Jack Anderson's righteous sense of morality was honed early, in the tight-knit Mormon community where he grew up outside Salt Lake City, Utah, during the Depression. He was molded by the Mormon philosophy that life is a struggle between good and evil, but he was also rebellious, chafing at his dour father and longing instead for adventure beyond his strict world.

He found his escape as a reporter, first infiltrating polygamous sects at home, then traveling to China, where he became a war correspondent. Anderson cultivated Chou En-lai as a source, then (briefly) spied on China's Communist Party for U.S. intelligence. He soon ended up battling American military censors, and headed back home to seek further adventure as a "leg man" for Washington's only investigative reporter at the time, Drew Pearson.