Mike Wallace and I didn’t start off as friends.
The great CBS newsman, who died Saturday at age 93, telephoned me when I was writing my first book, Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Jr. Spy Ring. It was 1986 and Wallace had learned that I was the only reporter who had gotten John Walker Jr. to talk to me.
At the time, Walker hated the media and didn’t want to talk to anyone about the 18 years that he had spent spying for the Soviets or how he had recruited his son, Michael; his brother, Arthur; and his best friend, Jerry Whitworth, as traitors.
For those of you who haven’t read my book or might not remember the case, John Walker Jr.’s arrest in 1985 was the biggest spy scandal in the U.S. history since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted and executed in 1953.
Walker’s treachery stunned the nation and Mike Wallace was eager to get the first television interview with him.