July 16, 1999   3 Av 5759

Breaking Out Of The Pack
Wolf Blitzer reflects on his front-line view of history and on his Jewish life.

"Wyou doin'?" screams the larger-than-life face of Democratic spinmeister
James Carville as it fills the TV screen in the Cable News Network
Washington, D.C. studio. Carville is speaking, of course, to Wolf Blitzer,
CNN's senior White House correspondent.
Blitzer holds back a grin as he offers "my warmest" to the Carville
family. A half-hour earlier, he wished Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari
"good luck in your visit to Belgrade." It was the eve of the politician's
peace-seeking mission that would help end the Kosovo war. In June, Blitzer
ended his Sunday show "Late Edition" with "Happy Father's Day to all you
fathers out there, and especially to my dad in Florida."
The greetings are a typical part of the "nice-guy-of-the-news" demeanor
that has accompanied Blitzer - raised in a traditional Jewish home in
Buffalo, N.Y., the son of Polish Holocaust survivors - to the top of his
profession.
Even casual viewers of television news know his name. Recognition soared
eight years ago like a rising Scud missile from Blitzer's seemingly
omnipresent live Pentagon broadcasts during the Gulf War.
"When you are in the right place at the right time and you do something
about it, and you do it right, you get lucky," he says during an interview
on Memorial Day. "I worked hard, and obviously it was harder for me because
I was not used to television. But fortunately TV is not brain surgery, and
CNN gave me good producers and [other] people."
After the Gulf War, Blitzer covered the 1992 presidential campaign trail,
and anchored the White House beat, along with a long list of special
assignments. Two weeks ago,, he announced he was leaving the White House to
anchor CNN's revamped 10 p.m "World Today" newscast. Blitzer will continue
to host the popular political talk show, "Late Edition.
Over the years, Blitzer's been there live when the communist flag came down
at the Kremlin, when then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton celebrated his
presidential victory, and when Ehud Barak triumphed in the election of
Israel's newest prime minister. Throughout, Blitzer has traded the
belligerent, in-your-face style of some of his colleagues for an
even-toned, straightforward demeanor when reporting and interviewing.
That has earned him professional respect and helped his teams win an Emmy,
a Golden CableACE award and a "Best In The Business Award" from American
Journalism Review.
Along the way, a comic sort of celebrity has arisen. It comes from the
unusual name - it's real - and the bright white beard, a rarity among
high-profile "clean-cut" newscasters. A "Saturday Night Live" television
show skit focused on Blitzer having "the best name of the Gulf War." The
popular Capitol Steps improvisation group performed a song about him, while
David Letterman featured the facial hair in a top 10 list.
Blitzer enjoys the attention. About "Saturday Night Live," he says, "That
was cool. It was really fun for my daughter and my colleagues who could
have a good laugh at me."

