Earlier this week, Anderson Cooper’s agents informed CBS News that their client had decided to forgo a contract-renewal offer and would leave 60 Minutes, where he has been a correspondent for nearly two decades. The loss of the newsmagazine’s most famous talent blindsided Bari Weiss and the rest of the CBS leadership, I’m told, since they’d all been under the impression that he was likely to renew his deal. Anderson publicly attributed his decision to a recalibration of personal priorities—he has two young sons—but there was obviously more to it. “These negotiations were on the one-yard line,” a source familiar with the state of the talks told me. “It was total chaos,” said another person close to the network. “Everyone was caught off guard.”