They're Gonna Murder You: War Stories From My Life at the News Front

Acknowledgements

Thank you, thank you:

The Florida Times-Union

To those editors at the Florida Times Union who gave me my first job at a daily newspaper, to report fulltime for them during my junior and senior years in journalism school.

My special thanks to the editor who later became my co-conspirator in producing a story they would not print. Despite the harsh things I write about the newspaper,

I like to think other reporters and editors also chafed at the owner’s refusal to expose corruption. For some reason or another, those colleagues were not able to leave, as I did.

Harvard’s Nieman Foundation

My thanks to the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, for a marvelous fellowship that showed me during that snowy year in Cambridge how the rest of the world did great journalism.

Bosses With Balls

To the bosses with balls at the Miami Herald, WHAS-TV in Louisville, and WPLG-TV in Miami. For taking huge financial and career risks in approving my unusual projects.

To WPLG for amending my contract so I could continue reporting three days a week, and spend four days a week as a carpenter/plumber/electrician/cabinet maker to finish the waterfront house I built with my own hands in the Florida Keys.

Confidential Sources

To dozens of confidential sources, who shall remain nameless, even though many of them are now dead. They risked their reputations, their jobs, and sometimes their lives to tell me where the bad guys were hiding and what it took to smoke them out.

Media Relations Clients

To all of those clients who hired me to help them cope with the news media after I left reporting. Especially those whose lawyers told them to ignore my incredibly dangerous advice: Dump everything, explain how and why you screwed up, and what you're doing to prevent its ever happening again.

Attorney Tom Julin

To Tom Julin, the Miami lawyer, who guided me through the legal jungle involved in publishing a book like this.

Florida State Library Archives

To the Florida State Library Archives, for preserving so many photographs that show the people and places I write about.

My Daughters

To my three daughters, whose childhood was a little different, living with a father who sometimes came home from work at odd hours with a microphone taped to his chest, and cut strange holes in his van. And for coping with my emotional shields, created so I could be a better reporter.

When I left reporting and began to take down the shields, I told them we needed to get re-acquainted.

Preface

My friends have been telling me for years that I should write the war stories I tell about my reporting career. So here they are.

I’ve always said that reporters, cops and social workers are professional voyeurs. The secondary definition:

An obsessive observer of sordid or sensational subjects. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.)

Reporter-voyeurs get to see it all. Up close. Death, violence, crises, catastrophes, sexuality, obscene wealth, poverty, celebrities, conflict, grief, and absolute joy.

Best News Town in America

I spent 30 years as a reporter in newspapers and television. Most of it in Miami, which was the best news town in America. I was incredibly lucky. To work for the Miami Herald when it was in its prime, and then to become the first full-time investigative reporter for a TV station there.

I was lucky not to get hurt. Or killed.

After a civic club speech, the first question from the audience was usually:

They're Gonna Murder You

Aren’t you afraid they're gonna murder you?

No, I would say with a smile. They kill taxi drivers and convenience store clerks here, but I’m not aware of any reporters being murdered.

That was not completely true. I did think about it occasionally. My contract with WHAS-TV in Louisville – my first job in TV – included a hefty life insurance policy. During the winter of 1970-71 I was under deep cover there, carrying a hidden camera daily into illegal gambling joints.

Cold Cash in the Freezer

Only three people at the station knew I was there. I never went to the station until I came out from under cover. To avoid a money trail, News Director Bob Morse brought my salary and expenses to my house, in cash, every Friday night. It was stashed in the freezer until I deposited it on Monday.

My father, a firefighter, had taught me to do that. When a house burns to the ground, the freezer insulation usually protects what's inside.

There were times after I came out from under cover when a private guard service was on duty, watching my house at night.

When we were closing in on the corrupt sheriff’s department at the Miami Herald in 1966, I carried a pistol in my car. There was a vacant lot next to my house. A perfect place for an ambush. When I came home from work and got out of the car each night, I had the pistol in my hand.

Never Release the Kids

When I ended the undercover work in Louisville, the office at my children's school was told to NEVER, EVER let anyone except me or my wife pick up the kids. No matter who they said they were. No matter how critical or believable their story.

