Read Online Warrior Pose by Brad Willis - Free Book Online

Lindner convinced them, to re-energize it. Before I knew it, I was off to Texas.
    I quickly turned the consumer unit into an investigative one. We exposed racial discrimination at several of Dallas’s posh nightclubs, where the city’s rich and famous gathered. The clubs had secret policies of requiring a second photo identification from African Americans, then denying them entrance even if they managed to comply. We used hidden cameras and microphones to expose them turning away a black woman who happened to be a lawyer in the attorney general’s office. Subsequent lawsuits shut down several clubs.
    Just as it had been in Eureka and Sacramento, corruption and white-collar crime were plentiful, and I was more aggressive thanever. Only in Texas, the conservative establishment pushed back hard. Business and political leaders began complaining to WFAA management, and the station started trying to tone down my work. I pushed back even harder, refusing to dilute a story and standing my ground. Marty Haig, the news director, was a legend and a man of incredible integrity. But he was on the spot and did his best to walk a fine line between management and news.
    When I began working on the plight of a Dallas oilman locked away in a Caracas prison after being framed for a major oil scandal involving the Venezuelan government, the station declined my proposal to cover it. Bullheaded as ever, I took two weeks’ vacation, hired a freelance cameraman, flew to Caracas, and shot the story anyway. I even managed to smuggle a camera into the prison on visitors’ day and recorded a secret interview with the Texas oilman.
    Returning to Dallas, I pitched the story to ABC’s primetime network news magazine show 20/20 ; the show agreed to buy it. When I shared this with Marty Haig, he was upset and quickly decided WFAA wanted the story. He grudgingly agreed to pay me for all my expenses plus a hefty freelance bonus. The reports, which I titled Petrospies , created a sensation in Texas, got the attention of diplomats in Washington, D.C., and ultimately the oilman was freed. But my relationship with Marty Haig and WFAA would never be the same. I distrusted and resented them, and vice versa. My next story proved to be my last.
    It was 1984 and the Republican National Convention was about to be held in Dallas, where the delegates would nominate President Ronald Reagan to run for a second term. As it turned out, the construction company I had exposed in Sacramento was based in Dallas and played a major role in Republican politics. The federal government was still investigating them, so I updated the story and produced a five-part series. The night before it was scheduled to run, Haig called me into his office to say the station’s legal department was killing my stories. “They say the reports don’t pass legal review,” he said matter of factly. “They’re libelous and will get us sued.”
    Furious, I demanded to meet with the legal department and challenge its position. To his credit, Haig supported me on this.That afternoon, as I rifled through all my files to defend my work, I discovered something I had never noticed: WFAA’s law firm also represented the construction company my reports had exposed! The next morning, I tore into the legal team, defended my work, pointed out its obvious conflict of interest, and promised that if the reports were killed I’d take it to the Dallas newspapers and expose the whole thing. When it was over, Haig said, “We’ll air one report tonight, and one only. You’ll have to cut the series down to something less than three minutes. That’s it.”
    Haig didn’t have to say anything more. I knew this would be my last report for WFAA. I went back to the station and worked right up to the five o’clock evening news deadline, then walked onto the set to give the lead-in live and answer a few softball questions from the anchors when it was