Interview: Sam Donaldson
ABC News Correspondent

Sam, let me start by asking you where you grew up, and where you went to school, and a bit about your early years.

Sam Donaldson: Well, I was born in El Paso, Texas, it was in the nearest hospital to the family farm. When I was three days old my mother took me home and I was raised in southern New Mexico, below Las Cruces, above El Paso.

I was a typical farm boy. I liked the farm. I enjoyed the things that you do on a farm, go down to the drainage ditch and fish, and look at the crawfish and pick a little cotton. Although I never was a terrific cotton picker, you understand.

I had a horse, always, and I'd ride the horse in the summertime, sometimes bare back -- gentle horse, you understand. Go out in the corn patch, pick some corn. You really get the most out of sweet corn if you pick the corn off the stalk and rush it to a pot of boiling water. The longer you wait, the more sugar you lose. But if you get it in the first half hour, that is the sweetest corn ever.

When I got a little older, I played with a BB gun, things like that. But as a young kid, I never did, really have an ambition to be a farmer. I never thought, gee, I would like to farm, and I want to raise these crops. I didn't quite know what I wanted to do.

But in 1941, on December 8th, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, my mother bought a radio and we listened to the war news. We'd not had a radio up to that time. I was born in 1934, so I was seven years of age.

There's a picture of me at age 8 in a Cub Scout uniform holding a crystal microphone, obviously pretending that I was reading the war news. Don't ask me why I thought I wanted to do that, but I did. My mother had taught me to read, had read to me. She clearly was pushing me to try to do something with my life. And I began to read the newspaper and pretend I was reading the war news. This is the earliest known point at which something in my mind said maybe I wanted to be in the news business. But believe me, at age eight I had no idea of what the news business was like, nor did I have any feeling of the public's right to know, or the First Amendment. That would be revisionist history. I was just getting a kick out of it.

My mother did all she could to control me, but at age 14 she sent me to a military school. Now, the choices were to send me to reform school, or send me to the military school. I hadn't done anything felonious, you understand, but at that age I thought life owed me something. I thought life was meant to have a lot of fun in it, and that I should do what I wanted, and not have to pay attention to what people thought I should do.

Military school is a great device to take that out of a kid. In military school they said, "No. You're not going to do what you want to do, you're going to do exactly what you're told. You're going to understand something about discipline. You're going to polish that brass, you're going to shine those shoes, you're going to get up on time, you're going to make your bed, and you're going to go to class." Well, I hadn't gotten it.

In my first year at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, New Mexico I was the saddest new cadet I suppose they've ever had in their history. I got more demerits. I had to walk with my rifle every Saturday afternoon around the quadrangle, walking off tours. I got confined to the campus every weekend, because I had all these demerits. I mean, I really was in sad, sad shape. And at the end of the year, when so many of my classmates got promoted to come back -- you see, their second year they got to be private first class and corporal -- I didn't get promoted. Well, that summer between my... it was really between my sophomore and junior year, because the military school didn't take freshman in those days -- something happened. I can't tell you what happened. I didn't have some mentor who sat me down and say, now... I just sort of said to myself, "I don't like this. This is not fun, being the saddest cadet at New Mexico Military Institute. Getting all these demerits, not getting promoted." And so I went back that fall and I said to myself, "I'm going to go with the winners. Clearly, the winners polished the brass, and the winners polished their shoes, and the winners got out to reveille on time. And the winners make their grades. And I did it. I found it wasn't heavy lifting. It was just as easy to polish the brass as it was not to polish the brass.

At the end of that year I was promoted to sergeant. Only five or six of us got promoted to sergeant for our final year in high school. I learned a couple of things there. One, that it's better to be with the winners than the losers. And second, that everybody needs to understand something about discipline.

Now, discipline doesn't mean that you're a martinet, and discipline doesn't mean that you have to do everything anyone in authority tells you in lock-step because you can't think for yourself. But discipline means that you've got to organize your life in everything you do, for your own benefit and for the benefit of people around. If the appointment is at four o'clock, you ought to show up at four o'clock. If you're unavoidably late a few minutes, okay. But the person who shows up at five o'clock or six o'clock and doesn't think anything of it, that person is an undisciplined person. Also, that person is a person who says, "Hey, my time is much more valuable than your time." And none of us likes to hear that. So military school taught me that. And really, the basis, I think, of achieving some success in what I want to do today comes from my mother's push to get me to read and to make something of myself from the standpoint of an education. And from a military school which taught me that to fit into society, you can't just do anything you damn well please because it will suit you. And that it's much better to be with the winners than it is with the losers.

Thinking back on those radio broadcasts you listened to during the war years, was there any particular personality or broadcast that inspired you?

Sam Donaldson: Like everyone else, I listened to Edward R. Murrow from London. "This is London." I listened to that voice, I can't imitate it. I listened to other voices over the years. My friend and my idol, David Brinkley. "Well, this is David..." Over the years I've gotten onto a fact about people in my business. I hope they're smart, I hope they can recognize news stories, I hope they work hard and all that, but most of them have distinctive voices. They may look funny -- hello! -- or not. But a distinctive voice is important. I don't think I realized this as a young kid, but I do remember listening to those voices.

As I went to college, I went into radio and television. Now I suppose most people think that's one step ahead of basket weaving as a major in college, but it was part of the journalism department. We didn't have any television in the Southwest when I started to college in 1951. The FCC had frozen new construction permits and there were no television stations. But by the time I went to college, I knew that I wanted to talk on the radio.

I like talking. Hello! I had tried out for the football team, and after three days the coach came to me and said, "Thank you, but no thanks." Since I couldn't be a football star, the next best thing for enjoying life as a young man was to be a disk jockey on the radio.

In those days, if you wanted to listen to music on the radio you had to look in the newspaper and find out when it was going to be played. Now, today there are all-music stations, I mean, all over your dial, just as there are all-news stations. But there was a strict category of broadcasts, lots of soap operas, and other features. And at four o'clock in the afternoon, there would be music, something called, "Sam's Show" - - me! And I remember the theme. Bing Crosby and his son, Gary, sang it on a record: "Here's a happy tune, they love to croon, they call it Sam's song." And I'd come in and say, "Hello, this is Sam Donaldson," and on we'd go. And I'd play music for an hour and just had a ball.

What made it such a ball for you? What did you enjoy about the business in those early days?

Sam Donaldson: It was kind of exciting being on the radio. Not everybody was on the radio. "Look, ma, no hands!" Broadcasting news is a serious business, and I take it seriously, but ask anyone in the business, and if they don't admit there's a little bit of ham in them, they're either fooling you or fooling themselves.

There was a little bit of ham in me. And there's a lot of people say there's a lot of ham in me. One of the things I thought when I was in the White House many years later as ABC's White House correspondent, and Ronald Reagan used to call on me frequently, I thought, well you know, two or three things. First of all, he can hear me, because President Reagan even then was a little deaf. And second, one ham recognizes another ham. And so, he and I, from the standpoint of that, got along pretty well.

I wanted to be on the radio. There were no news departments in small radio stations throughout the country. The wire services, AP and UPI, would provide wire machines, and you'd rip and read five-minute summaries of the news. So I'd read the news. And on election night I'd go down to city hall in El Paso, Texas and cover the election. In those days, of course, we didn't have exit polls. You didn't know who had won the election until they actually counted the votes. I thought that was exciting too.

