Ted Turner reflects on his new role - and his legacy

Ted Turner reflects on his new role - and his legacy

By Erin McClam

ATLANTA (AP): In a sprawling office perched atop an empire he
no longer rules, the man once called Captain Outrageous is
cowering - chin on his knees, hands clasped over his head.

Ted Turner is obsessed with nuclear weapons, with their
potential for blowing the world into bits, even after the Cold
War. At the moment, he is demonstrating a 1950s civil-defense
drill for schoolchildren: "Duck and cover," he says.

Ten years ago, Turner ducked from no one. He was the self-
styled "Mouth of the South," Time's Man of the Year, the mogul
who turned the globe into a village that watched itself on cable
24 hours a day.

Now, his title is vice chairman and senior adviser of AOL Time
Warner, a corporate monster two mega-mergers removed from
swallowing up the broadcasting empire that bore his name.

"If only I had a little humility," Turner once said, "I'd be
perfect."

And now he has his wish.

Most of the pictures and framed magazine covers in Turner's
penthouse office at CNN Center are years old, his hair no darker
than a salt-and-pepper mix. They show a different man - the one
who had to apologize for calling Christianity a religion "for
losers." The one who compared Rupert Murdoch to Hitler.

Today, Turner's hair is white. And the man who vowed CNN would
be on the air until the end of time talks in vague references to
the end of his own.

"I'm 62 years old," he said flatly in a recent interview with
The Associated Press. "I'm closer to the end than the beginning."

It is a strange sound - an admission of mortality from the man
credited with changing television forever and helping make
Atlanta the capital of the New South.

Along the way, Turner became a symbol of money and power. It
was never clear which he wanted more.

That all changed in the mid-1990s, when Turner became a player
in billion-dollar corporate mergers. He traded control for cash,
piling up a US$9.1 billion fortune while loosening his grip on
his own kingdom - and watching his firecracker reputation slip
away.

First he folded Turner Broadcasting System into giant Time
Warner, accepting an unfamiliar No. 2 role and becoming the
largest single shareholder of the world's biggest media and
entertainment company.

"When he merged with Time Warner, it was almost, I think,
treated with a very subtle kind of disrespect," said Reese
Schonfeld, who helped Turner launch CNN in 1980. "They honored
most of his wishes and sneered at him behind his back."

Then America Online swallowed Time Warner whole, and Turner
became a vice chairman, an adviser, and - many would argue - a
figurehead. He's watched as the new corporation has divvied up
his creation and fired some of his closest friends.

The AOL announcement came just days after Turner and actress
Jane Fonda made their separation public, breaking up one of
America's best-known couples.

Schonfeld, who recently published a book lashing out at CNN as
a bold idea that has wasted away to failure, said Turner knew his
life - business and personal - was changing in the late 1990s.

"Ted is a very smart man," he said. "I feel certain that he
knew what was going on and was happy enough to end this. I think
he just started looking for other fields."

He was a man with nothing to do - and billions of dollars to
do it with.

Listening to words come out of Ted Turner's mouth is like
watching water come out of a kinked garden hose. The information
trickles out in stops and starts, unpredictable.

Asked about his role in AOL Time Warner, he freezes and folds
his arms across his tie, which features a blinding collaboration
of foreign flags. "I've talked enough about that," he says
sharply. He will not say even that much about the end of his
marriage; it is one of the ground rules for this interview that
the subject not be raised.

But ask him about all the money he is giving away - hundreds
of millions of dollars he has donated over the past five years to
a dizzying array of causes - and he gushes.

"I'm concerned about everything on the planet," he said. "The
health of the human race. You have to have your heart, your
brain, your lungs, your kidneys. You have to save everything in
order to save anything."

And the receipts say he is trying to do just that.
Turner gives about $50 million each year to the Turner
Foundation, sending the money to causes ranging from promotion of
population control to saving woodpeckers and black-footed
ferrets.

He is spreading out a $1 billion donation to the United
Nations in pieces, making sure it goes to four priorities - women
and population, children's health, the environment and security.
Last year, he added a $34 million pledge to the U.N. to cover a
reduced U.S. contribution to its budget in 2001.

And he has matched the millions with smaller gifts, assigning
them with microscopic range, like the $500 he gave to the
volunteer fire department of Gordon, Neb., which helped fight a
blaze on his ranch there.

Most wealthy philanthropists have a handful of different
interests, but Turner's laundry list of causes is unusual, said
Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
"He gets wrapped up in a lot of passions," she said. "And his
philanthropy reflects that."

For the moment, Turner's biggest passion seems to be nuclear
weapons. He raves about "Thirteen Days," the Kevin Costner drama
about the Cuban missile crisis, when the world paused on the
brink of annihilation.

He is fond of the phrase "hair-trigger alert," slang for
nations' capability to launch weapons of mass destruction with
only precious minutes of warning.

"We assumed that the world would become safer when the Cold
War was over," he said. "The world basically moved on to other
problems - the economy, the Internet. We've lived with these
things for so long that we just kind of got used to them. I
figured we needed to get it back on the agenda."

Turner committed $250 million over five years to reducing
nuclear arsenals, joining former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, who
commended the mogul for committing his "energy, creativity and
resources" to the problem.

"He has more time as he steps back from some of his business
commitments," Palmer said. "It'll be interesting to see what his
next phase is."

Turner admits that he is only a small part of the AOL Time
Warner giant, controlling 3 percent of the conglomerate. He talks
about the 1980s and early 1990s, "when CNN reported to me."

But control and competitiveness, two hallmarks of his
reputation, remain key to his character. About the same time
Turner focused his attention on giving away his fortune, he came
up with an idea to encourage other billionaires to do the same.

Why not rank them? Why not list them, the way Turner's class
is ranked by their success in business?

"There was no similar way in which you were rewarded (for
giving)," Palmer said. "He started putting the word out to
magazines. It's clear that some of that competitive juice had
been stirred up."

He topped Fortune magazine's list in 1998, which counted his
$1 billion gift to the U.N. And he chided Microsoft pioneer Bill
Gates for not giving more: "What good is wealth sitting in the
bank?"

Gates and his wife led a list released last month by the
Chronicle, giving $5 billion in 2000. Turner ranked 14th.

"I started giving money because I had money," he said. "If
you're a dancer, dance. If you're a writer, write. If you've got
a lot of money, contribute."

Peter Arnett, a Turner friend who reported from Baghdad during
CNN's Gulf War heyday but left the network after a reprimand for
a 1998 story that was retracted, said Turner's new role has left
him much more time to devote to advancing causes.

"He's sitting up there, but he's not in the chain of command
anymore," Arnett said.

"When you look at the man, he's done such a hell of a lot. Any
one of those areas would make a great obituary item. And who
knows what he'll do in the future?"

What, if anything at all? Ted Turner, who built a reputation
on restlessness, who for years seemed to fire off his mouth and
his checkbook without warning, talks as though he is satisfied,
finally, with what he has created.

Not that he shies from the notion of leaving a legacy. He
makes no secret of wanting the money he has given away to ensure
his influence decades from now, even as his corporate influence
dwindles before his eyes.

"I'm perfectly happy," Turner said. "In the old westerns, the
hero would ride over the hill into the sunset."
He grins. "And disappear."

On the Net:
Turner Foundation: http://www.turnerfoundation.org
U.N. Foundation: http://www.unfoundation.org
Turner Endangered Species Fund: http://www.tesf.org
Nuclear Threat Initiative: http://www.ntiscope.org
The Chronicle of Philanthropy: http://www.philanthropy.com