WASHINGTON – Daniel Schorr, whose journalism career over more than six decades landed him in the dark corners of Europe during the Cold War and the shadows of President Richard Nixon’s notorious “enemies list” in the 1970s, has died. He was 93.
Schorr died Friday at Washington’s Georgetown University Hospital after a brief illness, said his son, Jonathan Schorr.
Daniel Schorr’s path through the news business began in print, then led to almost three decades in television with CBS News and the fledgling cable network CNN.
By the time of his death, he was best known as a longtime senior news analyst and liberal commentator on National Public Radio. He also wrote several books, including his memoir, “Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism.”
“He was a model for us all,” said CBS “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer. “I’ve never seen anybody who just enjoyed reporting a story as much as he did. He just loved it.”
Schorr reported from Moscow, Havana, Bonn, Germany and many other cities as a foreign correspondent. While at CBS, he brought Americans the first-ever exclusive TV interview with a Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1957.
During the Nixon years, Schorr not only covered the news as CBS’ chief Watergate correspondent, he also became part of the story. Hoping to beat the competition, he rushed to the air with Nixon’s famous “enemies list” and began reading the list of 20 to viewers before previewing it. As he got to No. 17, he discovered his name.
“I remember that my first thought was that I must go on reading without any pause, or gasp or look of wild surmise,” he wrote in his book “Clearing the Air.”
Schorr’s stories pointing out weaknesses of the administration’s programs so angered Nixon that he ordered an FBI investigation of the reporter, on the pretext that he was being considered for a top federal job. That investigation was later mentioned in one of the three articles of impeachment against Nixon.
Schorr said he figured he became such a thorn in Nixon’s side because his newspaper background gave him a bluntness rare on TV.
He and Nixon were “extremely cordial” by the end of Nixon’s life, Jonathan Schorr said.
Schorr became part of the story again in 1976, when he arranged for the publication of an advance copy of a suppressed House Intelligence Committee report on illegal CIA and FBI findings.
At the time, Schorr called it “an inescapable decision of journalistic conscience” to see that the report ended up in print.
Many reporters found Schorr’s silence troubling when another CBS correspondent, Lesley Stahl, was wrongly accused of leaking the report. Schorr was suspended by the network and the House opened an investigation, though it later dropped the case.
He resigned from CBS soon after.
