George Crile III
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George Crile III (March 5, 1945 - May 15, 2006) was a United States journalist most closely associated with his three decades of work at CBS News.
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[edit] Personal
After studies at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown and Trinity College, Hartford, Crile worked as a reporter for the Washington columnists, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, and as Pentagon correspondent for Ridder Newspapers. Crile came from a line of pioneering surgeons. His grandfather, Dr. George Crile was a founder of the Cleveland Clinic. Crile's father, Dr. George Crile Jr., was the leading figure in the United States in challenging unnecessary surgery, best known for his part in eliminating radical breast surgery. His wife was Susan Lyne, former President of ABC Entertainment and now CEO of Martha Stewart Omni.
[edit] Career at CBS
Crile was both producer and reporter for CBS in a career with the company that spanned three decades until his death in 2006. Before joining CBS at the age of 31, Crile was Washington Editor of Harper's Magazine. In addition to Harper's, his articles were published in The Washington Monthly, New Times, The Washington Post Outlook Section and The New York Times.
[edit] Producer
Crile joined CBS News in 1976 to produce The CIA's Secret Army, his trail-breaking documentary that chronicled the previously untold story of the CIA’s secret wars on Castro after the Bay of Pigs. In commenting on this broadcast, the historian Henry Steele Commager wrote that it would go down as one of the most important journalistic reports in American history.
It was the first of a collection of seminal broadcasts that Crile produced based on his original reporting, and invariably centering on taking his viewers into previously closed and inaccessible worlds. Among his notable documentary reports were The Uncounted Enemy, a Vietnam Deception and The Battle for South Africa, which won a Peabody Award. That ninety-minute CBS show, which aired on January 23, 1982 was the subject a celebrated libel action brought by General William Westmoreland. CBS news and Crile were defended by attorney David Boies. The pretrial publicity was substantial. The high point for General Westmoreland's case at trial was Crile's first day of testimony as a hostile witness. In the subsequent days of testimony he was better prepared asserting CBS's position. The case ended in a wimper settling at trial with a joint statement and discontuance of the lawsuit.
In 1985 he joined 60 Minutes where he produced scores of reports with Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley and Harry Reasoner and established his credentials as a specialist in coverage of international affairs. He was on the forefront of covering the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and in collaboration with a Russian counterpart Artyom Borovik he became the only American reporter ever to gain access to the Soviet Union's nuclear empire.
[edit] Reporter
His initial 60 Minutes report, revealing the Soviet nuclear command’s willingness to consider halting the targeting of America, played a significant role in helping set up a summit between the US and Soviet nuclear commanders. His numerous reports from inside the deadly secret worlds of Russia and the United States appeared on 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II as well as an hour-long documentary for CNN. The Overseas Press Club twice awarded Crile its Edward R. Murrow Award for these broadcasts. Crile's reports included such subjects as Three Mile Island, the changing boundaries of death, judicial corruption in Texas. But throughout the years he focused primarily on covering crises in U.S. foreign affairs. Broadcast subjects included reports on:
- The revolution in Haiti
- The battle over the Panama Canal
- US Cuban policy
- The Afghan war
- The Contra war
- The Sandinistas
- General Singlaub and the World Anti Communist League
- Prince Bandar and the special U.S. Saudi connection
- The African National Congress
- America’s losing war on drugs
- The search for Archbishop Romero’s murderers.
- Jonas Savimbi and the US backing of UNITA
- The Gulf War
- The USS Harlan County incident
- The CIA's man in Havana
- The killers of Rwanda
- The unsung heroes of the US military campaign in El Salvador
- The KGB and the world of Soviet Intelligence
- Russia and America's nuclear arsenals
After 9/11 Crile repeatedly drew on his extensive experience and contacts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Near East to provide behind the scenes look into the worlds of Osama bin Laden and militant Islam.
[edit] Charlie Wilson's War
In the late 1980s Crile began the research and reporting on the Afghan War that led to his 2003 best selling book, Charlie Wilson's War. It is the chronicle of a missing chapter in the political consciousness of America – the story of how the United States funded the only successful jihad in modern history – the CIA's secret war in Afghanistan that gave the Soviet Union their own Vietnam. The support of the freedom fighters, through a Pakisatini coridor, was to lead to a latter jihad against westerners, which Crile saw coming.
Charlie Wilson’s War has been widely and favorably reviewed and is currently in its 10th printing. It is the basis of a Tom Hanks/Mike Nichols film of the same name, currently in pre-production for release by Universal Studios.
He died at age 61 from pancreatic cancer.
