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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show Larry Doyle.
Now Larry served two tours as a Marine during Vietnam before transitioning out and entering
into the world of journalism, ultimately becoming one of the most respected figures in his profession.
So we discuss a host of topics from his Vietnam experience, his journey into journalism, interviewing
President Nelson Mandela the day after he was released from Robben Island, his own perception
of the devolution of mainstream media and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier
for others to find.
And this is a free library of almost 700 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Larry Doyle.
Enjoy.
Well Larry, I want to start by saying firstly thank you for welcoming me to your beautiful
home here on Sanibel Island.
I've never been on this side of Florida before and it's absolutely stunning.
So thank you first.
It's the antithesis of the East Coast of Florida.
But sometimes I think the greatest difference between the coast is there's not much of a
pulse here.
Yeah, that's why I love, you know, Crescent Beach, South of San Augustine.
So I love that as a real strong pulse there.
So yeah, so as we're recording this, there is a potentially a hurricane bearing down
on us.
So just a little backstory there.
So I want to thank Mel first, Melvin Downs, former SAS special operator who was on the
show as well.
Just as an icebreaker, how do you know Mel?
Well once the war in Iraq began, CBS News, the organization I worked for, as well as
most of the major Western news organizations finally got hip to the fact that we're putting
our people in dangerous places.
What can we do to help them?
CBS reached out and contracted with an outfit called Pilgrims.
It's a British security company.
Remarkable for the fact that its staff members were all former British special air service
people, SAS people, members of the regiment, as they always reminded me.
And I'll tell you, they were a remarkable group.
I mean, they were schooled not only in survival techniques, protection techniques, but one
member of the team was always a well accomplished medic, which I mean, I thought, and I thought
that person was the most important member of the team.
Mel had expertise in both security and medicine.
So we became very good friends because he was a very reliable guy.
I mean, his decisions were made after he reviewed an accumulation of the facts.
I mean, and often I would have discussions with the security team acknowledging the fact
that we as journalists were often going to be in conflict with their security concerns.
In other words, I would say, well, no, I want to go to Sadr city in Baghdad because, and
the security team would say, well, you know, that's a no-go zone.
I said, well, no go for you, but it's must go for me.
So we would work some plan out and usually, you know, take a couple of days to work out
a plan that we could both achieve our goals.
And yeah, we got into Sadr city.
We were escorted by members of the mighty Saudi, Sadr army.
Our security people had to leave us at the gateway to Sadr city, but they knew where
we were.
We had arrangements at every hour.
We would make a call.
We had a code word.
If we use that, that meant we were in trouble.
At that point, the security, our security guys, Mel and his team would alert the nearest
quick reaction force the Americans had in the neighborhood and see what they could do
to give us a head.
So I mean, without a doubt and without exaggeration either, I would have to say that Mel on a
number of occasions saved our lives and certainly gave us excellent advice how to keep safe.
I owe him big time.
Well, it's so good to hear.
I mean, this cross pollination between all these amazing people that come on this podcast.
And at the end, I'll ask you the same thing.
I asked, who would you recommend as a guest?
And you were the person, you know, he suggested and obviously the feeling was completely mutual
from him as well.
I know that you obviously spent your career in journalism.
You're extremely well respected.
And there's another kind of side conversation there as we talked about on the phone the
other day regarding modern journalism.
But I would love to paint the picture because I know you were in the military before you
ever even entered that field.
So starting at the very beginning, tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit
about your family dynamic, what your parents did and how many siblings.
I was born right in the middle of New York City in the borough called the Bronx.
Grew up there in my early years and then I guess I was about 10 or 11.
The family moved north of the city to an area called Westchester County, cheek by jowl to
New York City, but often referred to as, oh, they're moving upstate.
And even though we were living upstate, I went back to the city for high school.
So I spent four years of high school in the city.
After that went off to college.
While I was in college, a thing called ROTC, Reserve Officers Training Corps, was a mandatory
class.
I thought it was a horrid waste of time because it was one hour of silly drills every week
and two hours of classroom.
Well, along came a Marine recruiter to the campus.
This is in 1961.
And he was offering a program called the PLC program, Platoon Leaders Corps, where you
gave up your summer vacations and you went to Quantico, Virginia to the Marine Training
Base there.
And if you signed up for the PLC program, you gave up a substantial part of your summers,
but you also didn't have to take ROTC.
So you did it to get out of ROTC.
So I jumped at that because remember, this is 61.
The world is pretty much at peace.
So I envisioned getting out of college in 1965, freshly commissioned as a second lieutenant
in the Marine Corps, spiffy uniform in pretty good shape probably, and being assigned to
guarding the embassy in Paris.
I mean, I really thought that was my future.
Well, things changed.
So I wound up spending some time overseas, a little bit more than two years, where I
learned a lot.
And when I came back, like a lot of veterans, I was confused.
I was unhappy with the reception toward veterans in this country.
I understood the frustrations and the quibbles about the war and its morality, et cetera.
But I graduated from college as an English major.
What do you do with that?
Not so much.
But I said, what to do?
Well, at that point, there was a government program called the GI Bill, where the government
would give you assistance to pursue education.
So I said, well, you know, I've got nothing on my plate.
What the hell?
I'll take a chance.
I'll see if I qualify.
I did.
And off I went to graduate school.
And while in graduate school, I was in a class called Communication Arts.
It was like a journalism class.
It was a PR class.
But there were other people in my class who had jobs at the local television station in
town, which was South Bend, Indiana.
And chatting them up, they said, you know, you ought to go down and see if there's, you
know, they're always, they hire a lot of us.
So I went down and I got a job there.
It was a combination radio television station.
It was an AM and FM radio station, a TV station, and it was owned by a newspaper.
So my original job there was at six o'clock, I would read a 15 minute newscast on the AM
station.
At eight o'clock, between eight and nine, I would host a classical music hour.
And at 10 o'clock, this is central time, I was the sports reporter on that news show.
I mean, I knew nothing about classical music, had no interest in classical music, but I
learned very quickly how to read from the back of the album covers and say, Philadelphia
Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy.
