In 1987, Kreig's book Spiked: How Chain Management Corrupted America's Oldest Newspaper documented a pioneering case study on how changes in the newspaper industry were harming civic life. The book was a regional best-seller and prompted his appearance on more than one hundred broadcast interviews. In earning a law degree from the University of Chicago, his independent study project on "Market Failures In Media Regulation" under constitutional scholar and future White House Office of Management and Budget regulator Cass Sunstein provided a scholarly basis for analyzing the kinds of civic harms documented by his book. He later worked as a Washington, DC-based attorney in the communications field. He began as a law firm associate working in an office of a major law firm with past and future Federal Communications Commission chairmen of both major parties. In 1996, he was named Wireless Communications Association president/CEO, coordinating the trade association's worldwide advocacy until 2008.
His 2013 book Presidential Puppetry, the first in-depth book about the Obama administration's first term, revealed important but rarely reported parts of the biographies of recent U.S. presidents. These revelations, including patrons and sources of wealth for candidates, illustrated how the American public is increasingly deprived of information about how candidates ascend to the highest office, including via election-rigging and hidden controllers over presidents and other top elected officials.
Kreig has been a research fellow at three major universities, has lectured about communications on five continents, and co-keynoted in 2008 the annual Futures Summit of the National Association of Broadcasters. He is a member of a number of journalism and bar groups. These include the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the District of Columbia Bar, the National Press Club and the Overseas Press Club.
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About Us
Mission
The Justice Integrity Project reports misconduct, primarily in the justice and political systems, that harms individuals, communities and democratic values. The project is non-partisan and supported by advertising revenue and paid subscriptions.
Coverage began in February 2010 to expose irregularities in the federal court system in high-profile political prosecutions. Since then coverage has expanded to include revelations on intelligence, surveillance, Wall Street, health care, the media and foreign policy. The project operates with editorial independence from any political, government or commercial special interest. Its editorial policy seeks common ground to expose corruption and injustice.
History
The project was founded with a primary focus on alleged abuses in the United States legal system. At first, its primary focus was upon political and other arbitrary prosecutions as well as official corruption cases targeting malefactors whose actions hurt many people.
Since then its oversight has expanded to include related topics in all branches of government and the news media, as well as global issues illustrating gross injustice. The expansion was because many of the most serious irregularities in the court system not receiving news coverage had roots in political and financial intrigues, some of which involved media opinion leaders.
The project's research focuses mainly, but not exclusively, on U.S. domestic federal investigations. Sample areas include warrantless surveillance, intimidation of families and witnesses, suppression of evidence, appearance of judicial bias, and irregular financial incentives. Also, the project has examined oversight by higher courts, Congress, and the news media that permit abuses that, in the aggregate, threaten the foundations of democracy.
What People Are Saying
"This is brilliant — morally, ethically, socially, legally. I can't wait to learn more about the organization you have created. For one thing, it relieves me of the pressure to begin such an organization myself. Now I can help support yours! Onward!
"You join a small but ardent band of warriors for justice and for the transparency that stands a chance of restoring justice. It does not matter who the president is, nor the attorney general. The culture of the DOJ survives administrations. It happens that the current administration started out with more promise than most, and so the disappointment is palpable. But Obama is too prone to please and to protect himself against being perceived as soft and weak, and Holder is in fact too weak to take on the old boys network (and, indeed, he was part of the problem when he was a federal prosecutor). It is very exasperating.
"But it's very good that we have exposure and criticism coming now from all ends of the political spectrum. You are doing an enormously important public service."
-- Harvey A. Silverglate, longtime defense litigator, adjunct Harvard Law School adjunct professor, Cato Institute Fellow, co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and author of Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
"The flagrant, unbridled abuse of governmental power by the DOJ and FBI in attempting to destroy an individual (financially, professionally, socially, and sometimes physically) for personal and political reasons, and to an extent that is grossly disproportionate to any alleged act of criminality, is the hallmark of a totalitarian government."
"All decent, fair-minded American citizens -- liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans -- need to let their voices be heard in denouncing, castigating, and rejecting such deplorable, dangerous tactics."
--Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., a famed forensic pathologist, consultant, medical school professor, author and civic leader. The former Allegheny County coroner in Pennsylvania for 20 years made many medical findings challenging other official accounts by law enforcers, and later was targeted in notorious political prosecution later dropped by federal authorities. He is author of more than 550 professional articles, eight books for the general public and author, co-author or editorial board member for nearly 50 other books for professional or technical audiences
"Watch out Department of Justice and judges. There is a new watchdog in Washington that is providing oversight of your criminal wrongdoing. The Justice Integrity Project (JIP) strives to 'promote effective oversight of federal prosecution and judicial misconduct.' JIP's goals are to 'educate the public and its opinion-leaders . . . and [work] with legal officials, organizations, and voters to increase awareness of how federal injustice harms the country.'"
