O'REILLY Sure, sure. 

 

KROFT We were the enemies.

 

O'REILLY But it goes down into history as a deficit on America's sheet. There's no doubt about it. Tore society apart. And I think that we are divided now in this country as we were divided in Vietnam. I don't see a lot of difference there. 

 

KROFT No. I don't either. 

 

O'REILLY It was about 50-50. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY And, you know, we're in turbulent times here. 

 

KROFT Yeah. I would say that, you know, what you said about, I think that Trump's problems are deeper than Iran and the war. And I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that he thinks he can do anything he wants. 

 

O'REILLY So if you were covering President Trump, you would be skeptical of him. 

 

KROFT Well, I would be, I try to be skeptical of everybody. 

 

O'REILLY Would you be fair to him? 

 

KROFT You know, fairness is a strange word. I think my big problem with Trump, it feels to me, and this is 60 Minutes and CBS, I kind of feel like we're in federal receivership and that... 

 

O'REILLY Well, he's a populist. He's a strong man. 

 

KROFT Yeah, and exactly. And the trustees of this receivership are Trump, Ellison, and Bari Weiss, and they have said quite openly that they think that they need to adjust. 

 

O'REILLY Yeah, they need to be fairer to him. More fair. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY And I agree with that, because as we talked about with Pelley, and I know what I'm doing, so do you. I can see when Leslie Stahl is interviewing Trump, and she says to him, well, there's no evidence of Russian collusion, you know, blah, blah. And I'm going, whoa, that's not how you pose that question. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY It's not. And you know better than anybody, because you interviewed Obama 17 times. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY 17 times. 

 

KROFT Yeah, something like that. 

 

O'REILLY Why did he like you? 

 

KROFT I think he liked me for, I'm not so sure it was personal. I think that he liked the fact that 60 Minutes could deliver to almost 20 million people every time he came. 

 

O'REILLY But he chose you. He could have had Mike. 

 

KROFT I think because I did the first story on him. I mean, I was the one that covered him during the presidential campaign. 

 

O'REILLY I think he trusted you. 

 

KROFT Oh, he does, I think he did trust me, and I think he knew that I was not gonna, I was not gonna like... 

 

O'REILLY Cheap shot him. 

 

KROFT Cheap shot him. 

 

O'REILLY Okay, and you didn't cheap-shot him.  

 

KROFT And I didn't. 

 

O'REILLY Now, in order not to cheap shot him, you have to be a little light on him sometimes. I remember those interviews and sometimes I could see, I said, oh, Kroft wants to ask this, but he doesn't want to derail the whole thing. Am I wrong? 

 

KROFT I think you're probably wrong in the sense that we did some, there was never an interview that we did with him, that we did not ask him about all of the, all of the... 

 

O'REILLY But you couldn't answer, rather than challenge. 

 

KROFT Because he, you know, Obama was an interesting person. I'd never really seen a politician like him. In all the years that I interviewed him, he never once said, stop, I need to talk to my aides to find out the answer. 

 

O'REILLY I interviewed him three times. 

 

KROFT He was in command. 

 

O'REILLY But with me, I challenged him. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

KROFT Okay. And, well, I challenge him too. You apparently haven't seen the last couple of interviews I did with him. 

 

O'REILLY And they got tougher as you went along, okay, because he got more trouble as you went along, to be fair. 

 

KROFT The situation was really, really a mess. 

 

O'REILLY And then he was, you can keep your doctor here if you want your doctor, and all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. 

 

KROFT But for the first four years of that presidency, the issue was the financial situation. 

 

O'REILLY Yeah. 

 

KROFT You know, we had just pretty much—

 

O'REILLY Over the cliff with Bush. 

 

KROFT Over the cliff with Bush, and the worst of it, some of the worst of it was when he was running, when he was president-elect. And I think that some of those things, you know, all of the bailout of the banks and everything. 

