[Frank Kearns] Today some of the fires are still burning, only a few of about 30 all over the city.

This reporter has covered wars and undeclared wars, riots and revolutions some 15 years.

But tonight here in Belfast was the worst single night of violence I've ever seen, and that includes Nicosia in Cyprus, Beirut in Lebanon, Algiers in Algeria, Leopoldville in the Congo.

[Narrator] In the 1950s and 60s, Frank Kearns was the "go-to" guy at CBS News for dangerous stories in Africa and the Middle East.

When the number of times he faced death reached 114, he stopped counting.

[Marvin Kalb] You need someone like Frank to go out into uncomfortable places, dangerous places, and get the story.

[Frank Kearns] The battle moves to the rooftops now.

Rooftop sniping on all the roofs.

This man just behind me, just as we came up the stairs, a bullet nicked about one foot from his head.

Yeah, very funny.

[Michael Kearns] You saw it was courage, I mean, in everything he pulled off.

You know, war after war, he covered every damned war in Africa in the years that he was a journalist.

Didn't miss one.

[Sandy Gall] I would have thought that Frank was highly successful and, very, and absolutely one of the best CBS correspondents I ever came across, and I saw a lot of them.

[Frank Kearns] This is Frank Kearns in Gaza.

Now back to Walter Cronkite in New York.

[Sandy Socolow] I don't know where or under what circumstances he grew up, what the influences on him were or what made him into what he was, but he was a cosmopolitan man in the best sense of the word and very fruitful, very important to CBS News... and in the end, deserved better than the way his reputation worked out.

[Sara Kearns] Frank said to me, I think I have to tell you something.

He said, "This evening on the evening news all hell's going to break loose."

And I said, "Why?"

And he was very upset and he said, "CBS is going to tell the world that I was a spy for the CIA."

[Music] [Narrator] In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the United States Senate established a committee to investigate alleged misdeeds by American intelligence services.

They were particularly interested in the CIA's covert relationships with the American media, both for collecting intelligence and for cover.

On The CBS Evening News on February 10, 1976, Correspondent Daniel Schorr reported that CBS News President Sig Mickelson told the Senate committee that two of his reporters in the 1950s Frank Kearns in Cairo and Austin Goodrich in Stockholm, were employed by the CIA.

[Daniel Schorr] Kearns, now a journalism professor at the University of West Virginia [sic] commented, "I deny it."

[Frank Kearns] During all the year I was a CBS News staff correspondent I had no connection whatsoever, NO, NONE, with the CIA or any other intelligence agency.

- Frank Kearns [Narrator]In his denial Kearns omitted his earlier years in Cairo where he worked part-time for the network.

Often he was seen there in the company of certain Americans with whom he shared the same values and ideals, as well as friendships going back to the war years in London.

They were CIA.

[Narrator] The story of Frank Kearns, CBS, and the CIA is one of long-standing and complicated relationships It started with Kearns's absolute belief that America and its ideals were endangered by the spread of the Soviet Union's influence and its model of a totalitarian society.

He accepted the propaganda used by the U.S. government and its outlets in the media, which warned of the "Red Menace" and the danger of nuclear Armageddon in the 1950s.

[Scott Lucas] There are important stakes in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Let's not minimize this.

When it comes to Europe, for example, Washington and Moscow are fighting to become the dominant power on the continent after World War II, and they are doing that politically and by building up their militaries and by providing economic aid.

[Narrator] But this was a different kind of conflict.

One government official described it as "a war that isn't a war."

[presenter] “The black portion of the map is the communist dominated part of the world controlled by the Soviet Union and the Chinese communist regime.” [Narrator] This was a " Cold War" with differing views of truth.

It was waged with sophisticated government propaganda on both sides.

Its outlet in the United States was an emerging new medium, called television.

[Scott Lucas] When Americans see the world on their television screens in the 1950s, one of the captivating but also terrifying things about this Cold War is that it could be a nuclear Armageddon.

[sounds of long, extended explosions] It could be the end of our days.

[Narrator] Frank Kearns was one of the reporters crusading for the American truth.

He understood what was at stake for the United States and its western Allies.

By the time he landed in Cairo in 1953, the Middle East was in turmoil and his career in broadcast news was set.

[Frank Kearns] This is an all-out Cold War out here with no holds barred, and any objective reporter must report in full conscience - in diplomacy, in the cultural fields, especially in the economic field - the Soviet bloc is penetrating the Middle East with consistent and constant and almost frightening success.

[Narrator] Half a world away from Egypt, Frank Kearns grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia, in the center of Appalachia.

His father was an engineer who worked in the coal fields and later in the aviation industry in Washington, D.C. His mother was one of five girls in a close-knit family.

Kearns graduated from West Virginia University in 1938, ready for his first assignment as a journalist.

[Michael Kearns] His parents were against him going into journalism.

They, they...I don't know...they saw him in a doctor or lawyer, that sort of profession.

But as my grandmother once said to me, "He had a will of his own and there wasn't anything you could tell him to do.

If he didn't want to do it, he wouldn't do it."