First violin, James Gearing.
So some of the people who were veterans at the TV station told me after about a year,
you know, they heard there was a job at CBS News in Washington.
I said, well, tell me about it.
They told me about it.
And I applied.
CBS took me to Washington.
I did an interview with them and they hired me on what they call the Washington Assignment
Desk, which is a, you know, it's an editorial slash clerical position, but important.
It gets the day started, it determines the coverage of it, you know.
And after that, I just moved on and was offered a job in New York as the deputy foreign editor,
to which I said, increase in salary, move to New York.
Why the hell, why not?
So I got to New York and I met the foreign editor and I said, listen, I'm going to be
perfectly honest with you.
I don't know the capitals of half the countries of the world.
He said, don't worry, we're all learning.
So I did that for a year and they made me the New York Bureau Chief, which is in charge
of the Northeast part of the United States.
It's strictly a management job.
I did that for a few years and a CBS show called Sunday Morning went on the air in 1979,
anchored by a fellow named Charles Garalt, a legendary broadcaster.
And I said, boy, that sounds like a hell of a show, a 90 minute news magazine on Sunday
morning, slow pace, time to examine issues.
So I went over and I talked to the executive producer there and I got hired for that show,
a remarkable show on the air to this day, probably has won as many awards for journalism
for CBS News than any other program it's ever put on the air other than 60 Minutes.
Well as part of my time producing stories at Sunday morning, I made a couple of overseas
trips, went to Lebanon, went to Central America, both places in conflict at the time.
And I said, you know, I kind of like this being out in the field.
So I went back to New York and I said, you know, how about I make a deal with you?
I split my time between Sunday morning and, you know, working on the foreign side.
They said, done deal.
So then I started to travel rather extensively.
And I think the other, not the other day, months ago, my sons and I were talking about
travel and we went to a world atlas and we checked off countries and my passport has
been stamped in 124 countries.
And I'm proud to say, I think I've only been asked to leave three of them.
Well I would love to just kind of backtrack for a second because now as people kind of
hear through this journey so far, obviously you've got an incredible lens when it comes
to journalists through all these different roles and then ultimately internationally.
Going all the way back to that young man in ROTC, and it's funny my son's in JROTC at
the moment so he's in the exact, you know, the high school version.
What as a young man were you seeing as far as journalism on the beginning of the Vietnam
War?
So let's start with that.
I didn't even think about journalism at the start of the Vietnam War.
In my time I never saw journalists in Vietnam.
I mean, you know, we were aware they were there because we heard about their reports
but I never came across any.
So I, you know, I couldn't gauge their work but in conversations I had with friends and
relatives back in the States, it seemed to me from what I was seeing and what they were
reporting was pretty accurate.
And I thought, well maybe these guys aren't so bad because I'm seeing what they're writing
and I know what they're writing isn't popular in some areas but it's truth.
Because it seems from conversations I've had that that was like the first conflict where
we're starting to see actual, you know, as you said, what was being reported wasn't so
much a kind of propaganda or downplaying but actually some of the, you know, the good,
the bad and the ugly of the Vietnam War.
Well I mean clearly there were, I think, two disparate parts of journalism at the time.
One that was getting accurate reporting from the field and the other was only too happy
to absorb the nonsense that was coming out of the Pentagon at the time and what is famously
known as the Five O'Clock Follies in Saigon, which was wartime propaganda.
So it kind of, I mean, not a big bright light went off but it kind of did strike me that,
you know, well, you know, maybe this journalism stuff is important because it can tell the
truth.
It can let people know what's going on.
And then I realized as the years went by, well the only way to do that is if you, our
eyes, ears, heart and brains are there to see it.
And that's when I finally, I said to myself, you know, I'm willing to sacrifice quite a
bit regarding your home life, etc. because I think it's really important to be able to
go out and fairly report.
And I've been involved in a number of stories that the United States government went to
some lengths to push back against.
And fortunately with the back of CBS, they never succeeded.
But those are struggles and those struggles continue today and probably they're even more
magnified today because the country is more divided now than it ever has been.
I just came from a discussion about democracy and the state of democracy in this country
and a panel of 24 folks and 20 of them are pessimistic and these are smart people.
I am pessimistic.
I think we're on a slide, reversible but a slide that is constantly tilting in the wrong
way.
So we discussed, I think this kind of topic on the phone a few weeks ago, me, my perspective
of what I see on the television now coming from England growing up with the BBC and then
as a thing called John Craven's News Round, which was almost like a BBC for children,
very kind of matter of fact, I was thinking on the drive down here, one thing I think
that you took away from that kind of news as well was empathy.
Like this is happening in this country and it's really bad and you left away with like,
God, those poor people, how can we help?
And there was a lot of fundraising and stuff that came out of that.
Fast forward to the last few years in America, my own personal perspective of what most people
are subjected to, whether it's CNN or Fox, which to me looks like the exact same blueprint
with a different colour tie, is not only the division that's driving, but literally the
screen is divided into four and four people are arguing with each other and offering opinions
and not journalism.
So with this lens and obviously we'll backtrack in timeline again, but as a respected and
awarded journalist, what is your perception of today's, I'm using air quotes, mainstream
media and the impact that's had on this division in this country?
Well I think the main problem with the media today is there's too little reporting and
a lot too much opinioning.
I mean, I've, you know, I have a lot of colleagues who work at CNN.
One of my sons works at MSNBC.
I retain a number of friends at CBS, ABC and NBC and in general, the people, and there
aren't that many of us left of my age, are not bullish on the future of journalism.
I mean, it's become as divided a pulpit as the political side.
And it is now, it's more political than repertorial.
I mean, I can't stand watching some of these cable shows when they have three or four people
because I can't understand a damn word any of them are saying.
Right?
I mean, blah, blah, blah, and the other one interrupts and then, oh, it's nutty.
And that's all it is.
It's sound.
It's what we're about now.
Still sound, that's it.
Not political discourse, not common sense politically, noise, political noise.
That's all we're hearing.