A pragmatic route to Israel

On this Sunday, Blitzer has just finished the live broadcast of "Late
Edition," the 90-minute behind-the-headlines show that aired on CNN at
noon. (The show has since returned to an 8 p.m. prime time hour as well on
Tuesday nights.)
His day begins, as it does every Sunday, with a 6:30 a.m. read of The New
York Times and Washington Post. Two hours later, Blitzer arrives at CNN's
office here. On weekdays, he goes straight to the White House - or wherever
the day's top story brings him.
Today, off-camera preparation with producers and assistants includes
writing and rewriting the script, figuring out Finland's time zone, and
confirming the number of dead at Arlington National Cemetery.
At 11:55 a.m., senior executive producer Lucy Spiegel tells her colleagues,
"Let's get him in the studio." So Blitzer compliantly dons his jacket and
makes the brisk walk around the corner and down the hallway.
After a last-minute check from an Atlanta director, Blitzer sips from his
"Late Edition" coffee mug and gives a final shuffle to index cards. For the
next 90 minutes, he and guest newsmakers focus primarily on the Kosovo
crisis.
When it's over, a relaxed, engaging and now makeup-free Blitzer joins a
visiting reporter in a conference room to discuss his career and his
private life.
Blitzer's obsession with national and world affairs began in the summer of
1968, which he spent at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His first trip to
the Jewish state was in 1961, when he became a bar mitzvah.
After graduation from State University of New York at Buffalo came a
master's degree in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies. He returned to Israel
for a two-year reporting stint for the Reuters News Agency. "I wasn't sure
I wanted to be a journalist," he says, "but they had some really great
people who taught me the trade."
Why Israel? His answer, perhaps resulting from an upbringing where being
Jewish was more natural than pursued, is practical. "I had been studying
Hebrew," he says matter-of-factly. "I figured it would be a good place to
go."
He returned home to get married a few months before the 1973 Yom Kippur
War. Around the same time, the Jerusalem Post asked him to be its
Washington correspondent, triggering a 16-year tenure that made Blitzer one
of the most well-known reporters in the Jewish world - and increasingly
visible in the greater journalism community.
Blitzer's rise began with an analysis column which was soon picked up by
the London Jewish Chronicle, and then U.S. Jewish papers such as the
Atlanta Jewish Times and its sister paper in Baltimore. Several Israeli
dailies started reprinting it in Hebrew under bylines such as Ze'ev Blitzer
and Ze'ev Barak, "Ze'ev" meaning "wolf" and "barak" being "lightning,"
which correlates with "blitzer," a German word.
"I got about $50 from the big papers like Baltimore, and from the small
ones about $10 or $15, and there were some who never paid anyway," he says
with a grin. "On any week there could be 30 or 40 papers using it. I had
never had any accounting; if they used it I trusted them to pay."
Even then, Blitzer reported on some of the world's biggest stories. He flew
to Cairo to cover the breaking Israeli-Egyptian peace treaties. In 1982,
he was in Beirut for the withdrawal of Syrian and Palestine Liberation
Organization forces. Three years later, he doggedly pursued the case of
Jonathan Jay Pollard, the U.S. Naval intelligence agent convicted of spying
on the United States for Israel. The research resulted in a book,
"Territory of Lies."
"I still follow it [the Pollard affair] to a certain degree," he says, "but
I'm not really up on the details."

Kuwait's troubles a boon to Blitzer

Throughout those years, Blitzer became a pipeline of trusted information
for many Jews and others. "He is regarded both within and without the
Jewish community and the journalistic community as a man of integrity,"
says Buddy Sisslin, who often invited Blitzer to speak at Washington's
Jewish Community Council. "He starts off as a man who can be trusted. He
adds to that a certain insightfulness and an ability to draw people out."
Quips Sisslin, "He's just fundamentally a really decent guy. In a world of
wolves, he's a really nice wolf."
Blitzer's Jerusalem Post days ended in 1989 with new ownership and new
ideology that took the paper to the right of center. He joined other
colleagues who felt that their era at the daily had passed.
Around that time, some top CNN executives invited Blitzer to lunch. Before
the meal check arrived, Blitzer had a job offer, one that he jumped at.
"I never had written a script for TV or anything like that," he says. "But
I was looking for something else and CNN, without knowing that, approached
me. I was amazed, and doubly amazed when they asked me to be the Pentagon
correspondent.
"Fortunately, a few months later the Iraqis invaded Kuwait," he says. "Bad
for Kuwait and good for my career. Here was a story that I knew a lot
about, covering the Middle East for so many years. Here was a story that
the whole world was watching, that I could use sources that I had used for
years."
Today, unlike many well-known television news show hosts or anchors,
Blitzer remains in the daily reporting grind.
"I have worked long hours," he says. "I'm not complaining because it's been
really fascinating. I do a tremendous amount of reporting. I'm not relying
on other people to do it for me. I'm on the phone all the time and if you
want to break stories that's what you have to do. I'm competing with some
of the best journalists in the world and when you are competing with them
your game gets better."
In doing so, he says he has always strived to be unbiased. "The highest
compliment I can get was when my readers and now viewers say, 'I don't know
if you are a Democrat or Republican,' or 'Do you favor the Likud or Labor?'
" he says. "I want people to come away from something I write or do on TV
and say, 'I learned something I didn't know.' "
Nor does he buy into claims by some Jewish media watchdog groups that CNN
is biased against Israel.
"Since he usually doesn't deal with the Middle East, it's hard to
characterize him," says Alex Safian, associate director for CAMERA - The
Committee For Accuracy in Middle East Reporting.
But Safian points to coverage after a suicide terrorist attack in Israel a
few years ago. Blitzer said that peace talks would subsequently be on hold.
"He phrased it as if he had no idea that it's a traditional mourning
period," Safian says. "One would expect someone with his history to be a
little more cognizant of some of the realities and the facts, and perhaps
be a little tougher on administration officials. I assume that he sometimes
knows more than he lets on."
Blitzer explains it this way. "I don't get any pressure from Jewish groups.
I get letters from lots of viewers, Jewish and non-Jewish. I get criticism.
A lot of people think I am unfair to Clinton, or too nice. I can't remember
any criticism or praise for that matter as far as my [CNN] coverage from
the Middle East."
He did not speak of President Clinton in this interview, but during an
April address in Baltimore to the Rabbinical Assembly convention, he was
candid.
"One of the biggest senses of regret that I have had over the past year was
all of us were forced to spend so much time covering the investigation of
the president, and we had no choice," he told 500 Conservative rabbis.
"Here was a criminal investigation of the president and a trial in the
Senate, and the impeachment process in the House. So we had to cover it,
but it seemed like such a terrible waste that we had to go through.
Specifically, it drained a lot of attention away from where our focus
should have been. For example, all of sudden Kosovo sprung up."

