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If, in the 1920s and 1930s, you ever thought about journalism, you probably imagined a journalist to be someone like Hildy Johnson, the cocky, wisecracking reporter who dominated the action in the 1928 play, The Front Page. Written by two former Chicago reporters, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the play, which attracted standing-room-only crowds on Broadway, focused on Johnson’s playfully unprincipled approach to getting a story. He lied to his newspaper colleagues. He misled the mayor. But, no matter, he got his scoop. Journalistic ethics, if such existed then, be damned!

Edward R. Murrow was Hildy Johnson’s polar opposite. His speech was what linguists called “great American,” sounding like it came from no one part of the country, but all parts; his suits were handmade on Saville Row; and his code of professional ethics was fashioned in war, hot and cold. There was no room for games or affectation, except, critics say, for the use of his middle initial. With friends, it was always Ed or Edward Murrow, but, on air or in any formal setting, it was Edward R. Murrow. A number of his wartime colleagues also used their middle initials—William L. Shirer, for example, or Howard K. Smith, or Richard C. Hottelet. It was their way of endowing the new business of radio and television news with a measure of respectability and legitimacy. John Charles Daly was the reporter who broadcast the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Charles? Later on, when network news achieved a higher degree of popular acceptability, Dan Rather did not need a middle initial or a middle name; nor did Tom Brokaw or Ted Koppel.

But, in the late 1950s, when I entered CBS News, the middle initial was still considered a badge of honor, a link to the greatness of Murrow’s World War II reporting, and for several years, like many other aspiring journalists, I toyed with a byline that included an L, for my middle name, Leonard, but I ignored it as often as I used it. For a few years, my byline at the Saturday Review, the New York Times, and other publications was Marvin L. Kalb, but the Times, for some reason, dropped the L, and soon thereafter, when I began to appear regularly on CBS Radio and TV, I too dropped it. It suddenly seemed superfluous.

On July 1, the start of my second week at CBS, I met a brilliant, beautiful redhead from South Orange, New Jersey. Eleven months later, we were Mr. and Mrs. We met under the clock at Grand Central Station, a blind date—she coming in from New Jersey, I from Queens. I was dazzled and fell in love. I must have made a favorable impression on her, because that night in her diary she wrote that I was “warm” and “natural.”

Madeleine (Mady) Green was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Wellesley College, and in September 1957, she was starting a PhD program in Soviet studies at Columbia University. From date one, we always had much to discuss, and now, 62 years later, we still do.

I stayed on the midnight-to-8-a.m. graveyard shift for more than three months, Terkel providing a course in radio news every morning. Among many other things, he expounded on the differences between local and network news and the importance of writing for the ear (radio) as opposed to writing for the eye (newspapers). “People don’t read radio,” he’d explain. And he would advocate the occasional use of a phrase rather than a whole sentence for dramatic effect, and, perhaps most important, the need to “talk” to the listener rather than “lecture” to him or her. You need “to have a conversation, to respect his intelligence,” he would urge. Terkel would have been a superb professor—he taught as much by example as by word. I will always remember his rewrite of my first attempt at a radio script. No one could have introduced me to CBS and journalism more effectively, more appealingly, than this thoughtful Yankee fan from the Bronx, who in later years was the editor who taped my broadcast reports from Moscow, making suggestions along the way to improve their “listenability,” a word Terkel made up and one that still makes sense to me.

Whenever he had a chance, Terkel would tell stories—he loved to tell stories about the “business,” his way of saying journalism-as-practiced-by-CBS. “Have I ever told you,” he’d often begin a story with a mischievous grin, “how we had to break into a Lowell Thomas newscast with a news bulletin?”

“What’s that?” I asked, bewildered. “Break into a newscast with a news bulletin?”

Thomas was one of CBS’s most fabled personalities. He was, in addition to being a successful newscaster, an actor, a writer, a businessman. Most notable, Thomas was the reporter who discovered and publicized “Lawrence of Arabia.” Success haunted his every move, almost.

Toward the end of an illustrious career, Thomas decided that it would be more comfortable for him to do his evening newscast from his home in Pawling, a New York City suburb, than from a studio at 485 Madison Avenue, and no executive at CBS had the courage to object. What Thomas wanted, Thomas got, even if that meant his newscast would be taped, not live, when aired—not the most desirable way of producing a news program.