The truth is, when I got started in this business, it wasn't because I had a full understanding of the importance of the business, but because I thought it was fun. I found it exciting. It fulfilled me, whatever it was that I was looking for. I thoroughly enjoyed my college years, working on the radio. And at the end of my college years, television had come to El Paso.

We hear frequently that it's a difficult business to break into. Tell us about how you actually worked you way up in radio and television.

Sam Donaldson: Well, when I graduated from college, I had to go in the army. In the mid-'50s, young men didn't ponder whether they should go into military service, it was a given. Unless you had a physical problem, you went in the military. There might have been a few people who were conscientious objectors, but not many. It was not like the days of the Vietnam War, when people actually said, "I'm not going to go, I think it's the wrong war." So I spent two and a half years in the Army, in artillery. I had an ROTC commission, so I was a lieutenant. I enjoyed life, it was terrific.

Then I got out of the service and, like so many people, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I'd had this broadcasting major in college. I'd even gone to post-graduate school at the University of Southern California. I didn't get a masters degree, but I did some work on it. And yet, I didn't really know what to do.

So I went down to Dallas, Texas. My sister-in-law's brother, who was a stockbroker said, "We'll teach you the stock business." I said okay, and he said, "You have to sell mutual funds to begin with." I couldn't do it. I literally hid under the bed when David would come in the morning, honking the horn to get me to come to work. The mutual fund was a good one, it wasn't a rip-off, don't misunderstand me. Yet I just couldn't ask you to buy something from me.

We sell ourselves all the time, absolutely. And in my business, I try to sell myself in many ways to get the story, to get an audience. But I just couldn't ask someone to give me money for this piece of paper which said, "It may grow and you may get some money."

So I looked in the paper and there was an ad that said they wanted a ghost writer to write a book. It turned out, the man who wanted to write the book was H.L. Hunt, who in 1959 was the richest man in the world. He had huge oil holdings in Texas, but he only had a fifth grade education. I went through all of his assistants and they said, "We like you. We think you're qualified. Mr. Hunt wants to meet you."

So one Friday afternoon I went to the Mercantile National Bank Building in Dallas and I went up to his office. There he was, in his 70s, the richest man in the world. He was dressed in a Robert Hall suit, with his lunch that he'd brought in a brown bag, literally. Maybe that's how he kept all his money. He asked me two or three questions, and then he said, "How cheap will you work?" I thought quickly, and I thought I delivered a brilliant answer. I said, "Mr. Hunt, I don't have many needs now. I'm a young man, I have just a little money saved, but I'll work for whatever you think the job is worth to begin with, because I want to work for you."

Well, he asked me two or three more questions and then dismissed me.

Later in the day his assistant called and said, "I'm sorry, you didn't get the job." I said, "Why? I was a leading candidate." "Well," she said, "when Mr. Hunt asked you how cheap will you work, and you wouldn't name a price, he wasn't interested, because he thinks everybody should know what they're worth." And she said, "It wouldn't have mattered if you said $1000 a month, or $300 a month." Well, I don't know what the lesson there is, because I -- you know, you name your price. But I guess the lesson is this: If you don't have confidence in yourself and think that you are worth hiring, or whatever it is, you can't expect anyone else to. And if I now call you in for a job and I say, "Can you do this job?" And you said, "Well, I don't know, maybe I can't, but I'd like to try," I can find someone else. Maybe you should be honest and say, "Yes, I can do that job. Now, I've had this much experience. Maybe I need a little bit more experience, but I can get it," and what have you. But I learned that lesson. And what it also did for me was teach me that I should go back to what I knew. I mean, go back to the game you know, go back to broadcasting. I knew that. I'd prepared myself for that.

So I immediately went down and got a job at KRLD in Dallas, Texas, which was a CBS station then. I worked there for about a year, and at the end of the year I resigned. They said, "Don't you like it here?" I said, "No, you've been wonderful to me, but I think I've learned everything I can learn." I think about the arrogance of that and I marvel that I would say something like that. Obviously I couldn't have learned everything in a year, but I thought I was ready to go on.

I threw everything I owned into a car and I went to New York City, because I just knew that New York was ready for me, and that they would welcome me. "Here he comes! Boy, how great! Where have you been all our lives?" Well, you know the rest of that story. They laughed at me, I couldn't get a job. I went and I made the rounds. I met every news director. I mean, it was awful. And they thought I was awful, or at least not anyone they should pay attention to. But I'd also applied at a station in Washington, D.C. And so, about the time my last dollar was about to leave me, they called me in Washington and they said, "Come on down, we want to take a look at you." And they did, and they hired me.

And the rest is history. What were you thinking? What gave you the courage to leave that secure position and seek your fortune elsewhere?

Sam Donaldson: I don't think it was courageous, I think it was foolhardy. If I'd known I was going to starve to death in New York, I don't think I would have resigned. Yet, Dallas is a great city today, it was a great city then. And I'm a Texan, so I enjoyed it. I was with people I understood. And yet, I felt that I wanted to do more.

I didn't come east of the Mississippi for the first time in my life until I was 26 years of age, but I knew. I read magazines, I listened to radio, I watched television. I knew there was something out there, and I wanted a part of it. I wanted to be in the news business, and I thought to myself, "Hey, I want to go to New York or Washington and be in the news business. That's where the action is." Now, I want to make clear that I think people who want to stay in Dallas, or in Farmington, New Mexico, or in Dubuque, Iowa are terrific. You decide what fulfills you, and where you want to work. And it's not a failure to stay in a small town and lead a wonderful life and do great work there. But for me, I wanted to see more. And I wanted to do more. And in those days at least, more meant bigger. It meant a grander scale, it meant more importance and a bigger scene. And that's what propelled me, in a foolhardy way, to quit my job in Dallas and go to New York without a job, because I wanted to do something up there.

What is it that lit that bright flame of enthusiasm and continues to fuel your passion for this business today?

Sam Donaldson: I don't know. I know a man who is worth lots of money. We were talking the other day. He owns huge companies. If I told you the names of the companies, you'd recognize him. He started off as a bulldozer operator at a construction site. Now, I'm sure there was a guy next to him in the other bulldozer. How come my friend made something of himself and the other guy's still running a bulldozer? I can't tell you what it is.

I don't think it's genes. It must be something in the background. My mother gave me a push. If I hadn't had her, maybe I wouldn't have had the push. If I hadn't gone to military school, maybe I wouldn't have decided to get with the program. Maybe I'd be running a bulldozer, rather than going on and doing something more.

I can't tell you what that little ingredient is which makes that first person want to go on and aggressively do more, and the other person be content to not do that. It's a mystery, but it does happen.

I got to Washington, I got in the news business, then I devoted myself single-handedly, single-mindedly to it. I mean, I lived, and breathed, and ate it. I worked 24 hours a day. That's an overstatement, obviously, but almost. I wasn't married then, and I devoted myself to it. And I tell people today, if you're going to succeed, yes, you have to prepare yourself. You have to have some background, you have to have some education, you have to have those kinds of obvious things without which, even though you have drive and ambition, you can't really get far, because the playing field will not be level for you. But once you have those things, the way to succeed is just do it the way the old Horatio Alger says it. You have to work harder than the next person. You have to take the dirty jobs. You have to work for less money than you can live on, or certainly than you want, and certainly than you think you're worth. You have to work on the weekends, you have to work nights, you have to get up at 2 o'clock in the morning. You have to skip your birthday, your anniversary, the kid's birthday.