Well, I want to get, I mean, there's so many great chapters of your journalistic journey,
so I definitely want to go back.
But what through this journey, I mean, I know even with CBS, you were let go and then rehired
and everything.
So even then there was kind of politics behind, but what are you seeing?
What has been the disassembling of journalism that you knew and loved in the 70s, 80s, 90s
to where we are now?
I think the biggest problem is there's too much.
I mean, when I started in the game, there was CBS, NBC, it's early 70s.
ABC was still relatively new at that time to the news game, but that was it.
And those three networks did half an hour each of national news, 6.30 Eastern time to
7.
The audience was 50 to 60 million people.
Now the cumulative audience of those three networks is maybe 21 or 22 million people.
Back in the 70s, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, one show had 21 million people's
viewers.
And I really think that those three networks do straight news reporting between 6.30 and
7, but no one's watching.
There's just too much stuff out there.
And you know, this is a country, I'm sure you're aware, that likes to be amused.
It likes to be entertained.
That's the easy way out.
And what's more entertaining than watching a bunch of politicians lie to each other,
walk over each other, beat each other up, contradict each other, right?
This is kind of funny stuff.
Ha ha ha.
You know, it takes an effort to listen to or read straight news, be informed, and then
maybe you have to make a decision.
There's just too much out there now.
And I think the too much is weighed heavily on the side of the talk fest, the opinion
gabs, the gab fest, blah, blah, blah.
Now with that, again, my complete white belt, layman's eyes.
When I look at, like you said, the lengthening, the amplification of news coverage, and sadly
it will be a school shooting, it doesn't matter the topic.
You can see that element of great.
Now we've got eyeballs, COVID is a perfect example.
I can't help but think that ultimately the kind of business model is the more click bait
style conversations and topics we bring on, the more eyeballs are going to be on our news
network, the more money we can charge for the advertising space.
Has that corporate side of things also factored into more, more, more that's diluting the
news?
Well, not so much in my experiences at CBS, although everything is cost out now.
I mean, when I started working at CBS, it was a corporation that had, I believe, 12
divisions, disparate divisions.
They own things like Sony Music, Steinway Pianos, Simon & Schuster Publishing, the New
York Yankee Baseball Team, I mean, and CBS News was a division.
And at that time, the chairman and vice chairman of CBS Corporation had an approach to the
news division of, they called it the Tiffany of the network.
And we were unrestrained about money.
I mean, we could do anything because they had 11 other divisions that were keeping the
ship afloat.
And it's this, you know, this crazy crowd over on West 57th Street in New York.
They get a lot of awards and a lot of good publicity.
So leave them alone.
And so, you know, I grew up in a journalistic era of absolutely being spoiled.
I mean, I don't want to be too glib about it, but truly money was not an object.
You know, it just, it wasn't considered, you know, if, oh, you need another crew?
Okay, well send a second crew in.
Oh, you need this, you need that.
Oh, you need to charter a plane?
Go ahead, charter the plane.
Now what was the kind of reason behind that?
I mean, was it truly understanding that you guys were needing the resources to get a good
story and tell the right story to the public?
There are a lot of differences.
The difference is at that time, the people that ran the place and basically owned the
place had a lot of regard for news.
They cared about news.
They thought it was important.
They didn't see news as an imperative moneymaker.
They didn't see it as a leg that would prop up the entire corporation.
It was something we want to be proud of, something we should do well.
We'll do it as the best we can and we'll give those people as much resource as they can,
you know, handle and they need.
That changed considerably, particularly in the eighties when CBS changed ownership and
they were purchased by a guy named Lawrence Tisch.
No background in broadcasting at all.
He owned Lowe's hotels, Lowe's movie theaters and a bunch of other things and Boulevard
Watch, right?
ABC was purchased by a larger corporation, NBC too.
As soon as that was that dynamic shift between managements that were invested in news and
businesses that saw their news divisions imperative as moneymakers, everything changed.
That's when the hammer came down and the budgets were tightened and scrutinized.
That's when you think you saw that shift from news to entertainment as well?
That actually came later.
The money guys came in, I guess they came to most influence in the mid eighties, but
the advent of the cable talkers, I guess really started what in 1990 when CNN finally got
on the air.
Then when the other networks saw how there could be additional programming, a CNN 24
network, they branched out.
NBC created MSNBC, which is their cable channel.
The Fox network, they have the Fox News, Fox Nation and then they have the talk side of
Fox.
The managers, most of whom came from pretty influential jobs in business, began to look
at the industry as a business.
It was less of a necessity or a calling for those in it as it was, well, damn it, everything
else we do makes money.
Why can't this little band?
It'll never go back.
The purse strings are never going to be loosened.
My downfall at CBS was I had a, I don't know how to put it nicely, a discussion with the
senior management of the news division about the resources that were available to us covering
foreign not only conflicts, but foreign bureaus.
They had tightened things.
They decided they didn't need my opinion.
I said, that's okay.
I left.
They left a year left after and the new chairman of the CBS news division called me and said,
come back.
So I came back for another six or so years.
That was right before you moved to Florida.
Is that right after that?
No, it was, I left.
I'm not, that's not Cherica.
I was fired in February of 2010.
Now at that, this is a list and I didn't mind.
I'll tell you why.
At that time I had a contract with them that was guaranteed and I was guaranteed employment
until December 31st of 2010.
So they told me like February, whatever day I didn't have to come to work.
I said done deal, I call my agent.
I said, here's the deal.
I said, they just gave you 11 months off and they're paying you.
So that was in February and in June of 2010, we moved here.
We bought this house and gutted it and every square inch has been redone.
So we basically lived in a shell here for about six months.
It's beautiful by the way.
Gorgeous.
It's an interesting, if it had a pulse, it'd be great.
But a lot of people love the, they love it because it's quiet.
And you know, if we sit out here long enough, you'll see all kinds of critters walking
by.
Yeah, Florida is amazing for that.
With the kind of news that today's society is exposed to, I want to ask you a question
based on your time in Vietnam.
