A Morley Safer Vietnam Report Ticked Off LBJ

Morley Safer announced Wednesday that he's retiring from 60 Minutes at age 84 after nearly a half-century with the show. CBS plans a tribute to the Canadian-born journalist on May 15 after the regular broadcast, reports Us Weekly. In the meantime, a post at International Business Times calls attention to Safer's reporting from Vietnam in the 1960s as among the first in the US media to raise critical questions about the war. This news clip of his, for example, shows an American soldier setting fire to a home's thatched roof with a lighter, and the clip reportedly angered President Lyndon Johnson so much that he ordered an investigation into whether Safer was a communist. "When told by staffers that Safer was 'just a Canadian,' the president replied, 'Well, I knew he wasn't American,'" IBT notes. (More 60 Minutes stories.)