Terkel explained how this system was supposed to work—that is, until one day when it didn’t. A team of writers in the New York newsroom would write Thomas’s script and then transmit it by modern-day Pony Express to his home in Pawling, where Thomas had built an impressive studio. Thomas, a genuine pro who had been broadcasting the news since 1930, would practice reading the script once or twice, and when he was ready, he would contact a radio producer in New York, who had one major responsibility—to arrange the taping of the Thomas newscast, usually an hour or so before it was actually broadcast to the nation. “Good evening, everybody” was Thomas’s distinctive opening, known to millions of listeners who trusted him more than any other newscaster. Among his many awards was a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“One day,” Terkel recounted, giggles between words, “something really big happened in the middle of his newscast. Really big. I forgot what it was, but we had to get it on the air real fast. I wrote a bulletin, gave it to one of our announcers, who went into Studio 9 and broke into whatever was on the air at the time. Well, it happened to be one of Thomas’s taped newscasts. ‘We interrupt this newscast,’ the announcer said, ‘to bring you the following news bulletin.’ Everyone in the newsroom, realizing what they had just heard, burst into laughter, at which point the phone rang. It was Thomas, and he was furious. He didn’t think it was funny at all, interrupting his news program with a news story.” Terkel shook his head. “We did.”

Most of the time, Terkel and I were, of course, absorbed with our immediate responsibility—which was preparing the scripts for the four radio newscasts (5, 5:30, 6, 6:30) that welcomed New York’s early risers to the glories of Gotham; but for the others who soon after 6 a.m. began to join us on the dawn patrol, their focus was, understandably, on the crown jewel of the CBS Radio Network, namely, the CBS World News Roundup (WNR), which, in 1938, started a tradition of timely and reliable news that survives to this day. The WNR staff was small, dedicated, no-nonsense: two writers, a producer, and an anchor. It seemed as if they rarely exchanged a word, each knowing by instinct and experience what the others were thinking and expecting. They occupied four scruffy desks in the middle of the newsroom. They were constantly shuffling newspaper and teletype clips back and forth, pointing at this one or that. When they spoke, it was generally in short bursts, the anchor suggesting his preference for the story that should lead the broadcast, raising his head and his bushy eyebrows as if to ask, “What do you think?,” the writers often nodding in agreement, then shifting their excitement to their typewriters, which somehow managed to survive the fury of their one-finger-here-one-finger-there assault, until, magically, a good script emerged. Relentlessly, the clock ticked its way, minute by minute, toward 8 a.m., everyone in the newsroom by now accustomed to casting a frequent, respectful glance in its direction.

At just the right time, the editor handed the script to the anchor, who gave it what could only be described as a “quick read” before rushing into Studio 9, where the mood abruptly changed from the contained chaos of the newsroom to the calm professionalism of a broadcast studio.

At exactly 8 a.m., as the second hand brushed past the number 12, the anchor, a tall, fullback of a man with a booming voice, “talked” to his listening audience: “Good morning,” he said. “This is the CBS World News Roundup. I’m Dallas Townsend.” For the next fifteen minutes, he took his listeners on a global tour with stops in Washington, Chicago, London, Moscow, and Cairo, picking up reports from CBS correspondents at each stop. If Townsend had the time (again, the clock—he’d often be looking up at the clock), he would conclude his roundup with a feature story designed to elicit a sympathetic nod or smile from his listeners. When, sliding a finger across his throat, the director would signal the end of the broadcast, Townsend would lean back, his face in a broad childlike grin. “How’d we do?” he’d ask, knowing the answer. “How’d we do?”

Townsend, an old timer who’d joined the network in 1941, had been a writer and editor on the WNR for many years before becoming its principal anchor in 1956, by which time he was recognized at CBS and beyond as a major star. During the 1948 presidential campaign between President Harry Truman and his GOP challenger, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, Townsend anchored all of CBS’s radio coverage. He had the same responsibility in 1952. It aroused no look of surprise when he was selected to anchor the WNR.

Once a week or so, I would deliberately delay my departure from the newsroom at 8 to talk with Townsend, and he would always stop for a brief chat about journalism in general or an aspect of Soviet policy that he had just reported. He was the gracious gentleman, willing to talk and, when he considered it appropriate, ask questions about Russian policy. Like Terkel, he too had heard that I had only recently returned from the Soviet Union. In those dangerous days of the Cold War, Russia was a natural takeoff point for almost any conversation about foreign affairs, especially among reporters. Many wanted to know about the unpredictable Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. Was he really as reckless in his actions as he seemed to be in his rhetoric? they asked. What would it take for the Cold War to become a hot war? Because a number of my recent articles had focused on Soviet leaders and policy, they wanted to know my opinion, and I was only too happy to oblige. If I could come to be seen at CBS as a ready and willing resource on Soviet affairs, I would be one happy fella.