I wrote a lot about the Italian Mafia. I never feared retaliation from them. They had learned from bitter experience that the public doesn’t care if hoodlums kill each other. Good riddance, the readers and viewers say.

But killing a public figure, like a politician, an entertainer or a reporter, is a very different matter. Unless they have betrayed the mob. Then the rules say they, too, get whacked.

Outrage over the killing of a public figure can quickly shut down the mob’s illegal businesses. The assassination of Alabama Attorney General Albert Patterson in 1954 was a powerful lesson for the mob. More about that in a moment.

The Risk to Outside Agitators

I was lucky not to get hurt covering Martin Luther King as his civil rights campaigns moved across the South. The people in those towns hated the reporters even more than the demonstrators. We outside agitators were giving their communities a bad reputation.

Federal law enforcement agencies warned reporters when their informers inside the Ku Klux Klan said KKK members were talking about bombing reporters' cars or deploying snipers. The KKK was considering both tactics when I spent the summer of 1964 covering King’s campaign in St. Augustine.

I will tell you about the time I was sure my crew and I were about to be killed by an angry mob of African-Americans in Miami. The police had retreated from a major confrontation. My photographer, grip and I were the only whites left, and the mob turned on us. We were lucky to survive.

Cops as Murderers

My primary concern for my own safety was always dirty cops, in both Louisville and Miami. I became a specialist in police corruption. Who better to kill you than the cops who will investigate your murder?

I worked several cases where cops murdered witnesses to prevent their testifying against them. In others, they killed dope dealers to steal their money and cocaine; or wiped out dopers who were competitors for the cops’ own drug dealing.

As Colombians took over the cocaine trade in Miami, I had more serious concerns about the risks.

Colombian Drug Lords' Revenge

Colombian drug gangs are incredibly ruthless and reckless in their killing. The Colombian code of honor says that if you betray me, I must not only kill you – I must kill your entire family.

By the time I left reporting, it was not at all unusual to find a family murdered – father, mother, kids. That told you someone in that family had crossed the Colombian cocaine dealers. We are seeing similar carnage now in Mexico.

I Wanted to Be There

I was lucky to know, very early, that I wanted to be a journalist. I started a school newspaper when I was in third grade. I had a darkroom as a fifth-grader, and was editor-in chief of both my junior and senior high school newspapers.

By then I knew I wanted to see and experience as much of life as possible. To observe the human condition, up close, and not get my hands or other body parts dirty. Reporting was a way to do that.

It was a truly wonderful career. For many years, I was the only reporter for a local TV station to ever win television’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize three times (the DuPont-Columbia Award).

But awards were peripheral. They used to kid me, in the newsroom in Miami, about stashing my Emmys in a desk drawer.

The true reward was going places, seeing things that few human beings get to experience. The ecstasy of being there while history is in the making. And then telling the world about it.

I always got a perverse pleasure at a party when someone was excitedly talking about a news event. I would let them gush for awhile. Then I’d say quietly, I was there. I wrote the story.

I could no longer do that when I moved to TV. If they remembered the story, they remembered my telling it. They thought of me as PART of the story. Big difference.

Which Was Better – Print or TV?

I was frequently asked, after I had made the switch from print to broadcasting, which I liked best. I couldn't give a definitive answer.

Newspaper reporting was much more thorough, and much better staffed. Newspaper stories usually made a huge impact because the newspaper in most cities was deeply embedded in the power structure.

Print reporters and editors were better educated and had much more experience than those in TV. As Walter Cronkite once said – If TV news had not been invented, many of those working there would be looking for acting jobs in the theater. Cronkite was a former print reporter.

The beat system was common in newspapers, where a reporter spent most of his/her time concentrating on just one area. They became true experts.

Celebrity Status for TV Stars

After I moved to television, I was fascinated with the celebrity status of on-air people – especially news anchors, and what that does to many of their personalities. It is not pretty. That's another story that I tell in Chapter 15’s Ron Hunter legends.

In television, the stories I produced had a much broader appeal than those I had written for newspapers. They usually ignited instant action to change the problems I uncovered. They would trigger lots of calls with tips to pursue deeper aspects of the story. The people who called felt they knew me. I had been in their homes many times.

The Visual Power of Television

I quickly learned that newspapers simply cannot match the visual power of television. I have been a photographer all my life, and that made it easier for me to switch to TV. You don't really have a story there unless you have pictures.