And the reason is the average person who doesn't deploy really gets a very polarizing view
of war.
Either it's kill them all, let God sort them out, or it's they're all baby killers.
So all that time ago when you were deployed, were there any times regardless of the politics
that sent you overseas that you realized that there were some evil people that needed to
be taken care of?
I thought anyone who was trying to kill me was pretty evil.
But going back to what you said about the war and the concepts and the perceptions about
the war, I happened to look last night at a list of Vietnam movies.
And it's a long list and some of the names on it are well known.
Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, but so many Vietnam era films were made.
And it's remarkable because I copied down descriptive phrases of these films.
And most of them were about veterans.
And here are the adjectives that were used.
Disturbed veteran, psychotic veteran, turns vigilante veteran, goes on rampage veteran,
goes insane veteran.
Now most of these were smaller films, but I noticed they're available on the Netflix's
of the world, some of them.
So they're still out there.
I mean, that is shameful.
Just shameful.
What was your coming, transitioning out the military experience, coming home experience?
I had a few people from the Vietnam era on one was Major James Capers, who's a renowned
Marine recon founder.
He was wounded and horrendous story.
He's there on the sidewalk.
I forget where they landed, but he's waiting for the transport unit to take him away.
And someone walks up and urinates on him.
And he's still near mortally wounded.
Another one, Rich Rice, who was a CAG member, same thing.
And so you hear, we asked these men, some signed up, many of whom, men and women, were
forced to go over there.
And then when they come back, they have this kind of reception.
And we wonder why there is a mental health issue in many of our veterans.
And you compare that to some of the kind of traditions of the warrior coming home in more
tribal cultures.
And there's a ceremony, there's an offload, there's gratitude.
So what did you experience yourself coming back from Vietnam?
Well perhaps I overprotected myself.
For quite some time, not a long time, but quite some time, I stayed close to family.
I didn't engage in public meetings that discuss the war.
I avoided private discussions.
I thought, going back, rehashing this, either pro or con, is not going to do me any good.
I'm not going to change anyone's mind.
No one's going to change my mind.
And I just said, maybe best for you, and this is a selfish thing, you need to step back.
Not avoid the realities, but don't put yourself in a position you have to address them, particularly
with someone else.
It was kind of, I want to avoid conflict.
And that helped me.
Everybody dealt with things differently.
I admire a lot of veterans I know who joined the anti-war movement.
I thought that was pretty courageous of them to go against their training and in a lot
of cases their family, et cetera, et cetera.
You know, I guess I tried to go the opposite way, a bit of isolation, because that worked
for me.
I mean, that's the whole thing.
What works?
There's no one path that is universally beneficial.
Absolutely.
Well, I mean, and like you said, the problem is when we hit a PTSD until recently, that
was what it was.
Oh my God, it's a veteran with a gun.
They're going to shoot up the insert, whatever.
Just staying back with your Vietnam deployment for one more second, the other side of that
question that we also don't hear is were there any memorable moments of kindness and compassion?
I mean, I've heard so many stories of, you know, military veterinarians taking care of
local animals to obviously all these medical personnel that bring in men, women and children
of that country that are wounded.
There's so many kind of human altruistic stories that never ever make it to the news.
So what about through that lens in your two years in Vietnam?
The heroes for me were the Navy corpsmen.
That's what we had, Navy corpsmen and the helicopter pilots.
I mean, so many of us wouldn't be here talking to you without those guys.
I mean, I saw corpsmen do things that were incomprehensible to me and at great risk to
themselves.
And the guys that flew those choppers are, oh man, I don't know, you know, because, you
know, I started out after I finished the PLC program, I was accepted into Marine aviation
and I spent a few months in Pensacola, Florida, learning to fly helicopters, right?
Eighteen months of training.
Well, a couple of months in, we had what's called a liberty, you know, it's the weekend
leave and we're in town knocking down a few beers and I happened to opine.
What a good deal this is, huh?
We've got a three year active duty obligation and 18 months is in training.
And one of my mates said, no, that's not how it is.
I said, what are you talking about?
He said, no, no, our three years starts after the 18 months.
I said, what?
On Monday I went in and I said, requesting a reassignment please to ground.
Well, some of those Vietnam era helicopters.
I really wanted to fly a helicopter.
Oh, I'm sure.
I'm sure.
Did you ever kind of soak around to that?
I could get it off the ground.
We never, that's as far as we got.
Then you were.
Lift off.
Yeah, some of those Vietnam era pilots now fly flight nurses and paramedics and I've
heard many a story from my brethren in the fire service of these crazy, I mean, you know,
phenomenal, but this, this, I don't, I can't think of any other conflict.
You would develop that much skill in a helicopter than Vietnam and then to be flying with someone
and you're trying to pick someone off a mountainside or off the coast somewhere and to have that
experience, which I'm sure we're starting to lose now age wise, but that must've been
an amazing time for EMS, for pre-hospital medicine and search and rescue.
Yeah, I mean, the era of the Vietnam helicopter pilots is well past.
I mean, but what they learned and what they taught and their techniques are still used.
I remember, I mean, for a while I lived in South Africa and at one point was doing a
story about a national park there called Kruger, which has a lot of animals.
And we, we had a helicopter pilot take us around to shoot aerials.
This guy was, it was, he was a South African, but he was American military trained.
And I'm telling you, I mean, I've never seen, I mean, this was mind boggling.
I mean, we came and he knew where everything in the park was.
He knew where to take us to see the elephants, to see the rhinos, to see the lions, right?
And he said, we saw a river that he took us to because that's, that's where rhinos cross.
And sure enough, they were like, you know, 15 or 20 starting to cross the river.
And he said, we'll go down and get a picture.
I said, okay, fine.
Usually we're happy.
The chopper tilts over, the cameraman leans out.
You're going to go, right?
This guy said, he said, watch this.
Okay.
He went down and he put the skids touching the back of one of the rhinos.
And I'm sitting there going, get out, get up, get up.
I mean, that's, and he said, I do this all the time.
I mean, it's, you know, this is what I've learned.
The skill was mind boggling.
