Washington Press Club Foundation

Carole Simpson: Interview #4

June 16, 1993 in Washington, D.C.

Donita Moorhus, Interviewer

Carole Simpson - June 16, 1993 Tape 1 of 1

June 16th, 1993
Listen to audio

Carole Simpson - June 15, 1993 Tape 1 of 2

June 16th, 1993
Listen to audio

Carole Simpson - June 15, 1993 Tape 2 of 2

June 16th, 1993
Listen to audio
Page 65

[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Moorhus: Let's start this morning with working at NBC and the network. In Chicago, what did it mean to move from WMAQ to the network?

Simpson: It meant moving down the hall. [Laughter.] And it meant having that aura, that network aura that in those days was real important. If you moved up to the network, you were really hot stuff. That was for camera people, that was for editors. The network was considered the best people. Now your reports are seen all over the nation, instead of just in one locale. Now peopleómy relatives in Atlanta could see me, my sister in California could see me, and now you're covering stories that aren't of just an import to the city of Chicago or the Midwest region, now they're stories of import to the entire nation and the world. You're covering the big story.

My first few months working out of the Midwest bureau had to do with the beef boycott. Dairy farmers were holding back cows from market to try to raise beef prices, so I spent most of my network career in the farms of the Midwest. I was in Iowa, I was in Illinois, I was in Nebraska, I was in Kansas, I was all over, and working out of the Midwest bureau for a network, that often was the kind of story that you did for the network.

There was a fourteen-state region that we had responsibility for, that ran from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border, and it's like fourteen states in the center of the United States. So that was our coverage area, so any stories that would happen in those areas I was sent to do, and most of them were farm stories, and I learned to appreciate farms. My grandfather had been a farmer, but I didn't know from farms growing up in Chicago. I grew to be very fond of farm people.

Every place we went, we were coming to talk to a farmer that was involved in the boycott, or the corn droughtócorn was a bad crop that year. We'd go to these farms, we'd set up with farmers and call the local grange and find out people we could talk to, and I swear, no matter where it was, they would have hot donuts, they would have lemonade and fried chicken. I mean, you had to eat. They would feed us. It was just that kind of wayóreally warm, lovely people I really learned a lot about. And that's the best thing about the job: you come in contact with things that you never would before, and get to meet people, and see ways of life that are so alien to the way you were brought up.

So I spent all of my time covering these stories, and ended up getting on the network quite frequently, perhaps once or twice a week, which is a lot for network. Then it was time to move to Washington.

Moorhus: I want to ask you a little bit more about the farm experience. Just as the farming was new for you, you as a black woman must have been a new experience for many of those farmers.

Simpson: Yes. And they acted like there was no difference.

Page 66

Moorhus: No big deal.

Simpson: No, not at all. And I have those antenna, those very sensitive feelings to when I'm being judged on a racial or sexual basis. They're just wonderful folks. It was not strange at all. I was one of the family. So that was interesting, too. These are people that probably didn't have much contact with black families in the great prairie of the United States. But, no, there was no acting surprised that I was there or anything like that.

Moorhus: Did this increased travel put additional strain on your home life?

Simpson: Yes. This began to be new now, that I'm going to be on the road a lot. There was some travel when I was a local reporter, there would be going to Springfield, Illinois, and there would be Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There would be things in the region where I'd be out of town for a day or two, but this was now beginning to be serious travel. But by this time, we had a very good housekeeper, my daughter was in nursery school, my husband was finishing up his degree, and we were looking forward to going to Washington, where I wouldn't be traveling as much because I was going to be covering the federal agencies. This was, we saw at that time, as just a temporary situation, and we could handle it. And as I say, I was enjoying all of this, because I was going places I'd never been before. Now I don't want to go anywhere, because I've been everywhere. [Laughter.] There's nothing else to see; I've seen it all. But it was all pretty exciting then, and those were the golden days of television, when there was money and we would charter hereóoften we didn't take commercial flights, we would just charter a plane and goóso that was heady stuff, coming in, having your own pilot and a car waiting to drive us to the story and that kind of thing.

Moorhus: Did you have problems with new crew members that had not been used to working with you?

Simpson: No, because a lot of them were guys that had, like me, been local cameramen and proved themselves and became network cameramen. Again, by the time I got to the network, I had been nine years in local news in Chicago, so I was pretty well known in the city, and my work was respected, and they knew I did a good job at the local level. And again, if the network has tapped you, then you must be good, right? You must be good. So, no, I didn't. I had the respect now of my peers and my colleagues, so that wasn't a problem.

So we moved to Washington. I was to be assigned to cover HEW, which was the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which is today HHS [Department of Health and Human Services]. It was not my choice of assignment, but it was a way to get to Washington. As I said, I really wanted to cover politics. But again, I was assigned because it had to do with "female" kind of stuff and "black" kind of stuff. It was health care, which women certainly care about, and education. Because I had a child, I knew about schools. And welfare, which had to do with black people, in the minds of our employers. So I was a natural, as a black female, to come to Washington and cover that beat. But it was important, and I felt I could learn from this, and it was a chance just to learn Washington. I had to come to a new city and learn how the government worked and all those kinds of things, so it was okay.

One thing I neglected to tell you yesterday, when I was telling you about how NBC was pressuring me to come to the network for two years, until my mother died, you'll have to remember that it began in 1972, which is a period of time when CBS went out and hired a bunch of women, hired Connie Chung, Lesley Stahl, Michele Clark.

Page 67

Moorhus: In response to the decision of the Federal Communications Commission.

Simpson: That's right. And there was a lawsuit filed by NBC later. There were problems, and all the networks knew they would have to hire more women because you had the women's movement in the early 1970s really hitting full steam, coming right out of the civil rights movement. And, in fact, when my daughter was born, I put in her baby bookóshe was born in 1970ó"A feminist is born." I saw that. So I was kind of steeped in all of the feminist rhetoric of that period of time. I'm sure that's why NBC was really after me, and I was a "two-for." They would get a female and they would get a minority.

Michele Clark was hired by CBS, the first black woman network correspondent, and I was the second one to be named in the nation, and, of course, she died tragically in a plane accident. In fact, I covered that plane crash.* People were very, very thoughtless. This was a beautiful black woman hired by CBS News, and she was going to be a star. She was a real comer. And she was killed in this awful crash at Midway Airport with a black congressman from Chicago. A lot of people were on that plane. I was sent to the plane crash scene and then to the morgue, and it was a horrible, horribleóI don't know how many, close to a hundred people died.

It's the kind of thing, these horrible stories that I've had to cover, and I saw the body bags come in, and I saw the burned corpses, and they're trying to make identifications and that kind of thing. I have always been able to work, do the job while I have to do it, and then fall apart. I could always steel myself, and see horrible things and report, because my job was to report thisóand then just collapse. I went through all of that. We were on the air so muchóit was a huge local storyóI was doing live reports from the scene of the crash, and from the morgue.

I talked to my mother during the night, and she said, "People have been calling me," because there were rumors that Michele Clark had been on the plane. They couldn't identify her body. And people thought it was me. Can you imagine people being so thoughtless to call up my mother and say, "Was that your daughter that was killed in the plane crash?" So she had been getting phone calls like that, and it wasn't until the next day that they identified her body, but I remember opening the newspaperóI had worked very late, I didn't get home until midnight, and couldn't go to sleep from the horror of what I'd seen, but finally went to sleep, and then the next morning getting up and seeing the newspaper and Michele's picture on the front page of it, and just breaking down, just crying. I mean, the horror of all of that came back.

And it's happened to me many times, when I covered murders. Two little boys drowned, grappling hooks searching for their bodies in the river, and they're being brought to shore. You can't steel yourself against that. I mean, you can while you're working. I have been able to while I'm working. But then you're haunted by these images for a long, long period of time.

That was an aside. But I'm sure because CBS had a black female, NBC wanted to have one, and she [Michele Clark] and I both had worked in local news in Chicago. She had been at the CBS station, and I had been at the NBC station, and we were friends. So there was pressure to hire, I think, someone, and I was an obvious choice.

Moorhus: Did you feel used?

