Bernard Kalb, a veteran TV reporter for CBS and NBC who quit his job as a State Department spokesman in the 1980s to protest a U.S. government disinformation campaign against Libya, has died at 100.
The disinformation campaign followed U.S. airstrikes that had hit Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s compound earlier in 1986 in retaliation for a Libyan-linked terrorist attack in Germany. It was designed to make Gadhafi think he was about to be attacked again. The Washington Post exposed the campaign, which the newspaper said included leaking false information to reporters and which Kalb knew nothing about.
New York Times columnist William Safire praised the resignation. “In his final official act, Bernard Kalb rose above ‘State Department spokesman’ to become the spokesman for all Americans who respect and demand the truth,” Safire wrote.In 1992 Kalb became the founding anchor of “Reliable Sources,” which reported on reporters and how they handled stories. Co-host Howard Kurtz took over the show after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Kalb was born Feb. 4, 1922, in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants. His father was a tailor from Poland, while his mother was from the Ukraine. He attended New York City public schools and graduated from New York’s City College.During World War II he spent two years in the Army, working for a camp newspaper in the Aleutian Islands alongside editor Sgt. Dashiell Hammett, author of “The Maltese Falcon” and other detective novels.
CBS hired him away from the Times in 1962 and sent him back to Southeast Asia, where he was well-known. He joined his brother covering the State Department in Washington in 1975, and they moved together to NBC in 1980.
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