"In February of 1967 we expanded that to four correspondents and a moderator," says MacNeil.

The product was "Washington Week in Review," which soon became a banner program for the newly formed PBS.

"I was on that thing every week for 11 years," MacNeil says.

MacNeil ultimately left the program because he could not countenance what he saw as an unfair imposition upon his journalistic freedom by a station manager.

Early in the administration of former president Jimmy Carter, MacNeil began to point out Carter's failings.

"He made blunder after blunder...he thought he could treat the U.S. Congress like he had treated the Georgia legislature," MacNeil says.

But the station manager was not pleased.

"I had prematurely identified President Carter as an incompetent and the station manager didn't like it," MacNeil says.

It was the station manager's reaction to MacNeil's opinion that ultimately prompted MacNeil to give up the job.

"[My] manager says I'd have to clear material with him. I quit," MacNeil says.

Some of MacNeil's preparation for Washington came in Harvard classrooms, but he says his education about America left him sometimes unprepared for the real thing.

"I majored in American History, [and] found it pretty much upsetting when I got the real stuff," MacNeil says.

MacNeil says he feels that the Harvard history department at that time was too concerned with facts and figures. He says he thinks a greater focus should have been placed upon the analysis of history.

"[There was] no explanation of what the hell was going on," MacNeil says.

MacNeil says he was not exposed to an analytical perspective on history until he arrived at Columbia to do his graduate work.