| Syndicated columnist
Jack Anderson was the premier investigative reporter in the nation's
capital during a career that lasted more than half a century. His
articles were published in nearly 1000 newspapers across the country in
a column called the "Washington Merry-Go-Round," which specialized in
expos�s of political corruption. |
 |
Anderson first began
poking the eyes of the powerful and pompous when Harry Truman was in
the White House. The young reporter spirited off classified documents,
eavesdropped on private conversations, and crusaded openly and joyously
without regard for more conventional notions of journalistic
objectivity.
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To Washington's power elite, Anderson was an object of derision, an
uncouth gossip-monger and self-promoter whose hyped-up prose and
shoot-from-the-hip style were considered ungentlemanly in the snobbish
drawing rooms of the nation's capital. But without him, many of the
capital's secrets would never have come to light. |
| Indeed, Anderson was a
critically important check on governmental power during a time when few
other reporters even tried to hold officials accountable. He was one of
the last of a dying breed of independent entrepreneurial journalists
who answered not to an editor or publisher maneuvering for marketing
position but only to his own personal sense of right and wrong. |
 |
 | Anderson so enraged
Richard Nixon that the president falsely tried to smear the muckraker
as a homosexual. Nixon's aides also illegally ordered the C.I.A. to spy
on the columnist, and at one point even plotted to assassinate him by
putting LSD on the steering wheel of his car. |
Part carnival huckster,
part freedom fighter, part impish rascal, for more than a generation
Anderson was in many respects the only real journalistic check in the
nation's capital.
To hear more about--and
from--Washington's most controversial muckraker, click here to listen
to interviews he recorded in 1993 with Daryl Gibson, co-author of
Anderson's memoirs, Peace, War and Politics.
Click here to order Jack Anderson's memoirs, Peace, War and Politics, online.
JOHP :: Jack Anderson Resources::
The Early Years
The Young Reporter
Senator Joseph McCarthy
1960s
President Nixon