-- Washington commentator and author Wayne Madsen, editor of The Wayne Madsen Report, author of 14 books, and a former intelligence officer with the U.S. Navy and National Security Agency
"Without the Justice Integrity Project, I don't think I could have persevered this long. God Bless you for your efforts on behalf of every one of the poor souls that your organization is there for. Every generation needs our Paul Reveres: Someone willing to run with a lamp and tell us the truth."
-- Louis M. Manzo, author, New Jersey former legislator and defendant in the historic and controversial Bid Rig III prosecution that led to Chris Christie's election as governor
Board of Directors
The Justice Integrity Project was founded in February, 2010. All of the original five founding directors are listed below.
James Ronald Fisher is an honors graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and retired Navy Captain. Also, he is Founder and Executive Director of WeThePeopleNow.org, an engineer, businessman, church and community leader, and civil rights advocate. Fisher’s 30 years of military service includes 15 nuclear submarine patrols during the Cold and Vietnam Wars. Also, he managed the overhaul and repair of nuclear submarines and inspections of almost every major naval command as the Assistant Naval Inspector General for Logistics on the staff of the Secretary of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations.His Navy work also included collateral duties as a prosecutor, defense counsel and summary court martial officer. His Navy awards include the Legion of Merit. As a civilian, he worked at two engineering services firms. He founded and led the Defense Fire Protection Association to improve the safety and survivability of U.S. military forces. Also, he founded and led the Veterans Sales and Services Corporation (VetSS), which specialized in hiring disabled veterans. His web site has, among other things, plans to end US wars and occupation, put more Americans to work and reform financial systems. In politics, he was chairman of the Northern Virginia Presidential primary campaign for his classmate John McCain in 2000, and held the same post in 2008 for Dennis Kucinich. He was first in his class in Submarine, Nuclear Power and Basic Engineering Duty Officer Schools and is the author of numerous research papers.
Andrew Kreig is Justice Integrity Project Executive Director and co-founder. Andrew Kreig has two decades experience as an attorney and non-profit executive in Washington, DC. An author and longtime investigative reporter, his primary focus since 2008 has been exploring allegations of official corruption and other misconduct in the federal government. Also, he has been a consultant and volunteer leader in advising several non-profit groups fostering cutting-edge applications within the communications industries. Between 2008 and 2016, he was an affiliated research fellow with the Information Economy Project at George Mason University School of Law. From 2009 to 2012, he was also a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and a half dozen journalism societies, including the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Press Club and the Overseas Press Club of America.
As president and CEO of the Wireless Communications Association International (WCA) from 1996 until 2008, Kreig led its worldwide advocacy that helped create the broadband wireless industry. He has lectured about communications on five continents, and co-keynoted the annual Futures Summit of the National Association of Broadcasters. Previously, he was WCA vice president and general counsel, an associate at Latham & Watkins, law clerk to a federal judge, author of the book Spiked about the newspaper business, and a longtime reporter for the Hartford Courant.
He holds excellent ratings from the lawyer-rating services Avvo and Martindale-Hubbell. Listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World from the mid-1990s and currently, he holds law degrees from the University of Chicago School of Law and from Yale Law School. Reared in New York City, his undergraduate degree in history is from Cornell University, where he was a student newspaper editor, rowing team member, and a Golden Gloves heavyweight regional finalist.
Dr. William (Bill) F. Pepper, right, who serves as both a director and counsel of the Justice Integrity Project, is an international civil and human rights attorney best known for representing Martin Luther King’s accused assassin, James Earl Ray.
In 1967, Dr. King had reached out to Dr. Pepper regarding an essay he had written for Ramparts magazine concerning Vietnamese victims of American napalm missions. Pepper was present at King’s famous Riverside Church speech and they worked closely together before King's death in such efforts as speaking from the headtable at the National Conference for New Politics on Labor Day in 1967 (as shown together in a photo at left) and in a projected 1968 presi+dential campaign by King, cut short by his assassination in Memphis. The assassination was ascribed to Ray, who initially accepted responsibility but spent the rest of his life in prison denying guilt.
The King family approached Pepper to reinvestigate the case, which he did by undertaking extensive detective work in the region surrounding Memphis and re-examining relevant witnesses and documents and reavedling new ones. These resulted in a symbolic victory in a 1999 civil court trial in Memphis on behalf of the King family, and three books by Pepper about the case, the first of which was An Act of State (Verso, 2003, below right).
