Mark Halperin

They were head and shoulders above every other journalist in terms of their fame and their influence.

And those two guys had covered American politics.

Dan was from Texas.

Tom was from South Dakota.

Peter was from Canada.

So they were Americans and they were

rather than North Americans, and they'd covered presidential campaigns.

Peter really hadn't.

He'd mostly been a foreign correspondent.

So he needed help navigating the personalities and all that.

And I was, you know, honored and delighted to be able to be part of his team to help him do that.

And he supported my career, not just as a broadcaster, but helped me get the job I'd wanted from early in my career to be the political director.

He lived right across the street from me.

I could actually see his apartment from the window of my apartment.

And I really, you know, ABC was very competitive then.

Rune Arledge, legendary president of ABC News,

said basically he was going to build the best news division with the biggest stars and that their competition was not going to be NBC and CBS, but each other.

And so Peter competed fiercely with Ted Koppel and Ian Sawyer and Barbara Walters for bookings and stories and access to the best correspondents.

And I was a Peter person.

And even though when I was political director, I was supposed to work for all the shows and all the anchors, I was a Peter person.