Les Whitten

Les Whitten (February 21, 1928 – December 2, 2017) was an American investigative reporter at the Washington Merry-Go-Round under Jack Anderson, as well as translator of French poetry by Baudelaire and influential novelist of horror and science fiction books.

Returning to Lehigh, he changed his major to English and Journalism, became the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, and graduated magna cum laude in 1950.

Coverage by the Washington Merry-Go-Round included a CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro and Nixon's secret foreign policy shift to Pakistan from India.

Whitten's specific assignments included investigating the private lives of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and top aide Clyde Tolson.

[3][4] During Watergate, Mark Feldstein—author of "Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture.

Later, Liddy recalled in memoirs, they rejected the placing of poisoned aspirin in Anderson's medicine cabinet for two reasons: it might endanger family members – and might take months to work.

[3] In 1973, FBI agents arrested Whitten and Hank Adams as they helped load stolen government documents into his car, earlier taken from the Bureau of Indian Affairs by Native American activists after the Trail of Broken Treaties protest and occupation of the BIA offices.

To secure a government witness for Whitten, Jack Anderson asked Interior Secretary Rogers Morton to "slip me some confidential memos on what you've done" against Native Americans.

[3] Whitten wrote nearly a dozen novels–political thrillers, horror, and science fiction – and translated poetry by Baudelaire from French into English.

The Watergate scandal was one of the most important news stories that Whitten covered in his career (here, Watergate complex , Washington, D.C. )
Whitten worked for Radio Free Europe in Munich (here, showing before and after images of bomb damage to Munich's Altstadt during World War II)
In the 1960s, Whitten worked for Jack Anderson , who took over the Washington Merry-Go-Round from founder Drew Pearson in 1969 (here, Pearson stands left with U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1964)
Whitten translated into English the poems of Charles Baudelaire (here, photo by Étienne Carjat , 1863)
Whitten's The Progeny of the Adder (1965) appears on Stephen King 's list of essential horror novels in his non-fiction book Danse Macabre (here, King in 2007)