That sounds pretty hard, pretty mean, but we all decide what sort of life we want to live. But my observation has been, certainly in the news business, you've got to give 110 percent. Particularly in the early years, although the secret is it never stops. If you do that, you'll beat the people who are smarter than you are. I've left behind a lot of people who are smarter than I am, or more handsome, because they weren't willing to do that.

Maybe ultimately, they're the smart ones. They go skiing on the weekends, or down to the seashore, or take a lot of vacations in the Bahamas. I don't. Maybe they're smarter than I am, but to do what I do, I think you have to do it my way.

And you think the key to that is perseverance and energy?

Sam Donaldson: I don't know many people, if any, who have had some straight line toward success. I mean, they start here, they work hard, they've got what it takes, and they just go straight to the top over some number of years. Most people get a little failure. Life knocks them in the head. I have a little saying, "When everything is going well, you know tomorrow something's going to go wrong." I feel a little better, frankly, when some things are going wrong, but some things are going right. Then I know we can continue.

I won't overplay the idea of being knocked in the head. It hurts! But it really does strengthen you, particularly if you have some setbacks early on. Because what you say to yourself is, "I'm not going to let this beat me. Yeah, I'm humiliated. I failed here. Some guy got the job that I wanted, and I deserved it, but there'll be other jobs." And then you just keep trying harder.

If you have straight line success for a long time, and you think, "I've got it made! I'm so good I deserve this," when you get hit in the head, you don't know how to handle it. I cover politicians. I like them. I've looked at politicians, and quite often the person who's been very successful at a young, early age fades. Not always, there are exceptions, but often that's the case. Another reason, other than not being able to cope with the media success is, you have to learn your craft. You have to learn your business.

Let me tell you a little story. In the '70s, television executives finally understood that they had to admit women into our business. Before that, all of us white guys were the ones who did it. But finally, life began to catch up with the executives and they understood that minorities and women had to be allowed in. And by gosh, you could just see a bunch of television executives sitting around one day saying, "Get me some women." They didn't know any women. The only women they knew were the femme fatales of this world. Plus, since women hadn't been allowed in the business, there weren't a lot of wonderfully qualified women, who'd paid their dues, and learned their craft knocking on doors.

So they ran out and found a woman who wanted to be in the business and said, "Okay, you're a star. Sit down, you're a wonderful star. See, we got a woman." The problem was, in a few cases, the woman wasn't qualified because she hadn't had the opportunity to get the background. Not that she wasn't smart, not that she couldn't do it, but she hadn't had the opportunity.

If you have an early success before you really have paid your dues, you really have learned your business, you really have spent those long hours holding up walls, waiting for the door to open for somebody to come out and say, "No comment," then you're not ready. But if, in fact, you come up slowly, working hard, keep battling, get knocked down, pick yourself up, get beaten by the competition. "Well, I'll beat them tomorrow." Then when the breaks come, then when the opportunities open up, you're ready, you can seize it. And you can then go on and be even more successful than you were.

Going back to your mother for a moment, she obviously played a tremendous role in your upbringing and influenced your life tremendously, what did she think when you told her that you wanted to go into broadcasting?

Sam Donaldson: As a farmer, she thought that was fine. I did not come from a family of so-called high achievers. My father, who died before I was born, was a farmer. It wasn't a family where, "If my son isn't a doctor, if my son isn't a lawyer, if my son isn't President of the United States, if my daughter doesn't go on to become famous, then you've failed."

I don't mean to be critical of people, I just have to give you my opinion. I think it's great if parents push their children to learn, push their children to understand work ethics, push their children to understand how to be moral, good citizens. But if the parents try to live vicariously through their children, or they say, "You've got to be a Nobel Prize winner, or else you're a failure," it tips the other way. Now the kid is overwhelmed, and if he or she isn't a success immediately, gets guilty about it. I think parents go too far if they make that strong an attempt to push it.

There was this tragic case of the young kid whose parents pushed her to fly across the United States solo at the age of what, seven? I don't know that a seven year-old really knows her own mind as to that kind of ambition. I always felt that it was at least one, if not both, of the parents that wanted to achieve it for themselves. That's wrong.

Besides your mother, was there any particular person who inspired you to pursue what you're doing?

Sam Donaldson: I'm sure along the way I ran into some great teachers and people that I admired, but other than my mother, who pushed me and gave me so many things, there is no one person that I can point to and say, "That person." When I got older, there were people who gave me breaks in this business, without whom I could not be sitting here today. I appreciate what they did for me.

Let me give you an example. When I got to Washington, D.C., having practically starved to death in New York, there were six or seven of us auditioning for the job. The man who was president of the company came in from his sick bed. He just said, "I want to come in. I don't feel well today, but I'm going to do it," and he chose me. Some time later, after he gave me the job and I was doing fairly well, he said to me, "You know, I didn't really think you were better." He mentioned a couple of other guys and said, "They were probably a little better than you were." But he said, "I was in the Army in World War II, and you were in the Army, and I thought -- I like this guy." What a lucky break! What if he hadn't come in? What if he said to his deputy, "You take this audition." The deputy hadn't been in the Army. He would have chosen one of those other guys. It's a lucky break that happened.

I've admired a lot of people in this business, and other people have done things for me, but I'll name one, although to name one is to exclude everybody else. Howard K. Smith was a CBS television correspondent. I didn't ever work for CBS, but the CBS news bureau was housed in the same building as the local station I worked for in Washington. I admired Howard. And then later, Howard worked for ABC and I worked for ABC, and I admired him there. I thought he was an excellent reporter, a very level-headed, sober journalist. I will always think of him as one of the best people ever in this business. There are lots of others. Frank Reynolds, who died tragically of cancer at the age of 59, was the anchorman at ABC for long years. He was another person I admired tremendously.

When you were starving in New York, what impact did that have on your later years? Hitting rock bottom, and moving on from that adversity, how did that affect the rest of your career?

Sam Donaldson: If you have a setback, and you're not doing well and then you overcome it somehow, it always sticks with you. You know it could happen again. I don't think of it in the sense of not being able to buy my next meal. On the other hand, it could happen. I barely knew the Great Depression of the '30s. I was very young, and we were very lucky. Living on a farm, we weren't deprived of food or clothing. But young kids today have no memory of that whatsoever, and even their parents don't have any memory of it. That's good. I'm glad we're not going to have another great, worldwide depression.

On the other hand, maybe it doesn't occur to them that sometime in this country, let alone in Africa, or Asia, or Latin America, it did happen, and it could happen again. So when you're out of work, and you're not making any money, and the bill collector's pounding at the door, it does give you a realization that this could happen again.

Other than that, I think my New York experience didn't do anything for me, or against me. Although I'll confess something to you: to this day I don't particularly like New York City. Nothing personal guys, but we hold grudges, don't we?

Washington has certainly agreed with you very well.

Sam Donaldson: Well, now it has. But I want to tell you a couple of things. People ask me all the time, "Well, you had a game plan, right?" And the answer is no. I wanted to be in this business, and once I got into the business I knew I enjoyed it, and I liked it, and I wanted to continue, but I never had a five year plan. "Okay, in five years I'm going to do this, in three years I will advance to here, in eight years I'll be the White House corespondent." Nothing like that.

