The Square Scourge of Washington

THERE is a reporter's daydream: his revelations rock the nation, and he shifts from merely writing news to making it. Newspapers front-page his exposes, he stars at televised hearings and on talk shows, fellow newsmen want to interview him, and the reigning powers that he assaults seem powerless before him. For roughly 9,999 newsmen out of 10,000, that vision remains forever fantasy, but for Jack Northman Anderson it has all come true. A college dropout with no intellectual pretensions, a relentless square whose biggest indulgences are a Sunday-afternoon nap and a second ice-cream cone for dessert, a clumsy writer who has yet to put together any memorable combination of words, he has nonetheless emerged in the past dozen weeks as the pre-eminent scourge of Washington. Security precautions in many offices are being tightened because no one knows where he will strike next. Nationwide, he is a household name. Now the most celebrated practitioner of the muckraking tradition, Anderson has conquered the shadow of his late employer and friend, Drew Pearson.

Anderson startled and embarrassed the Administration when he published secret papers showing a strong anti-Indian bias in Washington's handling of the India-Pakistan war. While hardly of the same magnitude, his story about Ambassador Arthur Watson getting drunk on a commercial airliner also produced red faces--and no denials. That was only a pinprick compared with his ITT charge. Anderson reported that the Justice Department settled an antitrust suit against ITT, on terms relatively favorable to the firm, at about the same time that ITT promised a contribution to help pay for the Republican Convention.

Chumminess. That accusation has endangered the confirmation of Richard Kleindienst as Attorney General, discomfited both the White House and the largest of all multinational conglomerates and set off a major Senate investigation. At the end of last week seven Senators flew to Denver to question the ailing Mrs. Dita Beard in her hospital room about the controversial memo* ostensibly written by her.

The case remains far from settled.

No wrongdoing has yet been conclusively proved; indeed, hardly anyone seriously thinks that ITT tried to buy off the Justice Department, or that it could have. What is being widely suggested is a Washington atmosphere of moneyed chumminess, of convenient convergence of interests between certain businesses and Government.

Meanwhile, Anderson returned to the attack. Last week he flaunted a sheaf of stolen ITT documents. On the basis of these, he charges that some ITT staffers and U.S. Government personnel plotted to prevent Salvador Allende, a Marxist, from taking office as President of Chile (see box, page 42).

This indictment too is already having wide impact. Even if the story is only partly true, it confirms the ugly suspicions in Latin America about a modern version of gunboat diplomacy, and about the Nixon Administration's intimacy with those old villains, Yanqui business and the "vested interests." ITT, meanwhile, is worried about the safety of its personnel in Latin America, where radicals like to take symbolic hostages.

The conglomerate is also anxious about further disclosures; Anderson has more documents as yet unreleased. Though ITT has destroyed some of its files and hired the international investigative agency Intertel to look into the leakage, the culprit is still unknown. It has to be someone with news sense and access to tightly held material. One theory: "A goddam angry secretary."

It is a plausible idea. Anderson often does get tips from disgruntled secretaries and clerks, as well as from newspaper reporters whom he sometimes pays He also has a network of regular informants among Senate aides, sub-Cabinet officials and Civil Service careerists in every important branch of Government. He has received documents from the White House, CIA, Pentagon, State Department and, on one occasion, part of a message to TIME from its Boston bureau. With three full-time legmen, Anderson rigorously follows up leads. He then divides the results into seven chapters a week of scandal and assorted disclosures for his column "The Washington Merry-Go-Round."

The column is a mishmash with an uneven history. After Pearson's death in 1969, the heir suffered dry periods in which his output was only soso. Not even Jack Anderson can find an interesting piece of skulduggery every day. So he relates, in tones of breathless outrage, such gossip as a 1970 bit about the then mayor of Tucson, James Corbett Jr., allegedly barging uninvited into a young woman's Washington hotel room and biting her knee (Corbett lost the subsequent election). Anderson also polices the drinking habits of Capitol Hill (he is an abstemious Mormon) and waxes indignant when public servants do not pay their own hotel bills.

These marginalia dovetail with Anderson's more important work. A wide vein of moralism runs through much of his writing and his suddenly prominent persona. Though congenial and even gentle off the job, he adopts an almost snarling style in his frequent speechmaking and conveys rigid righteousness on paper. In his own mind he is a man with a mission; its imperatives are not to be denied. He calls himself a "watchdog on government" and says that he was "brought up with a sense of duty and a sense of outrage." He insists that the drinking or leching capers of public men do not offend him "until they affect the public business."