______________________ * Michele Clark was killed in a plane crash at Midway Airport, Chicago, Illinois, on December 8, 1972.

Page 68

Simpson: No, because it fit in with my goal in life. "Fine, if you're going to use me and that helps me get to where I want to be and the things I want to do, I don't care." I wanted to be a network correspondent.

Moorhus: And you saw the opportunity to come to the network in Washington outweighing being slotted into HEW?

Simpson: Yes, because I felt, "Once I get there, I will become White House correspondent some day." [Laughter.] This was all on my track to getting to where I wanted to be.

So I come to Washington, and my husband, as I said, one day after we moved here, gets a job, a job that was going to send him to St. Paul, Minnesota, four days a week. It's a computer software company, and he was to do a computer system for Burlington Northern Railroad, whose corporate headquarters were in St. Paul, Minnesota. So one week after we moved into our house, and he started his job, he began having to travel every Monday morning, and he would come back Thursday night, and we were together three days a week. Here I am with a new job, new house, new neighborhood, new everything, trying to get my daughter in school, and having much of the burden of the running of the household on me, because I couldn't complain to my husband. I dragged him here with me. I can't say, "How dare you go off and leave me?"

So it was really tough. It was very, very hardóI mean, finding doctors and finding dentists and finding the grocery stores and dry cleaners, and just all of those things to live and to survive in a new environment. This was totally new. We didn't know anybody here. I had some relatives here, but I had not been close to them, so these were not people that I would turn to. And the new neighborhood, and just finding the school in September, and it was a lot on me, an awful lot on me. We were getting decoratorsóall of this having to be done.

And my coming to Washington, and having to learn the city, having to learn that huge agency. Remember, HEW was controlling Social Security and the whole public assistance and food stamps at that time were under there before they moved to [Department of] Agriculture. Just so much to learn about that agencyóthat's FDA [Federal Drug Administration], NIH [National Institutes of Health], all of those things came under this agency. This was a huge job just to get myself around and get to learn and meet the public information officers for the different agencies and things like that.

So it was a very difficult transition period, and it's like, "Why in the world did I do that? Why did I leave Chicago?" Home was there, my dad was still there, I was well known there. I could have gone on and stayed there and been quite a happy person. We had a lovely house. And I began wondering, "Why in the world would I do this to my daughter, to my husband, to me?" So there were a lot of second thoughts about whether I should really have done this.

At any rate, I plunge in to do a good job and to build. All of a sudden, I can't get on the air. As I told you, I had worked out of the Midwest bureau, had done all of these farm stories, had been on NBC Nightly News many times working out of the Midwest bureau. I came to Washington from Chicago, and it was as if I walked in off the street and said, "Can I have a job as a reporter?" I had to start all over again. These people didn't know me, these people had not worked with me, these people did not know that I had been a big deal in Chicago and had all of these scoops. I was like nothing. And I couldn't understand it, because they had to have seen me on the broadcast. We all watch the broadcasts every night, whatever network you work for. Everyone watches your flagship newscast, the evening news. That's where all the resources and

Page 69

all the prestige of a network resides, so it's important. So they had to have seen me. I'd been on the air.

I couldn't get on the air. I would come up with story ideas. This was during the period of time when the flu epidemicóremember the swine flu epidemic in 1974, '75? That was a big story that would have come under me. They're going to talk about vaccinating everybody in America, because this huge epidemic is coming. I would go out and cover the news conferences and whatever the scientists that were talking about the vaccine they were coming up [with], and it would be given to someone else to report on the air. And I'm like, "What the heck is going on? Why?"

"Well, we thought so and so should do it." I'm dealing with the senior producer of "Nightly News," the Washington producer. There are the executive producer and other senior producers in New York. But in Washington, because these are the biggest bureaus of each of the networks, you deal with the Washington producer for "Nightly News." And I'm told, "Well, they wantedó" They, the anonymous "they." "They wanted So-and-so to do the story."

"But So-and-so didn't cover the story. I covered the story."

"Well, give them your tapes and give them your notes and give them your information."

I'm like, "What in the world is going on?" So I go along, and I'm being assigned to do an interview for Carl Stern. He was covering the Supreme Court. "Carole, can you go do this interview for him?" I was being treated as an off-air reporter. That's what we call off-air reporters. These are reporters in training that don't get on the air, but they learn how to cover news, and some day they may get on the air. Again, here I am, I'm thirty-four years old, I'm a mature woman, I'm no kid that came from right out of college, and why am I being treated like this? Why am I being sent to do other people's interviews to go in their pieces and I can't get on the air?

I can't complain to my husband, right? And so I'm like steaming, okay, just really, really upset about what is going on. This goes along September, October, November, December, January, February.

March comes. I have not been on the air. People are calling me upó"What happened? How come we don't see you?" My dad's in Chicago. "Your daughter moved to Washington? We've been watching NBC, we never see her on the air." [Laughter.] And I'm like, "This is a huge mistake. Why in the world would I do this?"

Finally, a good friend of mine that I'm going to see in Paris in a month, who was a local reporter with me in Chicago, Pat Thompson, had been traveling in Europe, and she stopped by the London bureau of NBC News, and sat down to talk to a guy that we both knew, that we had both worked with in Chicago, who was now bureau chief in London for NBC. She said they started talking, and she wanted to see the facilities and everything. She called me up, and she said, "I think you need to know this." She said, "I went to see Irv." This was Irv Margolis, and he was the London bureau chief for NBC News. My friend is Pat Thompson, who is now a producer for ABC, but at the time she was a local reporter, we'd been very good friends there.

Moorhus: At WMAQ?

Page 70

Simpson: At WMAQ. So she said, "Carole, I went in to see Irv, and we started talking about you, and I asked him how come you're never on the air, what has happened." And she said, "You know what he told me?"

And I said, "What?"

"He said that word is out on the grapevine that you went to Washington and got lazy, and you weren't getting on the air because you weren't doing anything."

And I said, "What?" I said, "You're kidding me."

And she said, "No, he's quite serious, that the word in the network is that you've come to Washington and gotten lazy."

And I said, "Pat, you know that's not me. I've been doing everything I possibly can. I've been sending story ideas. They won't let me get on the air. They're giving my stuff to other reporters." And, again, I'm timid, because I wanted to still learn, I wasn't comfortable enough yet to challenge them, because I was still learning how Washington worked, and still learning how the NBC Washington operation worked, and all these other kinds of things. I'm still getting my feet wet, so I didn't feel comfortable challenging them really strongly on why I'm not getting on the air. But after she told me that, I went berserk. Clearly, somebody was putting out this word on me. I am so conscious now when I hear things about people, people say, "So-and-so doesn't write well," and I know how insidious that kind of stuff can be.

I vowed right then and there, "I'm going to get to the bottom of this, and I'm quitting this place. Somebody's out to do me in, clearly, and I'm not going to put up with it." When I hung up, "Thank you very much for calling me and letting me know that," because I could have gone on and on and not heard that for I don't know how long.

I started calling everyone I knew. Chicago was a great training ground for network people, because it is a big news town, and it is a great news town, and you get a lot of experience that can serve you well at the network level. So there were a lot of people that I knew, that I had worked with in local newsópeople that were now in positions of authority at the network. I called everyone I knew. I said, "Have you heard this about me? I understand that the word is out that I'm lazy," and I got confirmation from all these people I knew, yes, that that was the word. And I'm going, "You know me. Why would I come to my dream place?"

They had a big party. There was a huge send-off party for me from WMAQ, and great things. They did a gag reel for me, and I was well liked, and people knew I was a hard worker and a good employee. And I'm asking them, "Why would I come to what you know was my dream, to be a network correspondent in Washington, why would I come here and not do anything? Why would I do that? Isn't my goal to be on the air and to be seen and to have some impact and to tell some stories?" And I said, "Just promise me this, because you know what kind of employee I was. If you hear it, would you try to stop it by saying, 'Well I know her and that isn'tó,' just promise me that." And I got assurances. I don't know if it ever happened, but I got assurances from all these people that they would try to stop it. And I said, "And help me find out what is happening. I can't understand what is happening." Because I couldn't work any harder, and I couldn't turn up any more story ideas than I'm turning up, but clearly someone is out to get me.

