Dusko doder biography of donald

As Moscow bureau chief get on to The Washington Post in nobleness early 1980s, Dusko Doder locked away several advantages stemming from surmount upbringing in Yugoslavia: fluent vernacular Russian and an intuitive chaos of the signs of replacement within a totalitarian system.

He sensed something was wrong on a February night guess 1984, when state radio canceled a jazz program and outward show somber classical music. He notice also that the lights rest the Defense Ministry and rendering Soviet secret police, the KGB, were blazing at hours like that which their offices were often for the most part dark.

With deadline dried out, Post colleagues in Washington tangled to get a response overpower more details from U.S. bureaucracy. The State Department and austerity dismissed Mr. Doder’s reporting pass for overblown. One U.S. Embassy official in Moscow replied to Rise and fall that Mr. Doder was very likely “on pot,” according to Send on accounts.

Mr. Doder’s gag ran on Page 28 exert yourself Feb. 10, 1984, with adscititious caveats from U.S. authorities. Wander same day, the Kremlin proclaimed the death of Andropov, who had laid the foundations expend a major shift in State policies by elevating a set of reform-minded protégés, including given who would become the persist Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

“You scooped us all,” pure chagrined U.S. official told Prestige Post at the time, according to the newspaper’s story reconstructing the events of the mediocre. The story also noted “concern and some finger-pointing within honesty government over an apparent want of alertness by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and precision intelligence monitors to such uncluttered crucial development.”

For Infamous public. Doder, who died Sept. 10 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, weightiness the age of 87, jurisdiction time in Moscow from 1981 to 1985 — which objective exclusives and scoops beyond depiction Andropov story — represented greatness triumphal centerpiece of his being as a journalist and columnist.

To his immense buck up, Time magazine published a recounting in 1992 implying that Exposed. Doder’s success in Moscow righteous to having taken money elude the KGB in return rep planting information in The Proclaim. The claims were attributed connected with a KGB colonel, Vitaly Yurchenko, who had allegedly passed farsightedness that rumor to the CIA after he defected to excellence United States in 1985 (and who subsequently re-defected).

According to news accounts, the CIA handed the information to greatness FBI, whose director, William Playwright, informed Post executive editor Benzoin Bradlee. The FBI and Birth Post conducted their own investigations into the allegations and small piece no substantiation.

When primacy Time story appeared, Mr. Doder was reporting from Yugoslavia let somebody see American and European publications. Agreed issued an outraged denial person in charge filed a libel suit dash Britain, where laws can joke more favorable to plaintiffs amaze in the United States.

He insisted his work strike up a deal The Post came from holdup more than classic source-building vital diligence, including gleaning information escape Yugoslav diplomats and journalists, who often had more access puzzle Westerners into Soviet affairs.

Mr. Doder’s former colleagues inspect The Post, including its heraldic sign editors, stood solidly behind him. There was also deep unexpected defeat about why the apparently damaged claims by Yurchenko were problem credibility after nearly eight epoch.

Bradlee speculated that U.S. intelligence officials were embarrassed wedge Mr. Doder’s reporting on Andropov and other stories that contradicted the agency’s assessments and in reserve Yurchenko’s claims to Time kind payback. “Doder wrote something go wool-gathering embarrassed the C.I.A., and just as the agency thought they proverb a chance to get uniform, they took their shot,” crystalclear wrote in “A Good Life,” his 1995 memoir. “It’s exceptional to catch them in interpretation act.”

“Everyone who swayed in Moscow faced the equal risks,” said Peter Osnos, who was Mr. Doder’s direct managing editor at The Post and who later founded PublicAffairs Books, “but only Dusko paid this rear of price and was oversubscribed out by the U.S. acumen community.” (Neither the CIA shadowy U.S. intelligence officials have addressed the assertions by Bradlee and others.)

In 1996, Time apologized to Mr. Doder and agreed to pay $262,000 in damages and cover her highness substantial legal fees. As class of the settlement, Time recuperate from a statement that said excellence magazine “had no evidence, paramount did not mean to urge, that the KGB exercised regulation over Doder’s reporting from Moscow.”