I worked at this local station in Washington for six years. And ABC came to me and they said, "We'll hire you as a Washington correspondent." Now, if it had been CBS, or NBC -- which in those days, in the mid-'60s, were the major news networks, poor ABC was kind of a distant third -- I would have jumped at it. But it took me about three weeks to decide, well, okay. So, I went to ABC. I was lucky though, and I think people should think about this when they look for opportunities. ABC was a distant third, but the competition therefore was so much less. I got to do in the first few weeks and months things, and I drew assignments, that I would never have drawn at CBS or NBC. I would have been the ninth guy, hanging on by my fingernails waiting to go on. Whereas at ABC I was anchoring some of their programs, some of their specials, immediately, because there wasn't that much competition.

Now that was an upside of going to an organization that didn't have a lot of depth. The downside was, of course, who knew it? I was the Watergate corespondent for ABC in 1972 and '73 and into '74, but who knows that? They know that Daniel Schorr was the CBS Watergate correspondent and he was everywhere. Carl Stern was the NBC Watergate correspondent, and he was everywhere. I would go home after our evening newscast, and I'd eat my heart out watching these specials the two major news networks put on night after night. We didn't have one. ABC didn't have one all summer long in 1973, when Senator Ervin conducted the Watergate hearings in the Senate.

Some wags said we were number five in a three-man field. So the downside was that your wares were not particularly seen or appreciated. But look at what happened. Roone Arledge came to ABC News, having made ABC Sports the terrific number one division that it was, and he turned ABC News into a terrific number one division. And those of us who were here laboring in the vineyard -- Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Tom Jarriel -- suddenly were able to show people what we'd learned and what we could do.

So I guess the lessons there are twofold. If you can't get a job immediately with the number one organization you want to work for, think about the startup organizations. Think about the new enterprises. Okay, I'll go to work for them. I won't make much money there. I won't really be running with the big boys, but I'll have an opportunity to show what I'm worth. And if this company prospers, then I'll be Mr. Number One, even though I wasn't able to get a job with the Mr. Number One that I thought existed at the time.

And secondly, if you just keep working, maybe some break will come along and propel you up. I didn't have anything to do with the fact that Roone Arledge came to ABC News and made such a great success of the news department, but I was able to benefit from it. Whereas, if I'd say, "Well, I've got to run off now because, heck, we're still number three," instead of, keep on truckin', keep on doing my job, I wouldn't have been there.

Who was it who said, "learn to labor and to wait?" That sounds like such a downer slogan, "learn to labor and to wait." I think there's some truth there. It doesn't mean you just sit there in an anonymous sense and continue to lead your life "in quiet desperation." It means you can't be flitting around all the time. Keep your eye on the ball and keep on working.

To paraphrase something out of Watergate, what did you know about achievement and when did you know it? When did you realize you were on the right path? Not only the big break in your career, not only the Washington job, but the network job that has propelled you to where you are.

Sam Donaldson: I knew early on that the news business was right for me. I enjoyed it, it was fun. If I thought it was work, I might not have done it. There's a great lazy streak in me for things that I am not really interested in, but I think that's true of everyone. I thought it was great fun, and I enjoyed it, and I thought I was doing something that was important and that fulfilled me.

Now, my goal when I came to Washington was to some day, some day, earn $10,000 a year. I thought if I could earn $10,000 a year I could write back to El Paso, Texas and say, "Look at me." I've done a little better than that. But I guess my point is, there was no money in the news business when I started in it. That was not the goal, to make money. And I never thought about being famous. It didn't occur to me that that was going to happen to me. I simply enjoyed the work. I think people ought to think about their goals, not in terms of, "I'm going to make millions of dollars," or "I'm going to win the Nobel Prize," if you're a scientist, or "I'm going to win an Oscar," if you're an actor. You think in terms of what you'd like to accomplish in your field, what you'd like to do. And then, if you're lucky enough to be able to do that, these things may come, or they may not. But they're not the goal. It's something else that's the goal. And then material benefits, or other so-called benefits, will flow from that.

All my early years in the '60s, whether working for a local station in Washington, or beginning at ABC, I didn't think of myself as successful in terms of, "I'm a big star, I'm a big Pooh-Bah, I'm a number one reporter." I did think of myself as successful in being able to compete and get the job done. Some days the competition would beat me and I'd go home thinking awful thoughts, want to hide under the bed, depressed. But of course, in the news business, when you're working a daily news broadcast, you get your victories and defeats every day. If you get a defeat today, go back tomorrow morning and you may beat the competition. And you go home thinking you're on top of the world. "Boy did I whip them! Did I get the story!" And so, I thought of myself as successful in those terms. I could compete, I could get my share of the stories, I could get a television report on the air that told you something, that was accurate, that was right on, and that was enough for me. I didn't think in terms of, "And some day I'll be way up here," or "I'll make all of this." it was simply that I was doing well, enjoying what I was doing.

It wasn't until the late '70s that a lot of people knew me. People would stop me on the street. It was sort of a new phenomenon. My print colleagues began to write about me, not always favorably, may I say. They like to pull my tail a little bit. It's fair. Then I began to think, "Something's happening here. It's not just that I'm laboring away, having a good time in the news business, getting my share of successes, getting my share of failures. In fact, I seem to be doing pretty well by everyone's standards."

I tell the story about my friend, Ted Koppel, who began Nightline in 1980. He is a brilliant success, and does it better than anyone else I can think of in the business. People said, "Where'd he come from?" The answer is, he worked for 20 years learning his craft, and nobody knew him. If you'd said to him, "Are you successful?" He'd have said, "Yeah, I'm successful." But not in the terms that he is now thought of.

I covered every campaign, on the bus, from 1964 'til 1988. In '64 it was Goldwater, '88 was Dukakis, book-ended with two losers. I had a few winners in between. Jimmy Carter was one of them. I covered Jimmy Carter's campaign in 1976, and then ABC made me the White House corespondent.

Now, the White House beat in Washington, in those days certainly, was a prestige beat. It was the most used beat in town. Executive producers came to the White House for stories, whether they really should be on the air or not, because who could complain to them if they said, "It's the President of the United States. What do you mean, it wasn't the lead?" So if you're the White House corespondent, you got known. You were very visible, you were on the air a lot. This became the kind of success that lifted you just slightly above what you'd been, which was the ordinary, street-working reporter. I never thought of myself as better than my colleagues, simply that I was in a favorable spot there. On the other hand...

The White House beat is the most sterile beat in town. You're not doing any original reporting. You're sitting there in the press room, waiting for a press secretary or a president to come out and tell you whatever they want to tell you, and you pass it along. It's the old garbage in, garbage out. You try to do a little more than that, but it's not investigative reporting. It's not really going out there and digging up stories. So while at the one moment you have the most prestigious beat in Washington, the other moment you have the most sterile beat in Washington. That's why I was there 12 years, and I thought I'd stayed there too much.

When Roone Arledge came and made ABC News important, he did it in lots of ways. He brought us money, which we hadn't had before. He brought us air time, which we hadn't had before. He brought us an élan and a spirit as an organization. With Roone, we knew we were with a winner, so we began to act like winners. And the audience began to see us as winners. He hired a lot of good people. David Brinkley is a perfect example of a perfect hire by Roone Arledge.

David left NBC because the NBC president at the moment didn't think much of him. Didn't think much of David Brinkley? This man should have his head examined. Roone snapped him up in a moment. Now David has had a career at ABC as long as the career he had at NBC, from the standpoint of doing the Huntley/Brinkley report 14 years and he's done This Week with David Brinkley on ABC for 14 years.

