Walter Cronkite has made a career out of covering the unthinkable.
He was there at Hitler's Eastern headquarters in Poland right after the bombing (and picked up a piece of the despot's blasted urinal). In November 1963, he nearly broke down while announcing that John F. Kennedy had been murdered in Dallas.
So identified was Cronkite with his audience that in 1968 when he turned against the Vietnam War, saying it was unwinnable, President Lyndon Johnson said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."
Over the past 55 years of his life in journalism, the former CBS anchorman has seen it all. He's been called America's old shoe. Its national security blanket. Its conscience.
Always circumspect and sombre on TV, Cronkite has never been one to fly off the handle. But these days, Cronkite, who turned 85 in November, is quite vocal in his dismay with how the American government and its military is handling the media and its war against terrorism. In short, he's fed up with the Bush administration's insistence on keeping the cards so close to its chest.
"This is not a satisfactory situation," Cronkite says of the Pentagon's refusal to accredit any media to join the military on the ground in Afghanistan or in the skies. "The news media should be pounding on the doors of officials at the Pentagon, and at the White House, and elsewhere, to break down this blackout. Make them provide the facilities for us to cover the news on the scene."
In an interview this week, Cronkite is adamant that the public has a right to know more about what's truly going on in the Middle East. "That does not mean that we should not be subject to censorship; the media should be," says the avuncular newscaster, whose craggy voice is still strong, unmistakable, over the phone line from his office at CBS headquarters in New York.
"We not only have a right to know what our boys and girls' are doing in our name," says Cronkite. "We have a duty to know what the Army is doing in our name."
All his broadcast life, Cronkite has been a strong opponent of censorship. His stance has been hardened after more than five decades of reporting from the front lines in the Second World War, natural disasters, famines, assassinations, nuclear explosions, national elections, lunar landings, the struggle for civil rights and Watergate.
Although retired from the CBS news anchor desk, Cronkite comes into the Tiffany network's office, at 51 West 52nd St. in Manhattan, every day he's in town. A self-described news junkie, he wishes he were able to cover the war in Afghanistan. (A quadruple bypass and replaced knee won't allow it though, he jokes).
So he placates himself by pushing his government to do the right thing: open the doors of information wider so that someday we have an accurate history of Sept. 11, its aftermath, and the years to follow.
"Most of the reporting on what's happening in Afghanistan is being passed through press offices at the Pentagon with whatever touches on the truth the authorities there want to put to it," says the octogenarian, once voted America's most trusted man. "I don't see any evidence in papers or broadcasts that our American correspondents are being given access to American forces.
"It means that we're not getting the information, not only to which we are entitled," adds the newscaster, "but which is our duty to get. We should be screaming to high heaven that we are not getting reports from independent correspondents attached to the military."
In the early stages of the Afghan war, Cronkite says he understood why journalists could not accompany the small, covert special forces infiltrating Afghanistan. "But now that we've established a marine base there, and with the air-bombing missions continuing, it should be perfectly possible to accredit correspondents and permit them to accompany our forces. They should be permitted to report what they see and hear, subject only to censorship that's necessary in war time to assure the enemy's not apprised of critical things, such as the size of our forces or our casualties."
Cronkite believes that the U.S. government has placed such a comprehensive muzzle on this war because its military leaders are still nursing a "hangover" from the Vietnam War, which many in the Pentagon blame the media for losing.
"There are still a lot of older officers, now running things at the Pentagon who still believe that," adds the newsman. "And they've passed that thinking on to the younger members.
"I was part of a group that conferred with the Pentagon after Vietnam to establish a system to accredit a media pool to the military to give them full access to the truths they were uncovering," remembers Cronkite. "That fell apart the very first test, when we went into Panama. And it's continued through every military exercise since, including the Gulf War."
Cronkite was one of the first journalists accredited to American forces after the United States entered the Second World War in December, 1941. He covered many of the major battles of that war, including the Battle of the North Atlantic (1942) and the Battle of the Bulge (1944).
To obtain what were widely acclaimed eyewitness accounts for United Press, he flew on the first Flying Fortress bombing raids over Germany, parachuted into the Netherlands with the 101st airborne division, and waded ashore with the Allied troops at Normandy.
This week, he recalled a more light-hearted escapade. "I was in Montgomery's 21st army group and with the Canadians, when they moved into western Holland," says Cronkite. "As a matter of fact, a Canadian correspondent and I were the first entrants into Holland by dint of sneaking in front of the troops. And it was tulip season, in May, and we could hardly wiggle our way out of the car. It was so full of flowers."
Cronkite is wistful when he speaks about his time as a war correspondent in the early 1940s. "It was a high," he says. "That part of my career. It was exciting and it was a lead story everywhere. It was not just my story. It was everybody's story. And there was a constant level of excitement. It was dangerous, and that added to the excitement, of course, but I was also with a bunch of heroes. And I'll never forget that."
Some pundits have said Cronkite wasn't an intellectual giant, like his broadcast peers Edward Murrow and Walter Lippman. But he was a mirror of the people's soul. Unruffled, principled and steadfast. There's an often-told story about the time Lyndon Johnson appeared on one of the early Sunday interview programs in the 1950s, handed a page to Cronkite and his colleagues and said, "Boys, here are the questions you will ask me." Cronkite refused. Johnson sulked. The interview was a disaster.
Born in St. Joseph, Mo., in 1916, Cronkite quit the top anchor job at The CBS Evening News in 1981, signing off with his signature, "And that's the way it is . . ."
Twenty years since his so-called retirement, Cronkite still puts in a good eight to 10-hour day, doing interviews, writing articles and books (he just published a sailing book called Around America). That is, of course, when he's not out on the speaking circuit or producing documentaries for the Discovery Channel.
How, at 85, does he keep on going? "I don't think he could stop," says his assistant. "It's his life."
Cronkite admits he misses being on the front lines, especially now when "the biggest story of our time is unfolding.
"There's hardly a story that breaks that I don't want to be covering," he adds. "I'd like to be out there in the street myself."
As for the situation in Afghanistan, he believes the news media is doing "about as well as can be done, given the circumstances.
"Those who are reporting without any assistance from our military, without being accredited to our military, are showing great courage in an area that is highly disorganized and extremely dangerous.
"Vietnam is similar in some ways to the Afghanistan war in that we were in a totally new environment fighting a guerrilla war which we had not done before. But in Vietnam, the press was allowed to hitch a ride and join any fighting unit we wanted just by showing up. It had a traditional element to it because we were with our own, and we shared in a sense of danger," says Cronkite.
"Afghanistan is the first war we've operated independently of our own forces in an extended conflict. There was some of that in Bosnia, but this is the first war of this kind, of a totally unorganized nature."
In the past, Cronkite has expressed concerns that the media has lost its way, become too skewed to the sensational. That said, he says he still believes strongly in free speech -- the foundation upon which journalism was founded.
"I think it is still an honourable profession, absolutely," Cronkite booms into the phone. "If it's pursued by honourable people."
Gayle MacDonald