Ian E. Brodie; U.K. Journalist Chronicled U.S. Milestones

Ian Ellery Brodie, 72, an English journalist who covered most of the biggest news stories in the United States from the 1960s to the end of the 20th century, died of a stroke May 8 at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. He had lived in Bethesda for the past 25 years.

Mr. Brodie reported on the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and on the "hanging chads" of the 2000 presidential election. He was a Vietnam War and Moscow correspondent, publisher of a small-town newspaper in California and author of a book on sailing. He traveled to China ahead of President Richard M. Nixon, infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and scooped the competition on multiple continents.

He was, the Times of London reported Wednesday, "a reporter in the finest Fleet Street tradition. He never aspired to be a great writer or commentator, but was one of the best newsmen of his generation who loved being at the centre of events -- and usually was."

In October 1989, Mr. Brodie, then the Washington correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, was accompanying Vice President Dan Quayle to Southern California when a major earthquake struck San Francisco. As Quayle's aides dithered about heading back to Washington, Mr. Brodie intervened.

"Home?" he asked incredulously, according to a Washington Post magazine story. "Your man has to go up there! Do you want him high-tailing it out of California just a couple of hours after he was posing for pictures with San Francisco police who are now digging people out of the rubble?"

"He's going home," Quayle's aide said doggedly.

"You're out of your mind, all of you," Mr. Brodie replied. "Is he a national leader or is he not a national leader?" Then he threw down his best British gauntlet by invoking the name of the administration's favorite foreign leader. "Mrs. Thatcher wouldn't be asking questions. Mrs. Thatcher would be up there in a minute."

Quayle took his advice. Mr. Brodie went with him, and he scooped the world with a helicopter tour of the devastated area.

Mr. Brodie was born in Bath, England, and grew up in Luton, England. He left school at 16 to work first as a tea boy, then as a reporter for the local newspaper. After two years in the British Army, he worked at a Luton news agency before moving to London's Fleet Street on the strength of an exclusive and sensational story: A bus driver and his pregnant wife, a bus conductor, were selling their baby to a couple in the United States.

Mr. Brodie joined the Daily Sketch, followed by the Daily Express. In 1961, he persuaded a former military pilot to scour the countryside with him to find a group of British Nazis who had a secret camp in Gloucestershire. They not only found the camp but also George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi Party leader who had been banned from Britain but slipped in through Ireland.

Mr. Brodie worked as a national reporter and then as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, where he covered the fall of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964. From his next base in New York, the Times reported, he managed to attend a secret KKK meeting in North Carolina with Robert Shelton, the group's infamous Grand Wizard. "Do yourself a favor," Shelton warned him. "When I leave, it's advisable you do, too."

Mr. Brodie also lived in Southeast Asia, where he covered the Vietnam War for long stretches between 1965 and 1972. He was known for keeping a trunk full of fatigues and body armor at the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon so he could jump into the fighting.