Bill Lichtenstein - ABC News

ABC News

Lichtenstein began his work in television as a writer for ABC and CBS Sports, including as Chief Writer for CBS's coverage of the 1979 Pan American games.

Lichtenstein collaborated with producers Lowell Bergman and Andrew Cockburn on "COINTELPRO: The Secret War," the first network news report on FBI's covert dirty tricks program to disrupt and neutralize political activists, including actress Jean Seberg, and Black Panther Geronimo Pratt. He worked on "American Held Hostage: The Secret Negotiations," a three-hour prime time ABC News special hosted, by Pierre Salinger, that chronicled the previously unreported, extensive efforts by President Jimmy Carter to gain the release of the American hostages in Iran.

In 1983, Lichtenstein was nominated for three national news Emmy Awards, for a 20/20 segment he co-produced, Throwaway Kids, a nine-month investigation into abused and dying children in Oklahoma state juvenile institutions, "The Danger Within," a report on the dangers of Urea-Formaldehyde home insulation that resulted in a Congressional ban of the product, and "Nuclear Preparation: Can We Survive?" an investigation into President Reagan's secret plans for the U.S. to prepare to survive all-out nuclear war.

Lichtenstein produced three investigative reports for ABC News during the 1984 presidential elections, focusing on three key members of President Ronald Reagan's administration including an investigation of Reagan friend and campaign manager Senator Paul Laxalt (R-Nevada)for accepting campaign contributions from leading organized crime figures in the casino industry at the same time Laxalt was pressuring officials at the highest level of the Justice Department to curtail FBI investigations of mob activity in Las Vegas. All three reports were killed by ABC before air.

A 1985 Mother Jones magazine cover story, entitled "How ABC Spikes the News: Three Reagan Administration Scandals that Never Appeared on World News Tonight," revealed the three reports were spiked by the network following conversations between ABC corporate executives and the Reagan White House, as part of the network's efforts to gain favor with the Reagan administration to increase the maximum number of local TV stations that any one entity could own.

The events surrounding the three reports were detailed in Mark Hertsgaard's "On Bended Knee," and "Project Censored" cited the reports as "Three Stories that Might Have Changed the Course of the 1984 Election" in their annual top ten censored stories list in 1984.