George Crile III

George Crile III
George Crile with Charlie Wilson in Afghanistan
Born	March 5, 1945
Died	May 15, 2006 (2006-05-16) (aged 61) Manhattan, New York, U.S.A.
Nationality	American
Education	Georgetown University, Trinity College, Hartford
Occupation	Journalist
Television	CBS News

George Crile III (March 5, 1945 – May 15, 2006) was an American journalist most closely associated with his three decades of work at CBS News.

Personal

After studies at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and Trinity College, Hartford, Crile worked as a reporter for Washington columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, and as the Pentagon correspondent for Ridder Newspapers. Crile came from a line of pioneering surgeons. His grandfather, Dr. George Washington Crile, was a founder of the Cleveland Clinic. His father, Dr. George Crile, Jr., was a leading figure in the United States in challenging unnecessary surgery, best known for his part in eliminating radical breast surgery. His wife was Susan Lyne, former President of ABC Entertainment and former CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Crile died at age 61 from pancreatic cancer.^[1]

Career at CBS

Crile was both a producer and reporter for CBS. His career with the company spanned three decades until his death in 2006. Before joining CBS at the age of 31, Crile was Washington Editor of Harper's Magazine. In addition to Harper's, his articles were published in The Washington Monthly, New Times, The Washington Post Outlook Section and The New York Times.

Producer

Crile joined CBS News in 1976 to produce The CIA's Secret Army, his trail-breaking documentary that chronicled the previously untold story of the CIA’s secret wars against Castro after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Historian Henry Steele Commager wrote that it would go down as one of the most important journalistic reports in U.S. American history.

It was the first of a collection of broadcasts based on Crile's reporting, in which he took viewers into previously closed and inaccessible worlds. Among his notable documentary reports were The Battle for South Africa, which won a Peabody Award and The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception. The latter, which aired on January 23, 1982, was the subject of a libel action brought by General William Westmoreland. CBS News and Crile were defended by attorney David Boies.

Before the "Vietnam Deception" controversy Crile was embroiled in a similar controversy following the 1980 CBS Reports program "Gay Power, Gay Politics", which he reported, wrote, and co-produced. The program focused on gay politics in San Francisco following the assassination of openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978. It was widely denounced as manipulative and dishonest, a view partially upheld by the National News Council, an industry self-policing body not known for its willingness to criticize the networks.^[2]

In 1985, Crile joined 60 Minutes, where he produced scores of reports with Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley and Harry Reasoner and established his credentials as a specialist in coverage of international affairs. He was on the forefront of covering the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and in collaboration with a Russian counterpart Artyom Borovik he became the only US American reporter ever to gain access to the Soviet Union's nuclear empire.

Reporter

His initial 60 Minutes report, revealing the Soviet nuclear command’s willingness to consider halting the targeting of the USA, played a significant role in helping set up a summit between the US and Soviet nuclear commanders. His numerous reports from inside the deadly secret worlds of Russia and the United States appeared on 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II as well as an hour-long documentary for CNN. The Overseas Press Club twice awarded him the Edward R. Murrow Award for these broadcasts. Crile's reports included such subjects as Three Mile Island, the changing boundaries of death, judicial corruption in Texas. But throughout the years he focused primarily on covering crises in U.S. foreign affairs. Broadcast subjects included reports on:

The revolution in Haiti
The battle over the Panama Canal
US Cuban policy
The Afghan War
The Contra war
The Sandinistas
General Singlaub and the World Anti Communist League
Prince Bandar and the special U.S. Saudi connection
The African National Congress
America’s losing war on drugs
The search for Archbishop Romero’s murderers.
Jonas Savimbi and the US backing of UNITA
The Gulf War
The USS Harlan County incident
The CIA's man in Havana
The killers of Rwanda
The unsung heroes of the US military campaign in El Salvador
The KGB and the world of Soviet Intelligence
Russia and America's nuclear arsenals

After the September 11 attacks, Crile repeatedly drew on his extensive experience and contacts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Near East to provide behind the scenes look into the worlds of Osama bin Laden and militant Islam.