Page 71

Now I'm really mad, and now I'm telling my husband, "This is a mistake. I'm going to try to find another job." In fact, I had been offered a job at the PBS station in Chicago, WTTW, which was starting up a news program. They wanted me to come back. The local Channel 7 had offered me a job. I could have gone back to Chicago. There were opportunities there. And I felt there were opportunities in local news here in Washington if I wanted, that clearly the network was not for me. So I was prepared to look for another job, and was going to look in the Washington area.

But in the meantime, I went to the Washington bureau chief, and I said, "I don't know what's going on, but I want out." And I told him this whole story, "This word is out, it has crossed the Atlantic Ocean that I'm lazy. Why would somebody say something like that, and what is going on?" My bureau chief feigned ignorance, that he didn't know that this was happening. He had to have known it was happening, and I wasn't sure he wasn't party to it. And I said, "But I want out of my contract." I had signed a four-year contract to come to Washington. I said, "I want out. I'm looking for another job. This isn't working. You all don't like me and I don't like it here. I want out."

So he said, "Carole, now wait a minute. Wait just a minute. I'm going to call New York."

Dick Wald was the president of NBC News at that time. He is now senior vice president here at ABC News. He [Washington bureau chief] said, "I'm going to call New York. Don't do anything."

That night at home, I got a call from Dick Wald saying, "Carole, what is this I hear about these problems?" I mean, I was glad to see that it went to the high reaches of this company very quickly.

Moorhus: This would have been about April of 1975?

Simpson: This is spring of '75, yes. And I told him the whole story, and I said, "I don't know what's happening, but I don't like it, and I want out."

And he said, "Carole, I'll find out what's happening. I guarantee you things will change. Don't worry."

Do you realize the next day I was on the air with my first piece on NBC "Nightly News" from Washington? Just like that, it changed. And it continued to change, and I started being used. And as I say, I didn't know what had happened. I still was determined to find out who and what had started it, but now I'm busy. Now I'm getting stories on the air, and now I'm working, now I'm assigned to do those NBC News updates. That's a big deal, because that's in a prime-time audience, those little one-minute newscasts. Now Jessica Savitch had joined NBC. I would fill in for her, go to New York and do her Saturdayóshe anchored the "Saturday Evening News." I was being used as a substitute for her, and it really changed overnight. Now I'm sailing along and things are better, and it's working.

In 1976, I was at the Republican convention in Kansas City, Missouri, and I had been one of the general assignment reporters. I wasn't covering the convention per se, but I was covering the vice presidential possibilities, all kinds of little news stories that happened around, other than the floor of the convention, but that's a plum assignment, to be involved in the political coverage, and it was my first chance to get some of the politics that I wanted to do. There was a wrap party at the end of the convention, after both conventions. I didn't go to the Democratic convention,

Page 72

which I think was in Miami, but I was at the Republican convention. At the end of the second convention, there's always a huge party. All the networks have a huge wrap party, like on movies and stuff like that, and have entertainment and food, because they're tough, they're grueling, to cover a political convention.

At this party, the senior producer of "Nightly News" in Washington that I told you aboutóand again, I don't think I want to use his name. He will be in my book. He now works at ABC. It's really funny how all of these peopleówhat goes around comes around, and it's a very different situation between us now. He had been drinking, and he came up to me at this party, and as I said, it's a dancing thing, it's a real fun deal, and he took me against the wall, he grabbed me and kind of threw me up against the wall, and put his hands on either side of me, completely blocking me. Do you understand? His hands are against this wall.

Moorhus: Sort of pinning you in.

Simpson: Pinning me in, exactly right. And I can tell he's been drinking. I don't think to this day he would realize what had happened. I think he was so smashed that if you asked him if he did this, he would not have any recollection of it. I said, "What's wrong with you?" I'm feeling this invasion of my territory. He's like too close, and it's like, "Get away from me," and I'm trying to push him away from me.

He said, "You think you're something, don't you?"

I said, "What are you talking about?"

He said, "You think because you're black and because you're a woman, you can get a free ride at this network. I want you to know there will be no free rides for you."

And I said, "What are you talking about?"

"You just thinkó" I had been talking to some other people, and they kind of saw that I was in this uncomfortable situation and not knowing what is happening, and I'm frowning, and he's holding me, and I'm trying to get away from it, and other people came and kind of took him away from me. But he wandered off, being taken off, going, "Yeah, she thinks she's hot. She thinks she's so much, and she thinksó"

I am sure that this is the man that did this to me. I think he resented me. I think he's a sexist, I think he's a racist, and I think he was the one, because he would be the person that would be dealing with New York, when they asked, "Well, has she come up with anything?" and he probably said, "No, she isn't doing anything," because he resented the fact that I was black and that I was female. I think he resented both of those things, and he just was not going to have to work with me, and then when he was forced to put me on the air by the president of the news division, "You will use her, you will put her on the air," that must have really gotten to him. Okay? So right then and there, I felt I knew that I had found the person that hadóand what I guess had been simmering in his head all this time came out with this liquor, as he's telling this story to me, and I felt some satisfaction that at least I know, and it probably was one person that was in position to send this negative impression of me all around. He did not have a happy time later.

I'm so glad that I've lived long enough to see people that have done me wrong get theirs in the end. It's very satisfying. Even now, when people do naughty things to me, I always can kind

Page 73

of deal with it, because I know, "Some day you're going to get yours." And he got his in a big way, and he ended up losing. He's now back here in a very castrated position. It must gall him today to see my picture in the lobby downstairs, my moderating the [1992] presidential debate, my winning awards or whatever. I'm happy that I'm now in this position, where I'm on top. I could do him in, and I won't. I wouldn't. I mean, it would be quite easy for me with well-planted things, but it's like, "God don't like ugly," and it's like, "He'll take care of it." Just leave it alone, it'll happen.

So things got to be better at NBC.

Moorhus: But when he told you that, did you also feel that as long as he was where he was, it might be better, but it would never be all right?

Simpson: No, because clearly the message had been sent to him: Put this woman on the air. And I didn't care whether he liked me. My job was to get on the air and to tell my stories and report the stories. And again, I'm not going to let anything stand in the way of my doing that. He doesn't have to like me. I didn't care. It's like, "Just don't stop me from doing what I need to do."

So while I'm at NBC, I am trying very hard to move now into politics. I really wanted to cover the Congress, and that was my goal. Jessica Savitch had come inóremember her? Jessica came to NBC as the golden girl. In fact, Newsweek and allówell, that was the book.* She came in from Philadelphia, where she'd been an anchor, and Houston, where she'd been an anchor, and she was going to be the first woman anchor of a network newscast. They were going to build her to that position. And of course, those of us that had been laboring in the vineyards and working really hard, there's some resentment that somebody who was a local anchor in Philadelphia is going to be created into this. So they wanted to give her credentials. This is very much like the Ron Hunter situation in Chicago. So Jessica came in, and, yes, I was a little jealous and envious that this woman was going to be created into this person, but still I was friendly with her.

When I came to NBC, as I told you, it was as if I had come in from another planet. I mean, no one was friendly. People didn't show me where the bathroom was, where you went to have lunch, or anything like that. There was one other black correspondent, Gordon Graham, and there was one female correspondent, Catherine Mackin, and people just didn't reach out to me. That's why now, anybody that comes in, I always reach out to them, because when you're starting at a new place and no one says, "Come, let's have lunch, I'll take you to lunch and talk to you aboutó," I just had to kind of find my way. People just weren't friendly at all.

So Jessica, when she was coming, even though I was jealous that she would be coming in as the golden girl and anointed, I still reached out to her, and she points out in her book, Anchorwoman, her own biography, that I was the only person that spoke to her. She experienced the same kind of thing, that people didn't talk to her. And I'm going, "It's not her fault if they've picked her to make her a star. It's the company that is choosing people that may not have the credentials I may think they need to have to be awarded this kind of treatment," but still I was friendly to her and tried to reach out to her.

