Investigative Columnist Jack Anderson Dies

He launched scores of journalists on their careers, employing them as uncredited interns and underpaid associates and teaching them the craft. They included Brit Hume of Fox News, Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News Service, Howard Kurtz and Jonathan Krim of The Post, Roll Call columnist Ed Henry and novelist Les Whitten. His column ran in The Post until 1997.

Mr. Anderson himself grew into a multimedia personality, penning not only the column but also more than a dozen books and subscription newsletters. He was Washington bureau chief for Parade magazine. He broadcast a syndicated radio show, had a years-long gig on ABC's "Good Morning America" and had his own TV show, "Truth," which featured public figures hooked up to a lie detector.

With his marble gray hair, tranquil blue eyes and rich waterfall of a voice, Mr. Anderson was active on the lecture circuit, and those fees kept the newspaper column afloat.

In addition to the Pulitzer, he won the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Service to Journalism award in 1987 for his role in breaking the Iran-contra story and later was inducted into its Journalism Hall of Fame. He was at the founding meeting in 1975 of Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.

"I have to do daily what Woodward and Bernstein did once," Mr. Anderson told The Post's Tony Kornheiser in 1983. Kornheiser called Anderson's "a column of tweaks, leaks and piques, born of idealism, stoked by cynicism, a brazen, high-risk, righteously indignant antiwaste, anticorruption, anticommunist watchdog of a column that has been called everything from 'gold' to 'garbage.' Sometimes on the same day. Sometimes in the same sentence."

Born in Long Beach, Calif., but raised in a small town outside Salt Lake City, Anderson was interested in newspaper work from an early age. At 12, he edited the Boy Scout page of the Deseret News in Utah and soon advanced to a $7-a-week job with the Murray (Utah) Eagle.

In high school, he was president of the student body, and upon graduation, he joined the staff of the Salt Lake Tribune. He briefly attended the University of Utah, and on Dec. 7, 1941, he became a missionary, a typical rite of passage for devout Mormons, working in the South. Two years later, he enrolled in the merchant marine officer training school. After about seven months, he persuaded the Deseret News to accredit him as a foreign correspondent in China. He was supposed to report hometown, local-hero news, but he soon found that assignment dull.

So Mr. Anderson hitched a plane ride to a secret, behind-the-lines base operated by the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA. Alarmed to find a civilian reporter at their base, the OSS brass sent him to contact a band of Chinese nationalist guerrillas. From them, he found that a Chinese civil war was still raging, but he could not interest any U.S. paper in the news.

His draft board had been looking for him for some time and finally caught up with him in 1945. He was inducted into the Army in the Chinese city then known as Chungking and served with the Quartermaster Corps until 1947, working on military newspapers and Armed Forces Radio.

Upon his discharge, he came to Washington and applied to work for Pearson, who had been exposing government corruption for more than a decade. He was hired immediately, thus starting the column's tradition of employing ambitious, hardworking underlings. In his off hours, Mr. Anderson attended Georgetown University and took a course in libel law at George Washington University, but he did not receive a degree from either school.

His anonymous labor for Pearson finally irked Mr. Anderson enough that in 1957, he threatened to quit. Pearson promised him more bylines and pledged to leave the column to him.

In 1958, a federal investigator invited Mr. Anderson to accompany him while he was spying on Bernard Goldfine, a wealthy industrialist who had given a vicuna coat to presidential assistant Sherman A. Adams. The episode triggered a major scandal in the Eisenhower administration. Mr. Anderson, in violation of traditional journalistic practices, testified before congressional panels and lobbied senators about the issue. The uproar over those actions prepared him for being named, years later, to Nixon's enemies list, for being followed by the CIA, for the FBI's arrest of his partner Whitten for receiving stolen government documents and for numerous IRS audits of his tax returns.

In 1965, he finally achieved full partnership in the column, sharing a byline with Pearson, although he was paid a paltry sum -- about $15,000 in 1969 -- for his work on the most popular column in the nation. Upon Pearson's death, he inherited the column and split the proceeds with Pearson's widow.

Mr. Anderson's columns on misappropriations of campaign donations by Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D-Conn.) were recommended for the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1967, but the Pulitzer board selected another entry.

Mr. Anderson was considered significantly more accurate than his predecessor, although he was not error-free. He admitted he wrongly charged Donald H. Rumsfeld with lavishly decorating his office while cutting expenses on programs of the Office of Economic Opportunity. He also admitted giving covert aid to Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin in the early days of his anti-communist crusade, although he later turned on McCarthy. He also regretted not publishing a scoop about President Ronald Reagan's arms-for-hostages swap.

He was not above flamboyant "Front Page"-style tactics. During Watergate, when the FBI sought copies of grand jury transcripts that Mr. Anderson had obtained, he and Whitten decided to bar their office door and throw the papers out their window. Interns waiting below were supposed to scoop up the falling documents.

"We didn't have to do it because we got an agreement with Judge [John] Sirica," Whitten said. "He said if we'd return the papers and let him get rid of them, he would not pursue contempt of court against Jack. Jack agreed to that, and we took them out of a [hidden] panel in a desk. Jack took them home, what do you think he did? Xeroxed them and buried them in his back yard before he gave them back to Sirica. They're probably still back there."

Survivors include his wife of 56 years, Olivia Farley Anderson of Bethesda; nine children, Laurie Anderson-Bruch of Washington, Cheri Loveless of Provo, Utah, Lance F. Anderson of Germantown, Tina Carmichael of Warrenton, Kevin N. Anderson of Sandy, Utah, Randy N. Anderson and Tanya A. Neider, both of Bethesda, Rodney V. Anderson of Severna Park and Bryan W. Anderson of St. George, Utah; 41 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.