Presidential adviser Henry Kissinger tells a White House news conference in 1972 that “peace is at hand in Vietnam”

Presidential adviser Henry Kissinger tells a White House news conference in 1972 that “peace is at hand in Vietnam”

Washington Post reporter Marder (1919–2013) made his name on the “red beat,” where he was among the first to challenge U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy

I also had a lot of dealings and learned a lot from the outstanding members of the faculty … whom I drew on for the rest of my life in journalism, not as cronies, but as valuable sources of information The reason I only covered the first trial of [U.S. Senator Joseph] McCarthy was because during the next trial I was going up to Harvard as a Fellow of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, which is a rare prize to get in journalism. I was delighted to have it because it gave me several things. It gave me the substitute of a great fortune of a college education, at the level of a master’s degree. I also had a lot of dealings and learned a lot from the outstanding members of the faculty—who later became major figures in the Kennedy administration—whom I drew on for the rest of my life in journalism, not as cronies, but as a valuable sources of information, from whom I remained independent, never treating them as sources to whom I had any obligation …

I also met Henry Kissinger. Neither he nor I remember anything that either one of us said at the time, though I do remember an exchange we had later, after he became national security adviser. I had spoken to him for a story, and he called me the next day to say that he was “startled” by what I had written. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Did I misquote you?” He said, “No.” We had no private arrangement at that time, or anything. I said, “I quoted you correctly?” He said, “Oh, you quoted me correctly. I told you my view on the situation.” In the next sentence, however, another senior official source in the administration had said exactly the opposite of what [Kissinger] said. He said, “Why did you do that?” And I said, “That’s called journalism now.”

From an interview with Marder conducted by his nephew, Martin Sokoloski, in March 2012

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