One of the stories I uncovered in Louisville was a series of payoffs to a local official. The story showed the canceled checks he had cashed. A viewer stopped me on the street the next day. You got him by the short hairs, he said. When I saw those checks, there wasn't any doubt.

I had shown similar proof in newspaper stories, but the impact of printed photos does not match viewers' reaction when they see the same evidence on their TV screen.

Learning to Write Short

The most difficult thing for me about the switch to broadcasting was learning to write short. I had always been a long-winded newspaper writer. It was not unusual for a major series at the Miami Herald to begin on Sunday's front page, then jump inside and fill an entire page of newsprint.

Mort Crim, the anchor at WHAS-TV, had a syndicated radio show called One Moment Please. He wrote wonderful, profound essays for that show that were limited to 60 seconds. I tried to do the same, to learn how to write for TV.

I would write what seemed like 60 seconds, time it, and then begin the huge effort of cutting and trimming to carve it down to one minute. Eventually, I told Mort about my failure and frustration. How do you do it? I asked.

Write One Sentence, Then Pad It Out

You're going about it exactly backwards, he said. Here's the way to do it: Write what you want to say in one sentence. Then pad it out until it reaches 60 seconds.

A marvelous, secret formula for writing short.

Luckily, I worked at two stations where I was given enough air time to fully explore my investigations. Plus the resources and time to do the follow-ups. Most local TV news is hit-and-run. Shallow coverage, with very little follow-up.

One of the few assignments I missed was war. By the time I was in a position to ask for a Vietnam War assignment, thousands of other reporters were already there. I did not want to join the pack. The pack journalism of Washington had left a bad taste in my mouth.

My Washington Disappointment

I was assigned to the Knight Newspapers Washington Bureau in November, 1968. It was a time when the newspaper chain was expanding. They wanted a story from the Washington Bureau on all their front pages.

Which meant we covered endless Congressional hearings if they had anything to do with one of our newspaper's regions. Richard Nixon named a string of nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. Unfortunately, most had geographic ties to one of our newspapers.

So I would sometimes sit all day through one of those hearings, then rush back to the office to write the story. Even though the wire services had tag-teamed the hearing all day and transmitted fresh leads every few hours. They could do a better job. But Knight Newspapers wanted their brand on their front pages, and we in the bureau soldiered on.

No Readers in Washington

Most reporters consider a Washington correspondent's job the top of the ladder. For me, it was one of the low points of my career. The Los Angeles Times flew its newspaper to Washington every night. They hand-delivered it to members of Congress and other power people, so their stories would have an impact there. Very few people in Washington read the Miami Herald.

The Herald gave free newspapers to nobody. Even the White House had to pay for a subscription when I worked there. The legend in the newsroom said some people who worked the presses had once been caught selling newspapers on the street. So the edict went out: NO FREE PAPERS.

Snow, Ice and Living Costs

I disliked the winter snow and ice. The house we bought that was comparable to the one we left in Miami was far out in the woods in Maryland. I hated the one-hour commute each way. Everything was distant and inconvenient.

Even though the Herald had given me a salary increase when I was assigned there, it did not match the increased cost of living in Washington. When the job offer came from WHAS-TV in Louisville, I grabbed it. I had only been in Washington 18 months.

Where No Others Had Been

My goal was always to go where no other reporter had been. To try techniques that others thought too risky or impossible. I was lucky to have editors and TV station owners who were willing to take the risks, and spend their money on my crazy ideas.

More about that in Chapter 12 – Bosses with Balls.

I always wanted to show my readers/viewers what was really happening. I wanted to tell the story so well my readers and viewers felt they had been there, too. This book is my latest effort.

A quick story from history so you'll better understand my comfort level in writing about the mob:

The Patterson Assassination

Albert Patterson was a lawyer in Phenix City, Alabama, who had joined a group trying to clean up what was widely considered the most corrupt community in America. He was persuaded to run for state attorney general. If elected, he vowed to drive the gamblers, con men and prostitutes out of town.

In the 1930s, politicians in the depressed town had decided they could bring prosperity to Phenix City if they created an anything-goes kind of place. They thought booze, gambling and prostitution would appeal to young soldiers stationed across the river in Ft. Benning, Georgia. They were right.