And he knew from an early age that he wanted to be a journalist.

[Leighton Watson] He had an adventuring spirit about him.

He had a vision and he really worked at things, he was willing to take chances to do things, and I think that is what paid off in his career.

[Narrator] After college, Kearns wasted no time finding a job.

He went to work as a city editor for his hometown newspaper.

[Michael Kearns] And then somehow found himself as a cub reporter in Miami Beach.

[Narrator] But the United States entered World War II.

So his next adventure would take place in the capitols of Europe.

[Sara Kearns] World War II broke out, I think,he signed up.

So he went to London.

He spent five years in Europe.

[Michael Kearns] He entered the Army as an enlisted man and worked himself up the ranks [to a] battlefield commission.

He was affiliated with the Counterintelligence Corps - CIC.

Catching spies.

[Narrator] The U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps in London was a small unit when Kearns arrived as a Staff Sergeant in June 1942.

Its members were carefully selected for investigative, counterespionage service.

Kearns shared a comfortable apartment with two other members of his unit.

James Eichelberger and Miles Copeland.

They worked as plain-clothed investigators carrying out background checks on military personnel.

They also hunted for spies and saboteurs who tried to undermine the Allies' war effort.

[Lorraine Copeland] They were handpicked in Washington, and Miles was thrilled to be with such a wonderful group.

and the first job that I remember Frank and Miles carrying out was, to go around in England, and try and find out whether if there was loose talk and people were giving away secrets and whether there were German spies inhabiting pubs in hoping people would give out with things that they shouldn't be talking about, which Frank and Miles certainly enjoyed very, very much.

[Narrator] When Copeland married Lorraine Adie, who worked for British Intelligence, Frank Kearns was his Best Man.

Their wartime friendship bound them later on in the frontiers of another, colder war.

[Lorraine Copeland] They were best buddies!

I mean, they were as one in the way they thought and their humor, and they were very close, yes.

[Narrator] By November 1942, Kearns was commissioned to Second Lieutenant.

He worked in Eisenhower's headquarters.

While in London, the 25 year-old Army Lieutenant met a dancer from the Windmill Theatre, Gwendolyn Shoring.

They married on October 5, 1943.

Two days later, Lieutenant Kearns was back at work preparing for the Allies' invasion into Europe.

[Narrator] Kearns went ashore at Normandy in August, 1944.

He followed the advancing troops into Paris where he was promoted to Captain and named Commanding Officer for counterintelligence.

After securing the French capitol, he moved with the Allies into Germany.

Kearns' unit was responsible for arresting and interrogating captured Nazi officials including members of the SS and Gestapo.

In April of 1945, he entered Dachau with the 45th Division to free its 32,000 emaciated prisoners.

He was emotionally overwhelmed by what he found.

[Sara Kearns] He was one of the first people in there to liberate that camp.

He said the smell and sights were just ghastly.

I guess he had to live with that the rest of his life.

You don't forget things like that... sad.

[Michael Kearns] It was obviously a very painful experience for him.

I think it was for anyone who went through that.

It is something that none of us today could imagine.

[Narrator] It was memories of that authoritarian regime that would later influence his reporting on wars, riots and famines throughout the Middle East and Africa, especially in his early years at CBS.

After the war, Frank Kearns went back to working as a journalist.

He was signed by a literary agent in New York and wrote for magazines.

He also worked as a radio newsman.

[Narrator] He edited a manuscript for General Eisenhower's driver, Kay Summersby, in 1948.

The book quickly became an international best seller.

A close wartime friend, Captain Edward Saxe, recommended Kearns to the author and her publisher, Prentice-Hall.

[mysterious music] [Michael Kearns] Ed Saxe, was very instrumental in his career.

He was a godfather type in a way, in that he introduced him to the right people.

[Sandy Socolow] Ed Saxe was a very important corporate, corporate executive...and I know that he and Mr. Paley became good friends during WWII in London, and it was never clear to me exactly what role he played at CBS, except that he was very close to Mr. Paley.

[Narrator] During the war, Colonel William Paley -- the owner of the CBS radio network that carried the nightly broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow into American homes, worked in the Office of War Information.

While he was stationed in London, Paley met Edward Saxe, and the two became close friends.

After the war, Saxe joined CBS in New York.

He continued to advise the Department of Defense and the National Security Council in Washington.

This provided a solid link between CBS and the government agencies that were working against the global threat of communism.

It was into this entangled relationship that Ed Saxe invited Frank Kearns to join CBS as the network's reporter in Cairo in 1953.

Miles Copeland and James Eichelberger, Kearns's old wartime roommates, were already there, and working for the CIA.

[Scott Lucas] When you talk about people meeting up in distant places, it's almost like a Graham Greene novel.

So all of a sudden, you have Frank Kearns, the broadcast journalist, You have Miles Copeland, almost building up his own legend, as a CIA operative, and then you have James Eichelberger, the head of the CIA station.

[Narrator]Shortly before Kearns, Copeland, and Eichelberger arrived in Egypt a group of army officers staged a coup d'état that over-threw the regime of King Farouk I. Lt.

Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser was one of its leaders.

[Nasser speech in Arabic] This action forced the Americans to pay even closer attention there.

President Eisenhower wanted to know which way Egypt was leaning - to the West or to the communists.

[Gamal Abdel Nasser] The future of communism in the Middle East depends on the actions of the Western countries not completely on the action of Russia.

[Marvin Kalb] I remember clearly that Cairo was a central piece of the Soviet propaganda machine, and the Russians needed the Egyptians in order to serve as a base from which they could send forth their vision of the great new world.

[Narrator] But Egypt played a bigger role than simply being a base for Cold War propaganda.

It was strategically important to Europe and the oil producers.

Two-thirds of the oil that was shipped through the Suez Canal went to Europe, and controlling the oil traffic aided Nasser's grand plan to unite the Arab countries.

Although most Americans were paying little attention to the Middle East and North Africa, the Eisenhower Administration knew that the longstanding British presence in Egypt was now shaky and needed American support.

They were also concerned about a military buildup.

[Scott Lucas] Let's get to the core of what we're talking about here.

That is, that the CIA is building up links in Egypt - this fast-changing country, this country that had been under British domination up until the early 1950s - but now, you not only had gotten rid of the king, you have a new military government with these new figures, charismatic figures like Gamal Abdul Nasser.

How are we going to find out about this group?

How are we going to influence them?

What can we do?

You want to get as many people providing information as possible.

[Narrator] The CIA sent Miles Copeland and James Eichelberger to lead the effort.

Copeland now worked for Booz-Allen Hamilton, a management consulting firm that sometimes provided cover for the CIA.

Eichelberger was the head of the CIA in Cairo.

[Lorraine Copeland] There were so many CIA people there under cover of all sorts of things.

I mean, Miles was supposed to be organizing the Ministry of the Interior.

Frank was a news hound.

Eichelberger had a special job doing something else.

And, it was like that.

There were people working in the airlines who kept an eye on the airport.

There were people undercover working in the embassy itself, like the commercial attaché or something.

[Narrator] Kearns moved his family into a spacious flat on an island in the Nile River.

The area was filled with Egyptian government employees, foreign reporters, embassy officials, and of course, spies from every country with an interest in Egypt, the Suez and North Africa.

[Mysterious music] [Lorraine Copeland] The Eichelbergers lived not in the.. maybe in the same building, I'm not sure but very close by, and we all used to get together with parties back and forth.

But at night, you could either go to a night club, which would've been disastrous, probably, too much drink and loose talk, or you could go to each others' houses and have a party there, and that's what we did.

We made our own entertainment.

[Michael Kearns] And then of course all the personalities you see in TV, movies, like "Good Night and Good Luck," many of them were at the apartment in Cairo at one time or another.

I had the opportunity actually to meet Edward Murrow.

I remember him meeting me and saying, "Good evening, young man," and I just remember lots of cigarette smoke, a lot.

I could hardly see him.

[Narrator] Editors at CBS pressed Frank Kearns to sharpen his reporting in Egypt.

One way to do this was to examine Nasser's plan for Arab unity.

[Howard K. Smith] Here now is CBS News Correspondent Frank Kearns interviewing President Nasser.

[Frank Kearns] Sir, you said recently in a speech, I believe, that you want to ease tension in the Middle East and in the world.

At the same time, your powerful propaganda has been inciting trouble and continuing trouble in Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, even the Sudan and Tunisia, and openly inciting racial feeling in Africa.

How do you explain this?

[Michael Kearns] It is my information that Nasser really liked him and they got on - like -- as men can get on.

I mean, I even have a picture of him on Nasser's yacht - piloting the yacht!

They were almost friends.

[Narrator] Friends?

Perhaps.

But at arm's length.

Frank Kearns got to know President Nasser through Miles Copeland and through his Egyptian cameraman,Yousef Masraff or "Joe" as he was called, who was handpicked by Nasser to handle his official government photographs.

Joe Masraff spoke several languages fluently.

He was creative, hard working and very resourceful.

It was easy to see why Kearns wanted him for CBS.

[Sandy Gall] Frank must have gotten scoops that nobody else got, and access to Nasser and so on, which wasn't easy.

I mean, he did give interviews at that time but very restricted.

I mean, it was very difficult to get an interview.

If you were just an ordinary correspondent,you hadn’t a hope.

hope hope hope [1950s documentary music] [Narrator] In May of 1957, Kearns was asked to prepare an important cut-in for the second season of the CBS documentary program "The Twentieth Century," narrated by Walter Cronkite.

His report was included in a two-part segment called "The Red Sell" about the spread of communist propaganda in Egypt.

It was written by Marvin Kalb.

[Marvin Kalb] As I remember it, Bud Benjamin and Ike Kleinerman would think through the whole concept of the program.

and then assign reporters reporters in Cairo, reporters in Stockholm, wherever to do a piece of the broad concept that they had.

[Walter Cronkite] Finally to the turbulent middle east where communism rides the coat tails of Arab nationalism.

