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Mike Wallace
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At the age of 81, Wallace shows no signs of slowing down. In 1998, he not only renewed his CBS contract but also had one of the biggest scoops of the year: he was the only reporter to accompany U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to Iraq on his mission to prevent war between Saddam Hussein and the Allies. His exclusive interview with Annan was broadcast on 60 Minutes on Feb. 22, 1998. His controversial report on Dr. Jack Kevorkian in November of that year, in which 60 Minutes broadcast Kevorkian's own videotape showing him injecting lethal drugs into a terminally-ill man, spurred debate and media coverage for weeks.
Wallace's no-holds-barred interviewing technique and enterprising reportage are well known, and his numerous and timely interviews read like a "who's who" of newsmakers: George Bush, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Deng Xiaoping, Manuel Noriega, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Menachem Begin, Anwar el-Sadat, Yasir Arafat, the Shah of Iran, King Hussein, Hafez Assad, Muammar Qaddafi, H. R. Haldeman, Kurt Waldheim, Vladimir Horowitz, Itzhak Perlman, Johnny Carson, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Leonard Bernstein.
Wallace's experience as a newsman dates back to the 1940s, when he was a radio newswriter and broadcaster for the Chicago Sun. After serving as a naval communications officer during World War II, he became a news reporter for radio station WMAQ Chicago. He first joined CBS in 1951, left the network in 1955 and returned in 1963, when he was named a CBS News correspondent.
His television credits include Night Beat (1956-57) and The Mike Wallace Interview (1957-60). He anchored the Peabody Award-winning public affairs series Biography (1959-61), which focused on a wide range of historical figures from Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin to Helen Keller and Mark Twain to Babe Ruth and Clarence Darrow. His book, Mike Wallace Asks, a compilation of interviews from Night Beat and The Mike Wallace Interview, was published in 1958. His memoir Close Encounter, co-authored with Gary Paul Gates, was published in September 1984.
Wallace reported from Vietnam in 1962 and, after returning to CBS, covered the war several times between 1967 and 1971. In September 1990, CBS News presented a one-hour special, "Mike Wallace Then and Now," which recalled Wallace's 40 years of reporting and interviewing.
In June 1992, he anchored the CBS News/Post-Newsweek co-production "Watergate: The Secret Story," which marked the 20th anniversary of the break-in at the Watergate complex.
In December 1993, he anchored "CBS Reports: 1968," which chronicled that watershed year in U.S. history.
His news-making interview of the highest-ranking tobacco executive ever to turn whistle-blower, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, who revealed critical tobacco industry secrets for the first time on television, was broadcast on 60 Minutes and the CBS Evening News in February 1996.
In 1996, Wallace won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award grand prize and television first prize for a CBS Reports broadcast he co-anchored, "In the Killing Fields of America" (January 1995), a three-hour report on violence in America. His other professional honors include 19 Emmy Awards, three Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards, a Robert E. Sherwood Award, a Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Southern California School of Journalism and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the international broadcast category.
Wallace was elected a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi (November 1975) and was awarded a doctorate in humane letters, honoris causa, from the University of Massachusetts (1978). In May 1987, he received an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Michigan and, in 1989, an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Pennsylvania.
He was honored in September 1989 by Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications for his lifelong contribution to radio and television. In June 1991, he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, and in September 1991 he was honored by the Radio/Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) with the Paul White Award. In 1993, he was named Broadcaster of the Year by the International Radio and Television Society.
Wallace was born May 9, 1918 in Brookline, Mass. He was graduated from the University of Michigan in 1939 with a B.A. degree. He has a son, Chris, and a daughter, Pauline, and lives in New York with his wife, Mary Yates.