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Thank you very much!

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So, I've learned a lot of lessons
as an investigative reporter,

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and I thought
we'd just get right into it.

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Lesson number one:
you could get somebody killed.

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(Laughter)

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I've reported on organized crime
for a long time over the years

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and in 1980 in particular,
I covered organized crime in Chicago,

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and a multi-millionaire mob bookmaker
by the name of William "B .J." Jahoda.

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He worked for the Cicero crew.

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We in Chicago know that back in the day,
that means it was Al Capone's territory.

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He worked for a mob.

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What do we say about Rocky Infelice?

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A really bad guy.

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It was one of the cruelest,
toughest, meanest crews

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and Rocky Infelice was someone
to be reckoned with.

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"B" is what we called Jahoda,
what everybody called Jahoda.

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He was a formal newspaper guy,
he was a brilliant word-smith.

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He was an operator,
he could do the numbers in his head.

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And he could keep books, and count odds
and could figure it out.

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But it was also, at the heart of it,
a decent man.

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Over many profitable years,
Rocky get very testy,

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because they were
renegade bookmakers in Chicago.

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They were independent guys,
they weren't kicking over to the Outfit,

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and that was a bad thing.

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Rocky ordered Jahoda to go pick
some of those guys up

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on some ruse or another
and then, drop them off.

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"Drop them off" said Rocky,
"and don't look back!"

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Well, one of those bookmakers
was slaughtered in B.J.'s own kitchen.

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It was a bloody mess.

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He couldn't take it anymore and in 1989,
he agreed to be wired up by the feds

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to take down Rocky and his crew,
and believe me, this was a first,

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this never happened in Chicago.

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Nobody penetrated the Chicago Outfit
and the whole street crew,

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but Bill Jahoda did, and at great peril.

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The first time he put on
a wireless microphone,

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he thought it would be
some little tiny transistor radio.

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It was the size of a pack of cigarettes
and they put it in the small of his back.

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He said it was like a brick.

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He said when he went
into his first undercover meeting,

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he felt like a San Diego chicken
in a funeral parlor,

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he thought everybody knew.

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After six weeks of unbelievable testimony
in Federal Court,

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including that most memorable
moment I sat through,

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when even the judge laughed,

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because B was describing Rose Laws,
a famous Chicago madam,

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and how she would provide "her girls"
to the boys in Rocky's crew.

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Jahoda called it
"horizontal refreshment."

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(Laughter)

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B.J. Jahoda took down
the whole street crew.

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Rocky went to prison, B went into hiding,
into witness protection.

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And he decided to give me
his first TV interview.

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We were terrified.

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The Mob wanted to kill him.

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We had to be careful
about the meeting place.

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We decided on a hotel in Wisconsin,
outside the northern district of Illinois.

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But you know, we don't travel light.

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So we had 2 camera crews,
3 producers, me,

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and if somebody watched
the Channel 5 news, they could spot me.

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We were terrified that we were going
to get him killed,

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and I think B was pretty worried
about it too.

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We didn't get him killed, thank God!

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And in the interview,
I've got to tell you,

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it was just something!

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Because people called him a rat,
we called the story "Diary of a Rat."

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B. J. Jahoda did his civic duty,

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and stopped helping people get killed,

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but it was pretty tough.

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And when the interview
was almost over, I said:

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"Do you still everyday fear
for your life?"

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And he said:
"Let me just put it to you this way."

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"They'd start the party by scooping out
my eyeballs with a teaspoon."

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Lesson two:
somebody may want to kill you.

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My next door neighbour called
one morning frantically and said:

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"Who are the guys in your backyard
with the weapons under their arms?"

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(Laughter)

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It was a long story, but it begins with
a guy named Jeff Fort.

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Fort is in federal prison now,

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he's been in and out for
these many years.

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But even to this day, he remains

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one of Chicago's most feared
and most notorious gang leaders.

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He was a child of the Great Migration.

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He came up from Aberdeen, Mississippi,

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in the 50s, to Woodlawn
on the South Side of Chicago.

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And it was odd, because he was skinny,

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semi-literate at best,

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but he was magical.

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He was a leader.

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He led thousands of followers
in the 60s and 70s,

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and they called him "Angel."

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And in the Lyndon Johnson
War on Poverty's years,

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Jeff Fort got some of that federal money,
about a million dollars,

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that went to community organizations
and people with natural leadership.

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And he scammed the government,
stole the money, went to federal prison.

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But smart enough to realize
in federal prison

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that religious organizations experience
a level of constitutional protection.

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So he went: "Aha! I will form
a religion, not a gang!"

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It came to be known as the El Rukns,
a Muslim religious organization.

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And out of prison Jeff came back
to the streets of Chicago

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with his El Rukns.

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The Rukns were not just deadly,
they were small, they were secretive.

