R.I.P.: CBS News Icon Sandy Socolow

Sandy Sacolow

Sanford "Sandy" Socolow, who as Walter Cronkite's right-hand played a key role in the anchorman's coverage of the biggest news of the 1960s and '70s, including the space launches, Vietnam War and Watergate, died Saturday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York from complications from a long illness.

He was 86, according to CBS News.

As the trusted lieutenant of "The Most Trusted Man in America," Socolow shared a news philosophy with the anchorman and enjoyed a special status behind the scenes at CBS News throughout Cronkite's reign in the anchor chair from 1962 to 1981. He held several positions during the Cronkite era -- co-producer and executive producer of the "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite," vice president of CBS News, in which he supervised all hard news programming, and Washington bureau chief -- but acting as liaison to the biggest television news star in the world put him in a unique and powerful position. It was a role he continued to play until Cronkite died in 2009.

Socolow began a 30-year career at CBS on the morning news as a writer in late 1956 and soon found himself writing for a midday news program fronted by the up-and-coming Cronkite. A lifelong relationship began between the two, both of whom had been foreign correspondents for news services - Cronkite for United Press and Socolow for International News Service. In 1958, Socolow and Cronkite bonded as the writer and reporter for the weekly CBS prime time news program "Eyewitness to History," a venture that took them around the world to report on big events.

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