This is Frank Kearns reporting from the Middle East Always the contrast: Washington the enemy, the war monger; Moscow, the friend, and the lover of peace, the champion of peace.

All this may sound over-pessimistic, but the picture here is pessimistic.

After five-and-a-half years of covering the Arab world from North Africa to the Turkish border, I sincerely believe the communists are winning.

We are losing.

And, like many and other Americans out here, I'm depressed and tired of watching the communists win almost every single battle.

Of hearing their propaganda and Nasser's,attacking the United States day-after-day, year-after-year.

It's not only later than we think out here in the Arab world, it's almost too late.

[Narrator] Like others working in the 1950s, Kearns's reporting was dogmatic about the growing influence of communism.

He filed reports about the presence of the Chinese, the Warsaw Pact countries and the Soviet Union.

At the time, the storyline was always "us" - the Americans - versus "them" - the communists.

Little coverage was given to how the countries actually related to each other.

According to Dr. Lucas, the real story in North Africa and the Middle East was that each country was more concerned about its own security than about the standoff between the Americans and the Soviet Union.

[Scott Lucas] So was it the case that Frank Kearns simply thought differently from the Egyptians with whom he was dealing?

From the Algerians with whom he dealt?

That he honestly believed that the Soviet threat was THE major issue even when they did not?

Or, was he playing to an American audience?

Was he simply giving the line that people wanted to hear back in the United States even if that line didn't match up with reality?

I wish I could get inside his head to try to understand.

[Narrator] Another contributor to Cronkite's program was Austin Goodrich, a CBS stringer in Finland.

[Austin Goodrich] The Russians out-spend us in Finland by a considerable amount, and they have the manpower.

[Narrator] Kearns and Goodrich never met and never appeared on the same program again.

But later on, their names would become profoundly connected in journalism history.

[Austin Goodrich] Our enemy in the cold war was a very evil force.

He really was.

I use the word advisedly.

It was evil.

[mysterious music] [Lorraine Copeland] We called where our husbands were working, in other words the CIA, we called it "the old glue factory," which was a way of not saying the CIA, not naming it.

So amongst ourselves, we would refer to it as "the old glue factory."

It was a ploy.

You know, a subterfuge, I suppose, and also a bit of a joke.

[ Laughs] [Narrator] Years later, Miles Copeland wrote about his time with the CIA in his book, “The Game Player.” He said he and Eichelberger used "Frank's luxurious apartment as a headquarters."

He later told historian Scott Lucas that Kearns's apartment was actually paid for by the CIA.

[Scott Lucas] Now, there’s a couple of questions first of all about all this, and that is: Was this specifically done for Frank Kearns or was this done for any journalist who happened to then take up that apartment?

Was it almost like what we would call a CIA safe house in this day and age?

[Narrator] Was Frank Kearns's apartment really a "CIA headquarters"?

Or was Copeland, a gifted storyteller, exaggerating the nature of their relationship?

Was there some type of financial arrangement between Kearns and the CIA?

Or, was Frank Kearns simply a cooperative tool in the political engineering by his close friends, Copeland and Eichelberger?

Miles Copeland provided a clue when he wrote in his memoir that "Frank wanted to be involved in Cairo for the fun, but he refused to accept any official status with the CIA."

Lorraine Copeland, on the other hand, saw it differenty.

[Lorraine Copeland] I certainly thought he was part of the CIA because he was so close to Eich and Miles, and they would certainly not have been that close and cohabited, so to speak, that closely if he hadn't been.

[Mysterious music] [Narrator] Sig Michelson was president of CBS News while Frank Kearns was in Cairo.

In this role, he was one of the network's key links between Chairman William Paley and his friends at the CIA.

In his unpublished personal archives, Mickelson wrote that CIA director Allen Dulles told him that "Kearns was one of us."

But the CBS chief told him that his reporter couldn't work for both - the CIA and CBS.

Dulles asked for some time to work out the problem.

[Lorraine Copeland] They were really dedicated, and they were all absolutely convinced that things that later on the CIA was criticized for doing, they were convinced that these were the right things to do for the sake of America.

You know, they believed in their country and they believed they would have to do what was necessary for the good of America.

[Narrator] In April 1957, Mickelson flew to Cairo to confront his reporter.

There, Kearns told him that in order for them to talk about the CIA, they would have to go for a walk where they could speak without being overheard.

Mickelson said that's when Kearns told him that he'd rather work exclusively for CBS.

A few months later, Mickelson said CIA officials showed him a Frank Kearns letter of resignation.

He assumed it was genuine.

Then the letter was destroyed.

[traffic noise] [Narrator] For its fall schedule that year, CBS planned to devote a full hour to Algeria's struggle for independence from the French.

This decision coincided with growing dissent for America's "head in the sands" policy on the Algerian question.

[John Super] In '57, Senator Kennedy, JFK, made a speech on the Senate floor critiquing the French and urging the United States to use its moral weight to bring the war to an end, and that end would lead to autonomy or to sovereignty for Algeria.