Jessica was given the Senate, the United States Senate. Here I am now twelve years, maybe, having done local reporting and two years of network reporting, and wanting to cover the Congress, and certainly having the credentials and the ability to be able to do that, and here comes

______________________ * Almost Golden: Jessica Savitch and the Selling of Television by Gwenda Blair, 1988.

Page 74

this woman who's not even been a local news reporter, has been an anchor, and they're going to give her the United States Senate. That just really galled me, because I really wanted to do this. And poor Jessica just couldn't hack it. She was a wonderful, terrific anchor and reader, but she didn't know how to report. The people that worked up there said that she read gothic novels in the Senate radio/TV gallery, that she just really didn't know how to report. But they gave her the best producers and everything to try to give her these credentials, so before they make her an anchorwoman, they'll say, "She's covered the United States Senate for NBC News," and things like that. So she had a tough time. There was a lot of pressure on her, and she just didn't have the goods, the reporting goods, that were necessary to do this. But you'd get her in front of the camera, and she's magic.

You know there were tragic consequences regarding her life. There were drugs, and there was anorexia, and a lot of marital problems and things like that, and she ended up leaving NBC and, of course, later, dying.* That was a very sad, tragicóbut again, I think too much, too soon, kind of, lot of pressure on her to perform and really not having all of the goods perhaps necessary to make her successful. And I look back on that as really, really sad, what they were trying to do.

But that, again, is you have male employers thinking what America wants. It's like the Deborah Norville [situation].* You get a beautiful blonde woman, and we want men to be attracted to her, and that kind of thing, and it doesn't work. It really doesn't work. You need solid, good people that have had all the experience necessary to lead them up to that point. So I felt sorry for her, because I think she had too much put on her.

At any rate, she ends up leaving, and an opportunity comes to cover the House of Representatives. Chris Wallace had been in the House, and he had moved to the White House, and I fought and fought and fought. "Me, how about me? I can do it." [Gestures, waving her hand in air.] I waged a campaign to get this assignment. I really wanted it. I was traveling a little bit more, and my daughter was still young, and my husband was still traveling, so I wanted something that would kind of keep me more in town, and that's what the Congress would do.

So in 1979, I was named House correspondent for NBC. I really enjoyed it, and that's when I first had my political ambitions, thinking I would go back to Chicago and run for Congress, because as a reporter you're often covering problems, and you're doing a public service by explaining to the American people what are some of the problems, but never able to do anything about it. I thought, wow, if I could get into Congress, then I could actually come up with some legislation, or I could actually use that public forum to make a difference. I'll tell you about why I changed my political ambitions later, but at that point I was thinking about how exciting it was. I really loved it.

Moorhus: I'm curious. If this was 1979, that means that you had not only completed your first four-year contract with NBC, but had decided to stay and signed another one.

Simpson: Another three-year contract.

______________________ * Jessica Savitch was killed in an automobile accident in 1983 at the age of thirty-six. *Deborah Norville, an attractive young blonde journalist named co-anchor of NBC's "Today Show," was criticized for being inexperienced and promoted too rapidly. She was replaced within a few months by Katie Couric.

Page 75

Moorhus: A three-year contract then. Was your push to get a different assignment part of the negotiations for that contract?

Simpson: No. It just so happened they moved Chris [Wallace] to the White House and the job came open.

Moorhus: So you hadn't put any kind of conditions on that?

Simpson: No.

So I go to the Hill. During this period of time, NBC was undergoing a lot of turmoil. Bill Small (I will use his name) had been CBS News president, and he was brought over to NBC as NBC News president, and his idea of making NBC the best newscast was to bring CBS people to NBC. [Laughter.] So Bernie [Bernard] Kalb and Marvin Kalb were brought over, Bill McLaughlin. There were a lot of CBS correspondents that were hired, and NBC and CBS began to be split into two camps. There was the CBS camp, and there were the old timers' NBC camp. Because by this time, I'd been at NBC for six, seven years, and when you count the other years that I'd been part of the NBC family, because that seniority carried over, I would be considered a long-time NBC employee. So I was not one of his favorites.

In the fall of '81, I was told by the Washington bureau chief that I could no longer cover the House of Representatives. They were hiring Ken Bode and he was a long-time political person, and he was going to be another important person for the network, and they had to give him some Hill experience. This is again like the Ron Hunter situation. "We want you to cover [Department of] Energy as a beat."

I'm going, "Energy? You've got to be kidding me."

And my bureau chief, who liked me very much, said, "This is what Bill Small wants. He wants to bring in Ken Bode, and they made a place to put him, so you're going to lose this slot." It's déjà vu all over again.

I'm like, "You've got to be kidding me. Am I doing a good job?"

"Yeah, it has nothing to do with the work you're doing there."

"Then why the heck are you putting me on a beat in which I will never be seen? The Energy beat?" By now, [Jimmy] Carter is no longer president, [Ronald] Reagan is president, so that energy thing of the mid-seventies, it really wasn't a beat. This was the most insulting thing anybody could do to me. I mean, put me back even at HEW. But Energy, I knew, was not anything that was going to get me on the air. Now it's going to make me take a step back. I've been pushing forward and trying, as I say, having my eye on the White House some day, so getting that kind of experience. Now I'm being sidetracked here.

It was time for my contract to come up, and they made an insulting token offer in terms of what I would be given as a raise. I had been working really hard and doing a good job, and I thought I was going to get quite a nice raise for how hard I'd been working and how often I was getting on the air. So when I was told that I was going to be taken off, the next day I flew to New York to see Bill Small in his office. Somebody was going to have to tell me why this was happening. If my work was not bad, and if I was doing the job, then why in the world would you be sending me off to no-man's land?

Page 76

I flew up to New York and went to Rockefeller Center. I had made an appointment that morning and said, "I'm coming. I'd like to see you. What time can I see you? I think it was 11:30."

[End Tape 1, Side A; Begin Tape 1, Side B]

Moorhus: So you went in to see Bill Small in New York.

Simpson: Right, and I told him that I had been informed that I was being taken off the Hill and that I was being given this Energy beat, and I didn't understand it, why was I? And he said, "You don't have to understand it."

And I said, "Excuse me?"

He said, "We don't operate in your interest; we operate in the interest of the network. And we have considered it in the interest of the network to put Ken Bode in the House of Representatives and to give you the Energy beat."

And I said, "That's it? Just like that? Nothing else?"

He said, "That's right." And in so many words, "Take it or leave it." He was not even civil. He was not even cordial. He was just this stone-faced, "Hey, little girlie, take it or leave it, but that's it. That's the way it's going to be."

And I was trying to ask him, "Is my work no good?"

"No."

"Well, I still don't understand."

"As I told you, you don't have to understand."

I said, "Thank you very much." I picked up my purse. I wasn't in there longer than four or five minutes, if that long, and I'm telling you, I don't remember anything other than, "I've got to leave. I've got to leave NBC."

I can remember going down the elevator, and that's all. The next thing I knew, I was in Saks Fifth Avenue, which is across the street. You will see retail therapy recurring. [Laughter.] I found myself on the first floor of Saks Fifth Avenue when I came to my senses of like, "Where am I?" I had just left. I don't know what I was thinking. I just had left so dazed, knowing in my mind that I had to leave, and then ending up in Saks Fifth Avenue. And I looked around, I hadn't bought anything. I'm like, "What am I doing in Saks Fifth Avenue?" [Laughter.] It's right across the street there.

So I likeóoh, God. And I got to myself, I went to a pay telephone in Saks Fifth Avenue, and I called my husband. He is myóif I didn't have him to sound off on all these thingsóhe has been my steady rock, my support, every time some crisis would come, except when I couldn't tell him how miserable I was when he was in Minnesota. I always think of him first, and tell him, and he said, "How did it go?"

Page 77

I said, "It was awful. I'm leaving here. I've got to leave." I said, "I'm in Saks Fifth Avenue. I don't even know how I got in here." [Laughter.]

He said, "Have you bought anything?"

I said, "Not yet, but I think I need to."

He said, "What are you going to do?"

I said, "I'm going to call some agents while I'm here in New York."