One Sunday, under my mother’s rather relentless pressure, I reluctantly started the long-delayed chore of combing through bulging boxes of books, trinkets, and papers packed in Moscow and shipped to my parents’ home in New York, where they had been stacked in the basement untended for months. No sooner had I started than a surprise popped out of the first box I opened. In two large unsealed embassy envelopes were dozens of typed and written notes I’d kept during my Moscow assignment—notes defined as anything from a scrap of paper to a discarded napkin to an 8-by-11 page of embassy paper. These notes contained names, phrases from a conversation, even a sentence every now and then. Together, if one is blessed with a generous spirit, they might be described as a haphazard diary—but only if you were willing to stretch the definition quite a bit. They were notes of interesting conversations I’d had with Russians, including peasants I’d met in villages or Communist Party chieftains I’d been introduced to at Kremlin functions or at embassy receptions. Or notes of my general impressions of places I’d visited during my many trips through the vast Soviet countryside, from Bukhara and Samarkand in central Asia to Tbilisi in Georgia or Kiev in Ukraine.

On this Sunday, reading one note only led to my reading another, and then another, until I realized, after many hours had passed, that there might have been a point to keeping my “diary”—maybe, I had thought, these notes, efficiently strung together by sympathetic editors, might one day be packaged into a book about a young American’s adventures in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But maybe not. A book might have been a dream too far. I had to be honest with myself: if I had been a serious diarist, I would have been more responsible and surely more systematic, composing my thoughts in whole sentences, collecting tourist books of every place I’d visited, new Russian novels, interesting magazines, copies of newspapers, history books—the ingredients of a society stuck at the time in the mud of Marxist totalitarianism.

Still, the idea of a book kept reappearing in conversations with friends, family, and my new colleagues at CBS, and it intrigued me. I had my notes; maybe I had a book. But in the cultivated world of book publishing, as practiced in New York, the heart of the industry, no one could get anywhere without an agent. With a respected agent, publication was not only possible; it was probable. Without an agent, publication was impossible.

One day, sitting in the CBS newsroom, a friend told me about an agent with a special interest in foreign affairs, particularly in U.S.-Soviet relations.

“Contact her,” I was advised. “What have you got to lose?”

The agent’s name was Edith Haggard, and she’d been working at Curtis Brown Ltd., a prominent literary agency, since the late 1930s. Later that afternoon, my courage summoned to the task, I called, and, much to my surprise, she, not a secretary, picked up the phone. Another surprise: she knew my name, probably because she read the Saturday Review, a magazine devoted to books. I’d been writing for the Saturday Review since 1953, when I was still a graduate student at Harvard. My brother, Bernie, had introduced me to editor Ray Walters, who needed a reviewer with some knowledge of Russian affairs. As a student, I had “some knowledge,” and Walters gave me the opportunity to review first one book and then another and then another; and I must have been doing these reviews well enough to satisfy Ray, because this arrangement continued for many years. It was an assignment I treasured. It kept me up to date on new books. It helped build my reputation in the field. It added to my file of published work.

“Do you have a book?” Haggard asked, an obvious question.

“I have a kind of manuscript,” I replied.

“A kind of …?”

I tried to describe my collection of notes, my effort at composing a diary, but she cut me off. “Can you stop by at 11 tomorrow morning?” she asked briskly.

“I’ll be there.”

“And don’t forget to bring your notes,” she added, a drop of sarcasm in her voice.

In person, Haggard was small, charming, and so delicate she was often compared to Chinese porcelain. “So what have you got?” she wanted to know. I gave her “my notes.” She smiled when I explained my sloppy but determined approach to note taking. By the time I left, an hour later, a warm and wonderful hour spent sharing stories about Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Chekhov, Haggard said she would read my notes, and if she liked them, she already had a publisher in mind, who was also strongly inclined toward books about Russia.

A few days later, she called. “Marvin,” she said, a touch of excitement in her voice, “your notes need a lot of work, but I love what you have written, what you have discovered in Russia. I love the conversations, the humor, the Slavic sadness. It needs a lot of editing, but I think we have a terrific book here, and Roger agrees with me.”

“Roger?” I asked.

“Yes, Roger Strauss of Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy. It’s a good house, and I recommend we go for it.”

Who was I to argue? “Thank you, thank you,” I said, making no effort to disguise the excitement in my voice. “I could not be happier.”

Pause.

“When will they publish it?”

“Next November 1958. Roger’s aiming to put it out as quickly as he can.”

“Fantastic!” I said.

Haggard then wanted to discuss the advance, but I was too excited to listen. Besides, I had an hourly newscast to write.

In early October, John Day informed me that my position at CBS would change. I had been a “writer for WCBS radio,” in other words, a writer for a local station. I would now become a “writer for CBS News.” I would be joining the network. A year later, on my speedy ascent, I would be named a “CBS News reporter” and, when I was assigned to Moscow shortly thereafter, a “CBS News correspondent.” My work shift would also change: from midnight to 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. to midnight. The immediate advantage was both personal and professional. I would be able to see Mady at more convenient times, and I would be able to meet a few more of my new colleagues. Aside from Murrow, two were especially friendly and helpful—Robert Trout and Blair Clark.