Gen. Patton's Threat

General George S. Patton’s tank corps was stationed at Ft. Benning. Conditions in Phenix City were so bad, Patton at one point threatened to roll his tanks across the river and destroy the city, if that was the only way to protect his troops from the bars, bordellos and casinos.

Before he could carry out his threat, World War II began. Patton and his tanks were shipped to Europe, where he became one of the war’s most famous generals. The war brought even more soldiers to Ft. Benning. Phenix City was a boom town.

Nine years after the war ended, Albert Patterson (a decorated World War I hero) narrowly won his race for state attorney general. Before he was officially declared the winner, a major investigation began. The mob had attempted to rig the election with massive voting fraud.

Victory, Then Assassination

It took months, but Patterson’s victory was eventually certified by the Alabama Secretary of State. That night, Patterson was gunned down in an alley as he left his Phenix City office. Public outrage over the assassination was so great, the governor declared a state of martial law. National guardsmen methodically shut down all the illegal businesses.

A special grand jury returned more than 700 indictments against law enforcement officers, public officials and businesses that could be connected to organized crime.

Officials Charged with Murder

Three law enforcement officials – including the sitting state attorney general – were charged with conspiring to kill Patterson.

The city’s chief of detectives was tried for being the triggerman. He went to prison for 10 years. The attorney general checked himself into a mental hospital in another state and avoided trial.

Patterson's son, John, became attorney general and three years later was elected governor.

The mob learned from the Patterson killing that the assassination of a public figure outside the mob can be very bad for business. The success of their business is very high on their scale of priorities.

They see murder as a necessary part of their business. Like the legendary hit man who says to his victim as he pulls the trigger, Nothing personal. It's just business.

Louisville's Open City Status

So the work I did in Louisville was some of the most dangerous I did. Even more than covering Martin Luther King, or flying with campaigning candidates in borrowed, aging airplanes.

The mob’s control did not extend to Louisville. It was considered an open city with no Mafia family in charge. The mob had tried to move in on the illegal gambling operations, but – at that point – they were still locally owned.

Another cardinal rule for the Mafia has always been that no matter how nasty a member’s transgression, his family is off-limits. That posed another risk in an open city like Louisville.

I was not always an investigative reporter. It is a specialty that reporters gradually slide into, as they gain maturity and experience. Once I decided to go that route, I tried to do my job as safely as possible, and not worry about getting hurt.

Fear prevents you from thinking clearly; from reacting wisely in those milliseconds that can mean life or death. Fear can also prevent you from seizing opportunities to get the proof you need. So I learned to put fear aside and concentrate on my work.

Risk is Addictive

When I was carrying a hidden camera into bookie joints in Louisville, I knew that if the camera was discovered I would probably be killed. I found the daily risk addictive. There was a rush when I walked out of the bookie joints, saying to myself: I got away with it again.

When I would arrange a midnight meeting in a strange place in Miami, with a shady informer, I would always tell a colleague exactly what I was doing, in case I didn’t come back. Sometimes, I had someone hanging out nearby as a witness.

Looking back now, I would probably not take some of the risks today that I took as a young investigative reporter. Strange. I had much more to lose then. My three daughters are all grown now, with children of their own. A loss of nerve is just one of the terrible things time does to us.

The Threat to Democracy

I totally believed in what I was doing. I believed – and still do – that the country I love will fall apart if reporters and editors and media owners are not willing to take risks to set things straight. Financial risks as well as physical risks. Journalists and media owners must also stubbornly resist bending to public pressure.

Some of the stories I will tell are about events that happened 50 years ago or more. My memory of the small details may not be perfect. But I will do my best to tell the story as truly as I can.

In some cases, I will not use real names. Some of the people I investigated were never arrested or sent to prison. And I will not reveal my confidential sources, unless they give me permission.

I Will Never Disclose You

I routinely pledged to them that I would never disclose that they had helped me in any way, unless they released me from our contract. Those that are now dead cannot change our covenant.

I will show you the news media, as I knew it, from the inside. The way it really was. And voice my alarm that this American institution is now on the brink of extinction.

I left reporting in 1984 after I wrote a book teaching