Jack Anderson obit and info

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Jack Anderson obit and info

Postby Jerky » Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:04 pm

Jack Anderson, corrupt politicians' nemesis, dies<br>Columnist raked muck, broke Washington scandals since 1947<br><br>WASHINGTON (AP) -12-17-05- Jack Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning muckraking columnist who struck fear into the hearts of corrupt or secretive politicians, inspiring Nixon operatives to plot his murder, died Saturday. He was 83.<br><br>Anderson died at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, of complications from Parkinson's disease, said one of his daughters, Laurie Anderson-Bruch.<br><br>Anderson gave up his syndicated Washington Merry-Go-Round column at age 81 in July 2004, after Parkinson's disease left him too ill to continue. He had been hired by the column's founder, Drew Pearson, in 1947.<br><br>The column broke a string of big scandals, from Eisenhower assistant Sherman Adams taking a vicuna coat and other gifts from a wealthy industrialist in 1958 to the Reagan administration's secret arms-for-hostages deal with Iran in 1986.<br><br>It appeared in some 1,000 newspapers in its heyday. Anderson took over the column after Pearson's death in 1969, working with a changing cast of co-authors and staff over the years.<br><br>A devout Mormon, Anderson looked upon journalism as a calling. He was considered one of the fathers of investigative reporting, renowned for his tenacity, aggressive techniques and influence in the nation's capital.<br><br>Anderson won a 1972 Pulitzer Prize for reporting that the Nixon administration secretly tilted toward Pakistan in its war with India. He also published the secret transcripts of the Watergate grand jury.<br><br>Such scoops earned him a spot on President Nixon's "enemies list." Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy has described how he and other Nixon political operatives planned ways to silence Anderson permanently -- such as slipping him LSD or staging a fatal car crash -- but the White House nixed the idea.<br><br>Over the years, Anderson was threatened by the Mafia and investigated by government agencies trying to trace the sources of his leaks. In 1989, police investigated him for smuggling a gun into the U.S. Capitol to demonstrate security lapses.<br><br>Known for his toughness on the trail of a story, he was also praised for personal kindness. Anderson's son Kevin said that when his father's reporting led to the arrest of some involved in the Watergate scandal, he aided their families financially.<br><br>"I don't like to hurt people, I really don't like it at all," Anderson said in 1972. "But in order to get a red light at the intersection, you sometimes have to have an accident."<br><br>Anderson began his newspaper career as a 12-year-old writing about scouting activity and community fairs in the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah. His first investigative story exposed unlawful polygamy in his church. He was as a civilian war correspondent during World War II and later, while in the Army, wrote for the military paper Stars and Stripes.<br><br>After he went to work with Pearson, the team took on communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, exposed Connecticut Sen. Thomas Dodd's misuse of campaign money, and revealed the CIA's attempt to use the Mafia to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.<br><br>Anderson also wrote more than a dozen books.<br><br>He was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1986. In a speech a decade later, he made light of the occasional, uncontrollable shaking the disease caused.<br><br>"The doctors tell me it's Parkinson's," he said. "I suspect that 52 years in Washington caused it."<br><br>He is survived by his wife, Olivia, and nine children.<br><br><br><br>Jack Anderson was born in Long Beach, California, in 1922. Anderson was brought up in Salt Lake City and served two years as a Mormon missionary. His journalistic career when he began writing for his local newspaper, The Murray Eagle. At eighteen he joined the Salt Lake Tribune but during the Second World War he served in China. This included fighting the Japanese with a band of Chinese guerrillas. He also worked on the Shanghai edition of Stars and Stripes.<br><br>In 1947 Anderson he became a national journalist when he was recruited by Drew Pearson to work with him on The Washington Post. <br><br>Pearson and Anderson were always willing to expose the corrupt activities of politicians. Howard Hughes leaked information to Pearson that Owen Brewster, chairman of the Senate War Investigating Committee, was being paid by Pan American Airways (Pan Am) to persuade the United States government to set up an official worldwide monopoly under its control. Part of this plan was to force all existing American carriers with overseas operations to close down or merge with Pan Am. As the owner of Trans World Airlines, Hughes posed a serious threat to this plan. Hughes claimed that Brewster had approached him and suggested he merge Trans World with Pan Am. <br><br>Pearson and Jack Anderson began a campaign against Brewster. They reported that Pan Am had provided Bewster with free flights to Hobe Sound, Florida, where he stayed free of charge at the holiday home of Pan Am Vice President Sam Pryor. As a result of this campaign Bewster lost his seat in Congress. <br><br>In 1963 Senator John Williams of Delaware began investigating the activities of Bobby Baker. As a result of his work, Baker resigned as the secretary to Lyndon B. Johnson on 9th October, 1963. During his investigations Williams met Don B. Reynolds and persuaded him to appear before a secret session of the Senate Rules Committee. <br><br>Reynolds told B. Everett Jordan and his committee on 22nd November, 1963, that Johnson had demanded that he provided kickbacks in return for him agreeing to this life insurance