Really, I mean, I acted very quickly. There was no time to wallow. I had just decided. I called people, and I said, "Who's your agent?" I knew Liebner, and I knew this Arnold Geller that Connie Chung has, and I called all of them. Who could see me right now? And the person I called was Stu Witt, who is in Richard Liebner's office, and Richard Liebner has some of the biggest talent. He has [Dan] Rather and [Ed] Bradley. Stu Witt is a former vice president of finance for CBS News and left that to become an agent. When he talks to me nowóhe's still my agent, and a very good friend nowóbut I guess I was babbling on the phone. "Can you see me now? Something awful has happened. I need to talk to somebody now."

And he said, "Sure." And I went over to him. I don't think I cried, but he could tell I was just shaken, and I had told him what had happened and the whole story of my experience at NBC and how I had been trying to move along, and now they'reóand I said, "I've got to get out of there. Do you agree?"

And he said, "Yeah."

I said, "I want you to start looking now for me some placeóCBS, ABC, anywhere. I've got to get out. My contract's going to be up." I would have to stay through my contract, which was going to beóthis is October of '81, and my contract was up at the end of December. It had not even crossed my mind until this came out of the blue, of thinking of leaving or anything like that. But when I was up, I wanted to be able to walk.

Moorhus: Had you thought about getting an agent before this time in your career?

Simpson: No. No.

Moorhus: You'd never felt that you needed one?

Simpson: No. I was at NBC and when I re-upped after my first four year network contract, they gave me a decent increase and I was moving along, so I really didn't. But now, to move outside, I needed somebody that had contacts with some of these other networks.

Moorhus: And somebody who could negotiate?

Simpson: And negotiate it for me. I felt at that time I needed professional help trying to get out of this. And it's like, "Get me out of there. I want out." There was no talking to him [Small], and that's when I tell you of knowing when "It ain't gonna happen here."

Moorhus: Do you think that Small's assessment of your future was related to your being female?

Page 78

Simpson: No, because I think there were people thatóI mean, Connie Chung he brought over to NBC. And I think he was around when Lesley [Stahl] and Michele Clark and Connie Chung were [at CBS]. He was the Washington bureau chief. So, no, I don't know what it was. I don't know.

Moorhus: Well, you said that he was not in favor of working with the long-time NBC employees.

Simpson: Right.

Moorhus: So you think it was that factor, rather than your being female or black?

Simpson: I really don't know. I didn't get any sense of racism or sexism from him. But again, remember this is the president. You don't have that many dealings with him. You don't come in contact. I know the Washington bureau chiefs and the producers on the rim that you're dealing with for the broadcasts, but that hierarchy, you really don't have much cause to come in contact with them. So, no, I don't think he particularly liked me or my work, for whatever reason. I don't know.

Moorhus: Were there other people that were getting similar kinds of treatment?

Simpson: Yes. Yes. And as I told you, there was this split, so the long-time NBC employees, all of us, felt that we were not getting the deal. Richard Valeriani had covered the State Department, they bring in Marvin and Bernie Kalb to cover it. He was moved aside. A lot of us were being moved aside to make room. Now, Ken Bode had not been at CBS; he was coming from outside. I think he'd been at The Nation or New Republic. He was an editor, and they wanted to turn him into a television correspondent. And again, I don't fault Ken Bode or the Kalb brothers. Some people do, and I don't think that's fair, and I'm always saying, well, they were offered that, and they took it.

Moorhus: They didn't make the decision.

Simpson: Exactly. But, no, I can't say it wasóthere's nothing to indicate to me that it was [racism or sexism].

Moorhus: Sort of corporate politics, then?

Simpson: I guess. I don't know. As I said, I didn't have much contact with him other than the few times there would be some social event that the New York people would come down to Washington for something. So I didn't know him. I really didn't know him.

So I said, "Get me out of here as quickly as possible."

ABC jumped, and he [Witt] said, "ABC is really interested in you. George Watson (whose office we are now in; he's no longer our bureau chief but he was the Washington bureau chief) wants to meet with you. Can you have dinner with him tomorrow night?" I mean, this was all moving very, very quickly. Then there were feelers from some local stations and everything.

Now Jim is well established in his job, not traveling to St. Paul, now controller and financial vice president of his company, and so we didn't want to leave Washington at this point. I wanted to do something here.

Page 79

So I had dinner with George Watson, and ABC was like, "Please come. We will make you a star." They were talking to me of "Nightline" or being at the White House or being at Capitol Hill. It's like, "Please come. [President of ABC News] Roone [Arledge] loves you, Roone's seen your work, he's seen your tape. We've had our eye on you for a long time." And they waved big bucks in front of my faceóI mean, huge money, way above this little modest thing that NBC was going to give me, a little modest 2 or 3 percent raise that they were going to give me to stay and do Energy, and here these people are waving all of this money and saying, "The sky's the limit. You can do anything at ABC."

I said, "It feels right." Stu says, "They really want you. I don't think we need to look any further. You'll be able to stay in Washington, you'll be able to do the political reporting. There are other kinds of things that you want to do. I think we ought to go with this." So I did. And in December, I signed a contract, and January 4, 1982, I came to work here at ABC.

Moorhus: Before we get you to ABC, I'd like you to talk a little bit about covering the House of Representatives and whether it met your expectations, first of all.

Simpson: [Laughter.] Covering the House. It met my expectations because of the grandeur of just being in the United States Capitol every day. I adore that building. It's gorgeous. Just to come there, to come up the marble steps, to walk through Statuary Hall, to be in the rotunda, to be in the gallery above the chambers and all like that, was just wonderful. Seeing the tourists coming from all over the world, in and out of the hallways, to eat in the Senate dining rooms and things like that. All of the trappings of power and the legislative process, which I enjoyed, the bill mark-ups and watching hearings and then marking up a bill and then seeing it passed and then seeing a conference of the Senate and House to reconcile the two bills. I just learned so much about the legislative process.

The interesting thing is that I didn't realize how many dummies are in the United States Capitol. Right? I mean, there are some real dumb people there. I had the chance to interview for a series. We did profiles of the women members of Congress, and I interviewed all of them, little three-minute vignettes that ran on "The Today Show," and I had an opportunity to talk to each of them. They were little personality things, getting to know you, just kind of telling you about these people. I had some of those women tell me some of the dumbest things I've ever heard in my life. One of them, to remind herself that she was going to be interviewed by me the next day, had left herself a note on the mirror, "Wear red. You're going to be interviewed." "I left notes all around the house to make sure." And she tells me this on camera. I mean, they just soundedóand one congresswoman talked about the first time her little four-year-old grandson saw somebody black, he said, "Mom, I saw a chocolate boy." And she said, and, "Yes, and I told him, 'You're a little vanilla boy, and you know how good vanilla and chocolate go together, so he can be a friend of yours.'" It was ludicrous. I mean, stuff like that, when you get to talk to some of these people, so that was perhaps the overriding thing that I'd come away from the Congress with.

One of my favorite jokes that I use isóand I use it in speeches all the time, which is a great laugh-getteróis that I have covered the United States Congress and it was a wonderful experience, because it was there that I learned the difference between a horse race and a political race. In a horse race, the whole horse runs. [Laughter.] It always gets a great laugh. It takes a while for people to get it. But really, I kind of did come away withóthere are a lot of dedicated, wonderful, impressive people there that are really doing a job, but there are a lot of realóso you're not surprised at the scandals that have come out.

Page 80

I covered the page scandal, the sex and drug scandal in the Capitolóyou know, Rita Jenrette and Wayne Hayes and Elizabeth Ray. I covered a lot of those stories, and they don't surprise you when you see the quality of some of the people that the American people elect to represent them up there.

Moorhus: Did you cover the convention in 1980?

Simpson: 1980, I covered both conventions. I was at NBC. Now I was a perimeter reporter. You're not on the floor, but you're right outside, so it's the next level.

Moorhus: There's really quite a hierarchy.

Simpson: Oh, there absolutely is. Oh, yes, to be on the platform, to be a floor reporter, and then there are the perimeter reporters, and then there are the general assignment reporters that are assigned to individual candidates or something.

So in '80, and in '84, for NBC, I was in New York and Detroit covering those conventions, and that was great. '76, I did the Republican convention in Kansas City.

Moorhus: What kind of things do you remember about the conventions in '80, as a reporter?