 

O'REILLY Unlike Trump, Obama was a realist, and he was a consensus seeker. Would I be correct there? 

 

KROFT Yeah. I don't think nearly as liberal as people point him out to be. 

 

O'REILLY No, I agree with that, I agree with that, but he was stubborn. 

 

KROFT Yes. 

 

O'REILLY Very stubborn. And when I would interview him, I'd say to Mr. President, two of them were live. Super Bowl interview is live. And the presidential interview is the hardest interview you're ever going to do, I think. Do you agree? 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY Because you have to respect the office, even if you don't like the guy. 

 

KROFT That was actually my take on doing the job. I remember the Brokaw interviews and the Cronkite interviews of presidents. They were very respectful. Someplace along the line in the last five or six or ten years, probably, it began like, you know, it was sort of get the guest. 

 

O'REILLY Well, it began with Iraq. That's where it began. Okay. When Iraq went south, then the hounds of hell and the media were unleashed. Cheney's this, he's a Halliburton blood, that's where it really began modern time. I'll tell you an interesting story about Obama. When I had to do the interview live, I had 17 minutes. Because the Fox Sports people didn't want any of this. They want to interview some guy that was thanking the Lord that he scored five touchdowns. That's all Fox wanted, okay? They didn't want any discourse that was gonna veer away from my teammates are the best and I love them. That's what they wanted. They hated me anyway. So I go to Mr. President, look, we've got 17 minutes. I got a lot of questions for you here. You can do 17 minutes on my socks. Okay, 17 minutes. He can look at my socks and speak for 17 minutes about them. 

 

KROFT Yes. I said, when I raise my finger, my crooked finger from playing ice hockey, like this, that means I want to get in. I have a question, all right? You have two decisions to make. You can keep going, and then I'm going to interrupt you. Okay, you know me. Or you can wrap it. Okay? And he was totally cooperative. He wrapped it. And then I got in the questions that I wanted. I think I amused him. You, he took seriously. Me, it was like this cat in a little ball that he was whacking around. 

 

KROFT I can't let this pass. I mean, you've been talking about Dan Rather in the liberal slant of, democratic liberal slants of CBS. What about Fox? You think Fox is maybe a little conservative? 

 

O'REILLY It's interesting when you ask about Fox, you're asking me who wasn't really a part of that machine. My numbers were so staggering, I made so much money for them. They didn't say a word to me. Unlike you, I had to fight hand-to-hand with Hewitt and all these other pinheads. They didn't say one blanking word to me. It was, hey Bill, how you doing? Like some lunch? Okay, that was it. So I never, ever got involved with any of that. And then when I left, that one constraint, because remember I was at eight prime time, all right, disappeared. And it all fell into line, because the profit margin was in speaking to one segment of the American people. And it remains to this day on all of the networks now. I mean, look at The View, look, ABC News runs The View. Okay, and it makes its money. By talking to liberal women. That's where it makes its money. So that's what they do. But with me, it was a totally unique experience because of the economic power that I brought in. Very fascinating. It's a good question you're asking. You're still on your game, Kroft. You know, you're still in. 

 

KROFT You know, I think that, you know, I think Ailes was a genius. 

 

O'REILLY No doubt. 

 

KROFT Ailes figured out that you could be dominant with a rating of five. 

 

O'REILLY Well, he knew. 

 

KROFT And that there was no conservative voices at all. 

 

O'REILLY He was similar to Hewitt, okay? He knew what was good on television. He knew who was good. Now these people have no blanking idea. I don't know who the anchor is for CBS. Who is now... Tiffany Who? What? They don't know who's good, who's bad. Now you did one of the most fascinating interviews I've ever seen, had to be chilling, the Clintons after the infidelity stuff. Tell me about that. 

