James Reston | |
|---|---|
 Reston circa 1972 | |
| Born | James Barrett Reston (1909-11-03)November 3, 1909 Clydebank,Dunbartonshire, Scotland |
| Died | December 6, 1995(1995-12-06) (aged 86) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Illinois (B.A., 1932)[1] |
| Occupation(s) | Columnist, editor |
| Notable credit | The New York Times |
| Spouse | Sarah Jane "Sally" Fulton |
| Children | 3, includingJames Jr. |
James "Scotty" Barrett Reston (November 3, 1909 – December 6, 1995) was an American journalist whose career spanned the mid-1930s to the early 1990s. He was associated for many years withThe New York Times.
Reston was born inClydebank, Scotland, into a poor, devout ScottishPresbyterian family. In September 1920, Reston emigrated with his mother and sister toNew York City as steerage passengers on board the SSMobile, and arrived and were inspected atEllis Island.[2]
The family settled in theDayton, Ohio area, and Reston graduated fromOakwood High School inOakwood, Ohio. In 1927, he was a medalist in the first Ohio High School Golf Championship. He was the Ohio Public Links champion in 1931, and in 1932 was a member of theUniversity of Illinois' Big Ten championship team.[3]
While at Illinois, he was a member ofSigma Pi fraternity and was a roommate ofJohn C. Evans, a Sigma Pi brother.[4]
After working briefly for theSpringfield, Ohio,Daily News, he joined theAssociated Press in 1934. He moved to theLondon bureau ofThe New York Times in 1939, but returned toNew York in 1940.
In 1942, he took a leave of absence to establish a U.S.Office of War Information in London. In 1945, following the end ofWorld War II, he rejoinedThe New York Times as a national correspondent inWashington, D.C..
In 1948, he was appointed diplomatic correspondent.[5] In 1953, he became bureau chief and columnist.
Reston served as associate editor ofThe New York Times from 1964 to 1968, executive editor from 1968 to 1969, and vice president from 1969 to 1974. He wrote a nationally syndicated column from 1974 until 1987, when he became a senior columnist. During theNixon administration, he was on U.S. presidentRichard Nixon'slist of political opponents.
Reston was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1980.[6]
Reston interviewed many of the world's leaders and wrote extensively about the leading events and issues of his time. He interviewed PresidentJohn F. Kennedy immediately after the 1961Vienna summit withNikita Khrushchev on the heels of theBay of Pigs invasion.
In 1989, Reston retired fromThe New York Times.
In his 2013 book,The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War,Stephen Kinzer portrayed Reston as a key contact forCentral Intelligence Agency directorAllen Dulles, alleging that he collaborated with the CIA'sOperation Mockingbird, in which the agency sought to influence global reporting and journalism.
Reston married Sarah Jane Fulton on December 24, 1935, after meeting her at theUniversity of Illinois.[7] They had three sons:James, a journalist, non-fiction writer, and playwright; Thomas, formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for public affairs and the deputy spokesman for theU.S. State Department;[8] and Richard, the retired publisher of theVineyard Gazette, a newspaper onMartha's Vineyard purchased by the elder Reston in 1968.[1]
Reston died on December 6, 1995, inWashington, D.C., at age 86.