Previously, Pepper was the citizens chairman for Robert F. Kennedy’s run for the Senate in Westchester Country and also a counsel for Robert Kennedy’s accused assassin Sirhan Sirhan, beginning in 2007. In that work, Pepper has argued with others that Sirhan deserves parole and also has been falsely accused and convicted of killing Robert Kennedy. Pepper and others have argued that Sirhan fired shots toward Kennedy but that it was physically impossible for his shots to have killed the presidential contender in a pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, as alleged.
Pepper has stated that he never would have undertaken the pro bono defense of either Ray or Sirhan unless he thought they were actually innocent of the deaths, not simply "not guilty" for technical legal reasons.
Pepper received undergraduate and graduate degrees from Columbia University, a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts, a Juris Doctoral degree from Boston College and also studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His most recent book — The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., published by Sky Horse Publishing — is the result of 39 years of research and gathering of documentation and sworn testimonies on new confirmed information that will revise the history behind the assassination of Dr. King.
In Memoriam: John Kelly
1935-2021
Introduction: The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) published this column about the late John Kelly, a co-founder and director of the Justice Integrity Project and longtime member of the OPC. The press club's membership also includes this editor.
John Kelly, below left, a longtime OPC member who combined an eventful career in broadcast network news with government service and a lifelong passion for journalism, died early this year at age 85 in Connecticut.
His career included work as a news editor and correspondent on the national staff of NBC News and CBS News. He was the last surviving reporter to have covered the 1960 Election Night victory party in Hyannis, Massachusetts of Democratic Presidential nominee John Kennedy, shown below right in a poster with Republican rival Richard Nixon.
Kelly went on to cover civil rights stories, early 1960s operations in Laos, the FBI and the Watergate scandal. In doing so, he worked with such iconic anchors as Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC Nightly News and Walter Cronkite at CBS News.
In one career interlude in the late 1960s, he worked for the CIA in Indochina during the Vietnam War. He later served during the 1970s in the administration of New York Gov. Hugh Carey as deputy commissioner and director of the State Office of Taxation and Finance, where he helped to unravel and expose to Congress corruption schemes that were hurting taxpayers.
In appreciation for John’s impressive career and inspiring personal qualities, Wayne Madsen and this editor collaborated last year in creating a 30-minute video homage, “Mr. Kelly Goes To Washington,” chronicling career highlights that recall the James Stewart film, with scenes from the movie shown below.
The Kelly video was viewable only privately until now. But we make the video public on YouTube for this column, particularly for OPC colleagues whom he so much admired. The link is
The video portrays the long-ago news events that Kelly covered and not his own role. That’s because his work habits encouraged him to focus constantly on his next story or civic project, and not collect an archive of personal clips and other memorabilia.
A CIA Career Interlude
Kelly, a tall, slender man similar in build to Hollywood's Stewart, interrupted his reporting career, leaving his post as an editor at NBC News at its Rockefeller Center headquarters in New York, to become a CIA covert action officer serving in Indochina, among other duties. Later, he returned to reporting. Then in the Carey administration, he was intimately involved in two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. One was an $85 million suit against the State of New Jersey for discrimination against New Yorkers working in New Jersey. The other was defending New York against a suit by Vermont, which sought to prevent New York from auditing the books of Vermont vendors selling in New York.
As a dinner speaker at the National Press Club in Washington, he called for investigations about weapons containing depleted uranium and Agent Orange being used by the U.S. military in Vietnam that have caused some 400,000 deaths, with others being disfigured. He has raised similar concerns about cancerous conditions in veterans in the 1991 Iraq-Kuwait War.
“As was the case with the cover-up of the effects of Agent Orange on GIs after the Viet Nam War, the Pentagon and its entities, including Walter Reed Army Medical Center, are in denial while Western Europe allies have prohibited the use of such weapons,” he commented. He has spoken about unauthorized and unlawful telephone eavesdropping on American citizens in the U.S. by the National Security Agency and has participated in panel discussions with former federal agent and intelligence officer whistleblowers. Also, he has criticized the editorial control of broadcast news organizations by their corporate owners in ways contributing to the demise of public confidence in the American news media.
He died on Jan. 9 in the hospice unit of St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury following a COVID-19 illness that compounded several pre-existing conditions, according to survivors, who include two brothers and their families.
I serve as director of the Justice Integrity Project in Washington, DC, which I co-founded with Kelly in 2010 as a non-partisan project to report on complex legal-political stories exposing global corruption and other sensitive issues.