Well, you talked about Kruger national park in South Africa, I know one of what I'm assuming
is probably one of the most memorable elements of your career was if I, my research is correct,
you interviewed Nelson Mandela the day after he got out.
Yes.
We had been, I was in South Africa for the dying days of the apartheid regime and the
release of Nelson Mandela.
So I mean, I saw the country do a complete pivot.
Nelson Mandela was probably as an impressive individual as I've ever encountered.
I mean, his, I was awed by his mere presence.
I'll tell you a funny story, not funny.
He was, he was released from Robin, Robin's Island prison, went to Cape town.
We had negotiated with his people to do the first interview after release.
And my days aren't correct, but let's just for, for the sake of what we're doing, let's
say he was released on Monday.
Our agreement was Tuesday morning.
We would do an interview and his political group, the African national Congress told
us it would be in the Cape sun hotel in Cape town.
So he said, okay.
And they said, and here's the room you'll use.
They had reserved, we were paying for it, but there were reserved, you know, a big room.
And I said, okay.
What time does Mr. Mandela want to do the interview?
He said six 30.
Tuesday in the morning.
Yes.
I said, with all due respect, the man has just been released 27 years in prison.
I said, no, no, he wants to do it at six 30.
And he said, you know, you, you just, you know, be in this room and be all set up and
be ready to turn on all your stuff at six 30.
Okay.
So we, we, we had three crews.
The CBS anchorman named Dan Rather was there for it.
It was a big deal.
We set up everything.
The cameraman and the technicians are adjusting the lights and about five 30, I guess, uh,
a door joining the suite that we're in opens.
And one of a Mandela's folks comes in and says, I guys, how you doing?
It's a no, we're good.
We'll be ready.
Okay.
Six 30, six 30.
We're ready.
Okay.
Six 30, that door opens and Nelson Mandela walks in the room.
I'm telling him my heart wanted to stop.
I mean, this is a man whose presence filled the room.
I've only met a couple of other people like that.
And I got up, walked over, introduced myself, shook Mr. Mandela's hand and sputtered out,
you know, six 30 in the morning.
I go, wasn't my idea.
You know, sorry.
I'm Mandela kind of put his hand on my shoulders and it's okay.
Listen to this.
It's okay.
I'm on prison time.
I'll always be on prison time.
And of course this professional journalism went completely numb.
So what did you see?
I mean, you were there as you said, apartheid was falling, you know, a very dark history,
I think in European colonization, excuse me, history or colonial history.
But obviously the back end of that wasn't a flawless transition either.
And you know, there was a lot of conflict there.
What did you witness with your own eyes as far as that kind of metamorphosis that you
witnessed?
It was slow.
It was painful.
It was inevitable.
But there was a South African government then run by a fellow named F.W. de Klerk that was
in power that was smart enough politically to understand their regime had to make evolutionary
changes or was going to come to an end in other ways.
And plus the influence of the world was leaning on the de Klerk government also.
And you know, it was inevitable.
So I left South Africa in late 92, six, seven months after Mr. Mandela had been released.
But I went back in 1994 to cover their first democratic elections.
And that's when it really struck me.
I mean, it was moving to see how important democracy was to so many people who had never
tasted it, much less learn much about it.
It was remarkable.
I mean, and I burst out, I admit it, I burst out in tears at one polling station because
when we were living in Johannesburg, we had a couple of South African ladies who took care
of the house and stuff like that.
And I was out with one of the crews early in the morning, getting pictures of people
voting and coming out of the voting places.
And I ran into one of the ladies who worked in the house, broke down.
This woman was so proud.
She's late sixties, first time voting.
She went in to vote and she came out and she showed me her hand with a stamp on it.
Remarkable.
I mean, it was great to see.
I watched, obviously I was a young boy then, but I watched that change.
And of course nothing is black and white.
It wasn't like he was an angel his whole life.
It was there.
Yeah, well, yeah, exactly.
It was there.
Yeah.
Good metaphor.
But he wasn't an angel his whole life.
Obviously Winnie, there was some controversy there.
But then I saw, same with Desmond Tutu, these become these incredible leaders and these
compassionate altruistic human beings.
And then I look at today here, today in the UK, and it's not left or right.
Like I've been disgusted for decades now, to be honest, because I'm waiting for the
real middle of the road leaders that unite a country, not divide them.
So with again, this amazing lens that you have, what was it that Nelson Mandela did
so differently than we're seeing, you know, year after year in the West?
Well, I mean, the most important thing and the obvious thing is he had the support of
the nation.
I remember South Africa was about, I don't know, 85, 90% black at the time, right?
He had overwhelming support.
You know, that's the critical component.
I mean, you know, it was legally required, politically expedient, and it had to happen
to have an election.
It's a foregone conclusion, I mean, just a question of the numbers.
So now, particularly in this country, things are so divided, you know, you can't have,
or it's almost impossible to have a leader that represents any kind of majority.
And therefore, there's always going to be blowback and pushback against anything he
does.
I think what is most lacking politically in the United States now is common sense.
I mean, here you've got a Senate, it's got 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats.
A bill comes up for a vote.
Fifty Democrats vote, yes, 50 Democrats, Republicans vote, no.
It doesn't matter that overall elements of that bill are beneficial to the majority of
Americans.
It doesn't matter.
We are so politicized and polarized, we don't look at what's best for the nation as a whole.
We have no consensus about what's good for the people.
We are stuck in the mud, you know, with our rigid dogmas.
And just before we began this discussion, I was in another discussion about democracy
in this country.
And one of the areas we were discussing was the how injurious has Donald Trump been to
democracy?
And my opinion was, you know, as an individual, I think, yeah, he put a dent in democracy.
But more important, his adherents and the people who still follow him are running for
office now as election deniers.
There are secretaries of state in various state contests who want to change the entire
pattern of voting.
They want the state to be able to certify the vote regardless of what the numbers are.
I mean, this is, you know, this is not one that, you know, that old canard of one man,
one rule, democracy rules.
This is, you know, an autocratic shift in this country.
