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Jack Anderson
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Jack Anderson (1922–2005) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative journalist and syndicated columnist who inherited the Washington Merry-Go-Round column from Drew Pearson in 1969. 1922-10-19 2005-12-17 Long Beach, California 2026-10-09 2026-10-09
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employed_by Drew Pearson legman on the Washington Merry-Go-Round column, later co-columnist and successor 1947 1969 1
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partner_of Douglas Cohn writing partner on the column 1999 2001 1
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investigated CIA Office of Security true CELOTEX II surveillance of Anderson and his assistants from an observation post in the Statler Hilton 1972-02-15 1972-04-12 11
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investigated Federal Bureau of Investigation true sought to review Anderson's papers for classified material; a letter of November 30, 2006 from the Acting Associate Attorney General stated the FBI was not seeking to reclaim any documents 2006 2006-11-30 28

Jack Anderson (1922–2005) was an American investigative journalist and syndicated columnist. He went to work in 1947 as a legman for Drew Pearson and inherited the Washington Merry-Go-Round column when Pearson died in 1969.12

Early career

Anderson was born in Long Beach, California, on October 19, 1922.3 He was raised in the Salt Lake City area. At twelve he edited the Boy Scout page of the Deseret News and soon took a job with the Murray Eagle in Murray, Utah, paying $7 a week. After high school he joined the staff of the Salt Lake Tribune, and on December 7, 1941 he became a Mormon missionary in the South.1 Two years later he enrolled in a Merchant Marine officer-training school. He then persuaded the Deseret News to accredit him as a foreign correspondent in China. He reached a base run by the Office of Strategic Services and was sent to contact a band of Chinese Nationalist guerrillas.1 He was inducted into the Army in 1945 and served with the United States Army Quartermaster Corps until 1947, working on service newspapers and Armed Forces Radio.1

Pearson and the column

Anderson applied to work for Drew Pearson, who had been exposing government corruption for more than a decade, and was hired immediately in 1947.1 For years his work ran under Pearson's name. In 1957 he threatened to quit, and Pearson promised him more bylines and pledged to leave him the column. Anderson received a shared byline in 1965. Pearson died in 1969 and left the column to him. Anderson split its proceeds with Pearson's widow, and the obituary places his pay at about $15,000 in 1969.1

On July 7, 1958 the Associated Press reported from Washington that a microphone had been found in a hotel room occupied by a member of the staff of the Boston textile manufacturer Bernard Goldfine, whose gifts to Eisenhower's chief of staff Sherman Adams were then before a House subcommittee. The wire described Anderson, "a legman for columnist Drew Pearson," as the man found in the adjoining room with Baron Shacklette, an investigator for the subcommittee.4

On March 22, 1968 the FBI sent William C. Sullivan a memorandum on the "Espionage - X" implications of Anderson's The Washington Post column of March 20, 1968, which reported a planned U.S. request that Chiang Kai-shek withdraw troops from Quemoy and Matsu. The memorandum reported "extreme concern" among Defense Department officials and the Chinese Nationalist Embassy, recorded the Defense judgment that the column was "generally accurate" and drew "almost verbatim" on two Secret documents, and stated that some Defense officials believed the documents had been leaked by an officer of the military assistance group in Taiwan.5 The FBI's public records repository holds eleven parts of Anderson material, described as old and newly released documents about Anderson, his writings on the FBI, and his use of leaked material of national security concern.6

At its height the column ran in about 1,000 newspapers, which the obituary puts at 45 million daily readers.1 In 1967 the Pulitzer nominating jury recommended his columns on the misuse of campaign donations by Senator Thomas Dodd, and the Pulitzer advisory board rejected that choice.1 The obituary records that Anderson admitted giving covert aid to Joseph McCarthy early in McCarthy's anti-Communist campaign, and that he had wrongly charged Donald Rumsfeld with lavishly decorating his office while cutting expenses on programs of the Office of Economic Opportunity.1

Retirement and other work

Anderson unofficially retired in 2001, when Douglas Cohn, his writing partner since 1999, and Eleanor Clift took over the column. The column ended on July 30, 2004, when United Feature Syndicate announced its end.1 He had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1986.2

