The Press: Schorr Signs Off

Almost from the day last February that CBS suspended him for passing a copy of the secret Pike committee report on CIA operations to New York's Village Voice, Daniel Schorr suspected that he would never again appear as a CBS correspondent. Then came his eloquent defense of a reporter's First Amendment rights last month before the House ethics committee, which had demanded that he identify his source. "To betray a source would be to betray myself, my career and my life," he declared. "I cannot do it."

He did not have to. The committee decided not to punish him, and CBS seemed ready to take him back. Said Schorr: "It appeared to me, from the ashes of all the trouble we'd had, that a whole new era might arrive."

Deep Tube. It never arrived. After consulting his wife Lee and his lawyer Joseph Califano—the only people to whom Schorr identified his Deep Tube, he handed his resignation to CBS News President Richard S. Salant. Schorr was afraid that CBS would keep him on until the memory of his ethics committee performance had faded and then quietly fire him. He also thought that he would not be able to fit in easily again at the CBS Washington bureau. "I would doubt my ability to function effectively if reinstated," explained Schorr, who first joined the CBS News staff 23 years ago. "My reinstatement would be a source of tension within an organization whose future success I still care about."

Not everyone at CBS was eager to see Schorr return. Some executives were still fuming over Schorr's remarks to Duke University students, in January 1975, implying that CBS had pressured Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid and Dan Rather to go easy on Richard Nixon the night he announced his resignation from the presidency—a charge all three deny. Worse, for several hours last Feb. 11, Schorr let his bosses believe that Fellow Correspondent Lesley Stahl leaked the Pike report. Some of the people Schorr worked with in the CBS Washington bureau have never forgiven him. Said a correspondent: "It's one thing to deceive management. It's another thing to shit on your colleagues."

Schorr, 60, will be paid his full salary (close to $70,000 a year) through 1978, when he will begin receiving a pension. He plans to give speeches (at $3,000 each), lecture next spring at the University of California (Berkeley), and finish a book. Schorr is free to leave the CBS payroll and join another network, but he insists that he is finished with television. Says he: "I have a terrible hunger for direct contact with people, and I want to see those little words in print that I can go back to next day and say, That's what I wrote.' "