[Narrator] The Foreign Editor asked Frank Kearns and cameraman Joe Masraff to report the Algerian side and to do something he called "a bit unrealistic...or impossible."

He asked them to join Algeria's National Liberation Front - the FLN using whatever contacts they had in Egypt and Tunisia.

Here, Joe Masraff was very helpful.

[Tom Fenton] If you were in a tight spot, if there was a roadblock you had to get by, if it was a really, really dicey situation with not very nice people you wanted Joe Masraff at your side.

He knew how to charm the birds out of the trees.

Or, he knew where to put the hundred dollar bill in the passport so that you could get past obstreperous officials.

They were a wonderful team.

Africa was not an easy place to work.

[Narrator] While they were embedded with the Algerians, Kearns kept a reporter's notebook that was shipped with their film back to CBS in New York.

Part diary, part notes for the film editors, it detailed every encounter.

[Frank Kearns voice actor] "Our final instructions from CBS News in New York stressed that we have no ax to grind, that our only orders are for honest, objective reporting... and the truth, nothing more than the truth," -Frank Kearns.

[Narrator] Kearns, Masraff and their Algerian guides carried more than 400 pounds of television and radio gear.

Trying to avoid French patrols and aircraft, they hiked across the border from Tunisia and through the mountains to reach a rebel camp.

For the first time, an American TV reporter witnessed the Algerians' determination to take back their country.

[Frank Kearns] This man claims the French have wiped out his entire family, mother and father, four sisters and one brother, four uncles, twenty persons in all.

These men are sincerely convinced that they are fighting for liberation and liberty.

Other young ones have grudges against French treatment of Algerian Moslems.

[Narrator] Kearns and Masraff spent six weeks behind the lines, recording the Algerian army as it fought the French.

Their lives were constantly in danger.

They believed that if they were discovered by the French, they would be executed.

[Frank Kearns] Here on the spot it sounds rather ridiculous to hear Washin... (suddenly stops) [rebal warns Kearns] [Sandy Gall] You know, he did so many of these very nasty stories, which (laughs) which of course his fellow professionals took off their hats to anybody who could cover those stories and come back alive and come back still smiling and still sort of a relatively sane person.

[Frank Kearns voice actor] “I can report in absolute honesty that despite the experienced correspondent's natural cynicism that despite continual mental probing and interviewing tricks, I find these people tragically hungry for independence, ready and willing to fight to the death for that independence and nothing less.

They also say that even the lowliest peasant knows the difference between communism and democracy.

They consider the communists as dangerous as the French and want no part in what they consider to be Russian imperialism."

-Frank Kearns [Narrator] Despite the perils presented at secret headquarters, in camps, and on risky patrols, the team from CBS survived.

They helped to settle the question of communist influence, and they cautioned that the future could be decided if America failed to act.

[Frank Kearns] If the undeclared war goes on for another year, perhaps two years, will the Algerians turn to the communists for arms?

"If my worst enemy hands me a red-hot poker, I have to take it.

I have no choice."

This is the attitude here in Algeria today.

[Narrator] The time behind enemy lines took its toll.

Kearns and Masraff lost four inches from their waistlines and 15 percent of their body weights.

Kearns wrote to his parents that he was "skinny as a skeleton."

[Michael Kearns] He came back as almost a cadaver.

Very sick guy.

They really had a rough time and it showed.

I mean, he looked like something out of a concentration camp, and my mother nursed him back to health.

The reaction among his colleagues was immediate.

Eric Severeid who appeared at the end of the program to comment on the implications for the U.S. wrote to Kearns: "I admired your work for the Algerian show.

I think you told this country something it did not know and needed to know.

This was reporting at its best in the classic manner... everyone concerned is aware of your accomplishment."

The documentary, called "Algeria Aflame" was broadcast on October 13, 1957.

For Kearns and Masraff, it won them the Overseas Press Club Award for "best foreign reporting," the George Polk Award for "distinguished achievement in journalism," and a Peabody Award for "going behind current happenings to idenify related problems and underlying causes.” [Narrator] Time magazine said the program "brought a tragic stalemate into sharp focus."

[George Esper] Being a war correspondent in many ways, despite the dangers, can be very glamorous.

It is certainly not a routine, and you’re in a situation where you can say to your editors or bosses in New York, "Don't bother me now... I’m covering a war."

So you are not doing any minor work.

What you are doing is major work.

You're writing the first drafts of history.

[Narrator] By the fall of 1958, both Kearns and Masraff had been given full-time jobs with the network.

[Sandy Socolow] In those days, CBS had a two tier system.

That is, there were reporters who were called “Reporters” believe it or not.

And then there was a tier called CBS News Correspondent.

That was a very small, elite tier, and you had to really bust your back to be promoted to become a CBS News Correspondent was a badge of honor - OK?

And when I first joined CBS News few people had that badge - very few, and mostly they were the Murrow Boys.

[Narrator] For the next three years, Frank Kearns covered the Middle East and Africa as a full-time CBS News Correspondent based in Cairo.

[Frank Kearns] The greatest enemy, politics aside, for all of the UN troops here, troops from 10 nations, is very simple: Boredom.

