A Tribute to George Crile by Jeff Fager

When I first arrived at 60 Minutes in the late 1980s, I was warned about the place: watch your back, people may try to steal your story, producers tend to keep to themselves, and some people who work there tend toward meanness. That was why I was so surprised to discover that my new next-door office neighbor was kind, generous, collegial, and endlessly interesting. Yes, it was George.

Over the years, we spent a great deal of time together, and I learned much from George and much about who he was.

I learned that he was relatively humble most of the time, although he set aside any sense of humility when speaking about his wife, Susan, who walked on water and turned everything she touched into gold. It was a little annoying at first, until I was able to confirm through everyone who ever knew Susan that those things were actually true.

I learned that he was always recruiting young people to work with him, that he loved teaching them, and that he took great pride in watching them grow. At 60 Minutes II, it became an accepted fact: George's headquarters kept expanding, and if there was someone on the floor you did not recognize, you could assume they were working for George.

I learned that his mind was so active that he found it difficult to stop thoughts from racing through it, or to keep himself from sharing those thoughts with others. I remember asking him on occasion, "George, would you mind not talking for a few minutes?"

I learned that he had an unsleeping curiosity, which was probably one reason he became such a fine reporter, and that he held a deep fascination with America's adversaries.

I learned that he had an extraordinary ability to find and report original stories unlike any other reporter or producer who had worked, at least during my almost 25 years at CBS News. Often, after collecting all of that strong original material and returning to his New York office filled with a sense of accomplishment, adventure complete, story in the can, he struggled to settle down and actually write it.

I remember how excited we were when he received the book deal. Who is George going to write a book about? We celebrated and toasted his great success, and then we celebrated once more when the book was finally completed, 15 years later. And Charlie Wilson's War was worth the wait.

What was it about George? I have been thinking about that all spring. He was a brilliant guy, a fascinating man, and a great reporter who could not settle down long enough to focus on telling his story. It was not because he lacked ability. George was a great writer. Look at the insert in your program. In his last email, he didn't know it was his last email; it reads like Lou Gehrig's farewell speech at Yankee Stadium. And the note to his girls on the back of the program: so thoughtful and beautifully written.

No, it was not about the writing. Most of the time, it was because he became distracted and excited by his next adventure. While thinking about him, I realized that if George had lived in the 15th century, he probably would have been an explorer, on his knees before Queen Isabella, charming her into sending him west in three ships in search of the New World. And imagine how the world might be different if the first European those natives ever met was George Crile. They would have been the best of friends.

George spoke in the language of an explorer. He did not call what we do a job; he called it a commission, and he taught the people around him to understand how fortunate we are to live the lives we live; that they are not real jobs, they are commissions. And sometimes they have a real impact. So when George the explorer returned to West 57th Street with his riches, the next step, the storytelling part, became a challenge, because all he truly wanted was to go out and explore again.

I remember George coming into my office to make his pitch for traveling somewhere exotic, usually with a mission in mind that would cost a great deal of money. He rarely explained, or even knew, how long the journey would take. Eventually, sometimes months and months later, he would return with the goods. He never let us down. In the winter of 2001, he convinced me to spend a fortune so he could wander through Pakistan and Afghanistan in search of bin Laden's followers. You will see the results of that story in a moment, as part of a series of reports he called "Prophecies of Terror" that we put on the air at great length in the weeks after 9/11. I believe it was the most enlightened reporting ever done about the origins of Al Qaeda.

So many of us were pleased to see George receive the recognition he deserved, both for an earlier offshoot of those reports and for Charlie Wilson's War. He also did many other things that deserved recognition. George was an innovator. Beginning with CBS Reports, he helped pioneer an approach that worked very well: as principal reporter and producer, he traveled around gathering his stories, appearing on camera and asking questions, while the correspondent working with him conducted a few interviews and narrated the story. It worked surprisingly well, with credit to Dan Rather and Bob Simon, who both gave George the space he needed.

The tape we are showing you today offers a sample taken only from George's 60 Minutes career, first on the mother ship, where George produced so many original and groundbreaking stories, and then notice the leap to 60 Minutes II, when George sets out on his own. And consider, as you watch it, this question: who else does stories on television as original and interesting as these? The answer, I believe, is nobody.