Anderson also broadcast a syndicated radio show, appeared for years on ABC's Good Morning America, hosted a television program called Truth in which public figures were tested on a lie detector, and served as Washington bureau chief of Parade (magazine). He wrote more than a dozen books and several subscription newsletters.1

Pulitzer Prize and ITT

In 1972 Anderson won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, for his reporting of American policy decision-making during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971; the award listed him as a syndicated columnist.7 In 1983 he told the Washington Post: "I have to do daily what Woodward and Bernstein did once."1

The obituary links Anderson's reporting to the ITT-Dita Beard affair, in which the settlement of an antitrust suit against ITT Corporation was tied to a $400,000 pledge to underwrite the 1972 Republican convention.1 The Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities recorded in its final report that Anderson reported on February 29, 1972 the existence of the Dita Beard memorandum, alleging that a $400,000 contribution to the Nixon campaign was tied to a favorable Justice Department ruling on ITT's antitrust problems. The report states that the White House response included an investigation in which Howard Hunt and personnel from some government agencies were used to investigate individuals related to the publication of the memo.8

Nixon White House

President Richard Nixon tried to smear Anderson as a homosexual, and the Central Intelligence Agency was ordered to spy on him. The obituary states that, according to the Watergate tapes, a Nixon aide ordered two cohorts to try to kill the journalist by poisoning.1

At the Senate Watergate Committee hearing of May 24, 1973, Alfred Baldwin identified a group of papers taken from the effects of James McCord as relating to Jack Anderson, headed "Confidential, subject: Jack Anderson" and signed by McCord. The committee received them in camera as exhibits 15A to 15D and did not publish them.9 On June 27, 1973 John Dean introduced a memorandum from Charles Colson to Dean, which Dean dated November 17, 1972, concerning information Colson had received from an informer about Anderson. In the memorandum Colson wrote that the informer reported Anderson found in a room with wiretap equipment and a private investigator in connection with the Dodd investigation, and that Anderson and Pearson were paid $100,000 in 1958 by Fulgencio Batista to write favorable articles. Colson wrote: "You know my personal feelings about Jack Anderson. After his incredibly sloppy and malicious reporting on Eagleton, his credibility has diminished. It now appears as if we have the opportunity to destroy it. Do you agree that we should pursue this actively?"10

A compilation of CIA domestic operations prepared by the CIA Office of Security and submitted to the Director in May 1973, known as the CIA Family Jewels, records a surveillance codenamed CELOTEX II. At the direction of the Director of Central Intelligence, the Office of Security conducted surveillance of Anderson and at various times his "legmen," Brit Hume, Les Whitten and Joseph Spear, from February 15 to April 12, 1972. An observation post was maintained in the Statler Hilton hotel directly opposite Anderson's office, to attempt to determine Anderson's sources for highly classified Agency information appearing in his syndicated columns.11 The preceding item, CELOTEX I, covered Michael Getler of the Washington Post in 1971 and January 1972.11

The same compilation includes a memorandum of September 9, 1972 from Richard Helms to Henry Kissinger. It states that after noting that Anderson had a continuing source for classified documents on narcotics, the Agency arranged a trap so that the recipients of CIA Intelligence Memoranda on narcotics could be identified. The memorandum identifies a leak to the press as having come from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.12

A separate CIA memorandum in the compilation, signed by Ted Shackley of the Western Hemisphere Division, concerns a column by Anderson that linked Howard Hunt to break-ins at Chilean diplomatic installations in Washington and New York. The memorandum states that the Agency knew of no foundation for that allegation, that any connection between ITT and the break-ins was conjectural, and that the column itself said as much.13

Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University, wrote in a March 25, 2022 article for the Washington Post, reprinted by Stars and Stripes, that in March 1972 Colson told Hunt that Anderson "had become a great thorn in the side of the president" and that the White House had to "stop Anderson at all costs," words Feldstein attributed to Hunt's later Senate testimony. Feldstein wrote that Colson proposed an untraceable poison or a high dose of a hallucinogen like LSD, that "a Senate committee investigated and confirmed the plot to poison Anderson," and that Nixon's role in the plot has never been definitively established.14

