WASHINGTON, July 23 (UPI) -- Veteran broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr died Friday morning at Washington's Georgetown University Hospital. He was 93.
The Washington Post said the specific cause of Schorr's death was not disclosed.
A commentator for National Public Radio for the past 25 years, Schorr's long career as an investigative newscaster made him one of the best-known U.S. television journalists and got him in trouble after he was singled out as an enemy of the President Richard M. Nixon administration.
CBS suspended him in a dispute over publication of a report the Nixon administration had classified as secret.
As a reporter and commentator for CBS in 1970, Schorr first antagonized Nixon when he said the administration had failed to set up a national healthcare program.
He further angered Nixon when he reported the president had voiced misgivings about the effectiveness of the Safeguard antiballistic missile. Nixon denied making such a statement and called Schorr a liar.
On Aug. 17, 1971, the president told the Knights of Columbus he would formulate a government program to assist parochial schools. An investigation by Schorr indicated no such plan was in the making and he made his findings known on television.
Schorr was called for an interview by an FBI agent who said the commentator was being considered for an important government position. When Schorr refused the interview, his friends and acquaintances were questioned by FBI agents, again on the pretext that Schorr was in line for a sensitive job.
Schorr found no indication he actually was being considered for such a position. Later it was learned the FBI had been used by the administration in an effort to intimidate Schorr.
During the Watergate scandal, Nixon appeared on television on several occasions in attempts to clear the White House. Schorr followed each Nixon appearance with adverse comment.
Schorr also reported the CIA had been involved in assassination plots against three foreign leaders. He noted President Gerald Ford was apprehensive the reports would put the United States in an embarrassing position on foreign relations.
When the House Intelligence Committee investigated the CIA and FBI, Schorr obtained a copy of the Congressional group's final report. The White House persuaded the committee to withhold the report from the public. An angered Schorr gave the report to the Village Voice, a New York weekly publication, but initially denied he was the source of the document. A day later he admitted the Voice report had come from him, and he was suspended by CBS Feb. 18, 1976.
Schorr later defended his action before a congressional committee, and the investigation into the leak was halted. However, Schorr was blamed for having allowed suspicion over the leaked document's source to fall briefly on fellow CBS reporter Leslie Stahl, a situation publicized when Mike Wallace interviewed Schorr for CBS's "60 Minutes" news program.
Schorr subsequently resigned from the network to teach and lecture and complete a book, "Clearing the Air."
In 1979, Schorr became the first nationally known television journalist to join Ted Turner's Cable News Network, becoming its Washington anchor. He left CNN in March 1985. Schorr said he was dismissed after CNN "insisted on abrogating the assurance of my journalistic independence," which he said Turner had personally guaranteed.
Schorr was born in New York Aug. 31, 1916. After graduating from City College of New York in 1939, he worked on the copy desk for the Jewish Telegraph Agency and then for the New York Journal American. In 1941 he went to Amsterdam to run the New York office of the Netherlands News Agency. This work was interrupted by Army service during World War II.
After his discharge, Schorr returned to his Amsterdam job and remained there until 1948 when he began free-lancing for various publications including The New York Times and Christian Science Monitor.
He joined CBS News in 1953 as Washington correspondent, with assignments also to Latin America and Europe, and in 1955 reopened the network's Moscow bureau.
Roving assignments later took him to stories in Europe and the United States.