And I mean, I think it's wrong.
I think it puts us in desperate shape.
Do we get out of it?
Probably not in my lifetime.
Well, again, the layman observation that I've made is that the system keeps giving us the
same type of human being.
Some may hail from the Democrats, some may hail from the Republican side.
But I'm waiting for that uniter, that person who's putting the health of the nation, you
know, the happiness of the nation, the reinforcing community and altruism and mentorship and
all these values that I think make a nation great.
And when you take a step back and look at, again, I'm looking at complete white belt
lens, that ultimately it seems you have to basically be a millionaire or more to even
play the game.
And then you have to be willing to take money from certain organizations that will then
support you.
So if you could be king for a day, what would our potential president selection system look
like versus how we have it now?
Well, I would get rid of this idea of the electoral college and I would go to a simple
count up all the votes the winner got the most.
I mean, our electoral process now has been some co-complicated.
There is no real national voting policy.
I mean, states change voter registration laws.
They do a thing called gerrymandering, you know, districts.
So a Republican or Democrat is favored in that district.
I mean, our electoral system has become flawed because it's too complicated.
It's almost like our tax system.
I mean, what happened to the majority wins?
You know, you go back, say to the 2000 election, you know, Bush gore.
I mean, that's what it began.
And then Hillary Clinton Trump, Hillary Clinton wins the popular vote, loses the election.
Biden Trump, Biden wins the popular vote and the electoral vote.
The election doesn't count, it's been fixed.
I mean, even when we have an election, nobody wants to accept it.
Like right now, the Republicans you can name, I mean, you've got Trump, the Florida Governor
here to Santos, former Secretary of State, you know, Pompeo, Ted Cruz, the Senator from,
you know, and on and on.
They're probably like, if you spoke to a Republican, they would probably name eight or nine people
who would be acceptable to them as a candidate.
But they're quickly winnowed out.
And here's how they get winnowed out, which is unfortunate.
They don't get winnowed out because of their politics or their policies or what they stand
for.
They get winnowed out because they don't have the money.
Exactly.
So that's my point is that I think like I've made this observation with, let's say, Trump
Clinton, Biden Trump, and it's not that Trump's a common denominator, you know, pick two people
out of the original group.
I don't think most people would have picked either of those final two, whether they're
Democratic or Republican.
And so I hear so often, well, it's the lesser of two evils.
Well, out of 330 million people, should we be hearing the phrase, the lesser of two evils
when we get to the final two for the Democratic race?
I mean, excuse me, the presidential race.
My observation has always been who the hell would want the job?
Well that too, and that should change.
But I mean, you know, it's water over the dam now and it's inescapable.
Our politics are all about money.
You know, I get a daily email from a fellow here named Charlie Christ, who's running for
governor against the Santas, right?
And every email I get, and sometimes it's twice a day, Hi, Larry, it's Charlie.
Oh, hi, pal.
Haven't seen you in a while, right?
It's asking for money.
You know, it's all about money.
Even the University of Florida, I'm still paying off my student debts and they're asking
me to donate.
I'm like, dude, I'm several, you know, tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
I'm still paying back for the exorbitant fees that you charge me.
And now you're acting like a nonprofit as well.
I don't think so.
Sorry.
You know, that's not a conversation I'm going to have.
You know, that student debt issue is interesting.
I mean, I think people, you know, first responders, firemen, EMT people, nurses, etc.
I think their student debt should be wiped away completely.
There's a thing in place, but I was like, oh, great, you've got to be a firefighter
for 10 years or you got to pay for 10 years.
But the thing is, you can't make a partial payment.
It's got to be a full payment.
And as a firefighter, you're struggling to make those.
And so and then ultimately, you know, the kind of degrees that we're taking, by the
time you get there, you've pretty much paid it off anyway.
So it's no help whatsoever.
That's right.
And teachers, I think, should be included.
I mean, you know, there's a teacher shortage in this country.
And there's always a criticism of the quality of the teachers we have.
Well, who wants to be a third grade teacher looking at 40 brats a day and knowing and
I owe $80,000 for the privilege of doing this?
Yeah.
And they're paying for their own school supplies in classrooms and they're having to get a
second job over the summer.
And yeah, I think I think it's terrible.
When you look at the education, places like Finland, they have a much deeper education
before you take on that role.
And they look at the child holistically.
Here, we do a shortcut and then we're like, well, don't worry about so much the kids.
Let's just work on these standardized tests.
And as long as the school looks good and we get our budget, then then we're golden.
And all these children slip through the cracks in the process.
Well, I want to kind of hit on one more area before we wrap up.
I know you ended up in the Middle East post 9-11.
So what was 9-11 through your eyes and how did that take you to Iraq and Afghanistan
after?
Line 11 to me was, I mean, I don't know how to describe the shock.
I always felt that this country was vulnerable to attack because that's how life is.
I mean, you know, nobody is impregnable.
Nobody is perfect.
But the shocking scale of the attack, I mean, it just said to me, holy something, we're
under attack.
It wasn't like, oh, you know, like in London, a bus was blown up.
To me, this was like, we're back at war.
And I never really went through the angst of trying to sort out the faults or problems
of the intelligence agencies.
Why didn't they know more about this?
I mean, you and I know enough to know that no intelligence agency is perfect.
And I hate to say it, there are a lot of smart guys on the bad side.
I mean, I've said, you know, I kept telling people, you know, I started to go to the Middle
East extensively in 1990, steeped not with a lot of knowledge of the Middle East, but
came away on it.
I'd come home and people would say, oh, you know, those rag heads, those camel, I'd say,
you know, hey, dude, these are some of the smartest people I've met.
These are not dumb people.
Don't think that this country has an exclusive on smart.
I mean, I'll tell you how smart this country is.
As part of the earlier conversation I was having before you came, I cited a couple of
polls that had recently been taken by major legit organizations, right?
Said 25% of the people in the poll could not name one of the three branches of government.
Right?
I mean, executive, judicial, legislative, the pillars of democracy, if you can't name
one of them, you don't know democracy.