 

KROFT Okay, it was during sort of the height of that, of the, well, there was a, something big happened. A network, NBC, picked up a story that was in the National Enquirer or the Star or one of them about Jennifer Flowers. And it was the first time that a tabloid story had ever crossed over to the networks. I think it freaked out the Democrats, and I was not, you know, I was... Taking kind of a week off because we didn't have a game, you know. We didn't have a show because of the Super Bowl. We had the Super Bowl that year. So I went out and had lunch or a drink with Anne Reingold, who was an old friend from CBS who had been working for Ron Brown at the Democratic Party. And she says, well, why don't you interview Clinton? And I said, this Sunday. And I say, well, first thing is we don't have a show. Second of all. He's, you know, my understanding is he's going to go and do Nightline, you know, this week. And so I didn't pay too much attention to it. And then the nightline thing for one reason or another, I believe it was because, if it's dragging on too long, tell me, I think that somebody was going to be executed. And I think, that night, and I think that, that Clinton was, in Arkansas was nervous doing it. So it slid. So I get a call on Thursday or Friday from Anne Reingold and said, you sure you don't want to do this? And I said, we don't have a show. And she said, well, now I started thinking, I said, let me call, you know, I sort of was sure you can get him. And I had a conversation with some people on the campaign, one of whom was Stephanopoulos. And I called up Hewitt, he's in LA. And I said, can we, you know, we can get Clinton, you know. And he says, well, what are you going to talk about? I said there's only one thing to talk about with Clinton. And that's Jennifer Flowers. And he said, Okay, let me see what I could do. They were running a 48 hours after the Super Bowl and he had called up and got them to carve out like 10 minutes for us out of the out of the 48 hour piece. And so that was it. I can remember the call with Stephanopoulos and...

 

O'REILLY He was working for Clinton at the time. 

 

Yeah, he was a press guy. And I didn't know George at the time at all. And he said, well, here's the deal. We can do 10 minutes, but it's going to be after the game, not in the regular 60 Minutes time slot. So he said what game? 

 

O'REILLY Oh, he's at the top of his game? 

 

KROFT Right, so I said, the Super Bowl. He says, wait a minute, this is going to air after the Super Bowl? We're in. 

 

O'REILLY So he wanted it. 

 

KROFT He wanted it. 

 

O'REILLY And it was Hillary, too. 

 

KROFT And they called back and said, what do you, what we'd like to have Hillary on. And I, first of all, Hillary had never been on television really, but everybody knew that she was incredibly smart and was considered to be a real asset for his campaign. And so we said, sure, you know, bring her along. I mean, one of the biggest mistakes Gary Hart made when he got into the monkey business, was that he didn't bring his wife on the show. I think she went a long way towards inoculating the damage. 

 

O'REILLY Now, was that a tough interview for you to do because of the tawdry nature of the accusations? 

 

KROFT No, it was pretty straightforward, you know it wasn't... 

 

O'REILLY And he denied everything. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY And what did she do? 

 

KROFT You know, she stood up for him, and she was... 

 

O'REILLY Stand by your man? 

 

She was really great. I mean, I would say great. I mean, great in what her task was, was to save his... ass. 

 

O'REILLY So they just... They just moved it all over, right?  

 

KROFT They didn't really smooth it all over because they didn't really know where we were going to go with this. And they were under the impression that we were going to ask them some questions about his campaign. 

 

O'REILLY Are you kidding? They thought that? But you, as a journalist, knew he had to rep in Arkansas. 

 

KROFT Of course. 

 

O'REILLY You knew that. 

 

KROFT Yes. 

 

O'REILLY Did you bring that up? Say, hey, you're rep is a little... 

 

KROFT I didn't have to go to the reputation and the gossip. We had, you know, the Jennifer Flowers. She was out there saying this.  

 

O'REILLY After you did the interview, what was their reaction, the Clinton's? 

 

KROFT Hillary did not like it, and Hillary went on the air and said that Steve Kroft was so nice when he was asking the questions, and then apparently he came back and asked all these questions, these mean questions, and... 