policy. This included a $585 Magnavox stereo. Reynolds also had to pay for $1,200 worth of advertising on KTBC, Johnson's television station in Austin. Reynolds had paperwork for this transaction including a delivery note that indicated the stereo had been sent to the home of Johnson. <br><br>Reynolds also told of seeing a suitcase full of money which Bobby Baker described as a "$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract". His testimony came to an end when news arrived that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. <br><br>As soon as Johnson became president he contacted B. Everett Jordan to see if there was any chance of stopping this information being published. Jordan replied that he would do what he could but warned Johnson that some members of the committee wanted Reynold's testimony to be released to the public. On 6th December, 1963, Jordan spoke to Johnson on the telephone and said he was doing what he could to suppress the story because " it might spread (to) a place where we don't want it spread."<br><br>Abe Fortas, a lawyer who represented both Lyndon B. Johnson and Bobby Baker, worked behind the scenes in an effort to keep this information from the public. Johnson also arranged for a smear campaign to be organized against Reynolds. To help him do this J. Edgar Hoover passed to Johnson the FBI file on Reynolds. <br><br>On 17th January, 1964, the Senate Rules Committee voted to release to the public Reynolds' secret testimony. Johnson responded by leaking information from Reynolds' FBI file to Anderson and Drew Pearson. On 5th February, 1964, the Washington Post reported that Reynolds had lied about his academic success at West Point. The article also claimed that Reynolds had been a supporter of Joseph McCarthy and had accused business rivals of being secret members of the American Communist Party. It was also revealed that Reynolds had made anti-Semitic remarks while in Berlin in 1953.<br><br>In 1966 attempts were made to deport Johnny Roselli as an illegal alien. Roselli moved to Los Angeles where he went into early retirement. It was at this time he told attorney, Edward Morgan: "The last of the sniper teams dispatched by Robert Kennedy in 1963 to assassinate Fidel Castro were captured in Havana. Under torture they broke and confessed to being sponsored by the CIA and the US government. At that point, Castro remarked that, 'If that was the way President Kennedy wanted it, Cuba could engage in the same tactics'. The result was that Castro infiltrated teams of snipers into the US to kill Kennedy". <br><br>Morgan took the story to Anderson and Drew Pearson. The story was then passed on to Earl Warren. He did not want anything to do with it and so the information was then passed to the FBI. When they failed to investigate the story Anderson wrote an article entitled "President Johnson is sitting on a political H-bomb" about Roselli's story. It has been suggested that Roselli started this story at the request of his friends in the Central Intelligence Agency in order to divert attention from the investigation being carried out by Jim Garrison. <br><br>On the death of Drew Pearson in 1969, Anderson took over his Merry-Go-Round column. Co-written with Jan Muller, the column was distributed to more than 400 newspapers. Anderson and Muller also wrote the Jack Anderson Confidential, an in-depth monthly newsletter.<br><br>Anderson has achieved many important stories including the discovery that Central Intelligence Agency plot to kill Fidel Castro. In 1972 Anderson won the Pulitzer Prize for his journalism. The following year his book, The Anderson Tapes, dealt with the activities of Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover. <br><br>Anderson interviewed Johnny Roselli just before he was murdered. On 7th September, 1976, the newspaper reported Roselli as saying : "When Oswald was picked up, the underworld conspirators feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them. This almost certainly would have brought a massive U.S. crackdown on the Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald."<br><br>Anderson's autobiography, Confessions of a Muckraker, was published in 1979. Other books by Anderson include The Washington Money-Go-Round (1997) and Peace, War and Politics: An Eyewitness Account (1999).<br><br>Suffering from Parkinson's disease, Jack Anderson retired from journalism in July, 2004. <br><br> <br><br>Open Debate on the Kennedy Assassination<br><br>Forum Debate on Watergate<br><br>Forum Debate on Jack Anderson<br><br>Name Base: Jack Anderson<br><br> <br><br><br>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><br> <br><br>(1) Jack Anderson, The Anderson Papers (1973) <br><br><br>Honest men will lie and decent men will cheat for power. Few reach the political pinnacles without selling what they do not own and promising what is not theirs to give. In the great and grueling quest for power it is easy to forget that power belongs not to those who possess it for the moment but to the nation and its people.<br><br>While power need not be corrupting, it is impossible to deny that the American political system invites corruption. Men must accumulate funds to campaign for office. Those who finance the campaigns expect a return on their investment. Those who are elected must listen to the special interests while they preach about the public interest. To lead they often must follow men whose motives are self-serving.<br><br>To keep the White House, Richard Nixon raised more campaign cash than it cost him originally to gain the White House. His agents systematically contacted the nation's great corporations and gave them campaign quotas for their executives to raise. Some paid their allotments hoping it would keep the government off their backs. Others, like International Telephone and Telegraph, sought to make a deal in return for a campaign commitment. Only a few, like American Motors, refused to ante up. Staggering sums were raised to reelect the President. The cost to the people of the United States, and to the free enterprise system, is still being paid in installments.