Sharyl Attkisson

Welcome.

May I amend one thing you said?

I believe it or not, never worked on 60 minutes and all those years and all that investigative reporting.

Very segmented organization.

And there was somebody at some level that did not want me contributing to 60 minutes.

I did when, when there were 60 minutes to before the Dan Rather scandal,

deep six that show, I was working on two pieces for that program and then it got canceled.

And then, um, yeah, never, never worked on 60 minutes.

I do.

I mean, Scott Pelley was not a popular anchor in terms of his skill as an anchor, as well as his personality.

And I can't explain why he persisted in the chair for some years anyway, because, gosh, quite a while before they removed him, I was told by a level above David Rhodes that they were trying to fix what they call the Scott Pelley problem.

And I don't know what keeps somebody in place when they think there's an issue.

But one of the issues they had with him was, as it was told to me, he takes his managing editor role too seriously.

He was interfering with the correspondent's stories in a way that was not productive.

And the veterans were complaining.

And longtime CBS names that you would recognize were complaining to the high executives about this.

My experience was when they named him, I was told by higher-ups, this new show without Katie Couric,

with Scott Pelley is going to be all about what you do, your investigative reporting, even more so.

I was already having a great career there, but they said, now with Scott Pelley there, boy, this show is going to be all about what you do.

And the very first week, the very first investigative piece, one of the best ones I think I ever did that I offered them, he censored, never aired.