Today’s post was written by David Langbart, archivist in Research Services at the National Archives at College Park, MD.
Noted journalist Jim Hoagland died in early November 2024. He spent most of his career working for the Washington Post, where he began working in 1966, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1971 and for commentary in 1991. Over the years, Hoagland had postings in Africa, Lebanon, France, headed the Post’s foreign desk, and wrote a syndicated column. Among the major issues he tackled were the apartheid regime in South Africa, the breakup of the USSR, the issue of the Kurds in Iraq, the Gulf War of 1991, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Department of State telegrams document how Hoagland both shared information with government officials and also caused problems for those same officials.
An example of sharing, and actual participation in the process, is found in the following March 1975 telegram from the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. In it, the embassy reported on Hoagland’s passing information to the U.S. Government from the Kurdish leader in Iraq along with his discussion of the situation.
This telegram was considered important enough to forward to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, then traveling in the Middle East for discussions on Egyptian-Israeli disengagement after the October 1973 War.
On another occasion in February 1977, a Hoagland article in the Washington Post reporting on the South African nuclear program raised enough concern that the Department prepared talking points for use by the Department’s spokesman and all U.S. Foreign Service posts in Africa, the U.S. embassies in France and Great Britain, and the U.S. Mission to the UN in case they were questioned about that article.
In other instances, the Department believed that Hoagland’s articles were of sufficient interest and import to warrant sharing widely. In late February 1979, for example, he wrote a long piece on the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs. The Department sent that article to about 40 embassies, consulates, mission, and other agencies in the following telegram:
For more on the murder of Dubs, see Tribute to a Fallen Diplomat.
Sources: All the telegrams come from the Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973-1979/Electronic Telegrams (NAID 654098), RG 59: General Records of the Department of State, accessible through the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) site. The telegrams can be viewed online from the “Diplomatic Records” page using the message reference number (e.g. – 1975BEIRUT03547) as the search term.
For the repeat of the telegram from Beirut, see 1975STATE065396 or TOSEC 931, March 22, 1975).