As I Saw It

About the Book

In the early sixties American networks started looking for cameramen to cover the military events in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic. CBS News hired Carl Sorensen. He tells how, with Correspondent Dan Rather, he survived an attack by a Vietnamese’s fighter plane and how a Vietnamese helicopter dropped Morley Safer and Sorensen into a combat zone leaving them covered to their necks in a swamp with muddy waters. In Cambodia, two Khmer Rouge cadres surprised Correspondent Bert Quint, Sorensen and Soundman Patrick Forest, wounding Forest. The author describes vividly how the Mexican Army in 1968 attacked the Plaza of the Three Cultures killing defenseless students and onlookers, and how a colonel smashed Sorensen’s camera lens and threatened to kill the CBS team. During the Cyprus conflict Turkish jets attacked the Nicosia Hilton Hotel wounding the author with a rocket fragment. In Iran, Sorensen was arrested by the Islamic Committee guards and put in prison accused of being an American spy. He also covered Pope John Paul II traveling in search of love and peace receiving enough papal blessings to last a lifetime.

About the Author

Carl Sorensen was born 1919 in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1938 he sailed away on a merchant ship ending up in Mexico as camera operator in the films industry. Years later, as cameraman for CBS News, he filmed the good, the bad and the evil.