Veteran CBS journalist Mike Wallace dead at 93

Mike Wallace, the grand inquisitor of CBS's 60 Minutes news show who once declared there was "no such thing as an indiscreet question," has died at the age of 93, the network said on Sunday. Wallace died at about 8pm on Saturday with his family by his side at a care centre in New Haven, Connecticut, where he had been living, anchorman Bob Schieffer said on Face the Nation, the CBS Sunday morning news show.

"He was one of the great pioneers in journalism," Schieffer said during the broadcast. "We are all going to miss him."

Just about anyone who made news during the past six decades had to submit to a grilling by Wallace. In almost 40 years on 60 Minutes, the ground-breaking investigative journalism programme, he worked on some 800 reports, won 20 Emmys and developed a relentless on-air style that often was more interrogation than interview.

Wallace also drew criticism for his go-for-the-throat style and the theatrics that sometimes accompanied it. He also became caught up in a $120 million libel suit that resulted in no judgment against him or CBS but triggered a case of depression that led him to attempt suicide.

Wallace interviewed every US president since John F Kennedy - with the exception of George W Bush - and dozens of other world leaders like Yasser Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeini and Deng Xiaoping.

Other interview subjects included everyone from Malcolm X to singer Janis Joplin, Martin Luther King Jr to television star Johnny Carson and pianist Vladimir Horowitz to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.