<br><br> <br><br>(2) Jack Anderson, The Anderson Papers (1973) <br><br><br>The experience of ascending the pinnacle of power changes the men who must exercise power. Some men can grow and be strengthened by the process. Most are diminished. When Lyndon Johnson was President, it was possible sometimes to glimpse the gangling adolescent from the Texas dirt farm. And somewhere under the brittle shell of Richard Nixon lurks the quiet, studious youngster in Whittier who wanted to be a railroad engineer. But in the White House, they no longer were the men they once had been. The aging process for all human beings tends to replace<br>idealism with cynicism; for the powerful the change is often more pervasive.<br><br>The men of the press seldom remind the leaders of their obligations, nor the citizens that they are the true owners of power. All too many who write about government have been seduced by those who govern. The press, like the powerful, often forgets its obligations to the public. Too many Washington reporters consider it their function to court the high and mighty rather than condemn them; to extol public officials rather than expose them.<br><br>It is far more pleasant to write puffery about the powerful, of course, than it is to probe their perfidy. Public officeholders are usually likable; that is why they got elected. Many reporters are taken in by this personal charm, are awed by the majesty of office; and they become publicists rather than critics of the men who occupy the offices.<br><br> <br><br>(3) Jack Anderson, The Anderson Papers (1973) <br><br><br>The need for the press to occupy an adversary role was clear to America's founding fathers. That is why they made freedom of the press the first guarantee of the Bill of Rights. Without press freedom, they knew, the other freedoms would fall. For government, by its nature, tends to oppress. And government, without a watchdog, would soon oppress the people it was created to serve.<br><br> <br><br>(4) Jack Anderson, The Anderson Papers (1973) <br><br><br>Unquestionably, the way an investigative reporter is compelled to operate is an imperfect system of newsgathering. Sometimes the sources do not have all the details. Sometimes the jigsaw pieces of information do not form a complete picture and the missing pieces are buried too deeply. Investigative reporters must work without the power of subpoena. They lack the money and manpower that the government can marshal to counter their efforts. The authority to classify embarrassing facts, the ability to shut off channels of information, the power to intimidate sources who could tell the truth - all these are on the side of the government.<br><br>It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that investigative reporters do not always get all the facts. They can uncover enough hidden scraps, however, to cast light on a blunder or an embarrassment or a scandal that the people in power had conspired to conceal. If our society was as free and open as it should be, and if government officials fully subscribed to their oaths to protect the public interest, there would be little difficulty in quickly establishing the truth. But officials all too often cover up the facts and then lie to the public.<br><br>Investigative reporters must work harder, dig deeper, and verify their facts more carefully than establishment reporters. Preposterous lies can be told to make the powerful look good; grievous blunders can be committed by officials in the name of the government; the public can be cheated by men sworn to uphold the public trust. But let an investigative reporter make a mistake and there will be howls of outrage. There can be a good word for a Lyndon Johnson who sent boys to die in a senseless war, or a General Motors which releases unsafe cars upon the highways, or a Richard Nixon who condones lawlessness while preaching law and order. But there is no good word for an investigative reporter who wrongly condemns someone in authority. <br><br> <br><br>(5) Jack Anderson, The Anderson Papers (1973) <br><br><br>The article described efforts by the White House staff to influence Dita Beard to disown her memo and also their attempts to discover some suitable scandal involving myself. The Post went on to quote from an "interim memorandum" written for the White House by its investigators reporting on my personal and business life. I was one of the founders of the Chinese Refugee Relief Organization, the report revealed; my fellow founders included Mrs. Claire Chennault, a prominent Republican and the widow of the organizer of the Flying Tigers; I had a bank account at the D.C. National Bank where the widow Chennault was on the board of directors; I owned a small interest in the Empress Restaurant in Washington and in a newspaper in Las Vegas. The incriminating picture was rounded out by a mysterious claim that I maintained "a close association with the operating arm of the Democratic Party," an entity I had thought to be nonexistent. The White House report was dismissed by the Post as "dealing with already known and generally uncontroversial details about Anderson." Such entries, while they might be helpful in an application for credit at Thorn McAn's, seemed to me unworthy of sleuths operating at the presidential level.