Alsop (right) sitting withTurner Catledge (left) at theWhite House.
 

Joseph Wright Alsop V (October 10, 1910 – August 28, 1989) was an American journalist and syndicated newspaper columnist from the 1930s through the 1970s.

 

Early years

Alsop was born in Avon, Connecticut, to the socially prominent old Yankee family of Joseph Wright Alsop IV (1876–1953) and his wife Corinne Douglas Robinson(1886–1971).[1] His mother was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt and was also related to President James Monroe. Both his parents were active in Republicanpolitics. His father sought the governorship of Connecticut several times, his mother founded the Connecticut League of Republican Women in 1917, and both served in the Connecticut General Assembly.

 

Alsop graduated from the Groton School in 1928, and from Harvard University in 1932.

 

Journalism career

After college, Alsop became a reporter, then an unusual career for someone with an Ivy League diploma. He began his career with the New York Herald Tribune and in a short time he established a substantial reputation as a journalist, particularly by his comprehensive reportage of the Bruno Hauptmann trial in 1934.

 

Because of his family ties to the Roosevelts, Alsop soon became well-connected in Franklin Roosevelt's Washington. By 1936 the Saturday Evening Post had awarded him a contract to write about politics with fellow journalist Turner Catledge. Two years later, the North American News Alliance (NANA) contracted Alsop and Robert E. Kintner to write a nationally-syndicated column on a daily basis. His first book The 168 Days (1938), covering Roosevelt's unsuccessful campaign to enlarge the Supreme Court, became a bestseller. In 1940, Alsop and Kintner moved from NANA to the New York Herald Tribune.

 

In 1941, after it had become clear that the United States would soon enter World War II, Alsop and Kintner suspended their column and volunteered for the armed forces. Alsop entered the Navy and used his political connections to be assigned to Claire Chennault's American Volunteer Group, to become famous as the Flying Tigers, as Staff Historian,while the group was training atToungoo, Burma.

 

While on a supply mission for Chennault in December 1941, Alsop was captured and interned at Hong Kong by the Japanese. Repatriated on the neutral liner Gripsholm, he rejoined Chennault inKunming, China and served with him for the rest of the war.

 

After the war, Alsop resumed his journalism career, now working with his brother Stewart Alsop to produce on a thrice-weekly piece called "Matter of Fact". The use of the word "fact" reflected Alsop's pride in producing a column based on reporting, rather than opinions pieces like those of many columnists. While his brother Stewart remained headquartered in Washington to cover domestic politics, Joseph traveled the world, covering foreign affairs. Their partnership lasted from 1945 until 1958, when Joseph became the sole author of "Matter of Fact" until his retirement in 1974.

 

The Alsops once described themselves as "Republicans by inheritance and registration, and...conservatives by political conviction."

 

Despite his identity as a conservative Republican, however, Alsop was an early supporter of the presidential ambitions of Democrat John F. Kennedy and became a close friend and influential adviser to Kennedy after his election in November 1960. Alsop was a vocal supporter of America's involvement in Vietnam, which led to bitter breaks with many of his liberal friends and a decline in the influence of his column.

 

Personal life

In 1961 he married Susan Mary Jay Patten, the widow of William Patten, an American diplomat who was one of Alsop's friends. By this marriage he had two stepchildren, William and Anne. They divorced in 1978.

 

A noted art connoisseur and collector, he delivered six lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on The History of Art Collecting in the summer of 1978.

 

Joseph Alsop was at work on a memoir when he died at his home in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1989.

 

The memoir was published posthumously as I've Seen the Best of It.

 

Sexuality

Alsop kept his homosexuality a closely guarded secret all of his life.[6] Richard Helms called him "a scrupulously closeted homosexual." Nevertheless, Senator Joseph McCarthy insinuated that Alsop was homosexual in the course of a dispute with the Saturday Evening Post about its coverage of his campaign to remove "perverts" from government employment. When McCarthy implied that Alsop was not "healthy and normal," a Post editor vouched for him: "I know Alsop well, and I know he is a man of high character, with great courage and integrity."

 

Early in 1957, the KGB photographed him in a hotel room in Moscow having sex with another man, a Soviet agent. He rebuffed Soviet attempts at blackmail, instead writing "a detailed account of the incident and a relevant narrative history of his sex life". It has been described as "brimming with revelations about Alsop's sex life on several continents," including a report that one of his lovers was Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr., who resigned as Dwight Eisenhower's appointments secretary in 1953. His accounts, delivered to a friend in the CIA, quickly reached the FBI, allowingJ. Edgar Hoover to spread the information through the Eisenhower administration, many of whose members had fought sharp battles with Alsop. Hoover told Lyndon Johnson about the Moscow incident in 1964,and Johnson told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara about Alsop's FBI file.

 

In 1965, Alsop complained to friends that Johnson was tapping his phone, a claim that infuriated the President, who believed that he protected Alsop from McCarthy's attacks years before. Alsop told White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers that he believed the Administration was tapping his phone and spreading gossip about his personal life, all in an attempt to stop leaks. When Moyers reported the charges to the President, Johnson ordered Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to be certain no such wiretap was in place and protested that he never ordered one: "I'm as innocent of it as I am of murdering your wife," he told Katzenbach.

 

In the 1970s, the Soviets sent Alsop's embarrassing photos to several prominent American journalists without consequences. As a consequence, Alsop considered making his homosexuality public to end the harassment, but ultimately did not.

 

Later references

In 1967, Gore Vidal published Washington, D.C., a novel in which the character of a gay journalist is loosely based on Alsop.

 

David Auburn's play, The Columnist, which ran on Broadway from April 25 to July 8, 2012, dramatizes Alsop's life, notably the interplay of his politics, his journalism, and his sexuality