I had already read and heard a great deal about Trout, once described as “the voice of CBS News.” His family name at birth was Blondheim, which, Trout thought, sounded German at a time when German-sounding names were becoming unpopular in the United States. So, in 1932, as he launched his remarkable seven-decade career, most of the time with CBS, he dropped it—Blondheim became Trout, and Trout became a household name.

For many years, Trout’s voice was associated with major events, such as presidential inaugurations, political conventions, wars, even the Kentucky Derby. During the Great Depression, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the relatively new technology of radio to talk to the American people, Trout was the reporter who often introduced the president, in the process coining the term that made its way into history—“fireside chat.”

It was then only natural that, on March 13, 1938, it was Trout who interrupted regular programming on CBS Radio to introduce a new concept in broadcast news, the CBS World News Roundup. “The program St. Louis Blues will not be heard tonight,” Trout announced. A “special program” would take its place, including “pickups direct from London, Paris, and such other European capitals as, at this late hour abroad, have communications channels available.” Shirer reported from London, Murrow from Vienna, having just arrived there from Warsaw and Berlin. Thus was born a great broadcast—and an even greater industry.

During World War II, on D-Day, Trout did thirty-five newscasts in twenty-four hours, earning him the title “Iron Man.” For two years, he shared the London beat with Murrow. He tried teaching the swiftly rising star of CBS News to consider the microphone a metallic friend, someone with whom he could easily communicate, with or without a script. Trout had proved to be a superb ad-libber; Murrow never so. Though he became an exemplary broadcaster, indeed the pioneer of broadcast news, Murrow was never on a first-name basis with a microphone. During newscasts in Studio 9, for example, he would often break out in a sweat, opening his collar, even his trousers, to ease his anxiety. Trout, on the other hand, could probably not have imagined a story he could not broadcast with absolute ease and grace.

Yet, on the day I first met Trout, a day of unusual warmth in early October, perfect weather for a World Series game, the legendary broadcaster entered the newsroom wearing a long, woolen scarf wrapped carefully around his neck. Twice. I was taken aback. Was he trying to be funny? His reputation as a comic had already spread through the industry. But though the newsroom was warm, Trout made no effort to unwrap his scarf. He sat down behind a desk, smiled or waved at the writers and editors in a most friendly, relaxed manner—he was very popular with everyone. When a writer (not me) handed Trout his script for an hourly newscast, the broadcaster did unwrap his scarf once, but kept the rest of it firmly around his neck. He read the script in a barely audible voice, a kind of private practice session, and then, satisfied, he walked into Studio 9, his old haunts, and read the script without a hitch, as he had done with thousands of other scripts throughout his career.

Just as everyone in the newsroom stopped to marvel at the master, I turned to the editor, who had cleared Trout’s script. “Why is Mr. Trout wearing a scarf?” I asked, puzzled.

“Why don’t you ask him?” he replied.

I laughed. “Because I don’t want to lose my job.”

“No,” he said, “he’ll tell you.”

“I’d rather you tell me.”

“Ask him,” the editor repeated. “He’s really a very nice guy.”

So encouraged, I greeted Trout one day as he left Studio 9. “Mr. Trout,” I said, but words suddenly failed me. “That was a very nice broadcast,” I added limply. I could think of nothing else to say.

“You’re Kalb,” Trout remarked, sparing me further embarrassment. “Ed said you’d be joining us, and we ought to talk. About Russia. Right?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“It’s Bob, OK?”

“Yes, Sir,” I repeated.

We both walked back into the newsroom. I couldn’t wait any longer. “May I ask you a question, Sir?” A long pause followed. Trout, a tall, thin man with sharp features on a very angular face, knew where I was going.

“You want to know about my scarf?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Trout laughed. “I wear a scarf now quite often,” he said, pointing to his throat, “to protect my biggest asset, my throat, my voice. It’s what pays the rent.” He laughed and sat down, waiting for me to join him. “I’ve become highly susceptible to colds lately,” he said. “My doctor thinks a scarf might help me avoid them.”

A question mark must still have been on my face, because Trout added, “Even my wife thinks he may be right.” His wife had just entered the newsroom. She often accompanied Trout to the office.

Over the next few months, we talked many times—about the highlights of his career, about London during the blitz, about Stalin and Russia, about Roosevelt, whom Trout admired enormously, and about Murrow, whom he admired even more, if that was possible. Though he had never attended college, not even for a single course, Trout was a walking encyclopedia. He knew a little about a lot. He was also, as his editor often reminded me, a “very nice guy,” who just happened to wear woolen scarves on warm days.

