A Cold War-era Washington Post journalist who scooped not only the American media but also US intelligence agencies in 1984 was mourned this week after he died on Sept. 10 at the age of 87.

Dusko Doder’s connections and intuition during his time as the Post‘s Moscow bureau chief saw him report on the death of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov before American intelligence agencies had become aware of a change in leadership behind the Iron Curtain. 

Doder’s accurate reporting took the media by surprise to such a degree that it resulted in an accusation from Time magazine he was a KGB asset. Doder later sued for libel and won, but the damage to his career was done.

In a story eulogizing the acclaimed former reporter, the Post reported this past week:

As Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post in the early 1980s, Dusko Doder had several advantages stemming from his upbringing in Yugoslavia: fluent idiomatic Russian and an intuitive understanding of the signs of change within a totalitarian system. He sensed something was amiss on a February night in 1984, when state radio canceled a jazz program and broadcast somber classical music. He noticed also that the lights at the Defense Ministry and the Soviet secret police, the KGB, were blazing at hours when their offices were often mostly dark.

Like every foreign correspondent in the city, Mr. Doder heard rumors that Soviet leader Yuri Andropov was severely ill. He filed a story that reached The Post’s foreign desk at 7 p.m. on Feb. 9 reporting that various telltale signs “appeared to indicate that the country was being placed on an emergency footing,” suggesting strongly that Andropov was dead. A similar occurrence happened two years earlier with the death of Andropov’s predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev.

Doder’s reporting led to what his old employer called “fingerpointing” among US government officials for missing what a lone reporter was able to surmise – that the leader of one of two global superpowers had died.

The New York Times reported that CIA officials were “furious.”

Time‘s Jay Peterzell would later file a story that used questionable sources to imply that Doder had been paid by the KGB. There were inferences the agency was behind a smear of the reporter’s integrity.

In 1996, Doder was offered “sincere regret and apologies” as well as more than $250,000 by the outlet after Time was found to have libeled him.

Peterzell moved on from the publication shortly after and Doder’s name was cleared.

Doder died in Thailand after a battle with Lewy body dementia, leaving behind three sons and two grandchildren.

The post A Cold War Journalist – Who Was Falsely Labeled a KGB Asset After Scooping Rest of Media and CIA – Dies at 87 first appeared on Mediaite.

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