Tom Wicker

Thomas Grey "Tom" Wicker (June 18, 1926 – November 25, 2011) was an American journalist. He was best known as a political reporter and columnist for The New York Times.

Tom Wicker
Born
Thomas Grey Wicker

(1926-06-18)June 18, 1926
Hamlet, North Carolina
DiedNovember 25, 2011(2011-11-25) (aged 85)
Rochester, Vermont
OccupationJournalist

Background and education

Wicker was born in Hamlet, North Carolina. He was a graduate of the University of North Carolina. He won a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 1957. In 1993, he returned to Harvard, where he was a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government. He died from an apparent heart attack, on November 25, 2011.[1]

Career

The New York Times

Wicker began working in professional journalism in 1949, as editor of the small-town Sandhill Citizen in Aberdeen, North Carolina. By the early 1960s, he had joined The New York Times.[2] At the Times, he became well known as a political reporter; among other accomplishments, he wrote the paper's November 23, 1963 lead story of the assassination of President Kennedy, having ridden in a press bus in the Dallas motorcade that accompanied Kennedy. Wicker was a shrewd observer of the Washington, D.C. scene. In that capacity, his influential "In The Nation" column ran in the Times from 1966 through 1992. In an exit-interview Q & A with fellow Times reporter R. W. Apple, he reflected on one primary lesson of his years in the capital. Apple asked whether Wicker had "any heroes" in political life.

I think it tends to work the other way. Which doesn't mean that I look at all those people with contempt—quite the opposite. But the journalist's perspective makes you see the feet of clay and the warts, and that's a good thing. I found them in many cases to be truly engaging human beings and admirable persons but not really, in the long run, impeccable heroes, or even just heroes without the "impeccable." We should try to see people as clearly as we can. Then if a hero does come into view, why, we can give him his due.[2]

Books
External video
Booknotes interview with Wicker on One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream, April 7, 1991, C-SPAN

Wicker's 1975 book A Time to Die: The Attica Prison Revolt, which recounted the events at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, during September 1971, received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Fact Crime book. He is also the author of several books about U.S. presidents, including Kennedy Without Tears: The Man Beneath the Myth (1964), JFK & LBJ: The Influence of Personality Upon Politics (1966), and One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (1991). Other volumes Wicker penned include Facing the Lions (1973), a novel about a presidential campaign involving a candidate modeled on Sen. Estes Kefauver; Unto This Hour (1984), a novel of the American Civil War, during the Second Battle of Bull Run (1862), Tragic Failure: Racial Integration in America (1996) and Shooting Star : The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy (2006).

In addition, Wicker penned three standalone detective novels under the pseudonym “Paul Connolly”:[3] Get Out of Town (1951), Tears Are for Angels[4] (1952), and So Far, So Evil (1955).

Politics

Wicker's work earned him a place on the master list of Nixon political opponents. He wrote the essay on Richard Nixon for the book Character Above All: Ten Presidents from FDR to George Bush (1995). Wicker was mentioned in a 60 Minutes report from the 1970s which detailed how, along with other journalists and members of Congress who supported desegregation busing, Wicker and the others nevertheless sent their children to DC private schools.[5]

NSA monitoring of Wicker's communications

In a secret operation code-named "Project MINARET," the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the communications of leading Americans, including Wicker and other prominent U.S. journalists, Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker, such civil rights leaders as Martin Luther King Jr., and prominent U.S. athletes who criticized the U.S. war in Vietnam.[6] A review by NSA of the NSA's Minaret program concluded that Minaret was "disreputable if not outright illegal."[6]

References
  1. McFadden, Robert D. (November 25, 2011). "Tom Wicker, Journalist and Observer, Dies at 85". The New York Times. p. D8.
  2. Apple, R. W. (January 5, 1992). "Opinions Considered: A Talk With Tom Wicker". The New York Times.
  3. Steelman, Ben. "Tom Wicker, RIP." Star News Online, November 28, 2011.
  4. Simon, Tom. "Tear Are for Angels." Paperback Warrior, January 21, 2019.
  5. Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. p. 264. ISBN 0-465-04195-7.
  6. The Guardian, 26 Sept. 2013, "Declassified NSA Files Show Agency Spied on Muhammad Ali and MLK"
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