 

O'REILLY  Attacking you. 

 

KROFT Attacking me and attacking 60 Minutes, and Don really went after her, and she shut up pretty quickly because it wasn't true. But it was a weird interview, you know? 

 

O'REILLY Yeah. 

 

KROFT It was a wierd interview. I think that, you know, I kept trying to think, what's the first question I'm going to ask you? 

 

O'REILLY I have a bunch of wise guy answers, but I'm not going to do it. 

 

KROFT I said, so, tell me, who is Jennifer Flowers, and how do you know her? 

 

O'REILLY That was smart. 

 

KROFT Yeah, because he was completely...

 

O'REILLY Yeah. And you weren't being, you weren't being accusatory. Now it's all about accusation. Now it's like, you're a pinhead, you did this, well, you know, that kind of thing. When you completed the interview, did you have a better assessment of the two of them or a worse assessment? 

 

KROFT I didn't quite know what to think. You know, this occurred at a time when he had been on the cover of Newsweek the week before this interview, and they had declared him the frontrunner for the nomination. But nobody really knew very much about him. And, you know, I know Clinton now, much better than I did. I didn't know him at all when I did that interview. He's an impressive person. 

 

O'REILLY Very smart. 

 

KROFT Very smart, and very likable. 

 

I sat between him and Henry Kissinger at Yankee Stadium one time was unbelievable, but he's not a truthful man. 

 

KROFT Uh, no. 

 

O'REILLY He's not. 

 

KROFT Well, he's not truthful about certain things. 

 

O'REILLY Most presidents are like that. I think Obama might be an exception to it, even though Obama made some pretty big mistakes with his rhetoric. They're gonna say whatever puts them in a favorable light. You know that. 

 

KROFT You know, and with the Jennifer Flowers thing, he had to...he was going to be in this, he had to lie, and he... 

 

O'REILLY But it was the arrogance because after that he goes to Lewinsky. He doesn't even learn his lesson. 

 

KROFT Well, actually, I can't remember exactly... 

 

O'REILLY The timeline. 

 

KROFT The timeline, whether it was Lewinsky or the other woman from Arkansas. 

 

O'REILLY Okay, but be that as it may. 

 

KROFT That was the one, that was where he got in trouble. 

 

O'REILLY Paula Jones. 

 

KROFT Yeah, he admitted that he had lied. 

 

O'REILLY If you're caught doing that and your whole career wobbles, maybe you don't do it again. Not him. See, I know you're not a psychiatrist, but I-. 

 

KROFT No, but I would point out the fact that, I remember Izzy Stone once said, the first thing you need to know when you go to Washington is that all politicians lie. 

 

O'REILLY And I don't think that, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln's a pretty honest guy. Washington, he'd lie to Martha, but he didn't do a lot of public policy. 

 

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O'REILLY You also show up in Chernobyl. Fascinating. 

 

KROFT That was a good peace. 

 

O'REILLY Yeah, and people have forgotten about that, and that brings us back to Iran and the nukes. Chernobyl wipes out this whole area, still to this day contaminated, and you had to then broach the Russian bureaucracy. They didn't want you reporting over there, did they? 

 

KROFT Well, it was the Soviet Union, and Chernobyl was in Ukraine, so I was dealing with the Soviet apparatchiks. 

 

O'REILLY Okay. Why would they let you even do that? 

 

KROFT They let a couple of print reporters in, and that's when I saw the opening, and then we pushed for it. I think that they thought that it would be a sense that they were being open as they could about it, because they made some really big screw-ups at the beginning. And I think that they wanted to demonstrate that they were doing everything they could to try and clear out the mess. 

 

O'REILLY So this was a PR campaign? 

 

KROFT I never considered it part of a PR Campaign because I thought that there was too much stuff that they would never gonna be able to like turn to their advantage. And there wasn't. 

 

O'REILLY Getting back to CBS, 30 years, did you make any friends over there? I mean, real friends. 