And then it went on to say 50% in another poll could name any branch of the government.
This is like crazy.
You know, and that's, you know, is that the future?
Is that our future electorate in this country?
Could be.
That good.
Now, why do you think that is?
Why, why is there a disconnect between?
Cause I know that they do civics, but I think they're kind of taught at probably rather
than made excited.
The interest cultivated in the inner weavings of this country.
Why do you think that maybe I'm making an assumption now that 1950s children would have
been more connected than 2022?
Because it's more important to learn about artificial intelligence.
It's more important to learn about social media and how to use it pro and con.
I mean, it, you know, it's a dull and boring subject to look at a bicameral legislator,
you know?
I mean, Hey, you know, what's this executive branch?
You know what?
And you know, it, we don't have enough young people who are, are interested in the nitty
gritty of what makes this country run.
They're interested in the nitty gritty of how they're going to get ahead.
The hell with the rest of you.
This is all about me-ism.
Through my eyes again, looking at the, I wouldn't say it was even post-war, but I mean, as,
as the consumerism started to grow and you, you know, again, English eyes coming to America,
why is there two pharmacies built right next to each other?
Why is Kmart and Walmart right next to each other?
And so what I started seeing as I lived here longer was this, this hero worship, this,
you know, false God of monopoly, that you're the winner if you destroy everyone else versus
you look at every model around the world, you know, it's community.
Like you and I can both have a pharmacy.
Let's just build different parts of town and we'll, we'll help each other together.
So where do you think that kind of selfish element has crept into what was a very, very
service oriented country?
Well, some people say it's the plague of capitalism and you know, this has always been a country
where things get swallowed up.
You know, big companies are always absorbing little companies and getting bigger.
There are very, very rare instances, you know, where the minnow swallows the whale.
It's always the other way around.
And you know, companies get, get bigger.
They try to hide their bigness by diversifying into other areas.
Like, you know, a big company will suddenly decide also to have a pharmacy as, you know,
besides selling t-shirts and jeans.
It's it's the, I mean, look, let's say kid ourselves, success, success in this country
is measured by your wallet.
The size of your wallet, the comfort in your wallet, what you can do with your wallet.
I mean, and I think the competitive nature of the Americans gets measured in monetary
terms and success is also, it's not only bred that way, but it's measured that way.
I mean, how many people who are in big wage earners, let's call them, called successes?
Yeah, I mean, a lot.
You look at all the billionaires, that's all we hear about.
But then, you know, how much altruism and compassion and kindness is woven into, especially
their early business models, usually very little.
And you'll notice, I always take a look at relief efforts that are gathered for, I spent
a lot of time in Haiti and got involved with, you know, a couple of what I thought were
very legitimate agencies seeking aid for Haiti.
And I always thought to myself, you know, I checked these agencies out.
They were, you know, outstanding, upstart, good groups.
But 95% of their money came from me and my neighbor.
$20, $15, you know, $30.
And I thought, with all the damn riches in this country, I mean, IBM could take one day's
profit and rebuild a city in Haiti.
Well, I was just in Haiti, I was telling a story to someone yesterday.
I went on just a Royal Caribbean cruise and they've got this little portion called Labadee
and the comedian on the ship referred to it as fake Haiti or Jurassic Park.
And it's true, there was a giant, you know, electrified fence around the property.
But what was so heartbreaking is the people were enjoying Haiti, a beautiful country.
The Haitian people that worked for Royal Caribbean had jobs and they were sweet.
And it just goes to show that, you know, Haiti could be thriving as a tourist nation if it
wasn't for the corruption and maybe, you know, if we were able to give a little bit of support.
And there, as with Mexico and some of these other places, if we actually have policy and,
for example, I think prohibition of drugs has caused so much problems in Central and
South America.
That's why they're leaving those countries.
If we actually were able to reverse that and support those nations and we then become their
customers, then you would also address the immigration problem that everyone's bitching
about.
I was in a discussion about Afghanistan, about which I know a little.
And the discussion was how much aid, this is after the Taliban takeover, how much aid
should be given to Afghanistan?
And I've got a number of Afghani friends, a couple of whom I actually helped leave recently.
And I had to take the hardline views and contribute nothing.
What do you mean?
I said, the Taliban gets the money.
There is no distribution system outside the Taliban.
And isn't that a horrible truth?
There are donors lined up who want to help the Afghan people, but where do you put the
money that you know it's going to get to the end user?
Well, you were in Iraq post 9-11, you were in Afghanistan as well for a while.
Yeah, 2001, right.
Okay, so right when it happened then.
So with this journalistic lens that you have, we're out of both countries now.
The withdrawal, I think most would agree, was not ideal.
Many people have had on here, especially from the Green Beret community, report about the
tactics of going in a year and a half, two years, breaking down the training camps, taking
out some of the key leaders, building militia and then leaving again is a resounding kind
of what we should have done that I'm getting from them.
What has just been your perspective, boots on the ground of those 20 years?
And what can the people listening, what are some of the takeaways that we need to learn
from this last 20 years so that we don't repeat it?
God forbid we go to war again.
I think the main thing to learn is don't go into a place unless you have a plan to get
out of it.
I mean, Afghanistan, Iraq, no exit plan, and Iraq particularly, the most God-awful planning
by the Americans.
I remember the administration of El-Pol Brummer, the viceroy.
I mean, crazy.
They tried to revamp the Baghdad Stock Exchange, which they were rebuilding on the grounds
of the hotel that we were in.
Mel was there at the time.
Who do they put in charge of the Baghdad Stock Exchange?
An Iraqi?
An Iraqi economist?
A European economist?
A 23-year-old American political flunky.
Stock Exchange never got off the ground.
I mean, we, I think, are very well-meaning people, and I think we occasionally get hoisted
of our own ability to solve everything, that we are just better than everyone else.
We have an answer for anything, and damn it, you'd better go along with it because we're
the only ones with an answer.
The reason we're the only ones with an answer is we're the ones with the money.
But I mean, we couldn't buy success in Iraq.
