William Beecher, who as a reporter for The New York Occasions revealed President Richard M. Nixon’s secret bombing marketing campaign over Cambodia throughout the Vietnam Conflict, and who later received a Pulitzer Prize at The Boston Globe, died on Feb. 9 at his residence in Wilmington, N.C. He was 90.
His daughter, Lori Beecher, and son-in-law, Marc Burstein, confirmed the demise.
President Nixon ordered the bombings, code-named Operation Menu, in March 1969 in response to stepped-up assaults by the North Vietnamese Military and South Vietnamese guerrillas primarily based in Cambodia, a impartial nation. The marketing campaign was so secret that even William P. Rogers, the secretary of state, was unaware of it.
Mr. Beecher’s article in regards to the bombings, which appeared on the entrance web page of The Occasions on Could 9, 1969, famous that within the earlier two weeks alone, some 5,000 tons of ordnance had been dropped on Cambodia.
He additionally famous that whereas there have been no plans for a serious land incursion, “small groups” of U.S. reconnaissance forces had been infiltrating Cambodia “to guarantee that correct info will be obtained to offer ‘profitable’ targets for the bombers.”
The article generated a right away response within the White Home. Inside two weeks Gen. Alexander Haig, a deputy to Henry Kissinger, the nationwide safety adviser, requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation to faucet Mr. Beecher’s cellphone in an try to determine who leaked the data to him.
The choice to wiretap Mr. Beecher’s cellphone, together with these of 16 different journalists and authorities officers, was an early demonstration of the Nixon administration’s willingness to make use of legally doubtful technique of buying info or silencing critics.
Mr. Beecher was already an irritant to the administration, and he remained so, with scoops about arms-control plans and spy flights over China, all of which drew on well-placed sources throughout the authorities.
To many individuals’s shock, he left The Occasions in 1973 to work for the Division of Protection because the performing assistant secretary for public affairs. He returned to journalism in 1975 as a correspondent for The Boston Globe, the place he lined worldwide affairs.
He was a part of a crew that received the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for nationwide reporting with a 56-page article in regards to the state of the nuclear arms race — a late-career achievement that he wore calmly.
“Having received a Pulitzer didn’t damage, however I didn’t go round telling information sources that I’d received,” he instructed The Harvard Crimson in 2005. “I wouldn’t say that it made a complete lot of distinction.”
William Beecher was born on Could 27, 1933, in Framingham, Mass, the son of Gertrude and Samuel Beecher. His father was a grocer.
He studied authorities at Harvard, the place he labored as options editor for The Crimson and as a campus correspondent for The Boston Globe. He graduated in 1955; amongst his classmates had been David Halberstam, J. Anthony Lukas and Sydney H. Schanberg, all of whom would additionally go on to storied careers as reporters for The Occasions.
He obtained a grasp’s diploma from the Columbia Journalism Faculty, then spent two years within the Military earlier than becoming a member of the reporting workers of The St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
He married Eileen Brick in 1958. She died in 2020. Alongside along with his daughter Lori, he’s survived by three different daughters, Diane Beecher, Nancy Kotz and Debbie Spartin; and 10 grandchildren.
He moved to Washington within the early Nineteen Sixties to cowl the Supreme Courtroom for The Wall Road Journal, then joined the Occasions in 1966.
He made 5 journeys to Vietnam throughout the warfare. On one journey, alongside Mr. Haig, their helicopter was shot down over the Mekong Delta, although everybody survived with solely minor accidents. On one other, he realized that his spouse was going to have twins — information conveyed to him by his touring companion, Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
After working at The Boston Globe, Mr. Beecher served because the Washington bureau chief for The Minneapolis Star Tribune and because the director of public affairs for the Nuclear Regulatory Fee.
He additionally wrote eight novels, a memoir and a cookbook, and in retirement taught programs in journalism on the College of Maryland.
Many profitable reporters acknowledge their life’s calling early. However Mr. Beecher mentioned he didn’t discover his till late in his undergraduate profession.
“I believed that I used to be both going into journalism or regulation,” he instructed The Crimson. “I believed I could be bored in regulation, however I knew I wasn’t going to be bored in journalism.”