Charlie Wilson's War

Main article: Operation Cyclone

In the late 1980s, Crile began the research and reporting on the Afghan War that led to his 2003 best-selling book, Charlie Wilson's War, which tells the story of how the United States funded the only successful jihad in modern history, the CIA's secret war in Afghanistan that gave the Soviet Union their own Vietnam. The support for the Afghans, which took place via a Pakistani corridor, according to some strained interpretations led to a later jihad against westerners, which Crile claimed to have foreseen.

Charlie Wilson’s War has been widely and favorably reviewed and is currently in its 10th printing. The book attempted to portray how American government actually works, as opposed to what appears in political science textbooks. It is the basis of the Tom Hanks/Mike Nichols film, Charlie Wilson's War, which was released by Universal Studios in December 2007.^[3]

References

↑ Martin, Douglas (16 May 2006). "George Crile, CBS Documentary Producer, Dies at 61". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 April 2013.
↑ For an account of the program's misrepresentation, see Larry Gross, Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (Columbia University Press, 2001, pp. 50–54, ISBN 9780231119535 ). For a critical account of Crile's Vietnam program's bias, see Stephen Klaidman and Tom Beauchamp, The Virtuous Journalist (Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 166, ISBN 0195042050 ).
↑ GoneWithTheTwins (21 December 2007). "Charlie Wilson's War (2007)". IMDb.

External links

Interview on Charlie Wilson's War at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library
Appearances on C-SPAN

Cold War

USA USSR ANZUS NATO Non-Aligned Movement SEATO Warsaw Pact

1940s	Hukbalahap Rebellion Dekemvriana Yalta Conference Operation Unthinkable Potsdam Conference Gouzenko Affair Operation Masterdom Operation Beleaguer Operation Blacklist Forty Iran crisis of 1946 Greek Civil War Corfu Channel incident Turkish Straits crisis Restatement of Policy on Germany First Indochina War Truman Doctrine Asian Relations Conference Marshall Plan 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état Tito–Stalin Split Berlin Blockade Western betrayal Iron Curtain Eastern Bloc Western Bloc Chinese Civil War (Second round) Malayan Emergency

1950s	Bamboo Curtain Korean War 1953 Iranian coup d'état Uprising of 1953 in East Germany 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état Partition of Vietnam First Taiwan Strait Crisis Geneva Summit (1955) Poznań 1956 protests Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Suez Crisis Syrian Crisis of 1957 Sputnik crisis Second Taiwan Strait Crisis Cuban Revolution Kitchen Debate Bandung Conference Bricker Amendment McCarthyism Operation Gladio Iraqi July Revolution "We will bury you"

1960s	Congo Crisis Sino-Soviet split 1960 U-2 incident Bay of Pigs Invasion 1960 Turkish coup d'état Soviet–Albanian split Berlin Wall Portuguese Colonial War (Angolan War of Independence Guinea-Bissau War of Independence Mozambican War of Independence) Cuban Missile Crisis Sino-Indian War Sarawak Communist Insurgency Iraqi Ramadan Revolution 1963 Syrian coup d'état Vietnam War 1964 Brazilian coup d'état United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1965–66) South African Border War Transition to the New Order Domino theory ASEAN Declaration Laotian Civil War 1966 Syrian coup d'état Argentine Revolution Korean DMZ Conflict Greek military junta of 1967–74 USS Pueblo incident Six-Day War War of Attrition Cultural Revolution Prague Spring Malaysia Communist Insurgency War Invasion of Czechoslovakia Iraqi Ba'athist Revolution Goulash Communism Sino-Soviet border conflict CPP-NPA-NDF rebellion Corrective Move