The new and secret weapon of the Brazilians, brought six thousand miles from their homeland is the samba.

[samba guitar music] [Narrator] He still tracked communist influence, but his attention shifted to the struggle of nations and of people.

Countries in Africa and the Middle East were gaining their independence from European colonialism.

Now the question was whether these newly formed, yet fragile governments needed American support.

[Frank Kearns] Would you say your government is pro-West or anti-West?

[General Ibrahim Abboud] I'd say that we are "pro" any government that helps us and were friendly with us.

[Frank Kearns] Here in the Gaza Strip, it's obvious that the Palestinians are jubilant only at what they regard as liberation from the Israeli occupying forces.

[Music] [Narrator] In 1961, CBS closed its Cairo bureau because Egypt was censoring reports by foreign newsmen.

As a result, Frank Kearns was given a temporary assignment back in New York.

Joe Masraff went to Paris.

[Michael Kearns] I missed Cairo dreadfully and so did my mother.

And my father was not particularly happy in corporate CBS.

[Narrator] For next 10 months, Frank Kearns filed stories from CBS headquarters.

But within a year, he was back on the ground in Algeria.

He was more comfortable in the field than he was in the office.

Independence movements were gaining momentum throughout Africa and their stories grew in importance.

CBS promoted Kearns to Africa bureau chief in 1963.

[Kurt Hoefle] His knowledge of Africa was very thorough.

He had contacts wherever we went.

Frank had somebody that he knew from travel before and that we would invite for dinner and have interesting discussions, and I would always listen.

It was great.

I would admire Frank about his knowledge of Africa.

[Narrator] Frank Kearns remained the Africa Bureau Chief until 1971.

Throughout his career he covered stories in Europe as well as in the Middle East and Africa: the Aberfan mining disaster in Wales, thalidomide babies in Germany, the Six Days War between the Egyptians and the Israelis, the disasterous sinking of the Torrey Canyon oil tanker off the south coast of England, the Paris peace talks and the street battles in Northern Ireland.

[Kurt Hoefle] What I recall from the Northern Ireland story is that it was very dangerous.

The streets were burning.

We were running through the streets and people were chasing us, and we had to run for our lives.

We had to dash to a car to take us away from this angry, angry crowd that wanted to kill us, and all I remember of Frank that time was in the evening in the bar of the hotel, I remember Frank saying, "Josephine, more Irish whiskeys!"

[Laughing] [Narrator] Kearns was away from home for almost three quarters of his marriage with Gwendy.

She stayed in London.

He was now based in Rome.

Their son attended boarding school.

In the end, they had spent too much time apart and finally divorced.

[Narrator] While on holiday with his son in Bermuda, Kearns met a young British Airways flight attendant, Sara DeMaine, and began a long-distance relationship that quickly grew for both of them.

[Sara Kearns] He was very insistent and I stopped flying.

I joined him on his war stories.

We spent time in Israel, in Egypt, in Paris, in Africa, and finally I gave up flying altogether and moved to Rome, and I knew then he was just the best!

[Narrator] Among the African countries that Frank Kearns followed closely was Nigeria.

There, a series of military coups in the late 1960s launched a bloody civil war.

The secessionist country in the eastern region was called Biafra.

Kearns reported five times from this war zone.

[Dark music] When the 30-month struggle drew to a close in 1970, Kearns returned to investigate how how the defeated Ibos were being treated.

[Frank Kearns] First impressions out here are deep, and a little unnerving, disturbing.

Everywhere we go the people ask for food or are reduced to begging, or just stare pitifully, stunned with the sad, sad stare of the hungry.

Like all civil wars, this one was savage, all reflected in the faces of the defeated Ibos.

[Walter Cronkite] Reuters News Agency reports tonight that almost all foreign newsmen who had visited Biafra are being detained in a Port Harcourt hotel.

Nigerian officials are known to be upset over those news reports painting a grim, grave picture of the defeated Ibos.

We haven't found out whether Correspondent Kearns is being held.

[Narrator] After much negotiation, the Nigerians finally released all of the detained journalists.

For Frank Kearns, this would be his last assignment in Africa.

[Guy Stewart] He spent some time in a Nigerian prison and he had some real health concerns after they let him out.

[Frank Kearns] "What fairly sane man would face death an average of more than once every two months, consistently, over a period of 15 years?

Yet my list - never completed - added up to a real eyeball-to-eyeball, cornea-to-cornea confrontation with Death, 114 times."

-Frank Kearns [Patricia Bernie] He was offered a job back in the States, but that didn't suit Frank, and I think he realized then that he had come to the end of the road with CBS.

[Narrator] Frank Kearns was 53 years old.

From Dachau to Biafra, he'd seen the worst of how people could suffer, and he didn't want to see anymore fighting or killing.

Covering these stories was stressful and affected his health.

[Patricia Bernie] It's a pity that he didn't have as high of a reputation as some of his colleagues who got, frankly, who were not up to his standard.

