R.I.P.: Bernard Kalb, Longtime News Correspondent

Bernard Kalb

Bernard Kalb, a veteran correspondent for CBS, NBC and The New York Times who also made a brief and unhappy foray into government as a State Department spokesman, died on Sunday at his home in North Bethesda, Md. He was 100, reports The NYTimes.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Claudia Kalb, who said his health had declined after a fall on Jan. 2.

In his many years on television, Kalb’s sonorous voice, thick eyebrows and command of detail became familiar to millions of viewers. He covered wars, revolutions and the diplomatic breakthroughs that presaged the end of the Cold War.

He reported for The Times from 1946 to 1962, for CBS during the next 18 years (during which he joined his brother, Marvin, on the diplomatic beat) and as NBC’s State Department correspondent from 1980 to 1985. Then, for nearly two years, he served in the Reagan administration’s State Department — a stint that ended contentiously.

As a CBS correspondent in 1972, Kalb accompanied President Richard M. Nixon on the trip to China that proved to be a major step in the normalization of relations between the two nations. He also made virtually every overseas trip with Henry A. Kissinger, Cyrus R. Vance, Edmund S. Muskie, Alexander M. Haig Jr. and George P. Shultz during their tenures as secretary of state.

“You have a sense of being something of an eyewitness to the evolutions and eruptions of the decades since World War II,” Mr. Kalb said in November 1984 when President Ronald Reagan announced his appointment as assistant secretary of state for public affairs. It was the first time a journalist who had covered the State Department became its spokesman.

But Kalb resigned in October 1986 to protest what he called a “reported disinformation program” — he stopped short of confirming its existence — conducted by the administration against the Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The Washington Post reported that the program included plans to plant false reports in the press about internal opposition to Colonel Qaddafi and American military plans against Libya. Asked about Mr. Kalb’s resignation, Mr. Reagan said, “No one on our side has been lying to anyone.”

Kalb 1962

“My resignation does not endow me with sudden freedom to act on what may be or not be secret and what can be classified or what cannot be classified,” Mr. Kalb said. But he added, “You face a choice — as an American, as a spokesman, as a journalist — whether to allow oneself to be absorbed in the ranks of silence, whether to vanish into unopposed acquiescence or to enter a modest dissent.”

Bernard Kalb was born in Manhattan on Feb. 4, 1922.  In 1946, Mr. Kalb joined The Times. He originally wrote for the radio station WQXR, which at the time was owned by the company. He went on to write for the newspaper; he was a metropolitan reporter and covered the United Nations before being sent to Southeast Asia as a correspondent.

His first overseas assignment, in late 1955, was to accompany Adm. Richard E. Byrd on a mission to Antarctica.

After leaving The Times in 1962, Kalb joined CBS as a correspondent in Hong Kong. He was regularly dispatched from there to cover the Vietnam War, and he was the network’s on-scene reporter for an hourlong documentary in 1964 warning that the war was unlikely to end soon. Four years later he won an Overseas Press Club Award for a documentary on the Vietcong.

Returning to the United States in 1970, Kalb became Washington anchorman for the “CBS Morning News.” In 1975 he joined his brother on the diplomatic beat, and five years later they both moved to NBC. Bernard Kalb covered the State Department until he became its spokesman in 1985.

Kalb was the founding anchor and panelist on CNN’s weekly series “Reliable Sources” when it launched in 1993, remaining in the post until 1998. He was succeeded by Howard Kurtz, who was then succeeded by Brian Stelter until the show was canceled in August 2022.