Short Biography

Lila Diane Sawyer (born December 22, 1945) is an American television journalist for ABC and co-anchor of its morning news show, Good Morning America. In 2001 she was named one of the 30 most powerful women in America by Ladies Home Journal. In 2007 she ranked 62nd on Forbes` "The World`s 100 Most Powerful Women" list. Sawyer was born in Glasgow, Kentucky, the daughter of Jean W. (née Dunagan), an elementary school teacher, and Erbon Powers "Tom" Sawyer, a judge [1]. Soon after her birth, her family moved to Louisville, where her father rose to local prominence as a Republican politician and community leader; he was the Jefferson County Judge/Executive when he was killed in a car accident on Louisville`s Interstate 64 in 1969 while still in office. E. P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park, located in the Frey`s Hill area of Louisville, is named in his honor.

Sawyer attended Seneca High School in the Buechel area of Louisville. In 1963, she won the "America`s Junior Miss" scholarship pageant as a representative from the State of Kentucky, and in 1967, she received a degree in English from Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

She attended one semester of law school at the University of Louisville before turning to journalism. Since 29 April 1988 she has been married to award-winning director Mike Nichols. They have no children. Nichols has Daisy (1974), Max (1964), and Jenny (1977) from his three previous marriages. Sawyer previously had relationships with Nixon aide Frank Gannon and U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke.

Sawyer served as a local TV news reporter and "weather girl" for WLKY-TV in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1970, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler hired her to serve in the administration of President Richard Nixon. Sawyer stayed on through his resignation in 1974 and worked on the Nixon-Ford transition team in 1974-75, after which she decamped with Nixon to California and helped him write his memoirs, published in 1978. She also helped prepare Nixon for his famous set of television interviews with journalist David Frost in 1977.[3] Years later, Sawyer would be suspected as the source of leaks of classified information (nicknamed "Deep Throat") to Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal. On his deathbed, Rabbi Baruch Korff, a longtime Nixon confidant and defender known as "Nixon`s rabbi," said he believed Sawyer was Deep Throat. Sawyer laughed it off, and she was one of six people to request and receive a public denial from Woodward. In 1978, Sawyer joined CBS as a political correspondent and became a co-anchor, with Bill Kurtis, of the CBS Morning News in 1981. In 1984, she became a correspondent for 60 Minutes, where she remained for five years.

In 1989, she moved to ABC to co-anchor Primetime Live with Sam Donaldson. From 1998-2000, she would become a co-anchor for ABC`s 20/20, co-anchoring on Wednesdays with Donaldson and on Sundays with Barbara Walters. In 1999, Sawyer returned to morning news, under a lucrative contract, as the co-anchor of Good Morning America, with Charles Gibson. The assignment was putatively temporary, but her success in the position, measured by a close in the gap with front-runner The Today Show, has kept her in the position far longer than anticipated.

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