But they were in different jobs and in different countries and they got on the air more; and what is it all about...getting on the air, and Frank had to struggle to get on the air because of ther kind of stories that he covered, which frankly I don't think were of great interest to the American public or to the Foreign Editor of the time.

Africa was just so far away.

[Narrator] Kearns decided he didn't want to be a war correspondent anymore.

[Narrator] As he was contemplating his future, Kearns agreed to briefly return to the United States to speak at his alma mater, West Virginia University.

This reunion with family and old friends, friends as well as the reception he received while on campus inspired him to accept an offer to use his experience as a foreign correspondent in the classroom.

In 1971 Frank Kearns retired from CBS News.

[Guy Stewart] I know when he first came aboard, he said, "I'm a little uneasy about this business of teaching students."

He said, "You know, I've never done this before."

But I think we can say, without a doubt, that he took to teaching very easily, and it wasn't any time at all until it was just a nice fit, and he was doing a great job.

[Hoppy Kercheval] If you could get some quiet time, he would tell you those war stories about being a foreign correspondent and being in Egypt, and being in Africa.

And I can remember sitting there as a young student just thinking, this is great.

I'm in the presence of this man who has done these things and just soaking it up and just hanging on every word of these stories that he would tell about these faraway places.

It was all very intoxicating and all very exotic and told in his office where on his walls there were pictures of Morley Safer and Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace.

They would all have written on there, inscribed, you know, "To Frank, all the best" or "To Frank, Remember Cairo."

And it was magical to sit there, and I remember thinking that this was a big deal for me to be in his presence as a teacher.

I could learn a lot from him.

In fact, I want to be like him.

I want to learn from him.

Then I want to follow in his footsteps.

[Sound of a teletype machine.]

[Narrator] Kearns and one of his students were meeting in his office on the afternoon of February 10, 1976 when they were interrupted by a telephone call.

The person on the other end was Daniel Schorr.

He was about to mention Kearns on "The CBS Evening News."

[Daniel Schorr] Sig Mickelson, the former president of CBS News today identified two newsmen as having had CIA connections while serving as CBS News stringers - part-time correspondents.

Mickelson said that he had learned from CIA director Allen Dulles in 1956 that Frank Kearns, CBS News stringer in Cairo, was employed by the CIA.

[Narrator] Sandy Socolow was in Eric Severeid's office in the CBS Washington Bureau.

The phone rang.

It was Frank Kearns.

[Sandy Socolow] Kearns and Severeid were having this conversation.

I'm standing over Severeid's desk.

I can't quite hear what's going on.

But it's quite a lengthy conversation and Severeid hangs up and, kind of like, "Whew."

He said, "That was Frank Kearns, and I think he was crying or on the verge of crying, and he just didn't understand why we reported his involvement with the CIA and didn't understand what the use of it was, what good did it do, what was the purpose of it, why was it necessary and on and on and on and on."

And Severeid was quite shook up by the call.

[Narrator] Frank Kearns vigorously denied working for the CIA.

He denied it to everyone who asked him about it.

He even prepared notes to handle a barrage of inquiries from reporters.

[Frank Kearns Voice Actor] "must have been naïve, but a number of times I expected I would be approached or debriefed after being in a hot spot or having an exclusive story.

But to my knowledge...never, not once was I knowingly approached in all my years as staff correspondent for CBS News.

- Frank Kearns [Narrator] More than a year after the Kearns' allegation first appeared, CBS Chairman William S. Paley issued a formal statement, explaining the network's relationship with the CIA during the Cold War years.

He said it was "limited" and that he felt it was "his duty" to "cooperate in ways that seemed not only innocuous but patriotic."

Just to be clear, Paley also said that, "Kearns has denied ever having worked for the CIA."

[Sandy Socolow] The atmosphere and culture is so different.

In Frank Kearns' day, every year both CBS and NBC call all their foreign correspondents back to New York at Christmas time and would put on a broadcast, a roundtable.

Following that, the correspondents would be sent on trips throughout the United States to talk to interested groups who were interested in foreign policy, but among their stops was a stop in Washington to talk to the CIA.

This was not secret or hidden and nobody gave it a se... thought.

They would go to the CIA and they would get debriefed.

[Marvin Kalb] I think that there was probably, again, degrees of understanding, of cooperation between a network or a newspaper and the U.S. government... sure.

And I think it would be logical that it would be that way.

But that is decidedly different from taking an assignment from the U.S. government, doing something on behalf of the U.S. government, knowing that as a reporter you were going out not really just to find a story in the curiosity and the interest that we had to find things out but that you were doing something for the government.

No.

You know, honestly, I can't even imagine that happening.

[Frank Kearns Voice Actor] any legitimate news man employed by a legitimate news organization should have any connection whatsoever with any intelligence organization.

Absolutely not" - Frank Kearns [Hoppy Kercheval] If one was a foreign correspondent or working for the news agencies during the '50s and '60s and you are in these remote parts of the world that you would probably have sources in the intelligence community and, perhaps, you would help them and they would help you.

Maybe he was a stringer for them as well as he was for CBS, that you are exchanging information And knowing what I know now about gathering information.