In Poisoning the Press (2010), Feldstein reported on tapes from the National Archives. According to the account NBC News published from the book, H. R. Haldeman asked at a March 18, 1972 meeting, "Don't we have some spurious stuff that we can give to Jack Anderson," and Feldstein describes a lunch in March at the Hay-Adams Hotel with a recently retired CIA poison specialist, at which Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy discussed planting a poison in Anderson's medicine cabinet or putting massive doses of LSD on his steering wheel. Hunt told Feldstein in an interview before his death that Colson had ordered Hunt and Liddy to "locate Anderson's home and examine it from the outside for vulnerabilities." NBC reported that a spokeswoman for Colson said he "believes everyone has debunked this story a long time ago and he has nothing to add to it."15

The New York Times reported on April 14, 1980, summarizing excerpts from Liddy's book Will, that Liddy wrote the plan arose over lunch in Washington with Hunt and a CIA operative, was suggested because an Anderson column had supposedly compromised an American agent abroad, and preceded the Watergate burglary. According to the excerpts, a plan to kill Anderson with LSD was dismissed as impractical, and Liddy then volunteered to kill him on a Washington street but was advised by Hunt to forget it.16

Psychic research columns

Lieutenant Colonel John B. Alexander published "The New Mental Battlefield: Beam Me Up, Spock" in the December 1980 issue of Military Review, an official Army publication. Anderson's response came almost immediately. On January 9, 1981 his column "Pentagon Invades Buck Rogers' Turf" in the Washington Post used the terms "futuristic fantasies," "hogwash" and "voodoo warfare."17

His column of February 5, 1981, "Yes, Psychic Warfare Is Part of the Game," began "The brass hats are, indeed, dabbling in the dark arts," and used the phrase "Ouija board warriors," and referred to the "evil eye" and to the "comic-strip" treatment of the subject.18

On March 30, 1981 the Post ran "CIA Toys with Extrasensory Weapons." The column stated: "I've already reported on the Pentagon's $6-million-a-year research to develop ESP weapons," and its list of supporting research areas included remote monitors and stimulators, which the column described as work "like a Haitian witch doctor might try."19

Annie Jacobsen gives the column heading "Voodoo Warriors of the Pentagon" and writes that Anderson surmised the generals at the Pentagon were "dabbling in the dark arts" and that the wire services picked up the story, which went national and caused a stir within the military establishment.20

By 1984 the tone had changed. On April 24, 1984 the Post ran "'Voodoo Gap' Looms as Latest Weapons Crisis," which opened: "I have reported previously on secret projects to adapt psychic phenomena to military purposes."21 An Air War College paper on psychic research observed that by 1984 Anderson had changed his tune.17

The Army's Grill Flame nickname for its psychic research appeared in Anderson's work in 1984. A memorandum of May 17, 1984, titled "Recent Jack Anderson 'GRILL FLAME' Articles," recorded that Representative Charlie Rose had called Ingo Swann on May 16, 1984 and related that Dale Van Atta, an associate of Anderson, had said that he and Anderson had recently been under the influence of McRae but that this was no longer the case, and that a series of favorable articles would follow.22 A memorandum on a presentation to Harry Soyster on December 12, 1985 stated that the year before Anderson had published the project nickname Grill Flame and associated psi research with the U.S. Army.23

Castro plot and Iran-Contra

A CIA memorandum in the Family Jewels compilation on the plot against Fidel Castro states that Johnny Roselli threatened to expose his part in the operation. The Agency decided to ignore the threats and take a calculated risk. The memorandum then states that "Roselli or someone on his behalf" furnished Anderson details of the operation, and it attaches two Anderson columns dealing with Roselli.24 The compilation's list of Inspector General reports describes the Castro allegations as a story that "first appeared in Drew Pearson's column and has since appeared in Jack Anderson's column," and states that "While the columns contained many factual errors, the allegations are basically true."25

The obituary credits Anderson with revelations in the Iran-Contra affair and with the 1987 Sigma Delta Chi Service to Journalism award for his work on that story.1

Glomar Explorer

On March 18, 1975 Anderson mentioned the Hughes Glomar Explorer, the CIA salvage vessel, on his national radio show and declared his intention to reveal more details about the operation. The next day the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the New York Times published front-page stories on the vessel.26 The National Security Archive's briefing book on the project refers to the exposés on the vessel by Anderson and by Seymour Hersh.27

