Family refuses FBI access to columnist's archives

Jack Anderson turned up plenty of government secrets during his half-century career as an investigative reporter, and his family had hoped to make his papers available to the public after his death in December–but the government wants to see, and possibly confiscate, them first. The FBI believes that the columnist's files may contain national security secrets, including documents that would aid in the prosecution of two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. On Apr. 18, the family's lawyer sent a letter to the FBI refusing the bureau's request. "The family has concluded that were Mr. Anderson alive today, he would not cooperate with the government on this matter... To honor both his memory and his wishes, the family feels duty bound to do no less," the letter said. The columnist's son, Kevin N. Anderson, put it more succinctly: "He would absolutely oppose the FBI rifling through his papers at will." Though some of the documents may be classified, he said, they do not contain national security secrets, only "embarrassing top secrets–hammers that cost a thousand dollars and things like that." "The US government has reasonable concern over the prospect that these documents will be made available to the public at the risk of national security and in violation of the law," FBI spokesman Bill Carter said. Anderson said he was told by the FBI that the agency would remove anything that was classified from the papers. "It's disturbing to us in higher education because it has a chilling effect on the research process," said Duane E. Webster, executive director of the Association of Research Libraries. "If you've got someone looking over your shoulder, it creates an anxiety." Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University and Anderson's biographer, said he felt "intimidated" after two FBI agents showed up at his house. They asked if he had seen any classified documents or knew about how they could be accessed, and they wanted the names of all of his graduate students who had seen the papers. "It smacks of a Gestapo state," said Feldstein, who spent 20 years as an investigative reporter and producer for ABC, NBC and CNN. He labeled the move part of "the most broad assault on the news media since the Nixon administration." At its height, Anderson's Washington Merry-Go-Round column appeared in nearly 1,000 newspapers with more than 40 million daily readers. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his coverage of US relations with India and Pakistan, and his scoops included the involvement of five senators in the savings and loan collapse of the late 1980s, a CIA plot to use the Mafia to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro, Iran's role in the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Beirut, and investigations into the Iran-Contra scandal. He was also at the top of President Richard Nixon's famous "enemies" list. "I suspect he would think this was a continuing abuse of the secrecy stamp to try to remove embarrassing documents from the public eye," the younger Anderson said. "His life's work was to play the role of the watchdog of the government. He felt that his job was to try to get in and document government wrongdoing."