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It's springtime in Washington, D.C., all chill and cherry blossoms, and the perfect day to head into town for a visit with one of the burg's most iconic personalities: veteran newsman Daniel Schorr.

"I'm a piece of living history," shrugs Schorr, 92, who toiled for Edward R. Murrow at CBS and earned a spot on Richard Nixon's enemies list. "I've learned that's how people regard me."

But he's not a museum piece. The voice is instantly recognizable; as senior news analyst for NPR, Schorr breaks it down several times a week for his listeners on "All Things Considered" and "Weekend Edition," reporting for work as if 90 were at least the new 65. There's his career as an author — Schorr has written six books, including his autobiography, "Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism" (2001) and "Come to Think of It: Notes on the Turn of the Millennium"(2007) — and he's one of the featured guests at this year's Bethesda Literary Festival.

Schorr will be at the Hyatt Regency Bethesda at 11 a.m. Sunday, but the subject of his remarks is something that remains up in the air.

"I'll just do what I've always done as a journalist," he says. "Find out what people want to know, and tell them about it."

Schorr's philosophy could describe the Bethesda Literary Festival itself. The event was founded a decade ago, and Stephanie Coppula, director of communications for the Bethesda Urban Partnership, says that "every year, we try to do a little bit more to involve the community and stretch the idea of how it's possible to experience the written word."

And so, in addition to authors like Schorr, Mary Higgins Clark and Gwen Ifill, the festival features essay contest winners, poetry readings, special reading-related events for children, and even an evening of improvisational comedy.

"We've put together a manageable number of really good events," says Coppula, who notes that the festival is easy to access because it's spread over a weekend and held at different venues all over town. "We try to have a balance of well-known authors and events that will get the community involved."

Coppula says the festival has no particular theme, although its close proximity to D.C. means things tend to be political. Among this year's speakers are Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier, who will talk politics Friday evening in the Writer's Center. Gwen Ifill, who famously moderated last fall's final presidential debate, will speak about her book, "Politics in the Age of Obama," at 11 a.m. Saturday in the Doubletree Hotel.

And then there's Schorr.

"As a journalist, it's interesting to get outside yourself to see yourself as others see you," he says.

So he's perfectly open to the things that people want to know, even when they've ostensibly come to hear him speak about his most recent book. What was it like to be on Nixon's enemies list? That's a big one, a question people love to ask. And Schorr, who won his three Emmys as CBS' chief Watergate correspondent in 1972, never tires of answering.

"I consider my presence on the enemies list a greater tribute than the Emmy's list," he quips. "Really, my life is bound by two persons. One is President Nixon, who kind of created a career for me by what he tried to do.

"The other is Nikita Khrushchev. I filmed the ‘Face the Nation' program from his office in the Kremlin."

Which, in retrospect, is just one of dozens of "He did what?" moments that come into play when Schorr tells the story of his life. (Not long after his 1957 interview with Khrushchev — the first of its kind — the KGB arrested him on trumped-up charges and kicked him out of the Soviet Union.)

He speaks matter-of-factly, but with the natural cadences of a broadcast journalist. It's easy to know where he is in the life of an anecdote just by the tone of his voice. He has a gravitas that isn't just natural; it's necessary, given the unbelievable, larger-than-life stories he has to tell.

"The most important thing is that when an event occurs, it doesn't occur in isolation," he says. "My life is devoted to looking for context."

Take the very first story he ever covered. He was 12 years old, living in a ground-floor apartment in the Bronx with his widowed mother and his brother.

"It was July and it was hot — no air conditioning in those days," he says. "There was a big ‘plop' outside. A man had fallen, or jumped."

Schorr took in the scene and quickly called the police and the local newspaper, The Bronx Home News, which paid him $5 for the report he filed on the story.

"I look back and I think, ‘How could I, at the age of 12, be so cool?'" he says. "I myself am amazed."

But the anecdote offers context for what would become a life in reporting. Schorr went on to his high school and college newspaper staffs, worked briefly as a reporter before serving in U.S. Army intelligence during World War II and starting a career covering postwar Europe for the Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times.

"I had been working as a stringer," he says. "And there was a great flood in Holland in '53 — they were plucking people out of trees — and my reporting of the flood caught the attention of Edward R. Murrow.

"I received a cablegram," he continues, "the contents of which I still remember: ‘Would you at all consider joining the staff of CBS News with an original assignment in Washington?'"

Schorr considered it. "I watched television and tried to understand how I could relate to this strange new media," he says. And he came up with what is now considered the quintessential Daniel Schorr-ism, "Sincerity: If you can fake that, you've got it made."

It's funny, because what Schorr is is not so much sincere as objective. He doesn't hide his politics, his biases; he's transparent about them, to be sure. But at the end of the day, he is about setting aside everything subjective to examine the events at hand and put them into context.

"If you're a reporter, you have to be as neutral as possible," he says, and he reaches back for relevant examples from his own experience. His 1960 assignment to Germany, for example. As the child of Jewish immigrants from Belarus, could he report without bias?

"If I didn't think I could be fair, I didn't want to do it," he says. "But I spent six years in Germany, and I think I succeeded."

When put to the test, Schorr allowed humanity to trump the scoop. In 1959, he was working on a CBS documentary in Poland, reporting from Auschwitz and fighting for objectivity at the very epicenter of the Holocaust.

"We were traveling, filming in schools — trying to get a sense of what this place was like," he explains. "At a town on the Soviet border, we saw people in horse-drawn carts with their baggage piled high.

"We stopped and asked — me in my rusty Yiddish — ‘Where are you going?'"

The answer was Israel. Schorr had uncovered a very secret arrangement between the Soviet Union and the Israelis that, while newsworthy, would end abruptly if he chose to expose it.

"I agonized," he says. "It was an interesting little story, about four or five minutes worth of tape."

And in the end, he realized it would never see the light of day. Schorr says he agonized over the incident; he asked Murrow, "Should I be ashamed of myself for violating my own ethics?"

Murrow said he understood, but Schorr still feels it keenly: the choice between the lives of 200 innocent people — his people, in a sense — and his duty to the news, and the truth.

"You're a journalist, yes," he says. "But you're a member of a community."

The Bethesda Literary Festival takes place Friday, Saturday and Sunday at venues in downtown Bethesda. Daniel Schorr will speak at 11 a.m. Sunday at the Hyatt Regency Bethesda, 1 Bethesda Metro Center. All events are free and open to the public. For a schedule of events, visit www.bethesda.org/specialevents/

litfest/schedule.htm.