Before Bob Simon became a regular correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes in 1996, he traveled the world covering crises and war and civil unrest, mostly for CBS News. From 1977 to 1981, he was assigned to the Tel Aviv bureau. And in 1987, he was named the CBS News Chief Middle Eastern correspondent.
In January 1991, four days after the Gulf war started, Simon and his CBS News team were captured by Iraqi forces and spent 40 days in Iraqi prison, “most of it in solitary confinement.” (He later wrote about the experience in the book, Forty Days.) After their release, Simon told The Global Jewish News Source he was worried that his Jewishness might cost him his life. “I thought my number was up when they started accusing me of being a member of Mossad,” the Israeli intelligence service, said Simon, who was then based in Tel Aviv.