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And the government had a hell of time
penetrating them and tried for many years.

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Jeff quickly went back to prison
on a different charge,

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it was was a drug charge.

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And besides being a religious leader,
he was very good on a pay phone.

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And so, from the pay phone
in another joint,

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for 3500 hours of wire taps,
the feds were listening in,

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as he instructed his followers
to make a deal with Muammar Gaddafi.

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And they go to Libya.

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Because they are Muslims
and will get to know Gaddafi.

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And for 2.5 million dollars,
Jeff's group promises

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promises that they will commit
acts of domestic terrorism

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and shoot airliners out of the sky.

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And the feds got him.

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And he was in terrible trouble
in that trial.

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In the meantime,
I'm doing a documentary on him,

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it's called "Angel of Fear."

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And the phone rings at home,

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and it's an El Rukn hitman
named Billy Doyle

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and El Rukn hitmen
don't call reporters at home,

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so I knew I was in trouble.

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I called NBC, I called the feds
and I called the police.

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I didn't want to call anybody,
because as a reporter,

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you belong to nobody's club.

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NBC sent in security,

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the feds and police
were watching the house.

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The security system that was installed
came with a panic button

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that looks like a garage door opener,

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and if you punch it with your finger,

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it creates a class-one emergency
and cops come to your house.

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One morning, I am in the tub,
with my six month old son,

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and my two-year-old comes
into the bathroom and goes: "Look, mom!"

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(Laughter)

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I knew I had 30 seconds

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to either take my mascara out
from under my eyes or put on a robe,

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because in 30 seconds the cops were
at the door, the doorbell was ringing.

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When I opened the door, there were
two men in firing position,

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they had run through the wet
cement next door,

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where they were relaying sidewalks,
cement was on their shoes...

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And I said: "I'm so sorry!
I'm so sorry! I really am sorry!"

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Next day, I called Jeff's lawyer,
and I said:

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"Tell him he made
a really bad mistake in doing this."

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The lawyer said: "Jeff says he's sorry."

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But I knew I had
to say sorry to somebody else.

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Early the next morning,

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I packed up the kids, baby on my back,
Josh next to me.

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We get a cab, we go to Dunkin' Donuts,
get 12 dozen donuts,

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put them in the cab,
drive to the 18th district.

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A hooker and a drunk hold open the door
as they've been let out of the tank.

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We go into the 18th district
I put Josh up on the desk,

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and I said: "Josh, tell the sergeant
that we are sorry."

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(Laughter)

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And the cop, who had
an Irish brogue, of course,

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goes "Oh ma'am, don't be
so hard on the boy!"

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(Laughter)

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Lesson number three:
prepare to be unpopular.

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Over the years, we've done stories
on the most popular people in our midst.

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That would include Michael Jordan
at the pinnacle of his career,

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Barrack Obama at the beginning of his
historic ascendancy to the presidency.

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And we are currently at The Sun-Times
engaged in yet another story

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about the nephew of the Daley clan

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and whether he got special consideration

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in an altercation resulting in the death
of a young man in 2004

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for which he had not been charged.

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All three of those stories have generated
great controversy for us.

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Jordan's charity was designed really
as a public relations thing for him;

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giving money to the needy
was only a tiny percentage of it.

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Obama had a well-connected fundraiser
named Tony Rezko

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whom he didn't want talk about
during that first campaign,

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and we did.

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It took 18 months to persuade him to come
to our editorial board and explain it.

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There's been a special prosecutor
appointed in the case of the Daley nephew

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and the young man who died,
David Koschman.

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There has been push-back
on all of these stories,

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from all kinds of people,
but we did the stories anyway,

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because it is a privilege
to be a reporter.

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In exchange for that privilege,
I always tell journalism students,

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that you give up some
of your normal rights as a citizen.

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Which means you don't belong
to a political party,

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you don't belong
to a special interest group,

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and sometimes, you don't get invited
very many places to dinner,

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because people don't want talk to you.

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And you know what?

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That's OK.

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Lesson number [four]:

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prepare to get more credit
than you deserve.

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In 1997, I quit my job at NBC

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and so did my co-anchor, Ron Magers.

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At that time, NBC was under quite
a different management, they're gone now.

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But they had decided
to jazz up our newscast,

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and they believed that doing that
would be best accomplished

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by hiring Jerry Springer as a commentator

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whom we would introduce
on the 10 o'clock news.

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Ron and I felt it would forever wreck
the integrity and credibility we'd built.

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We protested that it would be a mistake.

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We lost, they won.

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We quit.

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Our audience went on revolt,

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called in so many calls,
they melted down the switchboard.

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ten thousand calls came in, and voom.

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Ron and I got a lot of attention.

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National new stories were done about us,

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we're given credit, praise and all that.

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The fact of the matter

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is that people quit their jobs
every day on principle.

