Nationally-syndicated columnist Jack Anderson will speak at Texarkana College Monday at 11 a.m. in the TC Auditorium and then, following the lecture, participate in a question-and-answer session.
Anderson’s appearance was announced shortly after consumer advocate Ralph Nader asked to be released from his Dec. 5 engagement at TC after citing scheduling conflicts which would make it impossible for him to keep his agreement.
Anderson was one of the speakers TC originally had considered, according to Mike Mankins, but officials were not sure whether the columnist could make a full appearance.
“We feel very fortunate that we could get a speaker such as Jack Anderson on such short notice,” Ms. Mankins, who is chair of the speaker selection committee for the Student Activities Committee, said.
Although such activities are not permitted during weeks prior to semester exam periods, school officials okayed the Anderson appearance because of the special circumstances involved, namely, the Nader cancellation.
Anderson’s appearance is being sponsored by the Student Senate, the Student Activities Committee and the East Texas State University branch here.
Anderson, whose relentless digging has made him one of America’s top investigative reporters, frankly describes himself as a muckraker, but insists his object is not sensational but reform. Indeed, he professes to be sympathetic to the public officials who feel the prick of his pen. He considers it his special calling of the press, however, to expose corruption and crusade for reform.
Inherits Daily Column
The non-drinking, non-smoking, non-swearing Mormon Sunday School teacher and father of nine children inherited his Washington Merry-Go-Round column from the late Drew Pearson in 1969. The column appears daily in more than 340 newspapers, including the Texarkana Daily News.
Anderson, who has been on the bottom of some of the biggest exposes that have come out of Washington, began his career on a national scale with an investigation of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Anderson had started out to help McCarthy with his investigation of communists, quickly became alarmed over his methods, and concluded McCarthy’s shotgun methods were helping, not hurting, the communist case.
Anderson immediately began investigating McCarthy, and summed up his findings in his first book, written with Ronald May: “McCarthy, the Man, the Senator, the Ism.” The facts Anderson and May dug out played an important role in three Congressional investigations of McCarthy.
Several other stories, written with Pearson, have brought convictions of tax violators, five percenters and embezzlers. His evidence helped to convict three Congressmen of taking kickbacks; his legwork on the underworld was instrumental in persuading the Senate to authorize the late Sen. Estes Kefauver’s celebrated investigation of the underworld.
Since that time, Anderson has also been involved in investigations concerning Sherman Adams and the Eisenhower administration, former Senators George Murphy and Thomas Dodd and the Nixon administration’s role in the Bangladesh conflict.
For his expose of the Bangladesh controversy, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.
Most recently, Anderson is responsible for publication of the grand jury testimony in the Watergate scandal, which eventually “blew the lid” off an attempt to cover up Watergate and led to the resignation of numerous Nixon administration officials.
Anderson, 50, began his career at the age of 12 as a $7-a-week reporter for the Murray Eagle in Salt Lake City, Utah. Before coming to Washington, he also served with the Salt Lake Tribune and the Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes.
He is currently Washington editor of Parade Magazine, does a daily radio broadcast over the Mutual Network and has a syndicated television news commentary show.