Divine Charter. As for using stolen documents, Anderson has no scruples, except that he and his staff do no pilfering themselves. He says that he believes the Constitution to be divinely inspired--an idea he derives from Mormon theology--and he interprets it as forbidding Government secrecy that allows officials to mislead the public. "The framers of the Constitution did not intend that," he maintains.

To the argument that an Administration needs a great deal of privacy to conduct its business properly, he says yes, "but not to pursue a course in private that is counter to public pronouncements." Some secrets remain sacrosanct to him. He would not print information about weapons technology, for instance, or deployment of forces in time of war. Once, he says, he withheld material at the specific request of CIA Director Richard Helms.

But these concessions are unusual.

Anderson and his legmen have a certain disdain for conventional journalistic standards, believing that most large news organizations are too timid and too respectful of those in authority. Les Whitten, 44, the senior of the assistants, points out cheerfully that "the Xerox has done more for freedom of information than any law that could ever be concocted." As long as there are people willing--for whatever motive--to break security, Anderson & Co. are willing to consider the offerings.

How else, Anderson argues, can there be an effective check on the probity of government? Brit Hume, 28, another of his staff members, charges that most political reporters ask the wrong questions. "Who's paying?" he demands to know. "Who's behind the candidate? Who's really winning?" This is another strong tenet in the Anderson credo --one that unites him both philosophically and tactically with Ralph Nader, with whom he shares material and mutual admiration. They are both obsessed by the influence of private power and big money on public men and public policy. Almost by reflex, Anderson seems to smell danger in the contacts between Government officials and private industry.

Such relationships are inevitable for a variety of reasons, including regulatory procedures and the realities of political fund raising. Businessmen, like all citizens, obviously have the right to plead their cases in Washington and seek to influence Government decisions. However, the fact that affluence is usually influence cannot be denied. Nor is there much doubt that powerful private interests are often willing to spend their way to favorable decisions. Therefore investigative reporting--a term considered by Anderson to be "too high-toned" for his own work--is an invaluable antidote to corruption. It is also a practice with a proud if erratic history.

Sense of Unease. Muckraking seems to be a cyclical phenomenon. Its classic period came between 1902 and 1912, when Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair exposed civic corruption and business chicanery. It diminished in the 1920s, revived briefly during the Depression, and then went into eclipse again during the long period of post-World War II prosperity and contentment. In recent years, however, confidence and complacency have been shaken by the Viet Nam War, explosive social and racial tensions and the youth revolt. All these have bred a deep unease and an anti-Establishment mood in which the nation's institutions are undergoing tough scrutiny.

More newspapers and magazines are assigning individual reporters, or groups of them, to work full-time searching for exposes. Some notable scoops have resulted. LIFE, for instance, revealed connections between Abe Fortas and Financier Louis Wolfson, who was later imprisoned, that eventually forced Fortas to resign from the Supreme Court. A team working for the Long Island paper Newsday counts 21 indictments, seven convictions and 30 resignations of public officials and businessmen as a result of its stories. Other journalistic sleuths have won national recognition for local digging; in the past four years, exposes of harbor-commission bribery (George Reasons of the Los Angeles Times) and of shoddy practices by private ambulance services (William Jones of the Chicago Tribune) have earned Pulitzer Prizes. On a broader level, probing writers have shed light on what have become national issues. For example, Social Critic Michael Harrington and Reporter Robert Sherrill, in the 1960s, drew attention to the continued existence of widespread hunger and even starvation in the U.S., popular myth to the contrary. New Left publications like Ramparts wage a kind of holy war on authority generally, though they are often inaccurate. Skeptics like Jack Newfield and David Halberstam have savaged public policies and the reputations of those who make them.

For all that, many investigative reporters, particularly those on newspapers, do not exactly feel that they are riding the wave of the future. Their work takes weeks and sometimes months of interviewing and perusal of piles of documents, all too often with no results. Many false trails must be explored for every one that leads to a genuine story. Not many publishers feel that they can afford the investment, to say nothing of the risk of libel suits. Investigative reporters complain that the press on the whole prefers to report the activities of a Ralph Nader rather than dig up the facts itself.

Though obviously a creature of the muckraking philosophy, Anderson is in a class by himself. Unlike the ideologues who write for small or specialized publications, he has a mass audience; 746 newspapers now buy his column, an increase of more than 100 since Pearson's last days and a gain of 46 just since early January. Unlike the reporters who work for large individual magazines or newspapers, he controls his own budget and has no editor or publisher to second-guess his judgment. He can devote as many columns to one subject as he chooses, has another outlet in Parade magazine, and is now doing brief syndicated television spots.