As we moved into the '80s, and after Ronald Reagan became President, then I understood that more people knew me, and more people wrote about me, and more people watched me than ever before. In some terms, I guess this was more success. But I didn't enjoy it any more than I enjoyed it back in the early '70s when few people watched us, and I was the Watergate correspondent. I was still doing a job, and enjoying it and loving it.

With this recognition came other trappings of success. Some of the money in my business today is absurd. I believe in the marketplace but, from the box office standpoint, to equate news reporting on television with people in Hollywood, who draw in hundreds of millions of dollars, and therefore get that kind of money, I think is kind of silly, but it happens. But it was never the goal.

I say to young people today, "If you think you're going to get into the television news business to make money, think again. First, it's the wrong motive and you probably won't succeed because you won't have your eye on the right ball. And second, it probably won't happen, because it's not the rule. It is, to some extent, the exception.

Hey, I'm not going to give it back. I've earned it honestly, but this kind of success was not what I was seeking and it was not my goal in life. It was not what keeps me enjoying the business then or now.

Don't tell the people at ABC who must write my next contract, but I would work for far less if I had to, in order to do the business. It's not about making money, it's about telling news, investigating stories, putting them on the air, whether on PrimeTime Live now, or arguing with Cokie Roberts and George Will on the This Week round table. It's about doing the work, that to me is what success is: doing the work and enjoying it.

You mentioned Edward R. Murrow, Howard K. Smith, Frank Reynolds, Ted Koppel and David Brinkley as some of the people in your field you've admired. What are the qualities you particularly admire in these people?

Sam Donaldson: One of the qualities I admire is that they are aggressive people. Now, there's no one more courtly and gentlemanly than David Brinkley. Why would I say he's an aggressive person? Edward R. Murrow was not given to shouting, and yelling, and running down streets chasing people but, like the others, he was an aggressive person in that he was inquisitive and wanted to find out things.

To find out things, you do not sit in the back of the press room waiting to be called on. If you do, you'll sit there with cobwebs around you. You'll never get called on. You have to go forward. You don't have to do it in my style. Ted Koppel's style is completely different, but Ted is an aggressive person. He probes, he goes in. He doesn't let his guests get away with silly answers. And you have to be willing to do that. Not only fail, but make a fool of yourself. Now, you say, that's silly. Why would you go out and consciously try to make a fool of yourself? Well, you don't consciously try to do it, but if you ask a question in public, let's say, on television, every question can't be brilliant. Every question can't make you out to be one of the most articulate spokespersons in the western world. Some of the questions are going to be dumb. Because later you say, "Why did I ask that?" Or they may be technical, in the sense that, yeah, you're trying to get a little piece of information, but to an audience they don't seem to be profound at all. If you're not willing to say, "But that's my job and I don't care if I fall on my face once in a while, stub my toe, make a fool of myself in trying to do that job," then -- then you aggressively move forward.

We all try to be perfect. Obviously, none of us ever achieves that. But if you try to be so perfect on television, I don't think you can do the job right. Because you take all of the spontaneity out of it, you take all of the whoof, and the push and the pull out of it. It becomes a homogenized package. It may look beautiful, but there's no oomph there. As Gertrude Stein said, "There is no there there."

So, in live television, which I love, on the Brinkley panel where we argue issues, I'd rather swing by my heels from the chandelier than be absolutely perfect and speak only when I know that I have a perfect sentence that has a perfect thought. I think perfection is an enemy of real understanding in this world.

What qualities do you try to exemplify in your reporting? What are some of the things that you try to accomplish in your daily work?

Sam Donaldson: Well, integrity is everything, honesty is everything.

What you're saying to an audience, whether it's a print audience as a print reporter, or in my business, a television audience is, "Folks, I've looked into this to the best of my ability, and to the best of my knowledge what I'm telling you is accurate." And if I'm not certain, I will tell you that. I will say, "it's reported," or "there are reports of this, but we can't confirm them." If the audience doesn't believe that, then they're not going to watch me, and why should they? If they think I'm making it up, if they think I would distort it for some private agenda, if they think I'm so sloppy in my work that -- even though I don't mean any harm -- I'm always getting it wrong, they're going to watch somebody else. And indeed, they should. Now, that doesn't mean that I won't make a mistake, or that I won't occasionally tell them things which prove not to be true, but they will understand that. As long as they believe that I didn't know it at the time, and I honestly believed that what I was giving them was professionally accomplished, because I knew how to do the news business and that I believed to be the truth.

So that's integrity and that's honesty. Now, of course, you want to be complete. You want to be unbiased. But I think many people have a misconception of what being unbiased is.

If you send me out to cover a story, or look into an issue, and I have come back, having done a lot of work, looked into it pretty thoroughly, talked to a lot of people about it, I ought to know something about, what's the right of it and what's the wrong? If I come back and say, "Well, I looked into the issue and it's six of this and it's six of the other they say, and I don't know," I haven't done my job as a reporter. I'm not talking about a political dispute in which your view is just as good as the other person's view, and I report both views. I'm talking about factual information. If we're going to argue over welfare reform, we ought to start first with looking at the true statistics of what the program is today, not ones that people think are there. "Oh, we're spending all this money on all these people and it's a waste." Let's look and see. How much money? On what people? Under what circumstances? What's the return? Now we compile all of that. If I've done my job as a reporter, then I don't have to say to the audience, "Yes, but the people over here say it's the other way, and I've got to give equal weight." No, no. I've looked into it. I honestly believe that it's this way.

Objectivity does not mean that everybody's point of view on factual questions -- note, I say factual questions -- is as good as everyone else's. If you've done your job as a reporter, the audience wants you to say, "I've looked into it, and here are the facts. Now, you make up your mind, ladies and gentlemen of the audience, what you want to do with them. That's your job, but here are the facts."

I don't have to say, "Hey, I don't know what the facts are, so I'll give you the eight guys who have eight different views of the facts. Can you make up your mind, ladies and gentlemen?" No, they're busy. They've been selling insurance in Des Moines all day, they've been taking care of their families, they've been running a day care center in Dallas, Texas. They depend on me to have looked it over. Objectivity does not mean that everybody's point of view when it comes to factual questions is as good as everyone else's. Not for a moment.

You mentioned the importance of integrity in your work, and I wanted to find out, how does one achieve that reputation in your field? What advice would you have for people in your business who aspire to your position? How does one gain that reputation?

Sam Donaldson: Well, you know, babies are not born with a sense of morality, or integrity, or anything else. It's something you learn. It's something you learn from society. You learn from your family, if you're lucky enough to do that. You learn from your church, or your synagogue. You learn from your teacher at school, you learn from your classmates, you learn from mentors in the business.

You understand in the news business what you can do and what you can't do: the corners you should not cut. At first it may not seem to you that there's any reason why you shouldn't cut them, and then you learn that you shouldn't, and therefore then, you don't. And I say to people, "Don't take a chance." Let's say that morality or ethics have nothing to do with it. I do think they do have something to do with it. Let's pretend though for a moment they don't. I said, pragmatically, don't take a chance of destroying your reputation because you can get a story this way. Don't go through the desks when that's actually not your property to go through. Even though you learned something and you might beat the competition, it will come back and bite you. It will bite the news organization you work for, and you will destroy the very success that you were hoping for.

Play it straight, play it very straight. The audience will sense this over a period of time. They won't know on any given night, on a given report perhaps, but remember, there's no just one news source, there's not just one individual. They're reading newspapers, and they're watching other people. And after a while, if you're always out of step, or if you always do something which the others don't do, the audience will understand there's something wrong with you, and at that point you've lost it.