That's how information is gathered, You form relationships and it is not always pretty.

Could his role have been even greater in the CIA?

Who knows because Frank was so good at deadpanning.

He was so good at not sharing information.

He would've been a good spy.

[Laughs.]

[Scott Lucas] Sowhatever you think of Frank Kearns' case, whether you think he was right or wrong, he certainly was not the only person who was involved in this.

So from that standpoint, yeah, Kearns is right.

That in, a sense, he took the fall for a lot of other people.

Now, who in CBS decided it was Frank Kearns?

That I can't tell you.

[Sandy Socolow] I never had any doubts that Frank was a CIA agent at the same time that he was a CBS News employee.

But at the same time, every time I say that, I want to say that CBS management was right there and knew about it.

Frank Kearns was not a renegade.

[Scott Lucas] If you look at the investigative articles that did come out in the 1970s, the CIA didn't just have three or five or a dozen journalists that were connected with it, whether you call them agents or contract officers, there were hundreds.

[Daniel Schorr] Mickelson also said that Austin Goodrich who had been a CBS News stringer in Stockholm had been identified to him as working for the CIA.

Goodrich's present whereabouts could not be ascertained.

[Austin Goodrich] I guess it was the fact that I worked for a time with both CBS and the CIA.

It seemed to be a very sinful activity.

I never felt there was a moral problem with it at all.

[Austin Goodrich] This is Austin Goodrich reporting for "The Twentieth Century."

[Austin Goodrich] When I was a journalist, I really was a journalist, I had my heart in it, my intelligence, everything I had to offer, and I was good as a reporter; and when I was working on a secret mission, I was a ‘spook’ and I enjoyed that, too.

[Narrator] In a response to a Freedom of Information Act request for any CIA files on Frank Kearns, the Agency replied "that it can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of the requested records."

[Guy Stewart] He was really very much disturbed by the story.

Hurt, I would say, that CBS would say anything like that about him, and he continued to deny it for as long as I knew him.

But it was probably one of those aches or pains that lived with him for the rest of his life.

[Sara Kearns] I think it affected him.

In all honesty, it probably ended up killing him.

He was mortified.

I mean, he just... he was angry.

[Narrator] A year after the CBS/CIA story broke, Richard Salant, then the president of CBS News, told The Los Angeles Times that it would be too strong "to say he was a spy.

He was just one of those people that, when he found out things, he would pass it along to the CIA."

If Frank Kearns had any relationship with the Agency during his years in Egypt, his experience in Algeria changed the way he reported news.

Thereafter, he no longer framed stories with what can now be called "the CIA's point of view."

He seemed less concerned about America versus communism.

Instead, his focus was on the growth of nationalism and the pursuit of independence, which may or may not have enjoyed Marxist support.

The CIA allegation had cut deeply into Kearns's psyche.

He spent his entire career upholding the highest standards of journalism practiced at CBS News.

What began as post-World War II propaganda and packaged as ‘News’ for consumption at home, later took on a more measured world view, as television journalism matured.

Frank Kearns stayed at West Virginia University for seven more years.

Finally, in 1983, he and Sara moved to Sardinia where he planned to write about his experiences.

But serious health issues soon emerged, and over the next three years he struggled with cancer and also with writer's block.

[music] There were things he knew...and probably... there were things he knew he could not tell.

[Dan Rather] Former CBS News Correspondent Frank Kearns died today.

Cancer.

He was 68.

Death came in New York.

His reporting on CBS radio and television came mostly from datelines such as Baghdad, Khartoum, Yemen and the Congo.

He took the tough stories and never complained through the 1950s and '60s and on into the '70s.

More recently he taught journalism at the University of West Virginia [sic].

Legend may be an overworked word among journalists, But in his quiet, courageous way, Frank Kearns was one around here.

[Patricia Bernie] He was a one-off.

Um, I don't remember the other networks having anybody of Frank's caliber on the Africa scene.

[Sandy Gall] It's the correspondent's commentary which is the key to the story and that's what makes it really important and really valid, and I think the Americans invented that, and CBS was probably right there at the very beginning and people like Frank must have pioneered this method, which gave it the distinction and quality which I think still is the hallmark of good... You know you want to know what the correspondent thinks.

[Tom Fenton] Well, in the 60's and 70's you actually gathered news.

You had a... you had a beat.

It may have been all of Africa; it may have been the Middle East; it may have been just Israel; whatever your beat was, and you actually covered the news.

You went there.

You schmoozed with people.

You got to know people.

You can't simply parachute into a story and understand what is going on.

For one thing, if you parachute into a story, you’re there too late.

I don't think there is a place now days for Frank Kearns, and we're all - I mean this seriously - we are all the poorer for it.

[Frank Kearns] Two wounded on the army side and unknown wounded unknown number wounded on the rebel side.

A quiet Saturday afternoon in Beirut, Lebanon.

This is Frank Kearns in Beirut.

Now back to CBS News in New York.

[Music] [Announcer]Funding for was provided by Additional funding was provided by [Announcer] From West Public Broadcasting