FBI files and papers

After Anderson's death, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation told his family that the Bureau wanted to review his files and to remove any documents it judged classified before they were opened to the public; the request became public in April 2006. The Federation of American Scientists reported the request.28 On April 20, 2006 an FBI assistant director, John Miller, told NPR the bureau wanted access before the archive was made public. NPR reported that FBI agents had told the family that the papers included a document that could bear on a current espionage case involving pro-Israel lobbyists, and that 188 boxes were held by George Washington University.29

When the Senate Judiciary Committee asked under what law the FBI was proceeding, the Bureau replied that it had abandoned its effort. The Associated Press reported that the revelation came in a letter dated November 30, 2006 from Acting Associate Attorney General James H. Clinger to Chairman Arlen Specter, which stated: "At this time, the FBI is not seeking to reclaim any documents." The AP reported that Anderson's son and his biographer said agents had expressed interest in documents that would aid the government's case against two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The family then arranged for the papers to go to George Washington University for archiving.303132

In 2008 the FBI released its files on Anderson to the Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act request, a collection of more than 2,000 heavily redacted documents tracing Hoover's attempts to catch the reporter. Feldstein planned to add the collection to the university's Anderson papers.33

Death

Anderson died at his home in Bethesda, Maryland on December 17, 2005, at the age of 83. He had Parkinson's disease, and his family attributed his death to complications from it. He was survived by his wife, Olivia Farley Anderson, and nine children.12

Footnotes

  1. Patricia Sullivan, "Obituary: Jack Anderson was Pulitzer winning columnist," The Washington Post, December 18, 2005, reprinted by The Seattle Times, December 18, 2005. https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/20051218/andersonobit18/obituary--jack-anderson-was-pulitzer-winning-columnist ↩︎

  2. "Jack Anderson, muckraking journalist, dies," NBC News (Associated Press), December 2005. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10506872 ↩︎

  3. "Jack Anderson, columnist and ex-Utahn, dies," Deseret News (Associated Press), December 18, 2005. https://www.deseret.com/2005/12/18/19928462/jack-anderson-columnist-and-ex-utahn-dies/ ↩︎

  4. Associated Press, Washington, "Goldfine Records Burglarized; Aides' Room Bugged," The Daily Reflector (Greenville, North Carolina), July 7, 1958, p. 1. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/encore/ncgre000/00000086/00085661/00085661.pdf ↩︎

  5. Federal Bureau of Investigation, memorandum from R. D. Cotter to W. C. Sullivan, "Jack Anderson, Article in 'Washington Post,' 3/20/68, Espionage - X," March 22, 1968, FBI Vault, Jack Anderson, Part 01 of 11. https://web.archive.org/web/2014id_/http://vault.fbi.gov/jack-anderson/jack-anderson-part-01-of-11/at_download/file ↩︎

  6. Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Vault, "Jack Anderson," Parts 01 to 11 (archived page). https://web.archive.org/web/2014/http://vault.fbi.gov/jack-anderson ↩︎

  7. The Pulitzer Prizes, 1972 winners, National Reporting: Jack Anderson, a syndicated columnist, "For his reporting of American policy decision-making during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971" (archived page). https://web.archive.org/web/2012/http://www.pulitzer.org/awards/1972 ↩︎

  8. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, Final Report (1974), section "ITT and Dita Beard," pp. 205-206. https://archive.org/details/senatewatergater01unit ↩︎

  9. Testimony of Alfred C. Baldwin, May 24, 1973, Presidential Campaign Activities of 1972, Senate Resolution 60: Watergate and Related Activities, Hearings before the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, Book 1, p. 407. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp01unit ↩︎

  10. Testimony of John W. Dean III, June 27, 1973, Hearings before the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, Book 4, p. 1349 and Exhibit No. 46, p. 1687 (memorandum, Charles Colson to John Dean). https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp04unit ↩︎

  11. Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Security, submission of May 16, 1973 for the "Family Jewels" compilation, sections "CELOTEX I" and "CELOTEX II," CIA Reading Room document 0001451843. https://archive.org/details/CIA-Family-Jewels ↩︎

  12. Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels" compilation, memorandum from Richard Helms to Henry Kissinger, September 9, 1972, narcotics section. https://archive.org/details/CIA-Family-Jewels ↩︎

