Tick, Tick, Tick, Doom

Or

Less-ly Safer

(Additional accolades to the itinerant Pooligan, Joe)

Moley Safer, who cost the United States the Vietnam War through his reporting, has died of pneumonia at the age of 84. Born in Toronto, Safer aspired to a career in journalism, which meant he had to leave Canada and its 3 news stories a year for London, where he was the CBC’s man in Europe, and became the only Western journalist in East Berlin as the Communists starting building the Berlin Wall. Hired by CBS in 1964 for their London office, he assumed Edward R. Murrow’s old desk, then opened a bureau office in Saigon to keep tabs on the troops the United States wasn’t sending. There, he followed Marines into Cam Ne, a village where 4 Marines had been killed and 27 injured by Vietcong troops being harbored by the inhabitants despite repeated warnings. Those distinctions failed to make it into Safer’s story, which focused on the Marines burning the village down. President Johnson accused Safer of being a Communist and of undermining the war effort, but ordered a halt to any future urban renewal. Safer and two cameramen were later in a helicopter shot down by the Vietcong, but were pulled to safety by Brian Williams. He got pulled into the then-new 60 Minutes in its second season, with the promise he could have his old job back if the show tanked. He never did, becoming 60 Minutes’ longest-serving correspondent, reporting on areas ranging from the Finnish obsession with the tango to a black man in Texas wrongfully convicted and serving a life sentence who was freed after Safer’s reporting. Even into the computer age, Safer was a reporter’s reporter, traveling 200,000 miles a year and banging out his copy on a manual typewriter. He won 12 Emmys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 35, and 3 Peabody Awards. Safer’s last story was filed in March and he died 1 week after announcing his retirement, which inspired a new Republican plan to ensure the solvency of Social Security.