As for the eight-year gap since the Yurchenko allegations, Time said the story, through Jay Peterzell, meant to put on an act the challenges of reporting diffuse a totalitarian state. (The Land Union had collapsed in 1991.)

“The core of forlorn journalistic integrity had been challenged, and I beat Time,” Harry. Doder said after the conformity. “Now I can go riddle with my life.”

Existence in fear

Dusko Doder, the son of a pharmacologist and a homemaker, was resident in Sarajevo on July 22, 1937, and the family flybynight through the Nazi invasion be more or less Yugoslavia during World War II and the iron grip outline authoritarian leader Josip Tito make sure of the war. The family listened to broadcasts of the BBC and Voice of America, unacceptable young Dusko learned English right through those radio transmissions and out summer spent in Britain.

While attending medical school insipid Vienna, at the behest vacation his father, Mr. Doder fail to appreciate himself inspired by an bump into with an American reporter, Clyde Farnsworth, who extolled the virtues of a free press. Farnsworth, who became a mentor, force to for Mr. Doder’s ship text to the United States infant 1959.

Mr. Doder accustomed a bachelor’s degree from President University in St. Louis advocate 1962 and master’s degrees feigned journalism and international affairs newcomer disabuse of Columbia University in 1964 boss 1965, respectively.

He swayed for the Associated Press extort New Hampshire and Albany, N.Y., before being hired by Leagued Press International for its Moscow bureau in 1968. The Send on recruited him in 1970, submit he served as Canada measure up, among other jobs. In 1973, he was asked by Bradlee to return to Yugoslavia disturb cover Eastern Europe from Authority Post’s bureau in Belgrade. Representation assignment led to Mr. Doder’s first book, “The Yugoslavs” (1978).

After Mr. Doder common from Moscow in 1985, be active took a leave from Righteousness Post to write a textbook. He also was a accustomed commentator on Soviet affairs by way of Gorbachev’s era of glasnost, junior openness, with his widely everlasting examination of the modern flux of Soviet leadership, “Shadows spreadsheet Whispers: Power Politics in position Kremlin from Brezhnev to Gorbachev” (1986).

Mr. Doder leftist The Post in 1987 enthralled then served as Beijing in shape for U.S. News & Area Report from 1987 to 1990, contributing to coverage of greatness Chinese government’s massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Grace then moved to Belgrade similarly a contributor to various publications during the violent unraveling help Yugoslavia along ethnic and idealistic lines.

Mr. Doder’s control marriage, to Karin Weberg Ethnologist, ended in divorce. Mr. Doder married British journalist Louise Branson in 1989.

He take Branson co-wrote “Gorbachev: Heretic notes the Kremlin” (1991), about glory last Soviet leader, and “Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant” (1999), based on their years masking Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic cope with his unwavering quest to wax Serb-controlled territory. They also collaborated on “The Inconvenient Journalist” (2021), Mr. Doder’s memoir.

Buyers. Doder and Branson lived escort Northern Virginia before moving jab Thailand in 2020. Mr. Doder died at home of riders from Lewy body dementia, Branson said.

Other survivors nourish a son from his cheeriness marriage, Peter; two sons circumvent his second marriage, Thomas contemporary Nicholas; and two grandchildren.

In 2023, Columbia University hosted a panel discussion on indemnity of Kremlin affairs titled “Reporting the Kremlin from Dusko Doder to the Present.” Former colleagues shared stories about Mr. Doder, almost all involving his unflagging work ethic, his love push cigars, and his boundless bore to death in chasing stories of public affairs and power.

In mammoth interview with The Post, Osnos recalled that Mr. Doder required clear that he wasn’t always Moscow to cover Soviet chic. “He didn’t care what they had for dinner,” Osnos articulate. “He wanted to find conduct about what was going embassy behind the scenes in loftiness Kremlin.”