<br><br>What I did not take into account was the secret doings that were then fragmenting the energies of the compilers of my White House biography. These gentlemen - James McCord, G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, lohn Dean, and various presidential dispatchers and controls - were engaged in truly momentous events, compared with which their investigation of me was just a sideshow. For example, they were preparing blueprints for the burglarizing of Watergate and the bugging of George McGovern headquarters; they were perfecting schemes to burglarize the offices of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, to recruit call girls who would romance Democratic party leaders and report back the pillow talk, to forge documents framing President Kennedy for the murder of President Diem, to fabricate a new version of Chappaquiddick. The operatives were occupied not only with conceiving and planning these vaulting designs but in making formal presentations to the Attorney General of the United States and various high aides to the President - presentations replete with elaborate charts so that busy Nixon proconsuls could get a quick grasp of the finer points of the felonies within their purview... <br><br>As it happened, I was personally acquainted with some of the Waterbuggers. Frank Sturgis, a soldier of fortune who had roamed the world in search of danger and excitement, had been a friend of mine for years. I had written about his exploits fighting first for and then against Fidel Castro. Sturgis introduced me in Miami to Bernard Barker, a short, swarthy swashbuckler who was known to his associates as Macho (he-man). Both of them spoke of Eduardo, their CIA superior during the Bay of Pigs, who I realized much later was E. Howard Hunt. They were a collection of romantics, forever seeking adventure, forever finding misadventure.<br><br> <br><br>(6) Jack Anderson, The Anderson Papers (1973) <br><br><br>If government is to regain the trust of the nation, the administration of justice must be even-handed and freed from the pressures of political favoritism. The recent custom of appointing election campaign managers as attorneys general must cease. It is transparent that the men who raise the money to elect a President cannot be expected to deal honestly with major contributors. The lustice Department, if its name is to have meaning, should be led by the nation's best lawyers, not its political hacks. Its proceedings should be open, its prosecutions just.<br><br>The FBI, Justice's investigative arm, must be allowed to free itself from the web of politics now entangling it and regain its reputation as an unbiased, straightforward servant of the people. The responsibilities for internal security were thrust upon the bureau as America hurriedly geared itself for World War II. The emergency is long past; it is time for a new approach. No agency is as well equipped to fight crime as the FBI. That should be its job. The responsibility for evaluating political thought and activity should be turned over to a new branch of government closely supervised by Congress. America cannot afford a political police force.<br><br>Perhaps most important of all, Congress must rip aside the veil of censorship that prevents the American people from knowing what their government is doing. The United States now possesses more than twenty million documents that are hidden from public scrutiny by the censor's stamp. Men familiar with this hoard insist that only ten to thirty percent of the papers have any genuine bearing on national security. The rest are classified to keep Americans from learning of malfeasance, or bungling, or simply because the censor lacked the wit to make the papers public.<br><br>We are willing to agree, albeit grudgingly, that the President cannot make many of the cold, hard decisions he faces in the bright light of publicity. There are maneuvers of extreme delicacy that must be executed, and unpublicized deals that must be negotiated, if he is to meet his responsibilities. Let him keep these documents secret, for up to two years if necessary. Documents dealing with national security, of course, should remain secret as long as they remain sensitive. But the President and his underlings cannot be allowed to decide arbitrarily what will remain secret.<br><br>We call for the establishment of a national commission on security, comprised of intelligent, trustworthy individuals from outside the government, who would periodically review those documents the government feels must remain classified. The burden of establishing the need for secrecy would be on the government, rather than the present rule, which compels scholars and researchers to show why certain papers - some dealing with World War II - should be made public.<br><br>No other nation has been as successful as the United States in maintaining a free society. Yet the invasion of this freedom - secrecy, the politicization of justice, the hoarding of authority, official deception - are abuses of power that threaten our freedom.<br><br>Power corrupts not only those who abuse it, but whole nations as well, when they tolerate this abuse. <br><br> <br><br>(7) Louis Stokes, House Select Committee on Assassinations (September 28, 197<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START 8) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br><br>In 1967, 1971, 1976, and 1977, those 4 years, columnist Jack Anderson wrote about the CIA-Mafia plots and the possibility that Castro decided to kill President Kennedy in retaliation. Mr. Anderson even contends in those articles that the same persons involved in the CIA-Mafia attempts on Castro's life were recruited by Castro to kill President Kennedy. The September 7, 1976 issue of the Washington Post contains one of Mr. Anderson's articles entitled, "Behind John F. Kennedy's Murder," which fully explains Mr. Anderson's position. I ask, Mr. Chairman, that at this point this article be marked as JFK exhibit F-409 and that it be entered into the record at this point. <br><br>Mr. Trafficante, I want to read to you just two portions of the article I have just referred to, after which I will ask for your comment. According to Mr. Anderson and Mr. Whitten in this article, it says: Before he died, Roselli hinted to associates that he knew who had arranged President Kennedy's murder. It was the same conspirators, he suggested, whom he had recruited earlier to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro. By Roselli's cryptic account, Castro learned the identity