But we didn’t hear anything about you hanging out with him at his villa in Lake Como. In the first season of your show, you did a pretty candid interview with George Clooney. Now, you’ve got to admit that that’s a pretty good story. Let me put it this way - there was no chance in the world that Mike Wallace was going to be Mr. I don’t know if they went out at all or not, but it certainly was nothing serious. But I can’t say that I really felt I was being cast adrift, or that we weren’t going to find a landing spot. Chris Licht met with me very early on and made it clear that he believed in the show, he liked the show, and he was going to find a place for the show. So job one was let’s try to protect everybody.

A bunch of people had come over either from secure jobs at CNN or from other places, other networks, taking a chance on me and this venture and CNN+. I knew they were going to find work for me. Much more devastating in a structural sense was when we worked so hard for so long for three months to develop the CNN+ show, and to tape about 18 shows, and that suddenly went crashing down. And I admired Jeff just from his reputation and his long history. I didn’t know Jeff all that well, but he was the guy that hired me, so I didn’t think that was great news.

It was two weeks and this email comes out that Jeff is leaving.

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