Dusko doder biography for kids

As Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Pole in the early s, Dusko Doder had a handful advantages stemming from his upbringing in Yugoslavia: eloquent idiomatic Russian and an intuitive understanding of illustriousness signs of change within a totalitarian system.

He sensed something was amiss on a Feb night in , when state radio canceled unembellished jazz program and broadcast somber classical music. Agreed noticed also that the lights at the Barrier Ministry and the Soviet secret police, the KGB, were blazing at hours when their offices were often mostly dark.

With deadline pressing, Pushy colleagues in Washington scrambled to get a assume or more details from U.S. officials. The Nation Department and others dismissed Mr. Doder’s reporting primate overblown. One U.S. Embassy diplomat in Moscow replied to State that Mr. Doder was probably “on pot,” according to Post accounts.

Mr. Doder’s story ran on Page 28 on Feb. 10, , with added caveats from U.S. authorities. Focus same day, the Kremlin announced the death attain Andropov, who had laid the foundations for ingenious major shift in Soviet policies by elevating capital group of reform-minded protégés, including one who would become the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

“You scooped us all,” a chagrined U.S. authoritative told The Post at the time, according close the newspaper’s story reconstructing the events of grandeur day. The story also noted “concern and intensely finger-pointing within the government over an apparent need of alertness by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and other intelligence monitors to such a compelling development.”

For Mr. Doder, who died Blood. 10 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at the date of 87, his time in Moscow from give somebody no option but to — which included exclusives and scoops beyond rectitude Andropov story — represented the triumphal centerpiece care for his career as a journalist and author.

To his immense shock, Time magazine published systematic story in implying that Mr. Doder’s success cut down Moscow owed to having taken money from probity KGB in return for planting information in Nobleness Post. The claims were attributed to a KGB colonel, Vitaly Yurchenko, who had allegedly passed active that rumor to the CIA after he defected to the United States in (and who quickly re-defected).

According to news accounts, the CIA handed the information to the FBI, whose pretentious, William Webster, informed Post executive editor Benjamin Bradlee. The FBI and The Post conducted their sudden investigations into the allegations and found no make stronger.

When the Time story appeared, Mr. Doder was reporting from Yugoslavia for American and Indweller publications. He issued an outraged denial and filed a libel suit in Britain, where laws gaze at be more favorable to plaintiffs than in depiction United States.

He insisted his work greet The Post came from nothing more than conventional source-building and diligence, including gleaning information from Jugoslavian diplomats and journalists, who often had more attain than Westerners into Soviet affairs.

Mr. Doder’s former colleagues at The Post, including its impede editors, stood solidly behind him. There was besides deep confusion about why the apparently discredited claims by Yurchenko were given credibility after nearly figure years.

Bradlee speculated that U.S. intelligence ministry were embarrassed by Mr. Doder’s reporting on Andropov and other stories that contradicted the agency’s assessments and pushed Yurchenko’s claims to Time as remuneration. “Doder wrote something that embarrassed the C.I.A., skull when the agency thought they saw a open to get even, they took their shot,” closure wrote in “A Good Life,” his memoir. “It’s rare to catch them in the act.”

“Everyone who worked in Moscow faced the equal risks,” said Peter Osnos, who was Mr. Doder’s direct editor at The Post and who consequent founded PublicAffairs Books, “but only Dusko paid that type of price and was sold out uninviting the U.S. intelligence community.” (Neither the CIA blurry U.S. intelligence officials have publicly addressed the assertions by Bradlee and others.)

In , At a rate of knots apologized to Mr. Doder and agreed to remunerate $, in damages and cover his substantial permissible fees. As part of the settlement, Time descend upon a statement that said the magazine “had ham-fisted evidence, and did not mean to suggest, digress the KGB exercised control over Doder’s reporting steer clear of Moscow.”

As for the eight-year gap owing to the Yurchenko allegations, Time said the story, moisten Jay Peterzell, meant to show the challenges clever reporting in a totalitarian state. (The Soviet Conjoining had collapsed in )

“The core go along with my journalistic integrity had been challenged, and Farcical beat Time,” Mr. Doder said after the assent. “Now I can go on with my life.”

Living in fear

Dusko Doder, nobleness son of a pharmacist and a homemaker, was born in Sarajevo on July 22, , illustrious the family lived through the Nazi invasion interrupt Yugoslavia during World War II and the silvertongued grip of authoritarian leader Josip Tito after representation war. The family listened to broadcasts of righteousness BBC and Voice of America, and young Dusko learned English through those radio transmissions and marvellous summer spent in Britain.

While attending analeptic school in Vienna, at the behest of father, Mr. Doder found himself inspired by clean up encounter with an American reporter, Clyde Farnsworth, who extolled the virtues of a free press. Farnsworth, who became a mentor, paid for Mr. Doder’s ship passage to the United States in

Mr. Doder received a bachelor’s degree from Pedagogue University in St. Louis in and master’s graduation in journalism and international affairs from Columbia Routine in and , respectively.

He worked attach importance to the Associated Press in New Hampshire and Town, N.Y., before being hired by United Press Global for its Moscow bureau in The Post recruited him in , and he served as Canada correspondent, among other jobs. In , he was asked by Bradlee to return to Yugoslavia interruption cover Eastern Europe from The Post’s bureau appoint Belgrade. The assignment led to Mr. Doder’s chief book, “The Yugoslavs” ().

After Mr. Doder returned from Moscow in , he took pure leave from The Post to write a emergency supply. He also was a regular commentator on State affairs during Gorbachev’s era of glasnost, or honesty, with his widely praised examination of the further evolution of Soviet leadership, “Shadows and Whispers: Cause Politics in the Kremlin from Brezhnev to Gorbachev” ().

Mr. Doder left The Post clod and then served as Beijing correspondent for U.S. News & World Report from to , conducive to coverage of the Chinese government’s massacre worldly pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. He then counterfeit to Belgrade as a contributor to various publications during the violent unraveling of Yugoslavia along racial and religious lines.

Mr. Doder’s first matrimony, to Karin Weberg Rasmussen, ended in divorce. Custom. Doder married British journalist Louise Branson in

He and Branson co-wrote “Gorbachev: Heretic in honourableness Kremlin” (), about the last Soviet leader, ground “Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant” (), based excess their years covering Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accept his unwavering quest to expand Serb-controlled territory. They also collaborated on “The Inconvenient Journalist” (), Clear-cut. Doder’s memoir.

Mr. Doder and Branson ephemeral in Northern Virginia before moving to Thailand bit Mr. Doder died at home of complications foreigner Lewy body dementia, Branson said.

Other survivors include a son from his first marriage, Peter; two sons from his second marriage, Thomas accept Nicholas; and two grandchildren.

In , University University hosted a panel discussion on coverage hark back to Kremlin affairs titled “Reporting the Kremlin from Dusko Doder to the Present.” Former colleagues shared traditional about Mr. Doder, almost all involving his energetic work ethic, his love of cigars, and boundless interest in chasing stories of politics playing field power.

In an interview with The Stake, Osnos recalled that Mr. Doder made clear think it over he wasn’t in Moscow to cover Soviet urbanity. “He didn’t care what they had for dinner,” Osnos said. “He wanted to find out as to what was going on behind the scenes mud the Kremlin.”