I was excited about my first piece, which I’d pitched. I wanted to explore why so many workers on “the pile”—the pulverized remnants from tons of steel and concrete crashing to the ground on 9/11—were getting deathly ill from the lead, asbestos, and PCBs that had been released into the air. I couldn’t understand why the authorities weren’t doing more to help the heroic first responders. A wonderful producer named Kyra Darnton would work with me on the piece.
Christine Todd Whitman had been the head of the EPA during 9/11 and faced a lot of scrutiny for not sounding the alarm early enough. Kyra and others didn’t think she’d make herself available for an on-camera interview, but I thought I could get her to talk. I’d interviewed Whitman, the former governor of New Jersey, before and knew she liked me. So I reached out, then drove to her home in the Garden State to close the deal. I remember Kyra being excited by how involved I was willing to be in the booking process.
But I undercut my own legwork when I asked a freelance cameraman I knew from NBC to shoot the interview. I liked the way he lit me—an asset, given the 60 Minutes style of shooting faces so tight you could practically count Steve Kroft’s nose hairs. But still…another unforced error, advancing the idea that I required special treatment.
We called the piece “The Dust at Ground Zero.” I remember how specific the notes were about how I should narrate the piece—to be conversational and subdued, not anchor-y. （Years later, when Oprah came on board as a correspondent, they so micromanaged the way she said her own name—repeatedly urging her to take the emotion out of it—that she decided to part ways with the program. As if Oprah needs coaching on how to communicate with an audience.）
Kyra convinced Jeff Fager to run the story in two parts. The first one aired the Sunday after my evening-news debut.
The girls and I tuned in. The piece was smooth, well reported, impactful. Although my favorite part came before my story, during the iconic intro: “I’m Ed Bradley”; “I’m Steve Kroft”; “I’m Lesley Stahl”; “I’m Scott Pelley”; “I’m Morley Safer”…
“And I’m Katie Couric. Those stories and Andy Rooney, tonight on 60 Minutes.”
Jeff Fager sent a congratulatory email. My first piece was a success. If I was getting pummeled on the Evening News, perhaps Sunday nights would be the place where I could shine.
My next piece was a profile of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I’d interviewed her many times on TODAY, but this was an opportunity to go deeper, wider.
She defended the U.S. strategy of bringing democracy to Iraq by referencing racist tropes from the civil rights era. Rice saw a parallel between the misinformed idea that Iraqis simply weren’t equipped to embrace democracy and the ignorant notion that Black people “really can’t handle the vote.”
“It makes me so angry,” Rice said, “because I think there are those echoes.”
I pressed her on WMDs and the faulty intelligence that propelled us into war. But I also wanted to access Rice’s personal side. For this to be an in-depth profile, I’d have to get past her guarded facade. “Is it hard for you to have a social life? How does one go about asking the secretary of state out on a date?” And here I playfully held a finger-phone to my ear. “‘Hi, Madame Secretary, listen…’”
Which made Rice laugh.
We also got some great B-roll of a determined Condi in shorts and a T-shirt on an elliptical in her bedroom （she rose at 5:00 a.m. six days a week to work out to Led Zeppelin or Cream） and playing Schumann and Brahms on the piano with four friends on strings, something they did regularly.
Tough questions, personal insights, surprising moments. I thought we nailed it. Although this time the Columbia Journalism Review was less impressed, ignoring the serious conversation we’d had and portraying the interview as something befitting Entertainment Tonight: “The questions seemed more appropriate for someone like, say, Scarlett Johansson, rather than someone intimately involved in shaping our foreign policy in the wake of 9/11…To the head honchos at CBS News, we have one thing to say: Good night, and good luck.” Clever!
That was nothing compared with the fire hose of derision aimed at me following my interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards. In March of 2007, Elizabeth went public with the dire news that her cancer had metastasized to her bones—and yet she had decided to continue the taxing work of campaigning for her husband in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. This set off a coast-to-coast conversation about women, ambition, mortality, choices, and parenting. All issues I knew a lot about.