Daniel Schorr, NPR Legend, Dies at 93

Longtime NPR journalist Daniel Schorr died Friday morning at 93. Schorr began as a foreign correspondent, writing about the Marshall Plan and NATO for The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times, but moved on to cover the U.S.S.R. and later Washington politics for CBS. Despite his many awards—three Emmys during the Watergate years, a Peabody, and induction into the Hall of Fame of the Society of Professional Journalists—he said his greatest honor was being put on Nixon’s Enemies List, which he read on the air. His reporting earned him plenty of other enemies, too. In 1975, when he reported on assassinations carried out by the CIA, the agency’s director called him a "son of a bitch" and a "killer." He left CBS after his decision to leak a secret congressional report on illegal CIA and FBI activities to the Village Voice landed him in hot water. He went on to work for CNN and then NPR. "He could compare presidents from Eisenhower on through, and that gave him historical context for things," said Donald Ritchie, a Senate historian. "He had lived it, he had worked it and he had absorbed it. That added a layer to his broadcasting that was hard for somebody his junior to match."