of the underworld contacts in Havana who had been trying to knock him off. He believed, not altogether without basis, that President Kennedy was behind the plot. Then over in another section, it says: According to Roselli, Castro enlisted the same underworld elements whom he had caught plotting against him. They supposedly were Cubans from the old Trafficante organization. Working with Cuban intelligence, they allegedly lined up an ex-Marine sharpshooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been active in the pro-Castro movement. According to Roselli's version, Oswald may have shot Kennedy or may have acted as a decoy while others ambushed him from closer range. When Oswald was picked up, Roselli suggested the underworld conspirators feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them. This almost certainly would have brought a massive U.S. crackdown on the Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald making it appear as an act of reprisal against the President's killer. At least this is how Roselli explained the tragedy in Dallas.<br><br> <br><br>(<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START 8) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> Jack Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker (1979) <br><br>My mentor's sympathies, then, lay with (Howard) Hughes, but Drew (Pearson) felt stranded in an unsatisfying posture. It was his nature to want to play an important part in the great political brawls of the time, to put his mark on them, to help shape their outcome toward the benefit of his causes or the distress of his foes. Yet he would not take Brewster's side and could not take Hughes's. For though Hughes was probably the victim of an unsavory gang-up, his own conduct in the matter was too shabby to defend and he was not even making a fight of it himself. Grumbling at each day's leaks, Drew held back, watching the thing spin, looking for a handle to pick it up by.<br><br>At this point in his disintegrating fortunes, Howard Hughes phoned Drew from one of his West Coast redoubts. He had long considered Pearson to be journalism's leading molder of public opinion and the man most knowledgeable about the Byzantine twists of conspiratorial Washington. And since Drew's animus against Hughes's tormentors was clear, there was a mutuality of interest present that encouraged him to seek Drew's help and advice.<br><br>In the manner of cornered men whose expense accounts have already been made public, Hughes admitted to misdemeanors but pled innocent to felonies. He had indeed wined and wenched government officials and military brass, sometimes to excess. It was necessary, he said; his competitors did it, and as a relative newcomer trying to buck long-entrenched interests and liaisons, he had to play the game in order to get a hearing on his proposals. He had never looked on aviation as a moneymaker, he insisted; he was in it because he had a passion for it. He yielded to no man in his mastery of the dark arts of making money, as the astronomical profits of his other businesses showed, but in aviation, he had lost $14 million in thirteen years.<br><br>Then he got to the nub: three months before, Brewster had attempted to lobby him in behalf of Pan Am, he said, and having failed, they were both out to destroy him. Pan Am had put great pressure on him to merge Trans World with Pan Am and co-sponsor the chosen-instrument plan. Brewster himself had told him at the Mayflower Hotel that the probe would be dropped if he joined forces with Pan Am. <br><br> <br><br>(9) Jack Anderson, Peace, War, And Politics (1999) <br><br>When CIA chief John McCone learned of the assassination, he rushed to Robert Kennedy's home in McLean, Virginia, and stayed with him for three hours. No one else was admitted. Even Bobby's priest was turned away. McCone told me he gave the attorney general a routine briefing on CIA business and swore that Castro's name never came up. Yet McCone's agency had been trying to kill Castro, and just two months earlier Castro had threatened to retaliate if the assassination attempts continued. Another thing: On November 22, 1963, when I could talk about nothing else, when my wife could talk about nothing else, when the entire world was riveted on Dallas, the director of the CIA claimed that he spent three hours with the brother of the slain president and that they discussed routine CIA business.<br><br>Sources would later tell me that McCone anguished with Bobby over the terrible possibility that the assassination plots sanctioned by the president's own brother may have backfired. Then the following day, McCone briefed President Lyndon Johnson and his National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. Afterward, McCone told subordinates - who later filled me in - what happened at that meeting. The grim McCone shared with Johnson and Bundy a dispatch from the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, strongly suggesting that Castro was behind the assassination.<br><br>The CIA chief put this together with what he knew of the mood in Moscow. Nikita Khrushchev was on the ropes inside the Kremlin, humiliated over backing down less than a year earlier during the Cuban missile crisis. If Castro were to be accused of the Kennedy assassination, Americans would demand revenge against Cuba, and Khrushchev would face another Cuban crisis. He was an impulsive man who could become dangerous if backed into a corner. McCone warned that Khrushchev was unlikely to endure another humiliation over Cuba. This time he might do something reckless and provoke a nuclear war, which would cost forty million American lives. It was a staggering figure that the new president repeated to others.