We didn't buy success in Afghanistan.
From what I've seen, there is a terrible misunderstanding of the cultures of these other countries.
In Iraq, I think the Americans never understood the importance of tribalism in the Iraqi culture.
They thought, oh, Sunni and Shia, that's the big divide.
That's the big divide, but it's clan, tribal, family.
The divisions go on and on.
We never understood, we never grasped how widespread a society was, that there was more
than just a label, Sunni, Shia, Republican, Democrat.
No.
It was, are you an al-Takriti, an al-Baghdadi, an al-Samari?
You know, I mean, we didn't get it.
We weren't smart enough.
But God knows, if we get involved in another adventure of that size, we'd better put in
a lot of homework and we better absorb a lot of people who know what the hell they're doing.
Well, I've heard people say the same thing with Afghanistan.
There's so many small tribes in there.
And that's, again, a lot of the Green Beret especially report that.
You can't blanket say, we're going to help your nation when those people believe their
nation is just the village that they inhabit.
That's exactly right.
I mean, when I was in Afghanistan, we started off in, if you look at a map of Afghanistan,
in the northeast side, there's a strip of land, a very strip of land, you know, that
borders on China.
That's how far east it is, right?
And that's where the Northern Alliance was based.
So we joined them there and we stayed with them for months as they advanced out along.
And everybody thought, oh, well, the Northern Alliance, they're the guys, you know, they're
going to overthrow and they're going to be the good guys.
The Northern Alliance had some rudiments of some command structure.
But elsewhere in Afghanistan were pretty substantial, well-equipped, semi-trained armies of warlords.
We never understood, you've got to reach out to them too.
You've got to get them on your side before you can even think about consolidating anything.
Just absent-minded, short-sighted.
Too complicated for us.
Yeah.
Well thank you for it.
This is education for most of us listening because we weren't there.
And that's the point.
And you don't get these lessons through our screens at the moment.
Now I want to just bring up one gentleman, then we'll go to some closing questions.
But I think it's important.
I've had people on here that were, you know, Afghani interpreters, Iraqi interpreters,
Afghani commandos that, you know, were safely brought to the U.S.
And I've had people on like Tim Kennedy and some of the other guys that were parts of
those movements that brought some of their allies home.
You work with the guy Anwar Abbas Lafta.
So tell me about him because I think it's important as well for people to understand.
We allow again, I think the media mainly, to tar the entire nation with that brush.
Oh, we're at war with Afghanistan.
We're at war with Iraq.
When the reality is extremists in those countries are, you know, brutalizing their own people
primarily.
And we don't get that.
As you said, you get the rag head and all this stuff.
They're all bunched together.
So tell me about him and the heroism that he did and ultimately risking his life.
Anwar Abbas was one of our translators.
And I also call them fixers.
He's a very, very, very nice man.
And one of his jobs when he wasn't actually translating or out with us somewhere was to
watch the Arabic television stations and tell us what they were saying.
We had a room for him and a couple of his mates set up with three or four television
screens a ways off our newsroom.
Noah would come into the newsroom, running into the newsroom, clapping his hands, raising
him about the clapping his hands and yelling, breaking news.
And we'd say, what?
And he would tell us what Arab channel such and such was saying.
And I'd say, good, that's good.
But we kind of knew that for a day or so.
I'd say, well, the breaking news, where are you getting it?
He said, well, that's the little sign they put at the bottom of their screen.
I said, OK, every time you see it, yeah, come in.
He was a very, very nice guy.
And we had a number of Iraqi employees who were threatened by neighbors.
Maybe not threatened, but words of anger were directed toward them because they were working
for us.
It wasn't CBS in particular, it was the Wests.
We protected them as best we could.
Sometimes we wouldn't let them go home at night, for instance.
We'd keep them in the hotel with us for a night or two.
We didn't want them to establish any pattern, in other words.
And Anwar went home one night.
He got followed home.
He was in his house with his sister, whose name is Asia, who is a good friend of mine
now.
I helped her out.
She's in Arizona.
And suddenly, masked guys broke through the door, accused Anwar of working with the devil.
Anwar really couldn't deny it.
He said, but his sister was telling him, my job is nothing.
I don't like them, but they pay me a little.
They took him away.
We got nowhere.
The Iraqi police was absolutely not interested.
The American military couldn't be bothered.
We had little, if any, investigative powers.
But I told Asia, I said, if the group that contacts you, tell them that we will pay for
his release.
We're happy to have him released, and we will pay you.
We'll work out something.
They never contacted her.
Three days later, his body was discovered, and he'd been badly treated.
But Asia became a good friend of mine because I was able to wheedle CBS for some insurance
policy money for Asia as a dependent.
I really admired the local people that worked for us.
We didn't overly pay them, believe me.
But I think they worked for us certainly because it was a source of income that wasn't available
on the labor market in Iraq.
There just weren't enough jobs going around.
But a lot of them actually, I like to think they admired what we were doing.
They thought, you know, maybe what you guys do is important.
And I thought that would be a great legacy to leave.
That'd be okay with me.
Absolutely.
Well, just one more point.
We talked about the kind of devolution of some elements of journalism in this country
with this global lens that you have.
I always love it when we discover that a country is doing something really well.
Norway's prison systems, Finland's education.
Are there any news agencies, and it could be international, that you do respect still,
that maybe people listening can see what journalism is supposed to look like and maybe find our
way back there again?
Easy, BBC only.
Easy.
I would have said the same thing, but obviously I wasn't trying to load the question.
Well, Larry, I'm going to let you go because I know that you've got a hurricane bearing
down and got other things you need to do.
But I just want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time today and sharing
your story.
I mean, in this climate that we're in, I agree that there's a lot of divisiveness going on.
And to be honored to sit down with someone who's really heralded as one of the greats
in journalism.
Firstly, I was nervous as hell to interview you.
But secondly, just to share your knowledge and your perspective, I think is invaluable.
So thank you so much.
I hope I made some sense and I was helpful to you.
But thank you.
What you're doing is important.
And the discussion about journalism should be a never ending one.