'Whirlwind': Bill Kurtis memoir tells how law school trained him for covering trials
On June 8, 1966, when Bill Kurtis ducked out of his tax review class in the basement classroom at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas, to fill in for a colleague at the local television station, he had no idea a tornado would blow away his plans to join a Wichita law firm.
Then a part-timer at WIBW-TV to support his wife and child since he attended law school, Kurtis unexpectedly found himself to be the voice of reason when the country’s most destructive tornado at the time destroyed part of the city, and he stayed on air for 24 hours straight.
In Whirlwind: My Life Reporting the News, Kurtis’ new memoir, the acclaimed newsman tells how being an attorney built the foundation for his six-decade career in journalism, in which he covered major trials and investigated issues such as Agent Orange.
The ABA Journal talked with the retired CBS News anchor and executive producer of many legal-oriented television documentary series—including Cold Case Files, American Greed and Investigative Reports—at his home outside Chicago.
It was a huge responsibility for a 25-year-old law student to deliver lifesaving information to your home state as a tornado hit.
To this day, I get nervous, almost tear up. What warning to get people into a shelter to save their lives? I thought about cussing and crying. But I had a thought, and so [I said] “For God’s sake, take cover,” which is different than the regular, “We’d like you to go to the shelters.” Afterward, people calling in had dramatic accounts. “You saved my life. I was watching television and watching Bill Kurtis, and without that, why, we would not be here.” Well, you talk about making an impression. So I said, maybe God was showing me a really big sign that I couldn’t ignore. So I’m going to stay in television.
Shortly afterward, Chicago’s CBS affiliate, WBBM-TV, offered you a general assignment job, and you quit the law firm gig before even starting. In that era before legal correspondents, your editors saw your legal training—thinking on your feet, practicing in moot court and careful writing—as a point of difference. In fact, within weeks of starting, you were assigned the case of Richard Speck, who killed eight student nurses.
My first story! I’m 26! My first trial had two landmark cases delivered [just before it started]. The Miranda case, ever heard of that? And the Sheppard case, which was fair trial, free press. Fortunately, I had debated that in moot court. My first realization that I had an advantage was the change of venue. They certainly couldn’t have held the trial in Chicago. As the witnesses came aboard, I realized, my God, this is like having a scuba mask on and going underwater because I know what’s happening. I can see, and no one really else can.
In 1968, you witnessed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, with all the protesters and the beatings by the police.
You think we have a crazy time? Let me tell you something about what I’ve lived through. I would go right to 1968.
Then, you covered the Chicago Seven trial, which started as the Chicago Eight. You write that when defendant Bobby Seale was disrupting the proceedings, the legal training kicked into gear.
I knew there’s got to be an option. What’s the option? I walk over to Northwestern University to the law library, start going through some cases. Then I went back and tried to get [chief prosecutor and U.S. Attorney Tom] Foran aside. There was a gag order. I would do things like say, “Well, don’t say anything, but you nod your head if I’m right.” And I said, “It seems to be that the 7th Circuit not long ago had written up a similar disruptive defendant problem and bound and gagged the defendant to make him sit and witness his own trial. “That’s your only option.” And Foran didn’t even nod his head because he knew it was the only option that [Judge Julius] Hoffman had.
And, indeed, Seale was bound and gagged until he passed out.
He goes like this, slumps forward in the chair. [Defense attorney William] Kunstler screams and said, “My God, we’re suffocating him.” The jury is there, and one woman starts crying. The reaction is just one of incredulity. This is in our federal courtroom. This is the United States of America. So he’s taken out. And the next day they come in, and Hoffman does what he should have done in the beginning—sever [Seale] from the case.
How did you translate all those happenings in that trial in a 90-second report?
How? You just do your job.
When CBS moved you to Los Angeles to report for the network, you write that you drew the short straw to cover the murder trial of cult leader Charles Manson. After seeing Manson and his followers with X’s cut into their foreheads, you write you sensed what might happen next.
What if Charlie tries to disrupt the trial like the conspiracy boys did in Chicago? Charlie realized that he was losing. So one day the jury was in, Charlie jumps up on the table, lunges at the judge. The bailiffs all run, grab him, put him back in the chair, and suddenly we have an issue of disruptive defendants. I’m right there! Having been trained almost with my other trial work, almost for this very moment. The Supreme Court had already ruled in the conspiracy case that you can’t disrupt your own trial. We’re going to put you in the jury room, we’re going to pipe the sound in, and you can ride out the trial there. That’s what they did.
Angela Davis was on trial for her alleged involvement in the armed seizure of a Marin County courthouse in California that ended with four people dead, including the judge. You write that there was evidence that the leftist political activist and professor had bought three guns used in the crime.
I said, this is a slam dunk. How in the world can she get off?
But the trial was moved to Santa Clara County, near Stanford University, and defense attorney Leo Branton Jr. had a couple of new tricks up his sleeve, you write.
Everybody on campus, it seemed, wanted to help. So he gives them the voir dire, and they go through name by name to give background on each. They go through a bit of a mock trial too, where you have a jury and you present your arguments to it. It was the first time that had been tried. Then, Angela wants to be her own counsel. Here’s the orator of the civil rights movement. She could turn on a crowd. Opening statements: Up stands Angela Davis with a rip-roaring civil rights: “I am innocent. I am a Black woman in a white society, and I am being tried in a political trial by the state of California, and I am innocent.” Angela doesn’t have to get on the witness stand, so the prosecution doesn’t have an opportunity to even ask her, “Why did you buy the guns?” She is found not guilty, and boom, it was a big surprise.
Your reporting shows how each of these trials was strongly influenced by its judge.
The judge is the king. He is the director. And anything that happens in his courtroom, he’s going to control—going to keep people quiet, going to send them out of the courtroom, going to charge them with contempt of court. And you’d better obey the judge. But they all have different personalities.
The throughline for your career—from law school to journalism to now working with comedians on NPR’s Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me—is the search for the truth and clear storytelling.
That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be able to tell the legal points of a trial in layman’s terms: What does it mean? The law could use a lot more of that.
In the past, I’ve heard you discuss how where law and journalism intersect is at the First Amendment.
The First Amendment is the foundation of the entire Constitution. We have our rights, and our rights are to express ourselves. Political discourse, first of all, is something that has to be sacred. It comes and goes, doesn’t it, with the pressures from left and right.
Editor’s Note: This conversation was edited for length and clarity.
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