  13. Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels" compilation, memorandum of Theodore G. Shackley, Chief, Western Hemisphere Division, on Anderson's column concerning ITT and Howard Hunt, 1973. https://archive.org/details/CIA-Family-Jewels ↩︎

  14. Mark Feldstein, "50 years ago: Nixon White House plotted to assassinate journalist," The Washington Post, reprinted in Stars and Stripes, March 25, 2022. https://www.stripes.com/history/2022-03-25/50-years-ago-nixon-white-house-plotted-assassinate-journalist-5477284.html ↩︎

  15. Michael Isikoff, "Nixon plot against newspaper columnist detailed," NBC News, September 13, 2010, reporting on Mark Feldstein, Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture (2010), and on an interview with Howard Hunt provided to NBC. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39157420 ↩︎

  16. "Assassination Plots Described by Liddy," The New York Times, April 14, 1980 (clipping), CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710021-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710021-5 ↩︎

  17. Jack Anderson, "Pentagon Invades Buck Rogers' Turf," The Washington Post, January 9, 1981, p. D16, as cited in Air War College research paper on psychic research, CIA-RDP96-00789R001001420001-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00789r001001420001-3 ↩︎

  18. Jack Anderson, "Yes, Psychic Warfare Is Part of the Game," The Washington Post, February 5, 1981, p. DC11, as quoted in the Air War College paper cited in note 17. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00789r001001420001-3 ↩︎

  19. Jack Anderson, "CIA Toys with Extrasensory Weapons," The Washington Post, March 30, 1981, p. B13. CIA-RDP96-00788R001700360003-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001700360003-3 ↩︎

  20. Annie Jacobsen, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis (Little, Brown and Company, 2017). ↩︎

  21. Jack Anderson, "'Voodoo Gap' Looms as Latest Weapons Crisis," The Washington Post, April 24, 1984, p. C13. CIA-RDP96-00788R001200050011-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001200050011-3 ↩︎

  22. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), memorandum for record, "Recent Jack Anderson 'GRILL FLAME' Articles," May 17, 1984, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200030001-6. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001200030001-6 ↩︎

  23. Memorandum, "BG Soyster Presentation 12 December 1985," CIA-RDP96-00788R001700030003-9. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001700030003-9 ↩︎

  24. Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels" compilation, memorandum on the plot against Fidel Castro, paragraphs 4 and 21. https://archive.org/details/CIA-Family-Jewels ↩︎

  25. Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels" compilation, list of Inspector General reports, entry on the allegation that the Agency conspired to assassinate Fidel Castro. https://archive.org/details/CIA-Family-Jewels ↩︎

  26. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXV, National Security, 1973-1976, document 197, editorial note. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v35/d197 ↩︎

  27. National Security Archive, "The CIA's Declassified History of the Glomar Explorer," Electronic Briefing Book No. 305, February 12, 2010, introduction. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb305/index.htm ↩︎

  28. Steven Aftergood, "FBI Seeks Access to Jack Anderson Files," Federation of American Scientists, April 19, 2006. https://fas.org/publication/fbi_seeks_access_to_jack_ander ↩︎

  29. David Folkenflik, "FBI Defends Request for Columnist's Papers," NPR, All Things Considered, April 20, 2006. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/5353604 ↩︎

  30. "FBI Abandons Its Effort to Obtain Jack Anderson's Files," Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, January 4, 2007. https://rcfp.org/?p=39395 ↩︎

  31. "FBI Drops Demands For Jack Anderson Papers," Associated Press, January 4, 2007. https://cbsnews.com/news/fbi-drops-demands-for-jack-anderson-papers ↩︎

  32. Niketa Kumar, "FBI ends pursuit of GW housed Jack Anderson documents," The GW Hatchet, January 18, 2007. https://www.gwhatchet.com/2007/01/18/fbi-ends-pursuit-of-gw-housed-jack-anderson-documents/ ↩︎

  33. Lauren French, "Gelman Library to receive FBI files on columnist Jack Anderson," The GW Hatchet, October 27, 2008. https://www.gwhatchet.com/2008/10/27/gelman-library-to-receive-fbi-files-on-columnist-jack-anderson/ ↩︎