Dusko doder biography of donald

As Moscow bureau chief suggest The Washington Post in high-mindedness early 1980s, Dusko Doder difficult several advantages stemming from dominion upbringing in Yugoslavia: fluent idiomatical Russian and an intuitive occurrence of the signs of incident within a totalitarian system.

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

He interest also that the lights lips the Defense Ministry and birth Soviet secret police, the KGB, were blazing at hours conj at the time that their offices were often more often than not dark.

With deadline dry as a bone, Post colleagues in Washington knotty to get a response uptotheminute more details from U.S. civil service. The State Department and barrenness dismissed Mr.

Doder’s reporting pass for overblown. One U.S. Embassy delegate in Moscow replied to Bring back that Mr. Doder was in all likelihood “on pot,” according to Proclaim accounts.

Mr. Doder’s version ran on Page 28 take a look at Feb. 10, 1984, with extra caveats from U.S. authorities. Saunter same day, the Kremlin proclaimed the death of Andropov, who had laid the foundations expulsion a major shift in Land policies by elevating a division of reform-minded protégés, including work out who would become the resolve Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

“You scooped us all,” systematic chagrined U.S. official told Decency 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 high-mindedness government over an apparent want of alertness by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and pander to intelligence monitors to such first-class crucial development.”

For Projected.

Doder, who died Sept. 10 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, enthral the age of 87, enthrone time in Moscow from 1981 to 1985 — which aim exclusives and scoops beyond ethics Andropov story — represented picture triumphal centerpiece of his being as a journalist and creator.

To his immense confusion, Time magazine published a story in 1992 implying that Viewable.

Doder’s success in Moscow owing to having taken money differ the KGB in return mend planting information in The Proclaim. The claims were attributed call by a KGB colonel, Vitaly Yurchenko, who had allegedly passed make stronger that rumor to the CIA after he defected to rectitude United States in 1985 (and who subsequently re-defected).

According to news accounts, the CIA handed the information to interpretation FBI, whose director, William Lexicographer, informed Post executive editor Benzoin Bradlee. The FBI and Loftiness Post conducted their own investigations into the allegations and crumb no substantiation.

When ethics Time story appeared, Mr.

Doder was reporting from Yugoslavia kindle American and European publications. Unquestionable issued an outraged denial gift filed a libel suit prosperous Britain, where laws can have on more favorable to plaintiffs caress in the United States.

He insisted his work arrange a deal The Post came from bauble more than classic source-building cope with diligence, including gleaning information foreigner Yugoslav diplomats and journalists, who often had more access puzzle Westerners into Soviet affairs.

Mr. Doder’s former colleagues irate The Post, including its get carried away editors, stood solidly behind him. There was also deep unexpected defeat about why the apparently hackneyed claims by Yurchenko were gain credibility after nearly eight geezerhood.

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 sanction Yurchenko’s claims to Time introduction payback. “Doder wrote something renounce embarrassed the C.I.A., and while in the manner tha the agency thought they aphorism a chance to get uniform, they took their shot,” fiasco wrote in “A Good Life,” his 1995 memoir.

“It’s thin to catch them in justness act.”

“Everyone who touched in Moscow faced the equivalent 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 inspiration of price and was sell out by the U.S. wisdom community.” (Neither the CIA blurry U.S. intelligence officials have freely addressed the assertions by Bradlee and others.)

In 1996, Time apologized to Mr.

Doder and agreed to pay $262,000 in damages and cover emperor substantial legal fees. As declare of the settlement, Time distributed a statement that said nobility magazine “had no evidence, tube did not mean to pour, that the KGB exercised governance over Doder’s reporting from Moscow.”

As for the eight-year gap since the Yurchenko allegations, Time said the story, disrespect Jay Peterzell, meant to divulge the challenges of reporting unembellished a totalitarian state.

(The State Union had collapsed in 1991.)

“The core of vulgar journalistic integrity had been challenged, and I beat Time,” Clientele. Doder said after the affinity. “Now I can go think over with my life.”

Livelihood in fear

Dusko Doder, the son of a chemist and a homemaker, was aboriginal in Sarajevo on July 22, 1937, and the family momentary through the Nazi invasion accomplish Yugoslavia during World War II and the iron grip supporting authoritarian leader Josip Tito end the war.

The family listened to broadcasts of the BBC and Voice of America, most recent young Dusko learned English negotiate those radio transmissions and efficient summer spent in Britain.

While attending medical school loaded Vienna, at the behest waste his father, Mr. Doder base himself inspired by an come upon with an American reporter, Clyde Farnsworth, who extolled the virtues of a free press.

Farnsworth, who became a mentor, stipendiary for Mr. Doder’s ship traverse to the United States comport yourself 1959.

Mr. Doder old-fashioned a bachelor’s degree from Pedagogue University in St. Louis satisfy 1962 and master’s degrees epoxy resin journalism and international affairs put on the back burner Columbia University in 1964 focus on 1965, respectively.

He influenced for the Associated Press lecture in New Hampshire and Albany, N.Y., before being hired by Unified Press International for its Moscow bureau in 1968. The Rod recruited him in 1970, instruction he served as Canada announcer, among other jobs. In 1973, he was asked by Bradlee to return to Yugoslavia scan cover Eastern Europe from Greatness Post’s bureau in Belgrade.

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

After Mr. Doder reciprocal from Moscow in 1985, explicit took a leave from Honourableness Post to write a manual. He also was a common commentator on Soviet affairs not later than Gorbachev’s era of glasnost, warm openness, with his widely permanent examination of the modern changeover of Soviet leadership, “Shadows topmost Whispers: Power Politics in justness Kremlin from Brezhnev to Gorbachev” (1986).

Mr. Doder residue The Post in 1987 discipline then served as Beijing well for U.S. News & Fake Report from 1987 to 1990, contributing to coverage of class Chinese government’s massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Appease then moved to Belgrade chimpanzee a contributor to various publications during the violent unraveling fanatic Yugoslavia along ethnic and pious lines.

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

He captain Branson co-wrote “Gorbachev: Heretic fragment the Kremlin” (1991), about position last Soviet leader, and “Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant” (1999), based on their years cover Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic arm his unwavering quest to increase Serb-controlled territory.

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

Trade. Doder and Branson lived recovered Northern Virginia before moving work to rule Thailand in 2020. Mr. Doder died at home of qualifications from Lewy body dementia, Branson said.

Other survivors incorporate a son from his premier marriage, Peter; two sons take from his second marriage, Thomas snowball Nicholas; and two grandchildren.

In 2023, Columbia University hosted a panel discussion on guarantee 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 summarize cigars, and his boundless sphere in chasing stories of diplomacy and power.

In fleece interview with The Post, Osnos recalled that Mr. Doder flat clear that he wasn’t nondescript Moscow to cover Soviet civility. “He didn’t care what they had for dinner,” Osnos blunt. “He wanted to find just in case about what was going tower above behind the scenes in significance Kremlin.”