 

KROFT Few. 

 

But it's not easy to make friends in the television news industry. 

 

KROFT No, it's not, and I'm being honest, and it goes back to what I said earlier, if people seem really friendly, you need to check your wallet, and the worst one was your buddy Mike. 

 

O'REILLY What is it that drives this kind of deviousness? Now I've been doing this for 50 years, I think I know the answer, but I think the audience wants to hear from you. It's rough. This and Hollywood are the roughest. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY Why? 

 

KROFT Because everybody is so paranoid, I think. Because everybody knows the environment, and they think that somebody is behind them, you know, going to put a shiv in their back. 

 

O'REILLY Why just for fun, or for competitive reasons? 

 

KROFT For competitive reasons. 

 

O'REILLY They want the story, or they want the status... 

 

KROFT Jealousy or whatever, you know, I think that that's part of it. You know, there's a lot of...look, you must know this. I can remember when I was tapped to go to 60 Minutes I thought this was fantastic, and I expected that a lot of people would just come up, and say that's really great, I'm really happy for you, whatever. And then, you realize after a while that not everybody was happy that I got this job. 

 

O'REILLY Right. 

 

KROFT There were other people that wanted it. And so then you've all of a sudden made a bunch of enemies. And that's, it's just, you know, it is a snake pit. 

 

O'REILLY It is. 

 

KROFT It's a snake pit. 

 

O'REILLY Is it any way to live? If you had to do it again, would you do it again? 

 

KROFT I think that I, no, I probably wouldn't do it again. 

 

O'REILLY Really? 

 

KROFT Yeah. I hated it. I mean, I was, look, the best job I ever had at CBS when I was a correspondent at the London Bureau and got to see the world, that was the job I always wanted. 60 Minutes was really appealing, and I thought I wasn't really sure I was ever going to get there. I didn't really seriously think about it. When I did, there's so many things that, first of all, the job is just 24 hours a day. I mean, you may get a couple of hours of bad sleep. 

 

O'REILLY Beepers going off, they had beepers. 

 

KROFT Beeper's going off. Getting on jets, going here and there, the whole thing, then coming back and spending three or four days writing the script, and then going to the screenings, and then getting on, starting it all over again. And it was exhilarating in the sense that the reason I loved the job was because of the stories that I could do, and the fact that they liked good stories. The level, you can't go into that job and not do... I was kind of at a disadvantage. I was the first person on that show that had not been an anchorman. It wasn't really well-known. I'd been, you know, a lot on the evening news and was obviously, and I had been at West 57th. But I didn't have, I had to keep doing it, you know? I had to keep doing what I had been doing. I couldn't just go in there and allow a couple of producers.... 

 

O'REILLY Were you addicted to it? Did you get addicted to it like a drug? You had to do it. 

 

KROFT Yeah, probably. 

 

O'REILLY Yeah. And you're willing.... 

 

KROFT Because you get excited about the fact that you're still alive. 

 

O'REILLY But you do a good story, and people, you know, that people, millions of people see it. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY But at the same time, you're dodging the shivs every time you go into things. Somebody wants to kill you. And the only reason I survived at ABC and I prospered there, was because Peter Jennings protected me. He protected me. They would've cut my throat in 45 seconds. Local hotshot. Oh, look at the local hotshot because I worked at Channel 2 here in New York as a local hot shot. Okay, as Bernie Goldberg once said, and Goldberg wrote a book, Bias. 

 

KROFT Yeah. 

 

O'REILLY You read it? 

 

KROFT Uh, no, I know Bernie really well, so I didn't have to. No, I read parts of it. 

 

O'REILLY Did you subscribe to what he was saying, that the CBS apparatus had moved so far left that it wasn't really covering the news the way it should? Did you subscribe to that? 