Simpson: Well, it's not a very satisfying assignment, because you're tethered to the area where the delegates come in. You've got a camera and you've got IFB* and mike, but you can't move around a lot, so you're confined to really just finding interesting people and delegates coming in, or "Who do you think's going to get it?" Or, "How many roll calls do you think there will be?" It's just that kind of thing, so it's not particularly a satisfying assignment, other than the fact that you're there and you get to be, not very often, but you get to be on the fringes of the excitement. But it's not particularly a satisfying assignment.

Moorhus: Okay. Do you want to take a short break before we go to ABC? A short break. [Tape interruption.]

Do you get recognized on the street?

Simpson: Let me tell you my favorite story about being recognized. It was at NBC that I first covered George Bush, and I was assigned to his 1980 presidential campaign. Then when he became vice president, I traveled with him, and that was part of my assignment, in addition to covering the Capitol, when he would take a trip. Because Reagan was older, they wanted us with Bush at all times. It became important to be with Bush. So I traveled a lot with him, and we went toóthat's later, that's here, but if I don't tell you now, I'll forget.

Moorhus: Okay. Go ahead.

Simpson: All the time I get recognized on the street. And often, they don't know where they know me from, but it's like, "Did I go to school with you, or do you teach school at So-and-so?" And I used to kind of let them drag out, but now I just tell them I'm on ABC, and they go, "Of course that's where it is." But some people know you quite well.

______________________ * An Interrupt Frequency Button allows the director and producer to communicate with on-air correspondents.

Page 81

The funniest story I have is when I went with George Bush to Chinaóhe was vice presidentóin 1985, and on our way to China we stopped first in Hawaii, where he toured some military bases and Pearl Harbor, and then we flew to Saipan, which is an island I had never heard of. It apparently figured prominently in a World War II battle, and it's in the South Pacific, and it's part of the Marianas. And it's in the middle of nowhere. It was like six or seven hours out of Hawaii. It's not near Indonesia, it's not near Australia, it's not near Hawaii. It's in the middle of nowhere. We get there, and I can remember landing. It was beautiful. It was just tiny, it looked like a little emerald jewel in the middle of this blue Pacific, and it was just spectacular, and nothing around it at all.

We landed on the island, and they had given us information. They give us full briefing books on everywhere we go, and it said that there were 15,000 native inhabitants that were mostly of Polynesian origin, and it's a favorite honeymoon place for Japanese that come there. That's their major industry, tourism with the Japanese for honeymooners.

So we land, and I am so excited. I've never been to a tropical South Pacific island. I checked into the hotel room, and I think Bush had private time, so we were free that evening, and we were going to go out to dinner, those of us in the press corps traveling with him, but I just wanted to run out and explore. We checked into this hotel, and I went out to the beach and looked at all the palm trees and the beautiful sea. Then I wanted to cross the street. There were some little shops. There was only one traffic light on the entire island. So I go to this traffic light to cross the street to go to the little souvenir shops that were across the street from the hotel. I'm standing there at this red light, and there is a woman dressed in beautiful native dress, she had on a muumuu and she had a flower behind her ear, and she was holding the hands of two small children, maybe two and four, and I'm looking at her, I'm going, "Wow! Look at how neat she looks. This really is an island paradise."

All of a sudden she looked over at me, and she said, "Aren't you Carole Simpson?"

And I said, "Yes, but how do you know?"

And she said, "Oh, we see you all the time. We get cable from Guam." They got all the ABC news programs. I'm sitting here thinking I'm in the middle of nowhere, and this woman not only recognizes me, but knows my name, knows my network.

Moorhus: Speaks English.

Simpson: So you really get a sense of the global village.

Now, I venture to bet you that when I go to Nairobi and when I go to Zimbabwe, there are people that see me. Every time I go to Europe, people always recognize me in Europe, because Armed Forces Network carries ABC programs, and now especially since the [1992] presidential debate, my recognition factor has gone up fivefold since that.

But that's my favorite story. It's just like you never know. I was just so bowled over that.

Moorhus: That's a wonderful story, and a very good lead-in to your talking about how you got assigned to cover Vice President Bush during the [1980 presidential] campaign, and then after that, because we didn't cover that with NBC.

Page 82

Simpson: With NBC, when you're covering the Hill, which I was covering at that time, part of the business of covering the Hill is being involved in political coverage every four years, because you are basically covering politics. So in 1980 I was assigned George Bush's campaign. He was thought to be a nobody. There were so many other people running in 1980, Ronald Reagan was running, and nobody thought George Bush would have a chance. I mean, who was he? So he was considered a lesser assignment, but as you recall, in 1980 he ended up battling Reagan for the nomination, and ended up being named as vice president because he had won so many primaries and they felt they had to give him something, and he could bring the more moderate wing of the Republican party along.

When I got the assignment, they probably thought it was a throw-away assignment, he'd be out of the races by March, but he prevailed and won a lot of primaries. So I covered him. Then when I came to ABC in 1982, again it was considered important to stay with Bush because of Reagan. Now we've had the assassination attempt on Reagan, and so it became important.* So every time Bush left the country, I would go with him. He was one of my assignments. I did other things, but one of my assignments was to go with him, and that was because I had had the experience of covering him in 1980, knew all of his people, knew Mrs. [Barbara] Bush, knew him quite well. So it was logical for ABC to capitalize on my having that early contact with him, to continue with him.

Moorhus: When you started with that assignment, were you enthusiastic about it?

Simpson: Yes, to cover a campaign. To be a part of a presidential campaign, to go to New Hampshire and be part of the primary process, yes.

Moorhus: Were there just a small number of reporters covering Bush from the very beginning, and did that give you, then, a sort of special relationship?

Simpson: No, because everyone, all the networks, would assign people to every declared candidate. Everybody, ABC, NBC, CBS, the Washington Post. No he had a full contingent of reporters, but what typically would happen is people [candidates] would fall by the wayside, and you would end that coverage. But from the beginning, every declared candidate who was on the ballot would have full coverage by the wire services, everyone.

Moorhus: How large a group of reporters is that, then, from the beginning?

Simpson: Oh, it's a full busload, because much of the campaign would be done by bus, especially in a place like New Hampshire. It's a tiny little state. That would be about forty people. A typical network contingent would be the correspondent, a producer, the sound man and the camera man. So each network had four. Then the wire services would each have a correspondent. the Washington Post, New York Times, major newspapers, Boston Globe, of course, because that's their circulation area, Time and Newsweek, the news magazines all send someone. There are photographers that do pictures that are bought by different organizations, so they all have people. There would be Mutual Radio, a couple of radio correspondents.

______________________ * Ronald Reagan was shot and his press secretary, James Brady, seriously wounded by John Hinkley, Jr., on March 30, 1981 outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.

Page 83

Moorhus: And was it your experience in following Bush in that first couple of years that the same people kept their assignment from the campaign through the convention and then through the election, for each network or wire service?

Simpson: Typically, that would be the case, yes. If your candidate won, you ended up becoming the White House correspondent.

Moorhus: So do you get to develop a kind of particular relationship with the other reporters covering it?

Simpson: Yes. It's like camp. You spend all your time together. We're herded around like cattle, you know. "Come here. There's this photo op here. There's this." Your luggage is picked up here, you're all in the hotel. We'd go out to dinner together, we'd get on the planes together. Yeah, it becomes this whole symbiotic relationship. There's the class clown, there's the person that's always late for the campaign buses, and where's So-and-so, and the people that have drunk too much the night before at the bar. So you get to know each other really, really well. But it's fun. It's the most tiring experience of your entire life. Every four years, I would say, "I'm not doing another campaign."

You live on what we call living on four food groups: sugar, salt, fatówhat's the other one? I forget what the other one is. Because it's terrible. You're always on the go, you never get a decent meal. We might hit six cities in one day. They might bring you some sandwiches. So you're always in a machine, getting peanut butter crackers and a Coke out of a machine just to keep going.

Early in the morning with Bush, baggage call would be at 4:30 in the morning. Covering Reagan, it was easy. He would get up late, he would go just a few places, and go to bed by eight o'clock. Bush was a much more vigorous man, so he would start real early, and our first things would beóhe may have three breakfasts in one morning, start one at 6:30 in the morning, go to another one at eight, and do another one at 9:30, just hopping all day long, and go all the way until about ten or eleven o'clock at night.