Partly because he has triumphed over the frustrations suffered by others, fellow muckrakers almost to a man hail Anderson as a hero. Chicago Sun-Times Reporter Ray Brennan rasps: "I think he is one of the absolutely greatest there ever was." I.F. Stone finds him "filled with a good, wholesome attitude that every public official is an s.o.b. unless proved otherwise."

Positive Menace. Anderson is much less popular in other quarters. Buel Berentson, director of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, calls him "a snake." Berentson is a friend of Dita Beard's. Friends of Thomas Dodd are convinced that Anderson's revelations drove the Senator to an early grave. He also has made Government operations more difficult by publishing records of private policy talks--a complaint heard not only within the Nixon Administration but on Embassy Row. "This fellow is a positive menace," says one West German diplomat. "How can you run a Government with such people around?"

Jerry Friedheim, chief spokesman for the Pentagon, condemns Anderson as "too sensational and too superficial." Some Washington reporters share this feeling. Occasionally, they say, Anderson will run with a fragment of a story that other newsmen then treat as a tip to be developed. The propriety of using stolen documents also troubles a number of his colleagues who cannot rid themselves of the feeling that there is something dirty about it. Some critics further say privately that Anderson gets information with a tacit understanding that he will then leave the informant alone. Anderson admits that he sometimes uses this technique on an underling to pry out damaging facts about a bigger fish. He compares it to the granting of immunity to a grand jury witness. "Why not?" he asks. "The Justice Department does it."

He is accused of browbeating reluctant sources and playing rough with people who threaten to bring libel action. Anderson admits to making it as "painful as we possibly can" for an adversary, but denies that he ever even implies an attack in print to ward off litigation. "We have never used the column for blackmail," he says. Nor has a libel suit against him ever been successful. Only two have even been filed in the 2 1/2 years that Anderson has been running the column; Anderson won one and the other is still pending.

Planted Agent. His modus operandi is subject to almost as much gossip as the people in his columns are. While still a legman for Pearson, he was once caught with a Senate investigator who was bugging the hotel room of Bernard Goldfine, the businessman whose gifts of a vicuna coat and other items brought down Sherman Adams. Anderson insists that he was only a reporter sniffing around where the action was. He himself, he says, has never resorted to wiretapping or to bugging, but he has, on rare occasions, used a plant. While probing McCormack, Anderson had a young man get a job there. That ploy produced much useful information.

As his fame has spread, Anderson has needed such methods less and less. He gets much of his news from regularly calling longtime contacts, the rest arrives unsolicited in a deluge of mailed or telephoned tips. "Everybody with a real beef and a handful of memos now knows where to take them," remarks one Washington reporter. Leads are divided among Anderson, Whitten, Hume and Joe Spear, 31, the other member of the quartet. Anderson works chiefly with his established sources in government, turning over most of the over-the-transom tips to the younger men for investigation. Admirers and detractors alike agree that the team is usually scrupulous about at least calling anybody it is going to write about before publishing anything. The column now has a far better reputation for accuracy than it did in Pearson's time, despite its occasional lapses (see box, page 44).

Noble Commitment. Most routine work is done by phone, of course, but the big stories require more attention. One of the memorable recent checks occurred on Feb. 23. On that morning, Brit Hume walked into the second-floor reception room of ITT's Washington headquarters and asked to see Dita Beard. He, Mrs. Beard, Public Relations Man Jack Homer and Bernard Goodrich of ITT's Washington staff sat down around a conference table. Hume produced the memo mentioning the "noble commitment" of ITT to contribute to the G.O.P. convention.

The three ITT people studied the memo with horror, and Beard uttered a few four-letter words. But she did not then call the document a fraud, as she was to do weeks later. In fact, she told Hume "that's my little d." Hume obligingly offered to let the ITT people copy the memo, which they did on a machine outside the conference room. Hume then tried to question Beard about the memo, but got nowhere because Goodrich kept signaling her to silence by nudging her under the table with his foot. So Hume left, taking the original memo with him. Beard was furious, insisting later to her colleagues that, alone, "I could have handled him." Six days later the memo was quoted in Anderson's column. Anderson revealed last week that he had arranged a lie-detector test for Hume about his meeting with Beard, and Hume had passed.

When Anderson himself checks out a tip, he meets sources at their homes or in out-of-the-way restaurants or "crowded places"--rarely in his own home. He thinks it is now under surveillance, perhaps by Intertel, perhaps by the Government. Neighbors have noticed a car with two men sitting in it parked in the culdesac. The pair just seems to be enjoying the scenery.