<br><br>A trusted source told me that Johnson later picked up the phone and called a man who had been his neighbor in Washington for three decades - FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. From all that I have learned about those two men, I can speculate what Johnson told Hoover. More than likely, LBJ invoked flag, country, and the fate of forty million Americans who might die. He probably asked Hoover to make sure that the FBI postmortem on the Kennedy assassination did not even hint at the name Fidel Castro.<br><br>In times of national trauma, many people fancy themselves heroes. Witnesses see things that never happened; eavesdroppers overhear things that were never said; patriots fabricate stories to protect the national well-being; bureaucrats doctor paperwork to fit the official line; statesmen hide the truth while it is too painful to tell. Lies are told and rules are broken in the name of a greater good. Hoover was a man of many motives, but above all he was a patriot and a master bureaucrat. He despised many of the presidents who were his bosses; he was loyal only to his perception of the United States and the FBI. But LBJ knew how to appeal to Hoover's patriotism. To save forty million Americans from nuclear oblivion, the J. Edgar Hoover I knew would not only have agreed to whitewash the most important murder investigation of the century; he also would have agreed to use his power and control over the FBI to impose his will.<br><br>In less than a week, Hoover notified Johnson that the FBI investigation into the assassination was almost complete. It would lay the blame on a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who could no longer challenge the findings because by then he was dead.<br><br> <br><br>(10) Jack Anderson, speech at the University of Utah (22nd September, 1999) <br><br><br>The press in America today is not particularly popular. It probably does not deserve to be particularly popular. We have adopted many of our mainstream organizations radio, TV, newspapers have adopted the legal profession's way of learning the truth. A lawyer can prove anything. He may represent the defendant one day, the plaintiff the next, and he can take whatever facts are available on one side of the story and spell out a tale that proves either side, and he doesn't much care which side he is on. Depends usually on who offers him the biggest fee. Increasingly tabloid television programs and tabloid newspapers are doing the same thing. They decide what would make a good story and then they go out to prove the story, and they can prove anything there, investigate your background, find out all there is to know, all there is on the record about you, and take all the derogatory stuff that I learned, and put it all in one column without any compensating favorable information on the other side, and I could destroy your reputation. Well, I appeal to you, who are going in to this business, you who are taking communications under a great communications director, who will teach you right. <br><br>Let me tell you what I tell my reporters. I say I want to know the facts. I want to know the facts as they are, not as you think they are, not as you hope they are, not as someone tells you they are. I want to know the facts as they are, and I confess it is more difficult for them to find out those facts than it is for me to tell them to find out those facts. But I tell them that politicians (whom it is our duty to cover in Washington), that politicians are proud, egocentric people. Most of them would give an arm or a leg before they gave up their reputations, their good name. I can tell you that a man named Bill Clinton is in absolute agony over the stories about his personal life. He suffers. He has complained petulantly to friends: "How can they write these stories about Hilary and me? What do they know? Only Hillary and I know what our relationship is. How can they write these terrible stories?" <br><br><br>Richard Nixon went off his rocker for a short period of time, over the agony of Watergate, and the stories that we wrote about him. So I say to my reporters, "So, if you enjoy doing this too much, I don't think I'm going to like you." But I tell them it is our function to do it. This is our function. Our Founding Fathers understood, that government by its nature tends to oppress those it has power over. Our Founding Fathers decided that there must be, there had to be, there should be and there is, an institution that keeps an eye on government. That is what we do. There is nothing in the Constitution about freedom to practice law; there is nothing in the Constitution about freedom to practice medicine; there is nothing in the Constitution about freedom to engage in commerce; there is nothing in the Constitution about teaching. But there is something in the Constitution about freedom of the press. Our Founding Fathers understood, that it would be necessary to have a watchdog on government. <br><br><br> <br><br>(11) Jack Anderson, Peace, War and Politics: An Eyewitness Account (1999)<br><br><br>The CIA's Sheffield Edwards was supposed to make the contact with the underworld. He approached a former FBI agent and CIA operative, Robert Maheu, who moved at the subterranean level of politics. Maheu knew his way around the shady side of Las Vegas; he had been recruited by billionaire Howard Hughes to oversee his Las Vegas casinos. Happily, Hughes was a friend who owed me a favor. Intermediaries persuaded Maheu to confide in me. He confirmed that the CIA had asked him to sound out the Mafia, strictly off the record, about a contract to hit Fidel Castro. Maheu had taken the request straight to Johnny Rosselli.<br><br>Rosselli had a reputation inside the mob as a patriot; he was quite willing to kill for his country. But as he told me, there was an etiquette to be followed in these matters. Santo Trafficante was the godfather-in-exile of Cuba after Castro chased out the mob. Rosselli couldn't even tiptoe through Trafficante's territory without permission, and he couldn't approach Trafficante without a proper introduction. So Rosselli prevailed upon his boss in Chicago, Sam "Momo" Giancana, to attend to the protocol. Since Giancana had godfather status, he could solicit Trafficante's help to eliminate Castro. The project appealed to Giancana who had commiserated with other dons over the loss of casino revenues in Havana. Killing Castro for the government would settle some old scores for the mob, and it would put Uncle Sam in the debt of the Mafia.