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Author Feldstein, Mark Avrom.

Title Poisoning the press : Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the rise of Washington's scandal culture / Mark Feldstein.

Imprint New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.

Copies

Location Call No. OPAC Message Status
 Axe 2nd Floor Stacks  973.924 F333p 2010    ---  Available
Edition 1st ed.
Description x, 461 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents pt. I. Beginnings. The Quaker and the Mormon -- pt. II. Rise to power. Washington whirl -- Bugging and burglary -- Comeback -- pt. III. Power. The president and the columnist -- Revenge -- Vietnam -- The Anderson papers -- Sex, spies, blackmail -- Cat and mouse -- Brothers -- "Destroy this" -- From burlesque to grotesque -- "Kill him" -- Watergate -- Disgrace -- pt. IV. Endings. Final years -- Epilogue.
Summary It is March 1972, and the Nixon White House wants Jack Anderson dead. The syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, the most famous and feared investigative reporter in the nation, has exposed yet another of the President's dirty secrets. Nixon's operatives are ordered to "stop Anderson at all costs", permanently. Across the street from the White House, they huddle in a hotel basement to conspire. Should they try "Aspirin Roulette" and break into Anderson's home to plant a poisoned pill in one of his medicine bottles? Could they smear LSD on the journalist's steering wheel, so that he would absorb it through his skin, lose control of his car, and crash? Or stage a routine-looking mugging, making Anderson appear to be one more fatal victim of Washington's notorious street crime? This book recounts not only the disturbing story of an unprecedented White House conspiracy to assassinate a journalist, but also the larger tale of the bitter quarter-century battle between the postwar era's most embattled politician and its most reviled newsman. The struggle between Nixon and Anderson included bribery, blackmail, forgery, spying, and burglary as well as the White House murder plot. Their vendetta symbolized and accelerated the growing conflict between the government and the press, a clash that would long outlive both men. The author traces the arc of this confrontation between a vindictive president and a flamboyant, crusading muckraker who rifled through garbage and swiped classified papers in pursuit of his prey, stoking the paranoia in Nixon that would ultimately lead to his ruin. The White House plot to poison Anderson, the author argues, is a metaphor for the poisoned political atmosphere that would follow, and the toxic sensationalism that contaminates contemporary media discourse. Melding history and biography, the book unearths significant new information from more than two hundred interviews and thousands of declassified documents and tapes. This is a chronicle of political intrigue and the true price of power for politicians and journalists alike. The result, Washington's modern scandal culture, was Richard Nixon's ultimate revenge.
Subject Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994 -- Relations with journalists.
Anderson, Jack, 1922-2005.
Press and politics -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Presidents -- Press coverage -- United States -- Case studies.
United States -- Politics and government -- 1969-1974.
Political corruption -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Political culture -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Political culture -- Washington (D.C.) -- History -- 20th century.
Presidents -- United States -- Biography.
Journalists -- United States -- Biography.
Added Title Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the rise of Washington's scandal culture
ISBN 9780374235307
0374235309

 
    
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