Committed to a Jewish home life

When not on the job- and the beeper he wears means that he's almost always
on the job - Blitzer enjoys reading, playing tennis, working out "and
hanging around with my wife, daughter and friends. I have no trouble
relaxing. My problem is getting time to do it."
Sitting on his night table these days is "The Lexus And The Olive Tree," by
New York Times international affairs columnist Thomas Friedman. "When I do
read now it has to be quick," Blitzer says.
His home life has a distinctive Jewish flavor. "I believe in the
traditions," says the man who watched his mother light Shabbat candles and
whose father is known as an excellent Torah reader. "I think we've tried to
instill in our daughter, Elana, an understanding of her background and
faith, and the history of her parents and grandparents. That's very
important to us and to her, but I don't think she appreciates it as much
now as she will down the road. I can't say we're very observant or anything
like that, but it's part of our life."
Rabbi Matthew H. Simon of Congregation B'nai Israel in Rockville, Md.,
where the Blitzers have a long-standing family membership, sees a
commitment.
"What's nice about Wolf is that he's not a shy Jew in his synagogue," says
the rabbi. "Everybody knows he's around, and he and his wife have many
personal friends here."
The rabbi points to Elana Blitzer's bat mitzvah a few years ago as
reflective of the family's life and values. "It was a serious bat mitzvah
and the family were serious participants," he says. "Their commitment was
to make it a Jewish affair."
Whether it's Jewish, national or international affairs, by all accounts
Blitzer is making a lasting mark in a profession measured in seconds. And
enjoying it immensely.
As he says, "They literally pay me to have a front row seat to history and
do fascinating things around the world. As a boy growing up in Buffalo I
always loved international affairs and politics. I never in my life dreamed
that I would have a job doing this. So if it ain't broken, don't fix it."

The Blitzer File
BORN:   
March 22, 1948
Buffalo, N.Y.

EDUCATION:   
Arts and History, B.S.,
State University of New York at Buffalo
International Relations, M.S.,
The Johns Hopkins University School of
Advanced International Studies

PROFESSIONAL:
*Reporter,
Reuters News Agency, Jerusalem
(1971-1973)
*Washington Correspondent,
Jerusalem Post, Washington, D.C.
(1973-1989)
*Senior World Today Anchor,
White House Correspondent,
Cable News Network (1990-present)

MARRIED:    
Lynn Greenfield

CHILDREN:    
Elana

RESIDES:
Bethesda, Md.

BOOKS:
"Between Washington and Jerusalem: A Reporter's Notebook
(Oxford University Press, 1985)

"Territory of Lies"
(Harper and Row, 1989)