Mike Wallace
Paul Hawthorne/Getty
He was 93.
One of broadcast television's fiercest, most aggressive interviewers, Wallace was one of the founding hosts of 60 Minutes, television's most popular newsmagazine show.
Bob Scheiffer, host of CBS News's Face the Nation said Wallace died following a long illness Saturday night in New Haven, Connecticut, surrounded by family.
Wallace underwent triple heart-bypass surgery in 2008, a procedure that doctors called "a great success."
The CBS News family lost another veteran broadcaster in November when Andy Rooney died at age 92.
In an essay for CBS 60 Minutes colleague Morely Safer wrote that Wallace "took to heart the old reporter's pledge to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. He characterized himself as 'nosy and insistent.' "
"So insistent, there were very few 20th century icons who didn't submit to a Mike Wallace interview. He lectured Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, on corruption. He lectured Yassir Arafat on violence," wrote Safer.
Wallace â€" who traveled alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., and also interviewed Malcolm X during his illustrious career â€" retired in 2006, but occasionally returned to the show to interview high-profile subjects like Mitt Romney, Jack Kevorkian and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
He told reporters late in his life that if he could write his own epigraph, it would read, "Tough But Fair."
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