Scott Pelley

He comes and walks into my office and extends his hand and says, I'm proud to meet you, sir, he called me.

I guess I'm just old.

And I told him how wonderful it was to meet him.

He walked out into our newsroom and made a very nice speech about independence, about how important 60 Minutes was to the corporation writ large, and essentially telling everybody that they were going to take care of us.

We were walking on air.

We liked him.

He had the financial backing to back up his words.

And we thought a bright new era was coming after all the previous difficulty.

I was not familiar with her name, so I did some research and discovered those things that you just outlined.

She was going to be the new editor-in-chief at CBS News.

There never had been a title like that at CBS News.

It's sort of a print title.

It doesn't really...

translate to television, but she wanted to call herself that.

What concerned me was that she had zero television experience and had never managed a large global operation like CBS News.

Those were red flags to me, but

But I thought, you know, David Ellison thinks she's the right person for the job.

We are absolutely going to welcome her, listen to her and give her the benefit of the doubt.

You know, she just hadn't crossed my radar.

And if I hadn't heard of Barry Weiss at that point in time, that probably tells you more about me than it does her.