Reston's books include:
Reston won thePulitzer Prize twice. The first was in 1945, for his coverage of theDumbarton Oaks Conference, particularly an exclusive series that detailed how the delegates planned to set up theUnited Nations. Decades later, he revealed that his source was a copy boy withThe New York Times who was a member of the Chinese delegation.[9][10] He received the second award in 1957 for his national correspondence, especially "his five-part analysis of the effect of President Eisenhower's illness on the functioning of the executive branch of the federal government".[11]
In 1955, he was given theRaymond Clapper Memorial Award by theAmerican Society of Newspaper Editors.[12]
In 1986, he was one of twelve recipients of theMedal of Liberty. He received thePresidential Medal of Freedom in 1986 and theFour Freedoms Award in 1991.[1]
He was also awarded the chevalier of theLégion d'honneur from France, theOrder of St. Olav fromNorway,Order of Merit from Chile, theOrder of Leopold from Belgium, and honorary degrees from 28 universities.[13]
Writing inThe Washington Post shortly after Reston's death, Bart Barnes observed that "Mr. Reston's work was required reading for top government officials, with whom he sometimes cultivated a professional symbiosis; he would be their sounding board and they would be his news sources." But formerTimes editorR. W. Apple Jr. noted in Reston's obituary that he "was forgiving of the frailties of soldiers, statesmen and party hacks—too forgiving, some of his critics said, because he was too close to them".[1]
Reston had a particularly close relationship withHenry Kissinger and became one of his stalwart supporters in the media. At least eighteen conversations between the two are captured in transcripts released by theDepartment of State in response toFOIA requests. They document Reston volunteering to approach fellowTimes columnistAnthony Lewis to ask him to moderate his anti-Kissinger texts and offering to plant a question in a press conference for the secretary.[14][15]
A. G. Noornai, reviewing the 2002 biography of Reston, described how his closeness to Kissinger later damaged him further:
Nixon had been re-elected. Kissinger returned from Paris with a peace deal. Reston praised him highly. Nixon, however, decided to bomb NorthVietnam to demonstrate his support for the South. Reston did a story on December 13, 1972, based on his talks with Kissinger citing obstruction by Saigon, which was true. But he did not, could not, report what Kissinger had suppressed from him—he was privy to the decision to bomb Hanoi. That happened five days after the story was published. Kissinger now tried to distance himself from it and Reston was taken in by his claims. Kissinger "undoubtedly opposes" the bombing, he wrote and tried to explain Kissinger's compulsions. Reston's line had not gone unnoticed. The December 13 column was the last straw. It harmed his reputation. Reston had spiked the Pentagon reporter's story because it conflicted with his perceptions. The reporter was proved right.[16]
In his review of Reston's memoir,Eric Alterman wrote inThe Columbia Journalism Review:
To read Reston on Henry Kissinger today is, as it was during the Nixon administration, a little embarrassing. (Reston once titled one of his columns "By Henry Kissinger with James Reston".) Nothing in his experience in Washington, Reston says over and over in these memoirs, "was ever quite as good or as bad as the fashionable opinion of the day", and he thinks of Kissinger as a prime example of this. [...] But in praising Kissinger, Reston is praising a man who regularly misled him, who wiretapped NSC staff members to determine who was leaking to reporters when they revealed his unconstitutional maneuverings, and who urged Nixon to prosecute Reston's newspaper for its constitutionally protected publication of thePentagon Papers. During the infamous 1972 Christmas bombing of North Vietnam, Reston wrote of Kissinger that "he has said nothing in public about the bombing in North Vietnam, which he undoubtedly opposes.... If the bombing goes on ... Mr. Kissinger will be free to resign." The only problem with the interpretation, however, was that the bombings were Kissinger's idea. He misled Reston about his own position and then misled the White House staff about these conversations, finally admitting the truth when confronted with his phone records.[17]
Reston also displayed his affinity for the powerful whenEdward Kennedy drove his car off the bridge atChappaquiddick Island, resulting in the death ofMary Jo Kopechne. Summering at nearbyMartha's Vineyard, Reston filed the first account of the incident forThe New York Times; his opening paragraph began "Tragedy has again struck the Kennedy family." Managing editorA. M. Rosenthal edited the text to make Kopechne the subject.[18][19]
Reston wrote for theTimes that in July 1971, he sufferedappendicitis while visiting China with his wife. After his appendix was removed through conventional surgery at the Anti-Imperialist Hospital inBeijing, his post-operative pain was treated by Li Chang-yuan withacupuncture that "sent ripples of pain racing through my limbs and, at least, had the effect of diverting my attention from the distress in my stomach."[20]Paul U. Unschuld [de], an academic translator of traditional Chinese medical texts, credits Reston's article with the rise of traditional Chinese medicine in the body ofalternative medicine of the West.[21] There were popular misconceptions at the time that the acupuncture was used instead of anasthetics during the operation itself, but this was false, with Reston having been given a standard injection ofbenzocaine andlidocaine to anasthetise him prior to the operation.[22]
In the 1962 novelFail-Safe, byEugene Burdick andHarvey Wheeler, the unnamedPresident of the United States refers to Reston during an impending nuclear crisis when he says that "someone will crack and start to call Scotty or one of the wire services or some damn thing."
Reston is played byKenneth Welsh in the TV movieKissinger and Nixon.