No star at CBS News burned more brightly than Murrow’s, even though at the time he was beginning to feel disillusioned with television news, a fact he probably confided to very few others except his wife, Janet, and his executive producer, Fred Friendly. Whenever he walked into the newsroom, usually after lunch, wearing no jacket, his head down, his tie loose, a cigarette in his hand, looking like a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, the writers and editors would stop talking and instinctively pull back, opening a path for him to the tickers. It was like a scene from the Bible, Moses making his way to the Red Sea. As the new kid on the block, though one whose job at CBS Murrow, more than anyone else, had helped create, I too would pull back, as ignorant of his deepening unhappiness as everyone else in the newsroom.

I was to learn of it only a year later, on October 15, 1958, when he addressed the annual convention of the Radio Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) in Chicago. And he made news. “This nation is in mortal danger,” he began, stunning the audience with this startling message, stating in public what he had feared in private—that television, though profitable and in many ways satisfying, was actually failing to do its job, not helping a nation trapped in the global challenges of the Cold War. He painted a grim picture: if you watched primetime television for one solid week, he posited, you would find only “evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from the realities of the world.” He respected the potential of television. “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire,” he noted. “But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends.” (Murrow had his doubts, and he was now prepared to express them.) “Otherwise,” he concluded, using a phrase many others would later echo in their criticisms of television news, “it is merely wires and lights in a box.”

Murrow was not one for small talk, and he often fell into bouts of depression. But if, on those occasions, he felt a need for instant reassurance, he always knew he could find it in the CBS newsroom, where he was always held in the highest esteem, admired and loved, a warm reverence enveloping the reporter who, more than any other, had turned radio into broadcast news. Literally a hush would fall over the newsroom whenever he appeared. Would he say something? Or just read the tickers, and leave, his normal routine?

Every now and then, on these midday visits, he would have a word for me. “Enjoying your new life as a journalist?” he’d ask, a gentle pat on my shoulder. But, before I could answer, he would already have moved on.

Still, a few months later, as a result of a rush of troubling news from the Middle East, Murrow invited me to write a number of his radio commentaries. They all focused on Khrushchev’s policy toward Egypt. But even before Murrow could offer his invitation, Blair Clark had already offered me the opportunity to write commentaries about Soviet policy for his own newscast.

Blair Clark was the producer and anchor of the World Tonight, a fifteen-minute roundup and analysis of the day’s news, which aired weekdays at 8 p.m. Occasionally, Clark would stop me in the corridor and ask about a Khrushchev speech. Was the Soviet leader signaling a possible shift in policy? Clark might have read something on the wires, or in a book, and he wanted to talk about it. Unsolicited, I had been sending short memos on different aspects of Soviet policy to a small number of producers and correspondents, hoping they’d be helpful in shaping the evening newscasts. Was the news from Moscow that day truly significant, important enough to lead the newscast, or just interesting and therefore worthy of mention, or was it, in my opinion, merely another dollop of Soviet propaganda? I tried, with the memos, to answer such questions.

Apparently, Clark thought the memos were helpful, and once or twice a week he would arrange the equivalent of a brief seminar on the latest news from Moscow—the two of us meeting in his small office overlooking the midtown traffic on 52nd Street. In this respect, Clark reminded me of Murrow. Thoughtful, always curious, he had a way of turning a newsroom into a classroom, and I was, in those early months at CBS, thrilled to be able to talk to him; and if I was able to help him, even more so. Very quickly, it seemed, we became really good colleagues.

If America had an aristocracy, Clark would have been a member of it. He looked like my image of an aristocrat. Tall and handsome, elegant and soft-spoken, he was born into the riches of Long Island, raised in New England, and educated at Harvard. There he met an ambitious Bostonian named John Kennedy, and the two quickly became good friends. Clark served in the military during World War II, and he was a successful newspaper editor after the war. In 1953, while reporting from Paris, he joined CBS and, within a few years, rocketed through the reporter ranks to become the anchor of the World Tonight. A few years later, he replaced John Day as vice president of CBS News.

What would distinguish his broadcast from the World News Roundup, aired at 8 a.m., CBS’s other fifteen-minute newscast? Between the two broadcasts were eleven hourly newscasts, all focused on hard news. What had happened from one hour to the next? By 8 p.m., Clark reasoned, the CBS listener would be ready for a broadcast that placed the hard news of the day into a more analytical context—in other words, the listener would be ready for what would soon become known as “news analysis.” His reasoning proved to be prescient. Listeners did want to know not only what happened during the day, but why. Just as the World News Roundup satisfied the needs and desires of an America waking up to another day of excitement and danger, the World Tonight satisfied their yearning, after a tough day at work, for a sensible explanation of what it all meant, perspective on the news added like whipped cream on a sundae of hard news. Because Russia was almost always a major story, whether morning or night, it followed that the zigs and zags of Russia’s policy and personality would find a home on the evening broadcast.