 

KROFT I don't think I did. I think I, Bernie is a pretty complicated person. And you know, people create a sort of a brand. And I think that Bernie's brand had always been a little bit on the conservative side. And I think that he liked the fact that he could be outspoken about it to offset pressure, you know, saying that it was all liberal. And I think that... 

 

O'REILLY And he's a contrarian, Bernie. 

 

KROFT He is. And he took it a little bit too far, going after Eric Enberg on a story that Enberg had did, I can't remember what it was. And they got him fired. Bernie was also pretty arrogant. 

 

O'REILLY Well, we all are, aren't we? 

 

KROFT I have to tell you a story. Bernie, I think, really wanted to be at 60 Minutes and thought he would be. And... And I really like Bernie, I admire him, I think he's one of the most talented people I've ever been around. Great journalist. But he had, they did 48 Hours on Crack Street. And there was some guy, there was a some guy wielding a baseball bat, who was like the hero of the show. And the story goes that Don Hewitt ran into Bernie in the lunchroom and said, I want to ask you a question. How do you know that guy was who he says he was? And Bernie blew him off and said, of course he was. Well, it turns out that he wasn't. And I think it certainly damaged him with Hewitt. 

 

O'REILLY Right. 

 

KROFT And but, you know, we had people that you talk about, I mean, Andrew Hayward, and they were really good friends, and Andrew Hayward protected Bernie. But Bernie was, you know... 

 

O'REILLY He was different. 

 

KROFT He was different and he was so good. 

 

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O'REILLY One quick story. First day I was hired at CBS, 57th Street. You're familiar with it? 

 

KROFT Yes. 

 

O'REILLY I'm in the elevator. I'm 6'4. Guy walks in, he's 5'5. Okay. He looks up to me. He goes, you'll never make it, kid. Andy Rooney. 

 

KROFT Oh yeah? 

 

O'REILLY Didn't know him. Never spoke to him, his first words to me were you'll never make it, kid. 

 

KROFT Did he give you a reason? 

 

No, no reason, and he just kind of chortled, and I was going to be a wise guy, but I figured he's on 60 Minutes. Maybe I've already alienated half the building, maybe I don't want to. 

 

KROFT Well, there's a lot. I tell you, Bernie and Andy have some things in common. 

 

O'REILLY Right. It was a jungle over there, and the same thing with ABC. Last question for you, and then we're going to take a little break and for our Premium and Concierge Members. When you look back, you've done, I think, I mean, you gotta be in the top 10 TV journalists of all time. 

 

KROFT I don't rank them. 

 

O'REILLY No, but you don't have to reply. My opinion. 

 

KROFT Thank you. 

 

O'REILLY And you know, I'm always right. I know you are. I'm right. Does that mean anything to you? 

 

KROFT Yeah, I mean, it's satisfaction. You know, you only have one life to live, and you have only one, you know, I got into this business, and I got to the, you know, pretty much to the top ranks. And I was very proud of all the work that I did there. And... 

 

O'REILLY But you say you wouldn't have done it again if you had to go around? 

 

KROFT Well, I'm saved by the fact that it doesn't really exist anymore, that job. 

 

O'REILLY Yin and Yang. 

 

KROFT Yin and Yang. But I thought they were great. I got to go all over the world. I got to see... Meet all these people. That's what I loved about the London Bureau. I could go. That was also a killer job, but that's what I wanted. You know, when I decided I wanted to be a reporter, it came in Vietnam when I saw some guys straggle in from one of the networks, I think it was CBS, it might have been ABC, and you know they had long hair and they were wearing, you know, camouflage fatigues and they looked really cool and they weren't in the army. And this is when I was with the 25th Infantry Division, and one of my jobs was to escort some of these people, which I did a few times, and I said that's what I want to do. I wanted to be a foreign correspondent from that point on. 

 

O'REILLY Well, you certainly accomplished it. And we really appreciate you spending some time with us today. 

 

KROFT Okay. I'm sorry, I don't have time to tell you my first day at CBS. My elevator story.