Once you lose a reputation for integrity, a reputation for honesty, you can't get it back. You can't say, "Sorry. I'll never do it again." When you're seven years of age you can, but not when you're 27, or 57, or 67. By that point, a slip like that and you're dead.

With so many eyes watching you, and so many opinions out there, you're opening yourself up to criticism on a daily basis. How has criticism of your work affected you? How do you deal with criticism?

Sam Donaldson: I say to people...

"If you want to be universally loved, if you want to win a popularity contest, don't get in the news business." At least not in the sense of being the front guy. Because there is no way you can report a story and have everyone say, "Well, that's fine, and I'm sure they did a great job." And particularly if you're covering politicians, because people invest their loves, and their hopes, and their hatreds in politicians. And when you stand on the north lawn of the White House talking about President X and you have to report that something went wrong that day, all of his fans says, "Well, of course, that's wrong. He couldn't have made a mistake like that, it's this vicious reporter."

Then they write you a nasty letter saying, "Get off his case." If he's a Democrat, they say it's because you're a Republican. If he's a Republican, they say it's because you're a Democrat. You take this criticism, but you don't let it deter you in doing the job that needs to be done. You can't bend with critics. "Oh, well, they don't like this so I better pull in my sails, or do it another way." That's not saying you ignore all criticism. Once in a while, I get a letter from someone and they'll be right. That was not the way to do it. Or I was factually inaccurate and they caught me. Or I mispronounced a word and oh, they're right there! The word police are there every second.

So you look at the criticism, you think about it. But if it's just people who don't like what you say because they don't like hearing it, don't pay any attention. You won't be the most popular person. You won't be universally loved, but I think you'll be respected, because you'll do the job that ought to be done.

One of the fondest letters that I ever received, and I posted it on my door for years until it grew yellow with age, said to me: "Dear Mr. Donaldson, until today I thought of you as nothing more than a loud-mouthed ignoramus. But today, watching the David Brinkley program, I realized you had other despicable qualities as well." And they signed their name. I thought to myself, "Hey, there's a critic!" And I put it right up on the door. They're entitled to their view, but I didn't share it, naturally.

You yourself have said that you believe that you're perceived as being arrogant. How do you respond to that?

Sam Donaldson: I don't feel arrogant. I think a lot of people think I'm arrogant for several reasons. One, I'm intense. I'm not your avuncular, hale fellow, well met. I admire my friends, Walter Cronkite -- the greatest -- Charles Kuralt, Ted Koppel, people who make you feel comfortable, and they're not threatening at all.

And I'm sitting there, and I'm intense. When I start questioning someone on the Brinkley program, I'll get the bit in my teeth, and I'll get the fire in my eyes and you say, "Who is this guy? And why is he pressing that question? I mean, didn't the guy give an answer?" No. That's why I'm pressing him. He didn't give an answer. "But excuse me, sir, you did not answer that question." I think this comes across as arrogance. And second...

I do believe you have to be self-assured. That doesn't mean cock-sure, in the sense that I think I'm always right. I don't. I know, frequently, when it comes to opinion matters, I'm often wrong. And once in a while I'm wrong in factual matters, although I try hard not to be. But I think you have to feel that you have some self-assurance. Why would you do something if you didn't believe in it? Why would you say something if you didn't think it was right? If you're arguing a public issue, why would you argue your side if you didn't believe in your side? And I think that too can come across as arrogance. "Who does he think he is? He thinks he's the smartest guy in the world." But the bottom line is, I don't feel that I'm better than my colleagues, or my audience. And I don't think of myself as arrogant, but I'm aware that other people do. And I regret that, but I'm me and I'm just going to have to go on being me.

Have you ever had doubts about your work? Where did you get your confidence in your mastery of your profession?

Sam Donaldson: Well, I've never had any doubts about my ability to do the work that I was doing. Once in a while you get in over your head. If you get through it, you breathe a sigh of relief and say, "Wow, I really didn't have that together, but I made it." Once in a while you put a piece on the air that is a disaster for one reason or another. But you always want to work just a little bit ahead of your level if you can. Otherwise you don't advance.

One of the most awful moments I remember was in 1984. Ronald Reagan had gone with other world leaders to the beaches of Normandy to celebrate the 40th anniversary of D-Day. It was a big deal, and the whole day we were all over the beaches, from Pointe du Hoc, to Omaha Beach, etc. There must have been a hundred cameras doing video tape. There was a French pool, there was the British pool, there was the United States unilateral pool. ABC had individual cameras at various locations.

I had a couple of guys back in London who were supposed to be screening all these miles of tape. Well, I got back on the helicopter with other reporters. It was evening in Britain, but in the United States, it was late in the afternoon. We had about two and a half hours till air time. Now, this was the lead story on the ABC World News Tonight, and they gave me about six minutes. It was really a big deal. I got back and I sat down and said to the guys, "Okay, let me see the stuff from Pointe du Hoc." They started going through the cassettes and said, "It's not here."

I suddenly realized that things had not been catalogued. We had miles of cassettes and no one could find anything. I had in mind a little bit of what I think the story should be, but I had to see the tape, I had to see the sound bite., My notes say Reagan said this or that, but we need to see exactly. And of course, we have to give it to the editor to edit.

We got within 35 minutes of air, and of this six minutes we'd only edited about three minutes, and I saw disaster looming. Now, the entire network that day depended on this story, from me. I had this great support team, but in some senses they dropped the ball. It wasn't their fault. It's too long to explain. And all the money that ABC had spent to send us all over here and all the potential audience loss! Because if we weren't going to get on the air, that audience knew how to get to CBS and NBC within the press of a finger on that clicker. And I'm thinking to myself, "Wow, does everything depend on me." But you know, that energizes me. We got it done. And again, I couldn't have done it alone. We got on the air at the last minute, but I breathed a great sigh of relief, because that was skating right on the edge of not just, "Okay, the spot wasn't very good," or "It didn't work out." That was disaster. And for me it would have been a personal disaster, because would they have blamed my producers? No, and they shouldn't. Would they blame the cameraman? No, no. "Hey, Sam, how come you didn't produce?" And it was so important.

But that's exhilarating too. Talk to the skydivers, the mountain climbers, the great athletes. When you skate on disaster and win, wow do you feel good! Of course, if you lose, you drop right over. But you have to have confidence.

If you panic at that moment that I've just described and say, "It's 35 minutes to air, we can't find anything!" If you just throw up your hands and start making up excuses, so that, when the rockets come in from New York, "Where is that story?" you say, "It's this guy's fault!" -- you're lost.

I've talked to pilots who've brought airplanes in through dangerous storms, when the tail has almost fallen off. They're sitting there on the controls and they've got passengers. One false move, not being able to do it quite right, and that plane is going to crash, and everybody's going to die, including the pilot.

Now there are two ways you can go. You can throw up your hands and cry to mama, or you can sit there and try to figure out how to do it. I'd rather do the latter. Wouldn't anyone? I've been very fortunate so far in life. I've been able to do the latter in this business.

What do you think is your greatest achievement, personally and in the business?

Sam Donaldson: I haven't done the kinds of stories of Woodward and Bernstein did, Watergate. I can't claim to have reformed the business in major ways. I have done some things that I am proud of, and I've done some stories that I'm proud of.

