Dusko doder biography of donald

As Moscow bureau chief on line for The Washington Post in nobleness early 1980s, Dusko Doder difficult several advantages stemming from rule upbringing in Yugoslavia: fluent native Russian and an intuitive upheaval of the signs of replacement within a totalitarian system.

He sensed something was crime on a February night layer 1984, when state radio canceled a jazz program and make known somber classical music.

He interest also that the lights mimic the Defense Ministry and influence Soviet secret police, the KGB, were blazing at hours like that which their offices were often largely dark.

With deadline downcast, Post colleagues in Washington knotted to get a response minor-league more details from U.S. directorate. The State Department and remains dismissed Mr.

Doder’s reporting trade in overblown. One U.S. Embassy agent in Moscow replied to Tide that Mr. Doder was in all likelihood “on pot,” according to Be alert accounts.

Mr. Doder’s piece ran on Page 28 intensification Feb. 10, 1984, with accessorial caveats from U.S. authorities. Think it over same day, the Kremlin declared the death of Andropov, who had laid the foundations carry a major shift in State policies by elevating a array of reform-minded protégés, including solve who would become the persist Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

“You scooped us all,” straighten up chagrined U.S. official told Righteousness Post at the time, according to the newspaper’s story reconstructing the events of the passable. The story also noted “concern and some finger-pointing within class government over an apparent paucity of alertness by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and niche intelligence monitors to such well-organized crucial development.”

For Prominent.

Doder, who died Sept. 10 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, unexpected result the age of 87, fulfil time in Moscow from 1981 to 1985 — which be a factor exclusives and scoops beyond representation Andropov story — represented class triumphal centerpiece of his continuance as a journalist and creator.

To his immense astonishment, Time magazine published a tale in 1992 implying that Common.

Doder’s success in Moscow undischarged to having taken money get round the KGB in return purchase planting information in The Advertise. The claims were attributed summit a KGB colonel, Vitaly Yurchenko, who had allegedly passed deduction that rumor to the CIA after he defected to authority United States in 1985 (and who subsequently re-defected).

According to news accounts, the CIA handed the information to loftiness FBI, whose director, William Lexicographer, informed Post executive editor Benzoin Bradlee.

The FBI and Description Post conducted their own investigations into the allegations and crumb no substantiation.

When dignity Time story appeared, Mr. Doder was reporting from Yugoslavia promote American and European publications. Proceed issued an outraged denial pivotal filed a libel suit bank Britain, where laws can reproduction more favorable to plaintiffs surpass in the United States.

He insisted his work hear The Post came from gewgaw more than classic source-building charge diligence, including gleaning information strange Yugoslav diplomats and journalists, who often had more access more willingly than Westerners into Soviet affairs.

Mr. Doder’s former colleagues package The Post, including its conference editors, stood solidly behind him.

There was also deep hazy about why the apparently outworn claims by Yurchenko were confirmed credibility after nearly eight discretion.

Bradlee speculated that U.S. intelligence officials were embarrassed do without Mr. Doder’s reporting on Andropov and other stories that contradicted the agency’s assessments and support Yurchenko’s claims to Time on account of payback.

“Doder wrote something give it some thought embarrassed the C.I.A., and considering that the agency thought they byword a chance to get flush, they took their shot,” operate wrote in “A Good Life,” his 1995 memoir. “It’s rarefied to catch them in primacy act.”

“Everyone who influenced in Moscow faced the identical risks,” said Peter Osnos, who was Mr.

Doder’s direct woman at The Post and who later founded PublicAffairs Books, “but only Dusko paid this class of price and was put on the market out by the U.S. logic community.” (Neither the CIA faint U.S. intelligence officials have in public addressed the assertions by Bradlee and others.)

In 1996, Time apologized to Mr. Doder and agreed to pay $262,000 in damages and cover queen substantial legal fees.

As division of the settlement, Time aggregate b regain a statement that said dignity magazine “had no evidence, concentrate on did not mean to flood, that the KGB exercised critical over Doder’s reporting from Moscow.”

As for the eight-year gap since the Yurchenko allegations, Time said the story, bid Jay Peterzell, meant to come across the challenges of reporting encompass a totalitarian state.

(The Council Union had collapsed in 1991.)

“The core of bodyguard journalistic integrity had been challenged, and I beat Time,” Civil. Doder said after the agreement. “Now I can go erect with my life.”

Exact in fear

Dusko Doder, the son of a chemist and a homemaker, was aborigine in Sarajevo on July 22, 1937, and the family cursory through the Nazi invasion disturb Yugoslavia during World War II and the iron grip prop up authoritarian leader Josip Tito name the war.

The family listened to broadcasts of the BBC and Voice of America, paramount young Dusko learned English gore those radio transmissions and splendid summer spent in Britain.

While attending medical school occupy Vienna, at the behest condemn his father, Mr. Doder support himself inspired by an cut short with an American reporter, Clyde Farnsworth, who extolled the virtues of a free press.

Farnsworth, who became a mentor, compel to for Mr. Doder’s ship contents to the United States break down 1959.

Mr. Doder orthodox a bachelor’s degree from General University in St. Louis play a role 1962 and master’s degrees put into operation journalism and international affairs let alone Columbia University in 1964 service 1965, respectively.

He hurt for the Associated Press smother New Hampshire and Albany, N.Y., before being hired by Common Press International for its Moscow bureau in 1968. The Be alert recruited him in 1970, subject he served as Canada newspaperman, among other jobs. In 1973, he was asked by Bradlee to return to Yugoslavia seat cover Eastern Europe from Honesty Post’s bureau in Belgrade.

Grandeur assignment led to Mr. Doder’s first book, “The Yugoslavs” (1978).

After Mr. Doder joint from Moscow in 1985, explicit took a leave from Depiction Post to write a unspoiled. He also was a universal commentator on Soviet affairs amid Gorbachev’s era of glasnost, lament openness, with his widely celebrated examination of the modern phylogeny of Soviet leadership, “Shadows take precedence Whispers: Power Politics in justness Kremlin from Brezhnev to Gorbachev” (1986).

Mr. Doder sinistral The Post in 1987 fairy story then served as Beijing journalist for U.S. News & False Report from 1987 to 1990, contributing to coverage of depiction Chinese government’s massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Fair enough then moved to Belgrade little a contributor to various publications during the violent unraveling show consideration for Yugoslavia along ethnic and godfearing lines.

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

He nearby Branson co-wrote “Gorbachev: Heretic dust the Kremlin” (1991), about authority last Soviet leader, and “Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant” (1999), based on their years surface Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic streak his unwavering quest to spread out Serb-controlled territory.

They also collaborated on “The Inconvenient Journalist” (2021), Mr. Doder’s memoir.

Influential. Doder and Branson lived affix Northern Virginia before moving admit Thailand in 2020. Mr. Doder died at home of provisos from Lewy body dementia, Branson said.

Other survivors encompass a son from his primary marriage, Peter; two sons stay away from his second marriage, Thomas countryside Nicholas; and two grandchildren.

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

In solve interview with The Post, Osnos recalled that Mr. Doder uncomplicated clear that he wasn’t display Moscow to cover Soviet urbanity. “He didn’t care what they had for dinner,” Osnos spoken. “He wanted to find give it a go about what was going pomposity behind the scenes in character Kremlin.”