1970s	Détente Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Black September in Jordan Corrective Movement (Syria) Cambodian Civil War Realpolitik Ping-pong diplomacy 1971 Turkish military memorandum Corrective Revolution (Egypt) Four Power Agreement on Berlin Bangladesh Liberation War 1972 Nixon visit to China 1973 Chilean coup d'état Yom Kippur War Carnation Revolution Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Rhodesian Bush War Angolan Civil War Mozambican Civil War Ogaden War Ethiopian Civil War Lebanese Civil War Sino-Albanian split Cambodian–Vietnamese War Sino-Vietnamese War Iranian Revolution Operation Condor Dirty War Korean Air Lines Flight 902 Seven Days to the River Rhine Struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union

1980s	Soviet–Afghan War 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics boycotts 1980 Turkish coup d'état 1986 Black Sea incident 1988 Black Sea bumping incident Solidarity Soviet reaction Contras Central American crisis RYAN Korean Air Lines Flight 007 Able Archer 83 Star Wars Invasion of Grenada People Power Revolution Nagorno-Karabakh War Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall Revolutions of 1989 Glasnost Perestroika

1990s	Mongolian Revolution of 1990 Breakup of Yugoslavia Dissolution of the Soviet Union Dissolution of Czechoslovakia

Frozen conflicts	Abkhazia China Korea Nagorno-Karabakh South Ossetia Transnistria Sino-Indian border dispute

Foreign policy	Truman Doctrine Marshall Plan Containment Eisenhower Doctrine Domino theory Hallstein Doctrine Kennedy Doctrine Peaceful coexistence Ostpolitik Johnson Doctrine Brezhnev Doctrine Nixon Doctrine Ulbricht Doctrine Carter Doctrine Reagan Doctrine Rollback Sovereignty of Puerto Rico during the Cold War

Ideologies	Capitalism Chicago school Keynesianism Monetarism Neoclassical economics Reaganomics Supply-side economics Thatcherism Communism Marxism–Leninism Castroism Eurocommunism Guevarism Hoxhaism Juche Maoism Naxalism Stalinism Titoism Liberal democracy Social democracy

Organizations	ASEAN CIA Comecon EEC KGB Non-Aligned Movement SAARC Safari Club MI6 Stasi

Propaganda	Active measures Izvestia Pravda Crusade for Freedom Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Red Scare TASS Voice of America Voice of Russia

Races	Arms race Nuclear arms race Space Race

See also	Brinkmanship NATO–Russia relations Soviet espionage in U.S. Russian espionage in U.S. American espionage in the Soviet Union Soviet Union–United States relations US–Soviet summits

Category Portal Timeline List of conflicts

War on Terror

War in Afghanistan • Iraq War • War in North-West Pakistan

Participants

Operational	ISAF Operation Enduring Freedom participants Afghanistan Northern Alliance Iraq (Iraqi Armed Forces) NATO Pakistan United Kingdom United States European Union Philippines Ethiopia

Targets	al-Qaeda Osama bin Laden al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant al-Nusra Front Khorasan Abu Sayyaf Anwar al-Awlaki Al-Shabaab Hamas Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami Hezbollah Hizbul Mujahideen Islamic Courts Union Jaish-e-Mohammed Jemaah Islamiyah Lashkar-e-Taiba Taliban Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

Conflicts

Operation Enduring Freedom	War in Afghanistan OEF – Philippines Georgia Train and Equip Program Georgia Sustainment and Stability OEF – Horn of Africa OEF – Trans Sahara Drone strikes in Pakistan

Other	Insurgency in the Maghreb (2002–present) Insurgency in the North Caucasus Moro conflict in the Philippines Iraq War Iraqi insurgency Operation Linda Nchi Terrorism in Saudi Arabia War in North-West Pakistan War in Somalia (2006–09) 2007 Lebanon conflict al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen Military intervention against ISIL Operation Inherent Resolve War in Afghanistan (2015–present) Operation Resolute Support