Many people ask me, "What's the most interesting interview you've ever done?" Usually it's the last interview that I've done. I'd come up with a big name that people knew: Anwar Sadat, or Ronald Reagan, or Margaret Thatcher. Now for the last couple of years I know how to answer that question. It's a name no one's ever heard of, but I think it's one of the best pieces of work I've every done.

In 1994, with the help of a lot of people, I went down to Bariloche, Argentina. And I encountered a man that I knew was going to be walking down a street at a certain hour, with two cameras, to talk to him. He was 80 years of age, he was a kindly looking grandfather figure, he'd just come from a school where, as was his wont, he had been helping with children. And I said, "Erik Triebke?" "Yes," he said. I identified myself: Sam Donaldson of American television. I said, "You were the number two Gestapo chief in Rome in World War II." "Yes," he said. And I said, "You participated in the massacre of 335 Italians, will you tell me about it?" I don't know whether to this day the man did, but he stood right on the street corner, he told me about it.

I thought I was in the movies. All my life I had seen Curt Jurgens and other actors playing Nazis saying, "I was just following orders." I'm standing on the street corner and the man explains to me why they shot all of these Italian civilians in the back of the head. He was just following orders, he said. "It was not a crime, I was just following orders." I thought it was a crime, I told him so. We argued back and forth. Eric Triebke had done this. He'd done such a good job that in the last year of the war he worked for Adolf Eichmann. He deported six to seven thousand Jews to their deaths in the death camps.

There he was, living under his own name, a pillar of the community in Bariloche. We talked for about 15 minutes, arguing back and forth. I said, "By all conventions, by all humanity, this is a crime." "Well," he said, "it wasn't then. You did it in Vietnam." I said, "Yes, but it wasn't national policy. And when we caught our soldiers who did those things in Vietnam, we tried them, we sentenced them."

I got a little unprofessional and I said to him, I said, "Herr Triebke, many people think you should be executed for your crimes." Well, you saw something in his eyes. At that point, he thought maybe talking here in front of these cameras wasn't the brightest thing in the world. Perhaps he shouldn't be doing this. So he moved to his car and he looked up and he got in the car and he said, "You are not a gentleman." I said, "I'm not a gentleman? At least I'm not a mass murderer. I mean, there's something to be said for me." He drove off. Italy immediately asked for his extradition. And after a year and a half, Argentina extradited Erik Triebke to Italy.

As you and I speak, he's standing trial. I think he'll be convicted. There's no death sentence in Italy, so he'll simply spend the rest of his life in jail. I must confess to you, I hope he lives a long life. As Rabbi Hier said, he wasn't conscripted. He did it voluntarily. He liked Hitler's policy. Kindly looking old man!

I said to him, "Are you sorry for what you've done?" He said, "Yes, I'm very sorry." And I said, "Old men are sorry for the things they do when they're young, but shouldn't old men have to pay for the things they do when they're young." "Well," he said, "it was not a crime." I want him to pay. I hope he will pay. I think that's one of the best pieces of work I've ever done. It may not win any awards, but it fulfills me.

The type of story you just mentioned, bringing an admitted criminal to justice, is that the type of story that gives you the most satisfaction?

Sam Donaldson: It is now. Most of my life in Washington has been spent in the hard news beat, covering Congress -- the best beat in town -- the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House. I enjoyed starting the day asking questions of Presidents Carter and Reagan, and other Presidents, Clinton, Bush, Nixon, and at 6:30 at night the story would go on the air for a minute and forty.

But I think the work I'm doing on PrimeTime Live now, in the later part of my working career, is probably more important. It closed a military base in Bermuda. We found that there was a U.S. naval base there, very important during World War II, very important during the Cold War, but when we went there I said to the admiral, "Do you have any ships?" He said, "No ships." I said, "Do you have any planes?" "No planes." But they had some very nice VIP quarters.

The base was kept open to run the airport for the Bermuda government. That's a British airport, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Congress closed that base and saved $33 million. I thought that was interesting. I liked that. We've taken up the story of whistle blowers. We've done a story about sexual harassment in the workplace, in the Navy particularly, and in the armed services. It's had some results, I like that.

We've done stories about insurance scams and frauds. This young woman had two kids dying of cancer, but her HMO wouldn't give her the money for a bone marrow transplant, because it was an experimental treatment. We shamed them into it and she got the bone marrow transplant. I've lost track of her now, but at least for a while, she was doing better. I think that's worthwhile.

I think those things are more fulfilling, in a sense, than when I bring the news from the White House and say, today President Reagan did this, or he didn't do that. Personally, when I go home and we've done something on PrimeTime that helps people and changes things for the better, I really feel fulfilled, and I really think that's the way to go.

Speaking of cancer, you had a brush with it yourself, didn't you?

Sam Donaldson: Yes. In July of 1995 I discovered, soaping my groin one night, that I had a lump. What's this lump? I was marginally smart enough to understand that wasn't good. The next day I went to the doctors and had a biopsy done, and yes, it was a melanoma. Seven and a half years earlier I'd had a skin lesion removed that looked a little bad on my ankle, but they'd sent it to three separate laboratories, and three separate pathologists had all said it was not cancerous, and they were all wrong.

That's one of the mysteries of cancer, where were those cancer cells for seven and a half years? What were they doing? Lying on the beach? Suddenly they got a wake up call, "Okay, it's time to grow." Not a thing for seven and a half years, and then all of a sudden this lump.

I had it removed obviously, and all the lymph nodes. There was one node that was involved, the others were clean. So what does that mean? Well, according to statistics, a little over half the time people who have had this particular situation see it again. It comes back, typically, within about two years.

A little less than half the time, they never see it again. Now, which am I? Is it going to come back? Is it not going to come back? The verdict's already in, but I don't know it. So I'll just wait and see, and if I get hit by a truck at age 80, I'll figure it didn't come back. And if in a year or so we're having a different type of conversation, then it has.

Did that experience cause you to pause for reflection?

Sam Donaldson: Well, I wasn't scared. I'm not scared of the unknown and death. On the other hand, I'd rather not at the moment, thank you, because I'm enjoying life. I'm having a great time. Selfishly, I have to tell you, I want to stick around.

I was sad, because like most people I didn't know a lot about cancer. The word melanoma, to me, meant instant death. I understood it was one of the most vicious types of cancer, because it's not susceptible to radiation or chemotherapy, thank you. So, when I learned it was a melanoma I sat my wife down and I said, "We have to prepare, it may be a short period of time: a few weeks, or a few months." And I was sad, because I love her and I'm enjoying life. But I wasn't frightened in the sense of, "Oh, I'm going to die." Maybe if I was 30 years old, I would have been. But I'm 62, as we speak, and while I'd like to be 72, and -- if I remained in good health and had the mind -- 82, it's not like a young person. I've lived a lot of life and I've done a lot of things, seen a lot of things, and I understand the actuarial tables. We are not going to live forever.

So I figure that, if I cashed out at 62, I'd like to have lived longer, but I had a pretty good run. In fact, as I've said, it may never come back. And if it doesn't, terrific.

What else would you like to achieve at this point?

Sam Donaldson: Most of my life, I've had no big goal. I'm in awe of people who win the Nobel Prize. The other day, I asked a guy who had won the Nobel Prize in science, "Did you set out to win the Nobel?" He said, "No. You don't set out, to win the Nobel Prize, therefore I'll go to the laboratory and do this. I'm inquisitive about this. What I do is go into a laboratory see if I can find out about this."