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I got 2000 letters, easily,

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one of them from the wife of a DCFS,

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Department of Children
and Family Services worker,

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a guy who refused to relocate
battered children in a shelter in Chicago

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because he believed
they would be sexually prayed upon there.

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He was fired.

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I went to the grocery store one day,
and the butcher there, his name was Bruno,

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told me how he, the sole support
of a wife and kids,

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refused, at another store he worked at,
to short-weigh meat,

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put his thumb on the scale.

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And he was fired.

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The social worker and the butcher
didn't got all that press that we got,

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didn't get the attention,
nobody wrote a story about them.

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And they took risks
that were far greater than we did,

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for rewards that were far less
than Ron and I experienced.

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The day after I quit NBC,
there was a letter left for me at home.

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No post mark, no real return address.

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It was from B.J. Jahoda,
who picked it up on the news.

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He was somewhere in witness protection,
and the letter read:

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"Dear Doll, sometimes, we just have
to walk away. Love, B."

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Lesson five...

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be prepared for what
you cannot prepare for.

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There's a sense of mission for most of us
in my business, a sense or purpose.

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Like an emergency room nurse
that runs in when something happens,

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or a firefighter who hears
the fire call and goes.

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It's not just because
you're supposed to do it,

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because you trained to do it.

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It's because you want to do it,
because you believe in doing it.

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On 9/11, I was in New York,

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working for "60 Minutes,"
and "60 Minutes II."

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Like a classic Midwesterner,
I'm in there way early,

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because New Yorkers come in later.

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And there are monitors, of course,
everywhere in those places.

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And there are only of couple of us there,

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and someone screamed out "Oh my God!"

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as they saw on TV
the first plane hit the first tower.

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I'd been a reporter long enough
to know when something big happens,

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you get there, you get there
as fast as you can,

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because police lines will close around it

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and you won't get close enough
to see as much as you need to see.

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I headed down to the WTC
armed with my trusty phone.

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By that time,
the second tower had been hit.

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And I'm on the West Side highway,
as thousands are streaming this way,

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I remember one of them said:
"Stop, turn around!"

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In this crazy sense of invincibility
you have when you do the work you do,

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I said: "CBS news, don't worry!"

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(Laughter)

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And I kept going.

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I assumed my cell phone would work,

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but thousands of cell phones
frantically calling jammed every system.

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I was on the West Side highway
when I saw the first tower

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fall to the ground.

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And I kept going.

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I got around by West street
and there is ash on the ground

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and there are firefighters,
and I showed them my ID,

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and one of the firefighters said:

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"Just walk down the middle of the road,
because there is falling stuff."

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And there were stretchers,
but nobody was on them

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and paramedics were waiting.

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And that's when, as I'm walking down,
I feel the ground rumble.

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And the firefighter ahead of me
turns around, screams "Run!"

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I could see a fireball come out
of the base of the building,

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probably the ignition of jet fuel,

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as the building began to collapse.

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But you don't have time to look
at those things.

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I turned, I fell,

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he grabbed me by my waist,
threw me on my feet.

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And we ran, and he had the foresight

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to spot another building
that had a marble overhang,

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and he slammed me against it,
and he covered my body with his.

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I could feel his heart banging
against my backbone,

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because it was pounding so hard.

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The morning light had turned
completely black in a second.

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There were particles everywhere.

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You know, there were particles of people,

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and desks, and buildings,

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and pens and things, and we couldn't see.

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Couldn't see your hand in front
of your face, because it was so black.

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I thought to myself,
this is really how firefighters die.

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It isn't the flames, it is the smoke,
because you can't breathe.

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The firefighter, once we felt
that the building was down,

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handed me off
to a New York City police officer,

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who literally, held my hand,
as we put our hands over our faces

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to try to keep going, try to find
more and more light, to find our way out.

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I didn't think to ask
the firefighter's name.

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I did not ask the firefighter
to tell me who he was.

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And that haunts me to this day.

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What kind of reporter was I, you know,
that I didn't think to get his name!

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I got everybody else's after that.

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I got the police officer's,

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I got the people
who put the oxygen on me.

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I got some paramedics who got me
half way down the street.

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I got the name of the bus driver

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who let me hijack his bus
to take me to the CBS broadcast center.

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Just not the firefighter's name, not his.

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I don't know if he survived.

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He turned back, and went back
to the site of the second fall.

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I've looked for him,
I've written letters to authorities,

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I've told this story like this often
in hopes that someday, somewhere,

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someone will know who he is.

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I got on the set, at CBS,
sat down next to Dan Rather,

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covered in dust,
and I reported what I'd seen.

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The biggest lesson I have learned of all,

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every story, every day,
every year that I do this...

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Is that it is a privilege
to be a reporter.

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To do this work.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)