Then he would go to sleep, and then I would have to go to our affiliate station in whatever city we were in, and do the reporting and feed the spots for the morning news, and stuff like that, get back to the hotel about two in the morning, and then baggage call at 4:30 the next morning. Just unbelievable. It would go on, and you just go on autopilot. That's what I call it. You're like a zombie, like a robot after a while. No opportunity to get cleaning done, because you're never in one place long enough.

So everybody that goes on campaigns nowóand again, remember, there were very few women as part of the campaign process in '80. By '92, last year, probably half the contingent of reporters and technical people were female. There wouldn't be that many females on a trip, and we'd get real close together because we'd had these common problems of sanitary napkins. "Does anybody have one?" You know, all kinds of things like that, and we learned howóI wore black and navy blue. You couldn't get stuff cleaned. So I would take basic skirts and slacks and sweaters that I could throw on. You couldn't have anything that needed any attention, because you couldn't get it pressed, so you wore a lot of knits, and they were black and navy so they wouldn't show dirt, wouldn't show spots. I think we went a solid two weeks. I would rinse out my underwear in the hotel room at night and put it on wet, usually, the next morning, in the dead of winter. [Laughter.] And there would be never any time to shop or break away or anything like that. It's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Page 84

Moorhus: Who were some of the other women in 1980? Do you remember any names?

Simpson: Susan King, she was covering Bush for ABC.* I was at NBC, and so she was covering for ABC.

Moorhus: She was at the network then?

Simpson: Yes. She was here for three years and then went back to local news. She's a good friend. She's going to Zimbabwe with me, too. She's a very close friend. And who else was on? I can't remember. Remember, there have been a lot of campaigns since then. But Susan I remember. I'm trying to remember who from other places. Dorothy Collin from Chicago Tribune. Not many in '80.

Moorhus: Were the men helpful, or did they make it more difficult?

Simpson: No, they weren't helpful, and they didn't make it more difficult.

Moorhus: They were just sort of there.

Simpson: They were just men, being their silly selves. [Laughter.] Seeing how many people they could sleep with on the campaign, and boasting about it. You know, like who wants to hear it? It's like, give me a break. There was a lot of promiscuity on the campaigns, not among the reporters, but guys meeting some dame in a bar in some city in some hotel.

It's real interesting, because I did not participate in the '92 campaign on the bus, but I can remember reading some stories about how different it was in '92. A lot of these are yuppie men, very involved in their child-rearing, and running to telephones to find out how the baby isójust a whole different thing. As I say, in '80, '76 during the campaignóI was on the campaign briefly in '76 with [Senator Robert] Bob Doleóbut it was who could sleep with how many people, who could drink the most, who could get the drunkest. Now everybody's health-conscious, and drinking their Evian water and eating granola bars and yogurt, and such a different thing in '92 than it was before.

Moorhus: Very interesting.

Simpson: Yes. Yuppie fathers. Young yuppie fathers.

Moorhus: What kind of relationship are you able to establish with a candidate during that process?

Simpson: Not much, because we are herded. We'll try to get one-on-ones, we all seek one-on-one interviews with them along the way, but they manipulate us. When things are tough, they keep us back. When they want to get his message out, we have access. So it depends on how the political fortunes of the candidate are.

I'd built up over, because I covered him for eight years, with George Bush, a real fun relationship. He's a very nice man. I don't think he made a very good president, but as a human being, he's lovely, and he's a lot of fun to be around. And so is Mrs. Bush. I would go into the

______________________ * At the time of this interview, Susan King was at WJLA-TV, ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C.

Page 85

fire for her. I mean, she is one of my favorite people in the world. She is just terrific. I knew the whole family, and I was invited to the house when he was at the vice president's mansion. I'd be invited there every Christmas. My husband and I would go for parties there. I had opportunities to go to the house at Kennebunkport [Maine]. He would select out some people, and you'd get access. We'd take him to dinner sometimes, and I went to church with him many times. I'm Episcopalian, and Vice President Bush was, and I'd go to church with him some mornings when we'd be on the campaign.

Moorhus: You said, "We'd take him to dinner." Who was that "we"?

Simpson: A small group of reporters that might say, "Hey, we're going out for Mexican food. Do you want to go?" And he would sometimes come with us. Or we'd play a game together, or something like that.

Moorhus: Mrs. Bush has been very critical of the press.

Simpson: Things got bad in '88 after he was president. Remember, he was vice president. He didn't have the weight of the world on his shoulders then.

Moorhus: So the comments she was making were about a more recent relationship, and in the eighties you had a good relationship and they were accessible?

Simpson: They were great. I'll never forget, in 1980, this was Memorial Day weekend, and there was a lot of pressure on Bush to drop out and not participate in the California primary. People were telling him, "You're going to lose anyhow. You'd better make nice-nice to Reagan and maybe he'll name you vice president." He'd worked very hard. He'd spent two million dollars. He'd been campaigning for a year and a half before we covered him as a candidate. So it was very tough for him, and he really thought he might have a chance, but he was being leaned on by Jim Baker.*

We went to Houston, to his [Bush's] home in Houston, waiting for him to make a decision as to whether he would drop out or not. It was the end of May in Houston, which is miserable. It was like ninety-five degrees and ninety-five percent humidity, and we had to stake him out, waiting for any break. This would be a big story if he dropped out before the California primary. Our stake-outs would begin at six o'clock in the morning, and we would just stay all day long. We did that one day, we came back the next day. I think it was Friday we were there, and then Saturday we showed up at six o'clock in the morning, and it was so hot, no trees, we couldn't leave the motors on in the cars to keep cool. It was just miserable.

And so we're waiting out there, sitting around on the ground, reading newspapers and stuff, and all of a sudden, at about nine o'clock, a Secret Service agent came out. Mrs. Bush had sent us Dunkin' Donuts, had sent somebody to Dunkin' Donuts, and sent out a big pitcher of orange juice and a big pot of coffee for us, which was so sweet. She didn't have to do that. And we were so excited and so grateful. And then about 11:30, she came out herself, and she said, "Now, listen, you all, I'll let you all come in, and you can use the pool, but you have to promise me you're not

______________________ * James Baker, a close personal friend of Bush, ran Bush's 1980 campaign. He later served as chief of staff and secretary of the treasury for President Ronald Reagan and secretary of state for President George Bush.

Page 86

going to ask George Bush one political question, nothing at all about what his decision will be. Do you promise?"

And we're like, "Yes, we promise." [Laughter.] We went into the house. She had a bedroom upstairsóthis was their house in Houston, which was a beautiful homeóand they had a men's changing room and a women's changing room. There were bathing suits of all sizes. Apparently they had pool parties all the time. And we came out of our clothes, we were in the pool with George, and Millie's* in the pool swimming around with us. We sat on the lounge chairs. She served us lunch. We made jokes with him. The phone would ring, he'd go answer the phone. We stayed there until probably about four o'clock Houston time, to get ready for our newscasts. And did any of us report that we had been sitting in the pool with George Bush and not asking him any questions at all?

But they were like that. That's how good their relations were with the press, that she would let us come in, and, of course, we were nosing around and trying to listen to who's calling him on the phone, but they were great. They were great people.

Moorhus: About how many people were included in that pool party?

Simpson: Again, it was typically a contingent of thirty people, at least. They had a big house and a big pool. But, yes, the camera crews. They made no distinction, like just having the reporters or the correspondents come in. The photographers, the camera people, they all came in.

Moorhus: Did you feel uncomfortable, that you should have been asking questions, or that you had been compromised in any way? No?

Simpson: No. Our job was to stake him out and to report a decision when it occurred. Nobody was going to be able to scoop that. There wasn't somebody that was going to get a chance on that. This was high-stakes stuff. Our job was just to stay with him, and if he's going to let us stay with him inside, in his pool, sure, why not? Nobody was going to get a break on it. We were all there. So, no, we didn't feel compromised, and, as I said, we had a good relationship with him. This was somebody that did cultivate the press in a very big way early on.

