Obituaries
Daniel Schorr from page 69
pro-Nazi societies that flourished in that
period among German Americans.
John Kayston, a JTA staffer at that time,
recalled Schorr's resourcefulness in a 1997
interview marking JT/Vs 80th anniversary.
Kayston joined Schorr as an interpreter at
one of the Blind events.
"The storm troopers at the door asked
for our press ID and refused us entry
when they saw we were from the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency:' Kayston recalled. "We
went to another entrance; and when show-
ing our ID, we covered the word 'Jewish'
with our thumb." They got in.
By 1941, two years out of college, Schorr
had had enough, and found his complaints
at the wrong end of Jacob Landau, TIAs
founder.
'After seven years of this, I began to
bridle about this contorted view of a world
in crisis:' he wrote in his autobiography. "I
made my discomfort evident enough so
that Landau finally suggested it might be
time for me to move on. Fired, you might
call it. For the first time, but not the last"
Schorr's clashes with management, at
CBS and later CNN, would become the
stuff of his cranky legend. He never quite
won the job he longed for throughout his
youth, a correspondency with the New
York Times. As a freelancer in 1953 for
the Times, he filed thorough coverage of
an outbreak of floods in the Netherlands,
earning front-page play each day and the
respect of the paper's managers.
Yet, when Edward Murrow, the legend-
ary CBS correspondent, offered Schorr a
job, he cabled the Times to ask his editors
what they thought. They told him to accept
the offer.
Two years later, Schorr recounted at the
luncheon marking JT/Vs 80th anniversary
that he discovered why during a dinner
with two Times editors. War was looming
in the Middle East (it would break out in
1956), and "we need to have flexibility,'
they told him.
Translation? "My dream of becoming a
New York Times correspondent was dashed
because I was a Jew',' Schorr said.
The scoops that made Schorr a house-
hold name had little to do with his being
Jewish.
He opened up the CBS Moscow bureau
and scored the first televised inter-
view with the new Soviet leader, Nikita
Khruschev, in 1955. Schorr would be told
not to come back to the Soviet Union from
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70
July 29 • 2010
Obituaries
a vacation in 1957 for repeatedly defying
the Soviet censor.
Schorr was the first to obtain Nixon's
enemies list, released during the Watergate
hearings in 1973, of 20 people the presi-
dent hoped to "screw" through tax audits.
He immediately read the list on air, gasp-
ing when he reached No. 17: himself. He
was listed as a "real media enemy"
"I think I tried not to gulp," he told PBS
years later. "I tried not to gasp."
After filing, Schorr said, "I wanted to
collapse' He later said it was one of his
proudest moments.
More vexing for him was the reaction
by CBS in 1976 when he obtained a con-
gressional report showing that the CIA
had engaged in massive domestic spy-
ing; the report eventually would lead to
major reforms. CBS would not allow him
to report the scoop, so he handed it to the
Village Voice. The FBI launched a probe of
Schorr, and he risked a contempt charge
for refusing to reveal his source. (He never
did.) CBS eventually cut him off.
Schorr landed at CNN at its inception
in 1979, until he fell out with founder Ted
Turner in 1985 over Schorr's refusal to
accommodate former politicians as com-
mentators equal to journalists. Since then,
he worked for NPR, providing commentar-
ies.
Schorr as a boy was a proud, Hebrew-
speaking Zionist. He wrote of the irritation
he felt at the Yiddish spoken in his home,
saying he favored the language of the
Jewish homeland. He told JT/Vs 80th anni-
versary luncheon that JTA played a critical
role in bringing news of the atrocities of
the Holocaust.
In a career of history-changing scoops,
however, perhaps the one most revealing
about Schorr was one he let go: Speaking
at a New Israel Fund dinner in Los Angeles
in the late 1990s, he recalled coming
across a group of Jews fleeing the Soviet
Union during the Cold War in the 1950s.
He wanted to report the scoop; the fleeing
Jews begged him to refrain.
Schorr consulted his conscience as a Jew
and a journalist, and made the decision:
He didn't file.
Schorr is survived by his wife of 43
years, Lisbeth; a son, Jonathan, a daughter,
Lisa; and one grandchild.
JTA correspondent Tom Tugend in Los
Angeles contributed to this report.