On April 7, 2012, legendary American television
journalist Mike Wallace died at age 93. Wallace was most known for his
reporting on the CBS television network news show "60 Minutes." The
newspaper USA TODAY published a tribute article to Mike Wallace, which read, in part:
60 Minutes star Mike Wallace
combined a combative interview style with show-business panache, and his death
marks the near end of the era of the tough, old-school reporter.
In a career that spanned seven decades, Wallace
evolved from a radio entertainer in the 1940s and TV game-show host in the '50s
to the no-nonsense inquisitor of CBS' top-rated news magazine, 60 Minutes, which launched in 1968.
He applied his trademark reporting technique — steely questioning, skeptical
debating and ambush-style assault on the unsuspecting — well into his 80s.
Radio
Liberty experienced Mike Wallace's style of broadcast journalism in 1982 as
recounted by former Radio Liberty manager Gene Sosin in his memoirs. when
Wallace investigated charges of World War II Nazi collaboration against Anton
Adomovich, who had been employed at Radio Liberty from 1957 to 1974:
During this time of charges and countercharges concerning
the content of some Radio Liberty broadcasts, another threat to the station's
reputation arose in the form of an investigation by the top-rated CBS-TV
program, "60 Minutes." In the spring of 1982, CBS informed RFE/RL's New
York Programming Center that Mike Wallace wanted to bring his camera crew to
our office. They were interested in pursuing information published in a new
book, The Belarus Secret, by
John Loftus, a Boston attorney and former employee of the U.S. Department of
Justice Office of Special Investigations.
Loftus had uncovered evidence during his work in Washington
that Radio Liberty hired former Soviet citizens who collaborated with the Nazis
during the German occupation of Belorussia in World War II. Anthony Adamovich,
a writer for Radio Liberty, was included in Loftus's list. New York Director
William Kratch consented to the interview and asked me to join him in front of
the camera when Wallace appeared to tape the segment. I called Howland Sargeant
for advice, inasmuch as he had been president of Radio Liberty from 1954 to 1975. He confirmed that
several members of the Radio's staff in Munich and New York had been
collaborators, but that they had been cleared by the proper authorities in the
U.S. government before we hired them. In other words, their wartime association
with the Nazi occupation was forgiven because the Nazi invaders had offered
them the choice of collaborating or being shot. In the case of Adamovich, he
had been an editor of a Belorussian newspaper in Minsk and was forced to
cooperate with the Germans by continuing his activities under their
supervision.
Mike Wallace interviewed Kratch and me for about ten
minutes, throwing in a question about the Radio's former clandestine
association with the CIA, as if that cast a shadow on all of our activities. I
explained that it was Radio policy to employ former Soviet citizens who
combined expertise in journalism with personal knowledge of our target area,
always making sure, however, that they had a clean bill of health from American
counterintelligence. Wallace then acknowledged, "You people are not to
blame." But when the show was aired on May 16, 1982, his spontaneous
comment had been left on the cutting-room floor at CBS.
To make matters worse, he interviewed Adamovich, an elderly
man in poor health, who wilted under Wallace's notorious prosecutorial
technique. The telecast produced a negative image of Radio Liberty's hiring
policy and tarnished the generally good reputation we had painstakingly built
since our struggle with Fulbright and other opponents in Washington.
Congresswoman Elizabeth Holzman vented her indignation against Radio Liberty's
misuse of American taxpayers' money by allegedly consorting with war criminals.
In September 1982, CBS scheduled a repeat of the program,
and I sent a strongly worded telegram to Don Hewitt, chief producer of "60 Minutes,"
Ira Rosen, and Mike Wallace. At the end of the telecast on the following
Sunday, Wallace read the part of my message stating that we hired emigre staff members
and freelancers only after they had been cleared by the proper U.S.
authorities. Happily, there were no further repercussions. Perhaps the issue
was too remote and esoteric for the American public to get exercised about it
in the 1980s. The Soviet press gleefully reported the CBS program, but it did
not damage Radio Liberty. Our popularity grew tremendously after Gorbachev came
to power in 1985 and ultimately divulged previously censored information about
many aspects of Soviet reality that Radio Liberty had consistently exposed for
three decades, thereby confirming our trustworthiness and reliability.
On Februray 9, 1983, Congressman Barney Frank
(D-Massachusetts) wrote a letter to RFE/RL President James Buckley. In part, it read
Source:
Radio Free
Liberty/Radio Liberty now employs Mr. Anton Adamovich, a known Nazi
collaborator who should immediately be terminated from service and considered
for deportation under the provisions of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and
other laws making his residence in the United States illegal.
The FBI
knew of Mr. Anton Adamovich's connections to the Nazis according to Mr.
Adamovich's own statements on the television show "60 Minutes" aired
last spring.
I ask that
you take steps to remove Mr. Adamovich from employment with Radio Free Europe/
Radio Liberty and undertake an investigation of other employees who may have
collaborated with the Nazis.
James Buckley sent an interim reply to Congreeman
Frank on February 22 1983, which, in part read:
Given the
continued (and justlfied) intensity with which individuals guilty of war crimes
have been pursued, I would have assumed that any "known Nazi
collaborator" would have long since been appropriately dealt with.
President Buckley sent a final letter to
Congressman Frank on March 10, 1983, which, also in part, read
Following
accusations on the CBS “Sixty Minutes” television program of his being a
wartime Nazi collaborator, the Radio management, through its U.S. Government
oversight board, initiated inquiries through appropriate Government agencies to
determine the validity of the charges against Adamovich as well as similar
charqes against any other employees or free lance contributors of RFE/RL. To
date there has been no evidence given to us which would justify our taking
administrative action in the Adamovich case.
War
criminal charqes aqainst a number of RFE/RL, staff members have been made in
Soviet and East European media for decades. I want to reassure you that as
President of RFE/RL I will continue the management practice of investigating
all such charges, regardless of source, against our employees and will take
required action in all justified instances.
Allan A. Ryan, Director, Office of Special
Investigations (OSI), Department of Justice, in response to a request from the
RFE/RL oversight Board for International Broadcastings, wrote a letter to the BIB on July 8, 1982, in which
he had proposed:
I will not
routinely notify RFE/RL of investigations of RFE/RL employees. Such notice may
be unfair to an employee against whom charges are not later brought,
particularly if it served as the basis for administrative action against the
employee; equally important, such notice to a subject at an early stage of the
investigation might compromise the investigation itself. OSI personnel may, of
course, contact RFE/RL in the normal course of gathering information, but such
contacts should not be communicated to the employee, nor, without more, do I
think they should form the basis for any administrative action against the
employee.
Free-lance use of Adamovich continued for a few years and eventually stopped. Denaturaliization and Deportation proceedings were never brought against Adam
Adomovich. He died in New York on June 12, 1998.
For more information:
Gene Sosin,
Sparks of
Liberty: An Insider's Memoir of Radio LIberty
Chapter 11, pp. 185-187
The Cold War International History Project
has just put up on-line, for viewing or downloading, over 150 documents
(mostly CIA) that deal with the U.S. Government's covert involvement
and financial support of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty from the
late 1940s to 1971. Below are the details:
