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Interview: David Martin on the Wilderness of Mirrors, and More
The vaunted CBS News correspondent reflects on 50 years in the national security trenches
David Martin is not all that happy about being honored for his decades as a highly regarded, much decorated, national security correspondent at CBS News. In late September he was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Gold Circle honor society.
“Well, you know, it's kind of bittersweet because obviously you like being recognized by your peers, but the fact that I'm getting a medal which says the number 50 on it tells you that the calendar does not lie,” Martin tells me in an interview for the latest installment of the SpyTalk podcast. “And you know, I hate to think of having to leave this business. I enjoy it so much. But you know…”
Martin first earned his reporting chops at the Associated Press, which he counts as “the most valuable experience of my life, because it just really taught you the basics—’get it first, but first get it right.’ And I'm convinced that all the habits I learned in my twenties are the habits I've used ever since.”
Parlaying his stint as a young U.S Naval officer aboard a destroyer off Vietnam during the war, Martin won a job with the A.P. on the military beat. But covering the Church Committee’s 1975-76 investigation of the CIA’s Cold War excesses—assassinations, domestic spying, LSD experiments on unwitting American citizens and the like—drew him into the netherworld of covert operations and mole hunts, which he would eventually call “The Wilderness of Mirrors” in a groundbreaking 1980 book.
In 1983, Martin joined—actually rejoined—CBS News, where he’d done a stint as a researcher 15 years earlier, followed by a few years at Newsweek on the national security beat. From the get-go he had numerous firsts and scoops, earning him several Emmys and other coveted journalism awards as he covered U.S. diplomacy, domestic security, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the CIA’s global pursuit of terrorists, and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the agency’s black sites and interrogations methods, led by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
In our interview, Martin compared the CIA’s treatment of terrorist suspects to what North Vietnam meted out to American POWs.
“They don't use the word torture, but I think any, yeah, but anybody listening to what happened would call it torture,” he said.
Asked what drives him today, Martin instantly answered “the war in Ukraine, which is just one of the most extraordinary things.”
“You know,” he adds, “I thought in 1989 and 1990, when the Cold War ended, the Pentagon correspondent's job might become a backwater. And of course, it's become anything but.”
Listen to the whole fascinating conversation here on Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview: David Martin on the Wilderness of Mirrors, and More
New to SPYTALK,
I just listened to the Podcast with Stein and Martin. Very Interesting.
"Life in the Wilderness of Mirrors......"
From this Podcast gives a journalist summary view of Intelligence matters from
1945 to the most recent War In Ukraine as Martin states
"One of the Most Incredible Things"
"You could not have Imagined"
Well History has a bad habit of repeating itself and
the new population is hell-bent on making exactly
the same mistakes of another war in Europe as Martin and Stein state.
"Ground War In Europe" "My God Tank Wars In Europe"
"Casaulty Figures are .... Just ... Stunning"
"We fully do not appreciate the Brutality of this War"
"Over a half a million young men killed or wounded in the course of a year and a half"
"That is just .......... Mid-Evil"
"What Drives Me More Is The War In Ukraine"
"Horrible Kind of Stuff ..... all of it ..... just Mindblowing......"
The last statement was the almost the end of the Interview. I hope people listen
to this Interview a realize the seriouness of the "US Involvement" in
another Endless War in Ukraine.
Stein states at the End of Martin Interview
"They Knicknamed you Run Silent Run Deep because of your Style"
and term used with Submarines.
I hope you all understand the US Intelligence only gives you what they
want you to know and report on which is usually NOT what is really going on.
Alot of young Russian and Ukraine Boys are being killed daily.
I have walked down Missile Aisle hundreds of times on the Ohio, Michigan and
the Florida. This is indeed very very serious.
Howard Walther, Santa Barbara CA
An interview well worth listening to. Mr. Martin provides perspective on events current and historic that seldom is heard these days when opinion seems more important than fact. I particularly appreciated his comments on the value of his time as a novice reporter at the Associated Press. Reminded me of my brief period after college as a reporter on the Saratoga Springs Saratogian. It helped set my compass for the career in intelligence that would soon come. Reporting news and collecting intelligence have their similarities and demands.