Investigative Classics: The Exploits of Jack Anderson’s ‘Senior Ferret’
Legendary columnist Jack Anderson called his longtime legman, Les Whitten, “the best reporter in the country.” Tom Buckley of the New York Times may have offered a more precise description when he called Whitten Anderson’s “senior ferret.”
Many of the skills possessed by Whitten, who died last weekend at age 89, were not those taught at Columbia’s J-school. These included spying on FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and getting arrested for helping a source steal government documents.
Whitten’s Washington Post obituary included this nugget from Mark Feldstein, author of “Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture”:
During the Watergate investigations, Mr. Whitten “was trying to get some leaks and couldn’t get it,” Feldstein said in a phone interview. “He threatened his source by saying, ‘If you don’t give this to me I’ll say it came from you, but if you give it to me, we’ll have lunch and I’ll say it came from ‘a source near the White House.’
Feldstein’s book makes clear that Whitten’s methods were par for the course on Anderson’s staff, whose members slept with sources and donned disguises to steal documents. Anderson himself allegedly paid off witnesses after he was caught illegally bugging a businessman in 1958.
The Post obituary reports that the two faced heavy blowback for their efforts:
Just as often, however, Mr. Whitten and Anderson were on the receiving end of spying efforts, targeted by the Nixon administration for their critical coverage of the White House and leaks of government documents. The duo were trailed by the CIA, and at one point, Nixon associates G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt plotted to assassinate Anderson using LSD, or what Liddy later described as “Aspirin Roulette.”
Nevertheless, their skulduggery – and actual excellent reporting – led to many scoops during the decade (1969-78) when they collaborated on the nation’s most popular daily column, the Washington Merry-Go-Round. These include 1972’s Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for a series of columns on America’s shift toward Pakistan as its bitter rivalry with India sparked a 13-day war in December 1971. The first piece, published Dec. 14, 1971, was resplendent with insider knowledge and direct quotes taken, in part, from a classified document whose leak sparked a government investigation. It reported:
Inside the White House, meanwhile, the President has made no attempt to hide his favoritism for Pakistan. He has developed a close personal relationship with Pakistan’s dynamic President Yahya Khan.
Mr. Nixon, accordingly, has ordered his crisis team, known formally as the Washington Special Action Group, to find ways short of direct intervention to help Pakistan. The hush-hush group, headed by presidential policymaker Henry Kissinger, has been meeting almost daily in the White House’s fabled secret Situation Room since the Indian-Pakistani outbreak.
At the Dec. 3 meeting, Kissinger snorted: “I’m getting hell every half-hour from the President that we are not being tough enough on India. He has just called me again. He does not believe we are carrying out his wishes. He wants to tilt in favor of Pakistan. He feels everything we do comes out otherwise.”
Adm. Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reviewed the military situation. CIA chief Richard Helms also reported what his agents had found out about the fighting. Then Kissinger brought up the United Nations.
“If the U.N. can't operate in this kind of situation effectively,” he growled, “its utility has come to an end, and it is useless to think of United Nations guarantees in the Middle East.”
“We’ll have a recommendation for you this afternoon,” promised Assistant State Secretary Joseph Sisco.
“We have to take action,” pressed Kissinger. “The president is blaming me, but you people are in the clear.”
There was discussion about a statement that had been prepared for Ambassador George Bush. ...
