Джек Андерсон: Журналист-расследователь и его вклад в американскую прессу

American newspaper columnist (1922–2005)

Jack Northman Anderson (October 19, 1922 – December 17, 2005) was an American newspaper columnist, syndicated by United Features Syndicate, considered one of the founders of modern investigative journalism. Anderson won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his investigation on secret U. S. policy decision making between the United States and Pakistan during the Indo Pakistani War of 1971. In addition to his newspaper career, Anderson also had a national radio show on the Mutual Broadcasting System, acted as Washington bureau chief of Parade magazine, and was a commentator on ABC TV's Good Morning America for nine years. and was credited for breaking the story of the Iran–Contra affair under President Reagan. He said that the scoop was "spiked" because the story had become too close to President Ronald Reagan.

Anderson was born in Long Beach, California, to Orlando and Agnes (née Mortensen) Anderson, devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints of Swedish and Danish descent. He grew up with his family in Salt Lake City, Utah. After high school, he served two years as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints in the church's Southern States Mission. Anderson's aptitude for journalism appeared at the early age of 12 when he began writing the Boy Scouts Column for The Deseret News. He published his first articles in his local newspaper, The Murray Eagle. He edited his high school newspaper, The Granitian. He joined The Salt Lake Tribune in 1940, where his muckraking exploits included infiltrating polygamous Mormon fundamentalist sects. In 1944, he joined the United States Merchant Marine and served on cargo ships that went to New Guinea and India. In the spring of 1945, he resigned from the Merchant Marine, and became a war correspondent stationed in Chungking, China. He co founded Citizens Against Government Waste with J. Peter Grace in 1984. and he instructed them to go through Hoover's garbage, a tactic the FBI used in its surveillance of political dissidents. Anderson grew close to Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the two exchanged information from sources. When Pearson went after McCarthy, Anderson reluctantly followed. In the mid 1960s Anderson exposed the corruption of Senator Thomas J. Dodd and unearthed a memo by an ITT executive admitting the company made large donations to Richard Nixon's campaign to so that Nixon would stymie anti trust prosecution. His reporting on Nixon ITT corruption earned him a place on the Master list of Nixon's political opponents. Anderson collaborated with Pearson on The Case Against Congress, published in 1968. According to the Family Jewels Central Intelligence Agency documents, in 1971, during the Indo Pakistani War, the director of the CIA, Richard Helms, had a wiretap put on Anderson's phones. Other topics that Anderson covered included organized crime, the John F. Kennedy assassination, Ted Kennedy's role in the drowning death of a staffer at the Chappaquiddick incident, the Watergate scandal, the 1970 meeting between Elvis Presley and President Nixon, fugitive Nazis, the white supremacist organization the Liberty Lobby and other far right organizations, the death of Howard Hughes, the ABSCAM public corruption investigation, the investigation into fugitive financier Robert Vesco, the Iran Contra scandal, and the activities of numerous Washington agencies, elected officials, and bureaucrats.

In 1972 Anderson was the target of an assassination plot conceived by senior White House staff. Two Nixon administration conspirators admitted under oath that they plotted to poison Anderson on orders from senior White House aide Charles Colson. Over the course of three months, ending April 12, 1972, the CIA spied on Anderson, whose code name in the project was "Brandy". The CIA ended Mudhen after being unsuccessful at finding his sources and believing that Anderson was beginning to suspect he was being spied on by the CIA, which was able to collect a large file on his personal movements, his family, and the fact that he drove too fast occasionally. He later used documents he had been given about the project as part of a lawsuit against Richard Nixon and other government officials in 1977 claiming "that the agencies and officials committed various illegal acts and violated his constitutional rights to free speech and privacy". The program asserted that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a conspiracy involving an alliance between organized crime and the Cuban government,