The election is bearing down, and today’s media is leading us into it. Cleaning out old files, I found something long forgotten about how it worked. It was a sheaf of notes nineteen years old. It was stunning, reading about how this current reality was formed. The wounds of 9/11 were still raw and everyone wanted to do something. It was the end of November; memorable at this distance because I was a peripheral honoree for some work other people had done.

People were in town from Hollywood, since we were still talking back then. The ceremony was a strange and moving ceremony under the Dome at the CIA Original Headquarters Building at Langley. It is a marvelous structure, used for unclassified gatherings and events outside the main campus where the secrets lie. They don’t approve when we called it the Igloo, but that is what it looks like.

The statue of Nathan Hale, the Rebel spy who regretted that he only had one life to give for his country stands next to it. Hale is bronze and his gaze is forthright and his hands are bound, just as they were when he told his British captors they could jolly well go to hell.

The flag was at half-staff in honor of Mike Spann, the DO operative who had been killed in the prison uprising at Masar e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. The event lent a solemnity to the proceedings. The sky was gray and sprits of rain dotted the windshields of the cars in the lot. I talked to a Producer about some of the projects she was working on. There were proposals for documentaries, feature films and potential series. One or more of them might even have happened, but at this distance and so much water over the dam I can’t remember what it might have been. I don’t pretend to understand the entertainment business, and I admired enormously those who seemed to. It was a good feeling, having the whole team pulled together.

The ceremony marched forward with efficiency. The twenty-five individuals and teams were presented within a half hour. The certificates are awarded first, for significant accomplishments in the classified world. The citations are abbreviated and cryptic. The descriptions of events are generic, so the families can hear and understand that something special had been done, without actually saying what it was. Those in the business could tell, but it is peculiar shorthand tailored for mass secrecy.

When it came my turn, I walked quickly up the three stairs and onto the rostrum. I was gratified that I was getting a medal but uncomfortable with being recognized publicly. Others were here for recognition of individual acts of courage, or the culmination of a life spent in the secret world. The accomplishments attributed to me were actually the work of the organization that I had led, a staff of incredible professionals who worked anonymously in an arcane world of program-and-budget to pay for it all. As with all accomplishments, this was a team effort for which I got the credit. I kissed the Deputy Director on the cheek. It was a sweet moment.

But the day wasn’t over, and there was still work to be done downtown. Later, we hooked up with a spin-doctor who might have been the model for the guy in the film “Wag the Dog” and went with him to the White House to meet with a senior Administration official regarding information policy issues. Security at the Old Executive Office Building was tighter than usual, and the broad corridors were silent in the depths of the Friday early evening. It was an ambiguous meeting as things usually are there, and then a strategy session in a large black car hurtling back uptown. Then dinner with a senior NPR correspondent and breakfast meetings Saturday to outline strategy for the next step in ordering the various proposals into some coherent strategy.

That was the way things worked back before we got plugged into everything new and dynamic. Today, they are starting to talk about chip inserts as the next surge in assertive self-modification.

There was another reception in the evening, no plastic-covered badges required. We were at the older of the Westin venues, where the Jockey Club had been located for years. It was rich wood and starched white tablecloths and brass. They specialized in perfecting return of fine-dining to the District. They copied the 21 Club in New York, dark wood, intimate lantern lighting, and red leather semicircular banquettes. I just knew the light was dim. The Kennedys had dined there, of course, and in 1964 Jackie made headlines with a Marlon Brando appearance. It became a bit stale as Nancy Reagan’s favorite spot, and demand declined as the decor seemed “old fashioned.” The Jockey Club closed that year, so it was an interesting last call in 2001, the year the endless war started.

Jockeys were replaced by at the time by Cabo, a French-American collision restaurant without the somewhat stuffy but comfortable feel of the old power watering hole. The martinis were $8.90 in the bar, and that night it was filled with a singles group. The men all looked like it was at least their second time around, slightly paunchy, hair thinning, and the women were dressed to the nines, lot of off-the-shoulder cocktail dresses, hair piled high and evidence of a lot of time spent with personal fitness trainers. I looked the scene over with some bemusement and returned to the lobby to call Hollywood upstairs on the house phone.

I stopped in front of the two elevators and the one on the left opened. A distinguished couple emerged, the lady looking to be in her early sixties and the man older, probably in his eighties. Certainly, in his eighties as I recognized him.

“Good evening, Mr. Cronkite,” I said and stuck out my hand. It was Walter himself, the most influential journalist of his generation. His bushy eyebrows were unmistakable. “I’d like to thank you for your service to this country,” I said in medium but respectful tone.

Walter stuck his hand right back, looking me squarely in the eye. I felt myself plunged back thirty years, watching him in black and white as he guided us through the Kennedy assassination and the landings on the Moon. Some historians point to his Report from Vietnam as a turning point in the home perception of the war. He was accused of hastening domestic acceptance that victory could not be achieved in the war. I looked at how they used to measure success with body counts, our side on the way to 58,000 dead kids. Imagine that as your reality.

“Why, thank-you, Captain” he said in the full rich tones that marked the height of the American Century. I was still in uniform that evening, but it was not surprising that he knew my rank and moderate status in the world with a glance. “What is your name?” he asked with a slight smile, eyebrow up.

“Vic Socotra, Sir.”

“Why I know a Socotra- Bob Socotra, who is President of the Texas School of Journalism. Are you related?”

“Not to my knowledge, Sir, but there aren’t many of us.” I didn’t want to intrude on his privacy. I told him it was an honor to have met him, and that I wished him a very pleasant evening. Walter and the lady walked slowly to the entrance and out into the balmy late November night. I headed for the house phone to find my glam-town associate for her trip. I was pleased that it had worked out this way. In a surreal way, it felt completely natural to be encountering an American icon in the flesh against the rich paneling and oriental rugs. He was alert and kind, just as I had always imagined him.

I can’t imagine what it would be like these days. I don’t know the media line-up on all the channels. I watch enough Fox to be disparaged by my pals who have progressive views, but I honestly don’t know the other personalities on the other cable feeds. It wasn’t that way in the analogue world- all three channels of it. Walter was the man, he knew it, we knew it, and probably all the birds that flew between our televisions knew it, too.

He has had a couple re-writes on the resume before he left the Anchor Deck in the late eighties and then passed in 2009. He had friends and foes in his declaration about Vietnam. Some hawks blamed him for the loss of the Vietnam War, which is a pretty big accomplishment, if true. I know enough now to appreciate what I don’t know, and can only imagine it happened to him, too. But of course he said it from there. I thought of him when I had to give a brief speech of congratulations to the mayor of what used to be Saigon on the victory.

My reaction at bumping into him was profound. That is what they were in the second generation of broadcast news. Of course they were all Caucasian. The essence of the old non-diversity, rooted deep in the generation that survived a depression and won a global war. I am trapped by the relic memories of a different time in the new age of time measured in news cycles of increasingly short duration. Back then we were always alert for nuance on the evening news. Desperate for something accurate, I still felt we were getting most of the information we needed.

That is not the case now, of course, and I sometimes get lost between talking heads from the news and the opinion departments on the outlets. There is supposed to be a difference between news and the agitprop people. It is curious to be moving so quickly into an integrated digital species.

Walter may have changed that in his message about Vietnam, but it was clearly stated that it was an unusual piece not entirely from the newsroom. It was Walter’s opinion. It was a powerful alignment, and not what we get from what is floating around out there today. It was old school. I don’t claim to understand the new one.

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com