So what would I like to do for the rest of my life? Keep working. I don't have a goal to say like, "I'm going to find a big story and blow the lid off it. I'm going to bring down a president." No, no, no. I'm going to keep working, and if I do things and they're successful, maybe they'll win recognition, maybe they won't. It really won't matter, because that's not why I'm doing them.

Of all the people you have interviewed, presidents and other people, is there a particular interview that you remember and enjoy in particular? What type of interviews do you enjoy doing? Is there someone you really admire, that you've talked to in the past?

Sam Donaldson: Well, I do. My friend, Ted Koppel, does certain types of interviews on Nightline. The late Eric Sevareid did hour-long interviews with great thinkers of the western world. That's not what I do. I do political interviews mainly, interviews in which I'm trying to find out specific information. Often it's people in trouble, in trouble politically, in trouble because they've stolen money, in trouble for one reason or another.

So the type of interview I enjoy most is the one in which I get information that the public wants, that the public needs, out of someone who doesn't want to give it. If I can get it in some give and take, sitting down on David Brinkley's program on a Sunday morning, on a PrimeTime Live location, that's the kind of interview I like.

One time, Jimmy Carter flew to the Mideast to try to put together the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. They had put together the cornerstones at Camp David, but it was slipping away. The last percentage was not working out. And all of Mr. Carter's political advisors said, "Don't go. There's nothing in it for you. It's a no win situation. The odds are you won't be able to do it, and everyone will blame you. And they won't blame you if you just stay home."

But Jimmy Carter, being Jimmy Carter, said, "No, I'm going," and he got in his airplane and he flew over there and he saw his friend, Anwar Sadat and then he went to Israel and saw Menachem Begin. And the last night it looked like he had failed. Everyone knew that Mr. Begin, the Prime Minister of Israel, was being obstreperous by not giving in on some key points that President Sadat of Egypt had insisted on.

When we left the next morning, everyone thought the mission had been a failure. We stopped at the Cairo Airport, and Sadat came out and they all went into a little Quonset hut. Begin had stayed in Israel. When they came out, President Carter gave the most obscure little talk. He said, "We have now set in place the cornerstones on which we can build success." What did that mean?

He was walking down the red carpet, down to Air Force One with President Sadat. Now, I sang out and I said, "Mr. President," I said, "is it peace? Is it peace?" He said, "Well, I don't think we better go beyond what President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin and I agreed to say at this point." And I said, "But you said something to the effect that if the Knesset agrees that -- are you saying that it's peace?" And he looked at me and he said, "Yes." Well, everyone ran and filed. And of course, all the smart guys told me later, "Well, we knew that all the time." And I said, "Well then why did you wait to file 'til he said that at the rope line?" Now, you say, "Sam," you're going to say, "that's a great interview?" No. I mean, is that one of those wonderful interviews that lives in history? No. But I got a piece of information that, at that precise moment, told the world something that was quite important. And as a reporter, I thought that was a great interview.

I was quite pleased to have done that.

What book in particular is most memorable to you? What book inspired you in your life and in your career?

Sam Donaldson: As a young kid -- I guess I was in my teenage years -- Plutarch's Lives, one of the great classics, interested me. I've always been interested in history, in biography. Plutarch's Lives is simply the biographies of people in an ancient era: Caesar and the Antonines You study how they lived and what they did, and how they thought.

I can't tell you I came away from it saying, "Okay, now I'll pattern myself after this guy, and this guy, and this guy." But I came away with the sense that some people who were very ordinary when they started out could make something of themselves. And the very title itself! Plutarch was, of course, the author, the compiler of all of this. But lives? What is it about various peoples' lives who are successful, who make something of themselves, who make a mark in history and on the world? That book influenced me.

Now today, I get 10 books from publishers every week. Why? Because they think I'm so wonderful? No. Because they want PrimeTime Live to help the sale of the book. I can't read them all, but I skim some, and I read as many as I can.

I come back to biography, books that some of the great writers of today have done about our presidents, Harry Truman or Richard Nixon, a fascinating person if there ever was one, in the dictionary sense of the word "fascination." I enjoy these books, David McCullough, all of the historians who write. They're the ones that influenced me the most. When I get on an airplane, I buy a little Pocketbook, a mystery, or a spy novel, or Ludlum, and I spend four or five hours in an airplane going from one coast to the other, and I read that and forget it. That's escapism.

When I'm on an airplane, I read briefing material, if I'm going to shoot an interview, if I need to prepare myself for something the next day. Otherwise, I don't want heavy thinking. I'm like most people, I just want to sort of read along. The car plunges over the cliff, and the guys with the machine guns shoot, and of course the hero escapes. That's good enough.

What do you do for fun?

Sam Donaldson: My wife and I have ranch land in New Mexico. It's my native state, as you know. I'm a farm boy, born and raised in the Southwest. When I was young, I couldn't wait to leave the farm. Now that I'm older, I can't wait to get back.

It's a working ranch, and we're trying to make a profit there. We're not doing a very good job. Cattle prices, as we speak, are in the cellar. There's been a three-year drought. The old-timers say it might have been worse during the Dust Bowl of the '30s, but I'm not certain. Wool prices this year were awful. You see, that's what I do for pleasure. I keep the books, I write the checks, I pay the bills, I make out the government reports, I confer every day with the ranch manager. We make decisions about whether we're going to have to sell some of the herd, because we don't have enough to feed them.

What are we going to do about the coyotes, that are eating the lambs like there's no tomorrow? They're eating so many lambs, I thought the other day I'd put out some mint jelly, in case they want it with their mutton. Every time I say this, the conservationists and the people who love animals just jump all over me. "What? A coyote is a predator and has a right to live." Yeah, they have a right to live, I'm all for that, but they're eating my lambs, folks. I just put it to you, doesn't the lamb have a right to live? "Yeah, but you're going to sell the lamb and they're going to kill the lamb for the money." That's right. If you're going to be in the sheep ranching business, you have to try to get rid of the coyotes. Otherwise, you're not going to stay in the ranching business.

People want to reintroduce the Mexican wolf. That's wonderful! Wolves kill calves, not just sheep. If there's a government program to compensate ranchers, okay, it's fine. But if you say to the ranchers, "We're going to put the wolf out there. It's going to eat all your calves, and if you don't like it, lump it." I don't think that's the way it ought to work.

It's okay for me. At the moment I'm making a good salary at ABC. But I know people out there that have worked on the ranch all their lives. They don't have an ABC salary, what are you going to say to them? "So your daddy made this, and your grandfather made this, but we want to put the Mexican wolf here because the wolf once roamed here, so go find other work. See if you can become a newscaster?" No, that's not realistic.

The other day in Washington, two groups came to town from Hollywood. They were wearing their red badges to show that they were in the fight against AIDS. I'm all for the fight against AIDS, and I applaud them for doing that. They came to town, I should add, in order to join people who wanted to save the animals, all kinds of animals. "We shouldn't eat meat, we shouldn't kill animals." But they suddenly discovered they were being picketed.

They were picketed by AIDS activists who say, "We need animals in the laboratory to help discover ways to cure AIDS." It must have been a terrible contradiction for these people. I think animals have a right to live. They're part of our ecosystem, they're part of God's creation. But as long as we have the society that we have, they play a part in which they provide food for us, and they help us unlock the mysteries of science to preserve life.

In conclusion, is there anything you'd like say to young people who are aspiring to achieve what you have?

Sam Donaldson: No. You'll do it. I say, in conclusion, if I could make it, anyone can make it.

Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure talking to you.