After a few months of office seminars and an occasional drink at Colbee’s bar, a CBS favorite near the main entrance to 485 Madison Avenue, Clark one day suggested that, in addition to my regular responsibilities, I undertake another—that, when asked, I write about Soviet policy for different broadcasts. Clearly he had the World Tonight in mind. Maybe he had checked with Murrow, maybe not, but sometime in mid-March, he took his own suggestion to a new level—he started to read my analyses on air, often without changing a word, sometimes giving me name credit. The subject was often the budding, problematic relationship between Khrushchev and President Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt.

“You don’t mind?” he’d joke.

Understatement of all time: I was delighted.

I remember what happened the first time he informed me that he was going to read one of my commentaries.

As Clark entered Studio 9 shortly before 8 p.m., I raced into News Director Bob Skedgell’s empty office (Bob had left for the day), shut the door, called Mady, my mother, and brother with the news (“Yes, the program starts at 8 p.m.,” I reminded them), flicked on the radio, sat back, and listened, and waited. Finally, toward the end of the show—there it was!—my analysis of recent Soviet moves in the Middle East. For a moment or two, I sat motionless, staring at the audio console, perhaps a tear or two in my eyes. I was trying to absorb what had just happened—Blair Clark had read my analysis on CBS radio. Thousands had heard it, probably many more. (Ratings must have spiked when my mother began boasting to her family and friends.) Most gratifying was that it was Clark’s initiative to read it on air—his voice, my words, CBS’s stamp of approval. In this way, unofficially, I had become one of his writers, focusing on Soviet policy. In a few weeks, this arrangement widened to include pieces on communist activities and actions around the world. With no fanfare, I had taken a small step toward becoming the Harry Schwartz of CBS News. I was obviously in the right place at the right time.

As helpful as Blair Clark was in advancing my career, so too, following a circuitous route, was the unlikely romance of Khrushchev and Nasser. Both of these leaders, for different reasons, engaged in a dangerous conspiracy in the mid-1950s that not only threatened Western interests in the Middle East but almost led to war. It was, however, a conspiracy that was a godsend to journalists: a compelling story likely to make every front page and every hourly newscast. CBS had to cover the story; and even if I were not a budding specialist in Soviet affairs, I still would have been following it.

For the first time, Russia was sending arms to Egypt, challenging the West’s once dominant position in the Middle East. Russia was also using Radio Cairo to expand communist propaganda into other Arab capitals. Nasser, a charismatic Egyptian, struck a deal with Syria in 1958 to create the United Arab Republic, an eye-catching leap into an ephemeral pan-Arab nationalism. Britain’s Anthony Eden and America’s John Foster Dulles hated Nasser but could find no way to outflank his tricky diplomatic and military maneuvers. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, reflecting a broad Western judgment, described the Egyptian leader not as a “revolutionary” but as a pro-Soviet “dictator imagining himself as a second Saladin.” U.S. Marines were preparing to land in Lebanon, an unmistakable sign the United States was not about to bend to Arab guile, nor to Khrushchev’s gamble aimed at elbowing the United States out of the Middle East. Diplomats found themselves in constant motion, propagandists incited passions, riots deepened social instability, ships and soldiers were moving into fighting position, and the danger of war hovered on the near horizon.

On April 28, 1958, Nasser arrived in Moscow, and I got a call from Murrow’s secretary, Kay Campbell. “Ed would like to see you,” she said.

“When?” I asked.

“Now,” she responded. It was 3 p.m. I would usually be arriving in the office at 4 p.m., the start of my shift, but lately I’d been arriving earlier to do research and writing for the Saturday Review and other periodicals—what the academics would call “extra-curricular activity.”

The walk from the newsroom to Murrow’s office, a journey of no more than fifty feet, took less than a minute. Campbell’s welcome was a smile and a nod toward Murrow’s open door. “He’s waiting,” she said.

Murrow was pacing from one end of the room to the other. On his large desk were piles of newspapers and ripped-off wire copy. On the wall behind his desk was a placard with Cicero’s words: “If I had more time, I’d write you a shorter letter.” The moment he saw me, Murrow asked, “What do you make of Nasser in Moscow? What do you make of Khrushchev’s welcome? The AP says it’s the grandest ever accorded a foreign leader.” The wires were in fact reporting that Nasser was being treated like a conquering king—Khrushchev and the Kremlin elite waiting on both sides of a red carpet at the foot of the plane’s ramp, scores of school children carrying flowers and singing joyous songs about “peace and friendship,” 200 elite Soviet troops forming an impressive guard of honor, and crisscrossing Soviet and Egyptian flags lashed to every pole at the airport.

