Jack Anderson yearned for the mountains of Springville but could never pull himself away from the political drama of "Foggy Bottom" and Washington, D.C.
The former Utah journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist often stared at a painting of the Utah County scene hanging in his Washington office, dreaming of retirement. He planned on returning one day, said Dale Van Atta, one of his proteges.
Anderson, who died Saturday at 83, was a pivotal muckraking journalist who struck fear into the hearts of corrupt or secretive politicians — even inspiring Nixon operatives to plot his murder.
Anderson hired Van Atta in 1979 to one day take over his syndicated column, Washington Merry-Go-Round. But Van Atta knew Anderson could not leave his post at the heart of the journalism world.
"He was never really going to step down; it wasn't his nature," said Van Atta, who was as an investigative reporter for the Deseret News, now the Deseret Morning News, from 1973-79. "I learned quickly that Jack wasn't going to have an heir."
The Washington Merry-Go-Round broke a string of big scandals, from Eisenhower assistant Sherman Adams taking a vicuna coat and other gifts from a wealthy industrialist in 1958 to the Reagan administration's secret arms-for-hostages deal with Iran in 1986.
Anderson gave up his column at age 81 in July 2004, after Parkinson's disease left him too ill to continue. He had been hired by the column's founder, Drew Pearson, in 1947. The column appeared in some 1,000 newspapers in its heyday, including the Deseret News. Anderson took over the column after Pearson's death in 1969, working with a changing cast of associates and staff members over the years.
Anderson won a 1972 Pulitzer Prize for reporting that the Nixon administration secretly tilted toward Pakistan in its war with India. He also published the secret transcripts of the Watergate grand jury.
Such scoops earned him a top spot on President Richard Nixon's "enemies list." Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy has described how he and other Nixon political operatives planned ways to silence Anderson permanently — such as slipping him LSD or staging a fatal car crash — but the White House nixed the idea.
A devout Mormon, Anderson looked upon journalism as a calling. Considered one of the fathers of investigative reporting, Anderson was renowned for his tenacity, aggressive techniques and influence in the nation's capital.
"What drove him was a crusader's zeal," said Van Atta, who penned the column with Anderson from 1985 until the mid-'90s. "One of the shortest ways he put it was he was in business to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, and stand up for the little guy."
Anderson's biggest misstep also took place in 1972, when he reported that Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri — at the time the Democratic nominee for vice president — had a history of arrests for drunken and reckless driving. Anderson later acknowledged that his sourcing was faulty and apologized to Eagleton, who eventually dropped out of the race after revelations of treatment for mental illness.
Over the years, Anderson was threatened by the Mafia and investigated by numerous government agencies trying to trace the sources of his leaks. In 1989, police investigated him for smuggling a gun into the U.S. Capitol to demonstrate security lapses.
"He was doing investigative reporting before investigative reporting was known," Van Atta said. "He taught me if you feel you're in the right don't even back down, even if it means you have to bluff. He was fearless and went against the grain."
Known for his toughness on the trail of a story, Anderson was also praised for personal kindness. His son Kevin said that when his father's reporting led to the arrest of some involved in the Watergate scandal, he aided their families financially.
Anderson never published a story without first thinking about the implications on people's personal lives, Van Atta said.
"I don't like to hurt people, I really don't like it at all," Anderson said in 1972. "But in order to get a red light at the intersection, you sometimes have to have an accident."
Born in Long Beach, Calif., on Oct. 19, 1922, raised in the Salt Lake area, the legendary columnist started his career at the age of 12 as the editor of the Boy Scout page for the Deseret News. After short stints at the Murray Eagle and Salt Lake Tribune, Anderson returned to the News in 1945 as its war correspondent in the China-Burma-India theater.
His first taste of investigative journalism came after he infiltrated a local polygamist group.
After he went to work with Pearson, the team took on communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, exposed Connecticut Sen. Thomas Dodd's misuse of campaign money, and revealed the CIA's attempt to use the Mafia to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
"He was a bridge for the muckrakers of a century ago and the crop that came out of Watergate," said Mark Feldstein, Anderson's biographer and a journalism professor at George Washington University. "He held politicians to a level of accountability in an era where journalists were very deferential to those in power."
Anderson also wrote more than a dozen books.
He was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1986. In a speech a decade later, he made light of the occasional, uncontrollable shaking the disease caused.
"The doctors tell me it's Parkinson's," he said. "I suspect that 52 years in Washington caused it."
He is survived by his wife, Olivia, and nine children: Laurie Anderson-Bruch of Washington; Cheri Loveless of Provo; Lance Anderson of Germantown, Md.; Tina Carmichael of Warrenton, Va.; Kevin Anderson of Sandy; Randy Anderson of Bethesda, Md.; Tanya Neider of Bethesda; Rody Anderson of Severna Park, Md.; and Bryan Anderson of St. George.
E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com