A peek inside the large stone-and-frame house might confuse any sleuth. A kind of cheerful chaos reigns. Anderson likes to do much of his writing and phoning at home, despite the presence of many of his nine children (ages four to 20) and neighborhood kids who wander in. It is more than a little mind boggling to watch the feared crusader, dressed in pajamas and loafers, talking to a Pentagon source on the phone and trying to soothe a young son who is crying, "Daddy, she hit me!"

Anderson and his wife Olivia ("Livvy") are big on togetherness. Aside from running the household, she is on his payroll at $15,000 a year as a bookkeeper. They watch TV and go to an occasional movie and are decidedly unfashionable. Pearson lived in Georgetown, the Andersons are in Bethesda, Md. Although Pearson was heartily disliked by many in Washington, he was a sought-after catch for the more important hostesses. The Andersons are on no one's In guest list and candidly do not care. Anderson will never be modish, though now, at 49, he dresses spiffily and even tints his graying sideburns (his television producer wants it that way).

The columnist is not even a member of Washington's tight Mormon inner circle, though he attends services regularly and serves as "a home teacher," visiting Mormon families regularly for counseling and prayer. He is a bit too liberal and splashy for Mormon leaders like Senator Wallace F. Bennett and Hotelman J. Willard Marriott. Church etiquette requires that he be called "Brother Anderson," but some of the brethren choke on the words.

All that is somehow fitting. A man with Anderson's kind of mission should be a loner vis-a-vis all sorts of authority. The church--and Pearson--are probably the only yokes he has willingly borne since he left home. He grew up in Salt Lake City, the son of a postal worker; his mother once drove a taxicab to subsidize young Jack's missionary travels for the church. At the age of twelve he was a newspaper employee, reporting on Boy Scout affairs, and in high school he was student-body president. Once he tried to do an expose on the remains of Mormon polygamy; when church authorities learned of it,

Anderson was summoned to go on a mission. During the war Anderson shipped out with the Merchant Marine, then got accreditation as a correspondent. That led him to Communist-guerrilla country in China, but no newspaper was interested in his stories.

At the age of 24, Anderson walked unannounced into Drew Pearson's Washington office. For the next 22 years he was Pearson's low-paid (never more than $14,000 a year) legman and for a while was anonymous as well. In 1957 he threatened to quit; Pearson held him by promising more bylines and eventual inheritance of the column.

On taking over the "Merry-Go-Round" in September 1969, Anderson set out to make it strictly investigative and, much as the idea might shock his victims, impartial. Though he tries to avoid criticizing his mentor, he says: "With Drew, the column was more of a personal vehicle. Some of Drew's columns were simply to expound his own philosophy." Pearson conducted what looked like personal vendettas--against

Richard Nixon, Lewis Strauss, Joe McCarthy, L. Mendel Rivers. He also had a reputation for going easy on friends, notably Lyndon Johnson, who sometimes sought his advice by telephone.

Surprise Plug. Anderson, by contrast, rarely pleads for any specific cause, and lambastes almost everybody: Republicans and Democrats, Congressmen and Administration officials, diplomats and business executives, Edward Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover. Some Republicans believe that Democrat Anderson hits harder at them, but that is probably because they currently are in office. Few people except Nader appear in Anderson's column in a favorable light, and some of those who do are surprising. His infrequent pieces on President Nixon have occasionally been sympathetic, and in a 1970 column he gave a plug to the anti-pornography campaign of, believe it or not, Senator Dodd.

Muckraking has not made Anderson rich. The column last year grossed $236,000, of which the United Feature

Syndicate got half. Anderson's share all went in office costs, salaries ($22,000 to Whitten, $14,000 to Hume, $11,500 to Spear) and other expenses. Anderson's main income comes from outside activities: $21,650 last year from speechmaking, $10,000 from Parade, varying sums from writing and consulting jobs and small investments.

More difficult to calculate is his real influence. No laws have been passed or policies changed because of his columns. But a number of former incumbents are now retired because of him, and he has spread a not unhealthy apprehension throughout Washington. "He keeps a lot of people honest," says one Navy officer. "I do not know how many tricky decisions I have sat in on and heard someone say: 'And how do you think that will look in a Jack Anderson column next week?' " It is a sobering thought. Had it occurred in the right minds at the right times, it might have saved some Justice Department trustbusters, ITT executives and many others a lot of trouble.

-* An FBI test of the document indicated that it was typed about the time it was dated--last June 25. while not conclusive, the FBI finding supports Anderson's story rather than the theory that the memo was actually written later. ITT, however, insists that chemical analysis indicates the memo was "probably" typed early this year.

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