<br><br>Maheu had been ordered to keep a tight lid on the involvement of the U.S. government. The CIA was ready with a cover story that the Castro hit had been arranged by disgruntled American businessmen who had been bounced out of their Cuban enterprises by Castro.<br><br>On September 25, I960, Maheu brought two CIA agents to a suite at the Fountainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach. Rosselli delivered two sinister mystery men whom he introduced only as Sicilians named "Sam" and "Joe." In fact, they were two of the Mafia's most notorious godfathers, Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante, both on the FBI's ten-most-wanted list. They discussed the terms of Castro's demise, with Giancana suggesting that the usual mob method of a quick bullet to the head be eschewed in favor of something more delicate, like poison.<br><br>The wily Giancana was less interested in bumping off Castro than in scoring points with the federal government, and he intended to call in as many chips as he could before the game was over.<br><br> <br><br>(12) Mark Feldstein, The Last Muckraker, Washington Post (28th July, 2004) <br><br><br>Jack Anderson, 81 and ailing with Parkinson's disease, quietly gave up his syndicated column last week after more than half a century. It was not the ending some of Richard Nixon's men once had in mind. <br><br>In 1972, in one of the most bizarre and overlooked chapters in American political history, Anderson was the target of a Mafia-style hit ordered in the White House itself. Two Nixon operatives admitted under oath that they plotted to poison the troublemaking investigative reporter at the behest of a top aide to President Nixon. Ultimately the plot was aborted and the conspirators were arrested a few weeks later, as part of the Watergate break-in.<br><br>Anderson's retirement symbolizes the end of an era that predates Watergate. He was the last of the old-fashioned muckrakers. In his heyday, from the 1950s through the '70s, his daily "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column was the most widely read in the nation, reaching an audience of 40 million in nearly a thousand newspapers. Anderson's dramatic exposés of political scandal led to resignations and prison terms. He swiped secret documents, used bugging equipment to eavesdrop on conversations, and jubilantly savaged his enemies, unconcerned with such journalistic niceties as fairness and balance.<br><br>Anderson was an important transitional figure in the evolution of adversarial journalism, a link in the historical chain between the advocacy of Progressive-era reformers from the early 1900s and the more professionalized class of investigative reporters who came to dominate Washington in the 1970s. After World War II, when he joined the column under the tutelage of the late Drew Pearson, Anderson was for years the only Washington reporter of genuine influence who consistently exposed wrongdoing in the nation's capital - from the fur-coat scandals involving presidents Truman and Eisenhower, to corruption by numerous members of Congress, to the secret foreign policy machinations of the Nixon and Reagan administrations. <br><br>Anderson was able to break these stories in part because he was an independent journalistic entrepreneur, empowered by the technology and economic autonomy of the syndicated column. His reach extended beyond the control of any single editor or publisher.<br><br>He was a strict Mormon who viewed investigative reporting as a noble calling from God. He believed as a matter of theology that life is an eternal struggle between good and evil, and that the First Amendment was quite literally a divinely inspired charter that sanctioned his muckraking mission.<br><br>Anderson was decidedly unencumbered by ties to the Washington establishment, and he was in many ways uniquely situated to hold the muckraking banner aloft. He provided a vital check on governmental power during a time when journalists preferred to socialize with public officials rather than investigate them.<br><br>To be sure, his flaws could be glaring. He was bombastic and self-righteous, even when retracting stories, such as his false report that a Democratic vice presidential nominee had been arrested for drunk driving. The muckraker's unsavory techniques included threats, rifling through garbage, and financial relationships with sources. He openly lobbied senators on their votes, ghost-writing their speeches and using his column as leverage to influence them. His cliche-ridden evangelical style was an anachronism that sacrificed complex truths for simplistic but dramatic portrayals of good guys vs. bad.<br><br>In this respect, too, Anderson was ahead of his time, anticipating the victims-and-villains entertainment values that have come to dominate 21st-century television news. Ironically, despite the black-and-white view he expressed in his column, Anderson's own reporting was itself a far more grayish mix of courageous digging and sensationalistic self-promotion. In many ways, the columnist embodied the contradictions that have characterized investigative reporting throughout American history; from the beginning it has alternated between the highbrow ideals of public service and the lowbrow reality of celebrity gossip.<br><br>Part circus huckster, part guerrilla fighter, part righteous rogue, Anderson waged a one-man journalistic resistance when it was exceedingly unpopular to do so. That no one has emerged to take his place shows not only the void he leaves behind but also how much America's media landscape has changed.<br><br><br> <br> <br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Jack Anderson obit and info