Murrow, with a straight face, asked, “If you were to write my commentary for tonight’s broadcast, what would you say?

I gulped.

He continued, “Blair thinks your stuff for his show has been … quite good. I’ve heard a few of them, and agree.”

The renowned journalist sat down behind his desk. “So what would you say?” he again asked. I thought I saw a glimmer of a smile around his eyes.

“Do you mean for tonight’s show?”

“Of course.” Now I could see the smile. “Nasser arrived today, right?”

I looked at my watch. It was 3:30. Murrow’s show aired at 7:45. “When would you want to see the script?” I asked.

“6:30, no later,” he answered. “Now what are you going to say?” he asked, this time with obvious impatience. For an instant I did not know what I was going to say. I did know I was suddenly in a new world.

Murrow’s fifteen-minute newscast ended with a three-minute commentary, which he often wrote himself. It was his signature statement on the day’s news. Only later that evening did I realize that if I’d failed to write an acceptable script, one he would have been happy to voice on his program, he might not have had enough time to write another one. He must have trusted me.

So, what was I going to say? I’d been thinking about a possible approach all day—not for Murrow but for a memo I’d have distributed to producers. For both Khrushchev and Nasser, this love affair was a problematic gamble. By reaching out to Khrushchev, Nasser was abandoning his earlier suspicions about communist expansionism and, in a desperate push for glory, putting his fate, and his country’s, in Russian hands. He always feared “active Russian occupation of the Middle East,” he once said, leading to a time when “you practically hear the Russian boots clumping down on the hot desert sands.” By linking his political fortunes to a restless Arab nationalist, Khrushchev was hoping to secure one or more warm water ports in the Mediterranean, something no tsar had achieved over centuries of effort, and in the process damage Western interests in the Middle East.

“Go to it!” Murrow said, giving me the green light. “I want to know as much about what really drives these men as you know.” He had already turned toward his typewriter. He had things to do. “OK?” he asked, almost as an afterthought. Saluting, I replied, “Yes, Sir!” and, as I left Murrow’s office, I think, in my euphoria, I blew a kiss at Campbell.

But first things first. I would not have enough time to write the 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. newscasts, my regular responsibilities, and Murrow’s commentary. What to do? I explained my problem to the editor, usually a silent, irascible man who had never learned to smile. But now, apprised of my problem, he allowed a small smile to appear on his face. “No problem!” he all but shouted. “If Mr. Murrow wants you to write his commentary,” the editor said, with uncommon cheerfulness, “we here in the newsroom are happy to oblige.” The editor, pointing to my desk, added, “Great assignment, Marv. Write it. Mr. Murrow is waiting.” It had always been “Marvin,” but now suddenly it was “Marv.”

Nasser had arrived in Moscow in early morning, and by mid-afternoon he and Khrushchev were already in Red Square extolling the wonders of Soviet-Egyptian friendship. I thought I might have trouble writing a Murrow script, my awe for this journalist paralyzing my fingers; but possibly because I had been thinking about the story for much of the day, the words flowed easily.

“A tall Arab visitor joined his short Slavic host atop the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square today,” I began, focusing on the personalities of the two leaders, as Murrow had requested, and what each hoped to achieve during Nasser’s long, headline-catching trip to the Soviet Union.

Shortly after 6 p.m., I finished the script. Quietly, I read it, as if I were the broadcaster, and made a few edits. As a courtesy, I also asked the editor to read it. He was pleased I had asked, and, as a sign he accepted this assignment with the utmost seriousness, he actually changed a word here and there, dropped a comma, and asked a question easily answered. “I’ve never edited a script for Mr. Murrow,” he said, a faraway look of pride in his eyes. “Just tell him if there is anything else we can do to help, just ask.”

Campbell was next to see my script. It was 6:15 p.m., fifteen minutes ahead of Murrow’s deadline. She said Murrow would see it and get back to me before the start of his broadcast.

“But when will he see it?” I asked, anxiously hitting the word “when.”

“Soon,” she replied. “He’ll get back to you.”

“When?”

“He’ll get back to you,” she repeated, picking up my script and a few others and heading into Murrow’s office, where, through the open door, I could catch a glimpse of the legendary journalist huddled over his typewriter.

I returned to the newsroom, where I pretended to read the afternoon papers and the latest wire copy while I waited for Murrow’s reaction. Time passed very slowly. Shortly after 7 p.m., Ed Bliss, Murrow’s writer of hard news, a kind, highly competent journalist, entered the newsroom, apparently to check the tickers for late-breaking news. He was in a rush, but spotting me, he paused and, holding up his right thumb, like a politician just told his polls had risen, softly mouthed, “He likes it.”

