Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 14, 1994 TAG: 9412140073
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GAIL SHISTER KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``I find Mike Wallace irresistible,'' says the source, free-lance writer Karon Haller, 50, of Weston, Conn. ``No wonder he's gotten all those people to talk to him over the years. When you talk to him, you're incapable of saying no. The man is that skilled at what he does.''
The brouhaha began Nov. 17, when the Washington Post reported that Wallace had been called on the carpet by CBS News chief Eric Ober for secretly taping an interview with Haller in Wallace's Manhattan office Nov. 3.
CBS News guidelines prohibit hidden-camera interviews without permission from Ober or his deputy, Joe Peyronnin. According to Ober, neither of them was notified. When Ober first heard of it, two weeks after the fact, ``I was shocked,'' he says.
``I literally stared at Mike and his producer [Bob Anderson]. Neither of them had ever done anything like this. It's like they had a momentary lapse. ... I severely chastised them. They understood what they had done wrong.''
Haller, who had done a piece for Connecticut magazine about an assisted suicide, had agreed to help Wallace with a story about the death - but only off camera. ``I could see no reason in the world for my face to be in 30 million homes,'' she said Friday. ``I was terribly uncomfortable.''
Wallace and Anderson secretly taped the interview. Their intention, Wallace says, was to show Haller the tape before the piece aired so she could permit its use. Their big mistake, Wallace says, was not doing that immediately after the interview.
The entire incident ``was wrong, and I should not have done it,'' says Wallace, 76, a ``60 Minutes'' correspondent and co-editor since its 1968 launch. ``I'm taking the responsibility. In the final analysis, I'm the leader of the team. If I had said no, it wouldn't have happened.''
When Haller first learned of the incident, from a newspaper reporter calling her for a reaction, ``I was upset,'' she said. ``Then Bob Anderson told me they had done it to assure me I would look and sound OK on camera. I guess they call it Mike fright, meaning Mike Wallace fright.
``Once they explained everything, I relaxed a bit. It didn't disturb me as much as it disturbed everyone else. I saw it as an in-house problem, not my problem. The fact that they had broken a rule in their organization was a problem between Eric Ober and Mike Wallace.''
The sudden onslaught of attention has upset Haller's world, she says.
Haller, a former elementary school reading specialist with a doctorate in interpersonal communications from Columbia University's School of Education, became a writer five years ago ``because I thought it would be a quiet, contemplative life and I could hang out in the library all day.''
When the story hit the media, however, Haller was deluged with interview requests. Even her neighbors got into the act, she says. ``They asked me why Mike Wallace had secretly taped me. Was I involved in some kind of scam? Was I selling arms to the Third World? It was difficult.''
Haller, an Army brat who moved 15 times before graduating from high school, says ``it's excruciatingly painful to be in the spotlight. I'm an extremely private person. I like writing about people. I don't like being on the other side.''
Several weeks ago, Wallace called Haller and apologized. ``I told her I felt badly about what happened,'' he says. ``She said, `Don't apologize.' ``She apologized for the whole hassle. I asked her to come in the next day, and she agreed - no ifs, ands or buts.''
Haller confirms Wallace's version of the conversation.
``I am a sentimentalist,'' she says. ``When Mike Wallace talked to me about his feelings, my feeling toward him was sentimental. ... He's an icon to the American public, and to me, too.''
Haller taped the interview Nov. 29 in the CBS studios. (No air date yet.) She even joked to the technicians that she'd be more comfortable if the camera were hidden, she says.
Wallace estimates that Haller's interview will be two minutes of a 12-minute piece. The fact that she appeared on camera is a vindication of sorts, he says. ``If she was horrified, angry or thought we had done something dishonest, do you think she would go on camera?''
Wallace's reputation hasn't been hurt by the incident, Ober says.
``I hate to say this because it sounds so self-serving, but it did damn little damage. Anyone who knows me or Bob Anderson knows we are straight. `60 Minutes' has a first-rate reputation. There's no reason for it to be tarnished even a bit by something of this nature.''
by CNB