Jack Anderson (columnist)

Jack Northman Anderson (October 19, 1922 – December 17, 2005) was an American newspaper columnist, syndicated by United Features Syndicate, considered one of the fathers of modern investigative journalism. Anderson won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his investigation on secret American 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.

Quotes about Anderson

• Kissinger did take some knocks in the press over India, which sent him into a frenzy. Some of the records of his Situation Room meetings were leaked to the muckraking columnist Jack Anderson, who even found out that Kissinger had toyed with the idea of illegally sending Jordanian F-104s to Pakistan, although he did not realize that Nixon and Kissinger had actually done it. “We cannot survive the kind of internal weaknesses we are seeing,” Kissinger raged to Nixon. John Ehrlichman noted that Kissinger was lashing back with a forceful press campaign, “trying to change the fact that during his … [Situation Room] meetings Henry had lost his objectivity and he’d been exceedingly intemperate in his attacks on India.” Nixon, seeing how Kissinger “ranted and raved,” briefly considered firing him. “He’s personalizing this India thing,” the president told Alexander Haig. “[H]e just starts to wear himself out and crack up.” Still, Nixon shared Kissinger’s desire for revenge against Anderson. A year after Yahya started his slaughter, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy were drawing up far-fetched possible plans to kill Anderson—by poisoning his drink, or putting LSD on his car’s steering wheel so he would hallucinate and crash.
  • Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide. Epilogue