Moorhus: Does that relationship based on knowledge and of mutual respect affect the way you covered him?

Simpson: Not at all, because what would happen later, when George Bush got in some hot water on Iran contra, I can remember Mrs. Bush going, "But Carole, you're our friend." "No, I'm not your friend. I'm a reporter. ABC pays my salary. You don't pay my salary. You have a job to do, and I have a job to do. His job is to win over public opinion or whatever." I would have to educate them. And they'll isolate you. If they feel that they've gotten a bad break from you, there would be things that certain reporters weren't ableóbut that's always existed. There would be certain things that certain reporters wouldn't be invited to, or wouldn't be told about, or they would try to shut you out and that kind of thing. But you have to realize, yeah, we can have fun, and we can joke around, but my job is to report the good and the bad. I'll report the good. But if he makes a fool of himself doing such and such, that's my job. That's what I'm paid to do.

______________________ * Millie, the Bush family dog.

Page 87

So I have never felt that I've been compromised because I've liked someone. It's the same thing that the Black Caucus tries to do with those of us that are black reporters, that we're not supposed to be critical of them, and [former D.C. Mayor] Marion Barry tried to do it with his difficulties with cocaine here with black reporters. "You all are black, and you're supposed to be sympathetic, and you're supposedó" And we all have to constantly tell them, "Excuse me, we are reporters. That is our job. And we're going to cover you, good and bad." So you often have that. With women candidates, everybody that thinks you're their friend, or that you're a nice person, forgets that my job, my number-one job, is to inform the American people and to watch how you're doing your job and report on it. You have to understand that.

This is the whole thing with [President Bill] Clinton and the press. "Why is everybody so hard on me? Why is the press corps giving me such a hard time?" Excuse me, you are a public official, and I am the public watchdog, and I am going to report on your activities, good and bad.

Moorhus: Do you think that distinction is something that's hard for young reporters to balance out and to learn?

Simpson: I don't know. Because I don't think young reporters have the opportunity to have that kind of access. Most of the people that are covering politics and covering presidential candidates and covering presidents are people with quite a bit of experience and maturity and knowledge of the political process and that kind of thing. I don't know what happens at the local level, where young reporters may more likely have a relationship with a mayor or some state legislators. But even at the local stations, by the time you're covering city hall, you're an experienced reporter.

Moorhus: What's your favorite George Bush story?

Simpson: Well, that other one is one of the funniest with us, in the pool with him. Funny George Bush story. I don't know. There are so many. We've had so many experiences. I went to twenty-seven countries with him. I traveled all over. I was on five continents.

Moorhus: Well, then, talk about the travel that you did, perhaps in terms of the challenges as a reporter.

Simpson: Well, I had not really reported overseas until I started traveling with him and would have to report on his activities. That opened up this whole world of satellites and booking satellite time and facilities, and time base recorders and things like that that I didn't even realize. The whole European system is on a different system than U.S on how our cameras shoot, the lines of definition, the little dots that make up a picture. I learned a lot about how things are done differently that way.

I saw the world with George Bush. I went places. We went to Ethiopia and the Sudan and Niger and Mali during the drought, the Saharan drought in the mid-eighties. I saw the most incredible things that I never believed possibleóseeing the starvation of people, and children dying. Seeing the Somali famine again awakened all of that in me.

And one of my most astounding memories covering George Bush was we were in the Sudan, right over the border from Ethiopia, at a refugee camp, and because they're Muslim, we were told to wearóbecause when you're traveling the vice president, you become part of the official U.S. party, so we're not like reporters. We're not seen by the rest of the world. You're part of the U.S delegation, even though we're not officials. But we were told not to wear sleeveless things, and it's hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. And you have to wear dresses. They don't like to see women in pants.

Page 88

So I was around the refugee camp, and it was horrible seeing these dying children and these women and trying to suckle them with nothing, withered breasts. There were a gaggle of little boys that kept following me around, between the ages of five and nine, about ten of them. They just latched onto me wherever we would go.

[End Tape 1, Side B; Begin Tape 2, Side A]

Simpson: The camp director would shoo them away, and I'd be in another place, and they'd come, and they'd come up to me again, and they're pulling on my dress, they're touching my dress, and they were told, "Get away," and they're dirty. Now, clearly, these are children that had had a chance to have some food. They were vigorous little boys, and running around. Every time they'd spot me, they'd come a-running and they kept saying something to me, two words, which I couldn't understand, and every time they'd come up to me, they'd smile and smile.

It was getting time to go, and we'd been at the camp maybe five or six hours, and I saw Mrs. Bush cry as she was viewing these children. You couldn't help but be moved by how awful this was. So finally I asked one of the guys, "What are they saying to me?" And they'd peek around. They all kept peeking at me. He said, "Well, first of all, they've never seen a colored Western woman." They've seen white ones, because there were nurses and doctors there, but Ethiopians are really more my color. It's the sun that bakes them darker. If you saw the infants that were born, they're like my color, and it really is the sun that bakes them. So they recognized me as someone more similar to them than some of the white people.

I said, "What are they saying?"

And this guy said, "They're all orphans, and they're saying, 'Adopt me.'" I just about died. And I wanted to take them all with me, load them up on the plane, because they're beautiful people, and here are all theseóand they were stroking me and trying to touch me, and what they were saying was, "Adopt me." They had all lost their parents, and they were orphans. And I think about those little boys to this day.

I came home, and I told my son, "Don't ask me for anything. Don't you ask me for video games, don't ask me foró" [Laughter.] Here are these children with nothing, nothing at all. And it really brings home about how much we take for granted, how much we have, our children have. That was very moving, and that experience came with George Bush.

But going to China, going to Saipan, all the European countries. I went to Ecuador with him, Costa Rica. I really, really saw the world and appreciated the United States in more ways than I ever did by seeing what the rest of the world was like, so that was great. I look back on those days as wonderful.

When we went to China, there were only eight reporters traveling with him, so we became part of the official U.S. delegation, because they didn't want somebody just to herd the press around; there weren't enough of us. So we got to go to all of the official ceremonies as guests, like the rest of the U.S. delegation. We went to a banquet at the Great Hall of the People, and I'm standing there, and in those days, in 1985, the women were in the Mao suits, and no make-up, and there were very regimented communistic kind of diatribes that we had to listen to. They sat us with the official communicators of the China news agency, and it's a government-controlled press, so they would seat us with them.

Page 89

I remember seeing the plate of appetizers that were laid out there before we sat down. I looked at it, and I couldn't recognize anything, and I'm thinking, "I'm in China. I'm going to get sweet and sour pork and kung pao chicken and fried rice." I'm looking at this place of appetizers, and in the middle of it was just a duck foot that had been cut off at the ankle, and there's just a foot with the little nails sitting there, and this heap of things around. I said, "What is that?" "Jellyfish tentacles." We had food I could not eat. We had dog meat. We never saw rice. Rice is considered poor people's food. I always thought I could eat rice. I lost six pounds in China because I couldn't eat anything. We had duck brains, we had frog testicles, we hadó

Moorhus: It might have been better not to ask, right?

Simpson: Well, I had to ask because it didn't look like anything I had seen. [Laughter.] I was quite the ugly American in China, being unable to eat anything, and of course, there people will eat with their chopsticks and then take something off and put it on your plate, and you're supposed to eat it, and it's like, "I don't want this stuff." [Laughter.] I couldn't eat the entire time I was there.

Moorhus: Were there other women among the journalists?

Simpson: Yes.

I'm going to have to go. I just looked at what time it is.

Moorhus: Let's finish China. Were there other women on the trip?

Simpson: Yes, Julie Moon from the U.S. Asian news agency. Was there any other? No, just two of us.

Moorhus: Any other black reporters?

Simpson: No.

Moorhus: Did your being black arouse any particular interest in China?

Simpson: When I would go overseas, people didn't think of me as black. I was always asked, "Are you Spanish? Are you Egyptian? Are you Filipino? Are youó" Because my features are such that I'm not immediately pegged as an African-American, so it didn't even come up in most of these countries. I think they just assumed I was something else other than a black American.

Moorhus: Let's stop for today and pick up again on George Bush.