Postby Sepka » Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:58 am

He was a good man in his private life as well, and did a number of charitable deeds that aren't part of the public record.<br><br>-Sepka the Space Weasel <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Jack Anderson obit and info

Postby MinM » Sun Aug 30, 2009 11:44 am

Jerky wrote:Jack Anderson, corrupt politicians' nemesis, dies - Columnist raked muck, broke Washington scandals since 1947

WASHINGTON (AP) -12-17-05- Jack Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning muckraking columnist who struck fear into the hearts of corrupt or secretive politicians, inspiring Nixon operatives to plot his murder, died Saturday...

Anderson gave up his syndicated Washington Merry-Go-Round column at age 81 in July 2004, after Parkinson's disease left him too ill to continue. He had been hired by the column's founder, Drew Pearson, in 1947.

The column broke a string of big scandals, from Eisenhower assistant Sherman Adams taking a vicuna coat and other gifts from a wealthy industrialist in 1958 to the Reagan administration's secret arms-for-hostages deal with Iran in 1986.

It appeared in some 1,000 newspapers in its heyday. Anderson took over the column after Pearson's death in 1969, working with a changing cast of co-authors and staff over the years.

A devout Mormon, Anderson looked upon journalism as a calling. He was considered one of the fathers of investigative reporting, renowned for his tenacity, aggressive techniques and influence in the nation's capital.

Anderson won a 1972 Pulitzer Prize for reporting that the Nixon administration secretly tilted toward Pakistan in its war with India. He also published the secret transcripts of the Watergate grand jury.

Such scoops earned him a spot on President Nixon's "enemies list." Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy has described how he and other Nixon political operatives planned ways to silence Anderson permanently -- such as slipping him LSD or staging a fatal car crash -- but the White House nixed the idea...

'If that was the way President Kennedy wanted it, Cuba could engage in the same tactics'. The result was that Castro infiltrated teams of snipers into the US to kill Kennedy".

Morgan took the story to Anderson and Drew Pearson. The story was then passed on to Earl Warren. He did not want anything to do with it and so the information was then passed to the FBI. When they failed to investigate the story Anderson wrote an article entitled "President Johnson is sitting on a political H-bomb" about Roselli's story.

It has been suggested that Roselli started this story at the request of his friends in the Central Intelligence Agency in order to divert attention from the investigation being carried out by Jim Garrison...

For example, they were preparing blueprints for the burglarizing of Watergate and the bugging of George McGovern headquarters; they were perfecting schemes to burglarize the offices of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, to recruit call girls who would romance Democratic party leaders and report back the pillow talk, to forge documents framing President Kennedy for the murder of President Diem, to fabricate a new version of Chappaquiddick. The operatives were occupied not only with conceiving and planning these vaulting designs but in making formal presentations to the Attorney General of the United States and various high aides to the President - presentations replete with elaborate charts so that busy Nixon proconsuls could get a quick grasp of the finer points of the felonies within their purview...

As it happened, I was personally acquainted with some of the Waterbuggers. Frank Sturgis, a soldier of fortune who had roamed the world in search of danger and excitement, had been a friend of mine for years. I had written about his exploits fighting first for and then against Fidel Castro. Sturgis introduced me in Miami to Bernard Barker, a short, swarthy swashbuckler who was known to his associates as Macho (he-man). Both of them spoke of Eduardo, their CIA superior during the Bay of Pigs, who I realized much later was E. Howard Hunt. They were a collection of romantics, forever seeking adventure, forever finding misadventure...

Speaking of Jack Anderson and Chappaquiddick. The parallels between the plot to kill Anderson and a plausible scenario explaining Chappaquiddick are compelling:

Eschaton
From yesterday's weekend All Things Considered, about journalist Jack Anderson:


Mr. FELDSTEIN: Well, it's pretty wild, but it's true. The CIA started spying on Anderson under Nixon which was illegal, and Anderson found out about it and he sicced his nine kids--he's a devote Mormon and has nine children--on the CIA agents and they waved and let the air out of the tires of the agents and made sport of it all. So everything Nixon tried, you know, didn't seem to work and finally he turned to smearing him sexually and an assassination plot.

NAYLOR: Now what did the assassination plot involve? I mean, was this something that Nixon was directly involved with?

Mr. FELDSTEIN: We don't know. Here's what we do know--and it's been really interesting. I've been going through the National Archives documents on this and the White House tapes. We do know that E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, two names that would become famous a few weeks later during the Watergate break-in when they were arrested as part of that, secretly met at The Hay-Adams Hotel in March of 1972, a block from the White House, and they discussed rubbing out Jack Anderson, and they discussed various ways they were going to kill him. First, they talked about putting LSD in his drink. The trouble was as Mormon and a teetotaler, he didn't drink alcohol. So that was out. So then they talked about making him crash in an automobile accident, but they would have to go to the CIA and use a special car for that. So finally G. Gordon Liddy volunteered to kill Anderson himself personally by knifing him, slitting his throat, and staging it as a mugging that would look like a Washington street crime. At the last minute, this assassination plot was aborted, and a few weeks later, the men were arrested in the Watergate break-in and never had a chance to put their plan into operation.

G. GORDON LIDDY Tried to Assassinate a Journalist w/ Nixon!! - Democratic Underground

John Dean: "If Teddy knew the bear trap he was walking into at Chappaquiddick" -- - Democratic Underground

rigorousintuition.ca :: View topic - Ted Kennedy has passed

rigorousintuition.ca :: View topic - Ted Kennedy has passed

MinM's Journal - Frank Church | Jack Anderson
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Re: Jack Anderson obit and info

Postby MinM » Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:57 am

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Re: Jack Anderson obit and info

Postby MinM » Fri Oct 21, 2011 9:45 am

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Bert Randolph Sugar

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Re: Jack Anderson obit and info

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