For the next half hour or so I walked on air, occasionally pinching myself. Harry Schwartz, move over, I crowed to myself. When, at 7:40 p.m., I spotted Murrow and Bliss heading toward Studio 9, both engaged in hushed conversation, I slipped into Skedgell’s office and again called family and friends to tell them that Edward R. Murrow (“That’s right, Edward R. Murrow!”) was planning to read my commentary at the close of his newscast. Reaction was filled with oohs and aahs. I pressed the radio button on the audio console, sat back, and listened to the program that had been a part of the Kalb household for many years. Now I was to be a part of the program—I still could not quite believe it. Would he really read my commentary?

After a commercial break, Murrow opened his concluding commentary with my words about a “tall Arab” and a “short Slav.” It was happening. I leaned forward, elbows on knees, and listened intently. Did he change a word, a thought? No, I did not think so. He must have liked the script. His voice gave my words an authenticity and importance that on their own they would not have possessed. Listening, I suddenly realized that I was crying—the tears were those of pride, pleasure, and professional satisfaction.

Of course, I had been gratified when Clark read my scripts on air, but now I was in a state of unnatural bliss listening to Murrow reading one of my scripts, as he was to read others over the next couple of months. On that evening, I knew I had taken a big step toward a professional goal that, only a few months earlier, I had considered a remote dream.

“Congratulations.” It was Clark greeting me the next day. “Good job. I guess Ed’s been listening to the World Tonight,” a humorous reference to the commentaries I’d been writing for his show. Nodding toward his office, he whispered, “When you have a minute?”

I was there in seconds. Wasting little time on pleasantries, Clark said he wanted me to write another piece on Nasser’s visit to the Soviet Union, this one focusing on a single theme: the way Nasser was allowing Khrushchev to spread communist propaganda throughout the Arab world. Why was he doing this? And what effect was it having? It was a subject that intrigued me.

“When would you want it?” I asked.

“For tonight,” he replied. “A minute-twenty, no more,” the normal length of a piece for the World Tonight, “and try to get it to me by 7 p.m.” Clark usually accepted pieces as late as 7:45. Why the earlier deadline? I didn’t ask, and he didn’t say.

I had in my overstuffed briefcase, a kind of portable filing cabinet that I carried with me everywhere, several newspaper clips on Soviet propaganda efforts in the Middle East. My thinking was, if you understood the role of Radio Cairo, you would understand a lot about Egyptian and Russian policy. Why would the Russians want to use Radio Cairo? Why would the Egyptians allow it? And how effective was this effort? It was a complicated subject. A Mideast scholar could write a book on the subject. A Harry Schwartz could write 1,500 words for a Sunday spread in the Times. But a writer for a minute-twenty radio commentary had to be brief but somehow comprehensive, no easy task but obviously doable. Murrow, citing Cicero, had been writing “shorter letters” since World War II.

Practice did not make perfect, but it helped. The successful writer of radio and television news had to contain the natural impulse to add words when fewer might actually accomplish the same end.

My piece was long, a little over two minutes. I started the painful task of cutting a word here, a word there, a short phrase perhaps. No writer enjoys cutting his own script. I finally got it down to 1:26. Foolishly I thought Clark would accept the extra six seconds. When I submitted my script to him, at exactly 7 p.m., as he had requested, he dropped what he was doing, read it, and unceremoniously cut eleven seconds, meaning five seconds more than I had cut. It was now down to 1:15.

“Good!” he pronounced. “Damned good, in fact. Just what I wanted.” He then looked at me, as if he were sizing me up, and asked, “If I’m not mistaken, you’re hoping one day to be a CBS correspondent, right?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Meaning, you’ll have to do your own broadcasts, right?”

“Yes, one day.”

“Well, why not today? Why not right now?”

My heart missed a beat, or two, or three, and I said nothing.

“Why not?” Clark continued, sounding like an adventurous gambler. “Why not? You’ve got to start sometime.” He put his arm on my shoulder and, steering me down the corridor to Studio 9, whispered, “I know this is like throwing someone who can’t swim into a pool, and saying, Swim!” Clark squeezed my shoulder. “Only I know you can swim.”

“Really?” I asked, a show of timidity masking an inexplicable rush of self-confidence.

“No doubt in my mind,” he replied. “We’ll tape it tonight, but next time we’ll be doing it live.”

I sat down in the same studio chair Clark used, and Murrow used, and Trout used, and Townsend used; and when the go-ahead light flashed from the control room, I read my script carefully, made no mistakes and, when finished, looked up at Clark. “No need for another take,” he said. “Perfect.” At which point he spun around and returned to his office, where he resumed his final preparation for another edition of the World Tonight. For him it was another edition; for me it was a breakthrough.