Function
60 Minutes' Cheap Shots
Ukrainian Anti-Semitism
Jewish Ukrainophobia
Mailbag
A Sense of Responsibility
What 60 Minutes Should Do
PostScript
Preface
On 23 Oct 1994, CBS television broadcast a twelve-minute segment on its weekly
investigative-journalism show 60 Minutes titled The Ugly Face of Freedom, produced by Jeffrey
Fager and hosted by Morley Safer. The program's goal was to indict Ukrainian society and
history and to discredit the legitimacy of the Ukrainian State. The program's method was to
pack the broadcast with what may be the most concentrated segment of disinformation, calumny,
and hatred ever to make its appearance in the mainstream media. The program had been ready for
over half a year, but was not broadcast until the first official visit to the United States of
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Whether this timing was by coincidence or design became the
subject of comment among some program viewers.
From the beginning of the affair, it could not escape notice that this broadcast was not only an
attack upon Ukrainians and upon the nation of Ukraine, but that it was a Jewish attack, this
because every last person bearing responsibility for the broadcast, from the very top of the
chain of command to the very bottom, was Jewish:
Laurence Tisch, Chairman and CEO of CBS
Eric Ober, President of CBS News
Don Hewitt, Executive Producer of 60 Minutes
Jeffrey Fager, Producer of The Ugly Face of Freedom
Morley Safer, Program Host
Simon Wiesenthal, one of the two featured program witnesses
Yaakov Bleich, the other of the two featured program witnesses
That attacks upon Ukraine come overwhelmingly from Jews has been amply documented on the
Ukrainian Archive (UKAR), as for example in the discussion of Jerzy Kosinski, where it is noted
that ten out of ten of the leading calumniators of Ukraine are Jews. Possible reasons for this
phenomenon have been discussed throughout UKAR, with three of the chief reasons being: (1) the
acceleration of the brain drain from Ukraine to Israel with the help of a partly-magnified and
partly-incited resentment against Jews, (2) the heightening of Jewish cohesion through the
inculcation of fear and hatred of Gentiles, as by the Jewish keeping alive of a distorted memory
of the Khmelnytsky rebellion of 1648, and (3) the need to discredit the historical observation
that Jews typically victimize Ukrainians by inculcating the opposite image of Ukrainians
victimizing Jews.
On 15 Nov 1994, I mailed a letter to then CBS Chairman Laurence A. Tisch which consisted of a
lengthy critique of the 60 Minutes broadcast. I simultaneously mailed copies of this letter to
the host of the broadcast, Morley Safer, as well as the co-hosts Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Lesley
Stahl, and Mike Wallace. I received no reply from any of them. On 17 Dec 1994, I mailed a
covering letter to Laurence Tisch together with an expanded version of my critique (the critique
was now titled The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes, and was dated 11 Dec 1994), with copies to the same
host and co-hosts. I again received no reply.
In an attempt to clarify the accuracy of the 60 Minutes broadcast, other letters were sent,
among them letters to Michael Jordan, Chairman of Westinghouse, following the Westinghouse
purchase of CBS in 1995, letters to Simon Wiesenthal, star witness on The Ugly Face of Freedom,