Our organization benefited from John Kelly’s continuing interest in providing story tips and sage counsel. We rented a van last fall to move Kelly from his longtime home from Washington’s suburbs to join relatives near where he had begun his career as a reporter in the late 1950s. During the course of the move, I obtained new insights about my friend’s early career, his passion for journalism as a vital component of public service, and his admiration for the OPC.
John, a loyal friend, was also a complex and generous man of seeming contradictions – such as his advocating for aggressive, in-depth coverage of news while remaining personally in the background.
The following details of Kelly’s life draw heavily from the account that has been posted since 2010 on the website of the Washington, DC-based Justice Integrity Project, on whose board Kelly served until his death.
Early Years
A native of Massachusetts whose family moved to Connecticut, Kelly’s career began as a high-school copyboy for the New York Journal-American in the 1950s.
While participating in a training program and riding with a reporter and photographer team, one night he met the newspaper's famed columnist Walter Winchell sitting in a street. Winchell, a pioneering columnist and radio reporter beginning in the Roaring Twenties, was cradling in his lap the bloodied head of a car accident victim, who was gushing, "Walter! Walter!" in happiness over his brush with tabliod fame.
After a stint with a New Haven newspaper and television station Kelly returned to New York to report for United Press Movietone Television News on national assignments while also attending Columbia University. His coverage of the John F. Kennedy 1960 campaign included responsibilities as the pool reporter on Election Night.
His stories included cutting-edge reports on the historic 1961 integration of University of Georgia at Athens and flying to Washington to witness the Kennedy inauguration and, from a nearby camera platform, hearing Kennedy’s words, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
In 1962 on the 50th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, Kelly interviewed three survivors of the tragedy. He then reported at sea on the U.S. Navy’s interception of Soviet vessels during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also that year, he flew with federal hurricane hunters based in Jacksonville, Florida into the eye of a storm.
He reported exclusives about Albert “The Boston Strangler” DeSalvo, Cuban militants planning Castro’s overthrow, Soviet espionage, Mafia crime, and Watergate.
More specifically, Kelly’s other work in the 1960s included first-hand reports of astronaut John Glenn’s lift-off. As a correspondent accredited at the United Nations, he also covered Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s iconic speech banging his shoe on a UN desktop for emphasis. Kelly was covering the UN Security Council when U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge removed a secret microphone from artwork installed in the Moscow embassy. Soviets had given the embassy a decorative U.S. seal, but with a microphone in the eagle’s beak.
As a foreign correspondent at UP Movietone in London, Kelly covered Parliament, served in Paris and covered intrigues involving Berlin Wall escapes and reprisals. Besides assignments in Hong Kong, Thailand and Japan, he covered the so-called Secret War in Laos. He lived in the mountains with anti-communist Montagnard tribes and flew on Air America drops of rice and paratroopers. While posing as a student and traveling by train between Munich and Berlin through East Germany during annual Warsaw Pact Maneuvers, he was once taken into custody by the East Germany State Police and Stasi, the East German secret police. Similarly, he was taken into custody by agents of the Communist Pathet Lao and held at their headquarters in Vientiane before release.
In February 1965, he obtained an exclusive interview for NBC with Malcom X, right, in which the black leader correctly predicted that he would not make it through the weekend without assassination.
Kelly’s assignments included living on the secret bases of the militant anti-Castro organizations Alpha 66 and Brigade 2506 as they planned commando raids on the Cuban mainland from camps in the Florida Everglades. The FBI’s Hoover authorized Kelly to meet with former Soviet GRU intelligence agent Kaarlo Toumi, who was being hunted by the Soviet KGB and on its hit list, in safe houses in New York after the Finnish-born Russian switched sides to become a double-agent for the U.S. For years, Soviets failed to detect the agent’s switch.
As night editor at NBC’s headquarters news desk at NBC's 30 Rockefeller Center headquarters portayed by photographer David Shankbone at left, Kelly obtained permission from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover for exclusive news film footage of the arrest of 18 Ku Klux Klan members for the infamous “Mississippi Burning” murders of three civil rights activists whose bodies were dumped in a swamp.
Later, as a reporter at CBS News, Kelly covered Watergate coverups in Washington, Miami and California. Among his exclusives were the Army’s use of the University of Minnesota campus police for surveillance and photographing students during rallies and campus activities. Also, Kelly broke stories showing that Army instructors rigged tests measuring Army reactions to potential missile attacks.
Kelly served as a CIA covert action officer beginning in the 1960s but resigned after calling for a congressional investigation into Vietnam War corruption by local officials and coverups by U.S. officials who failed to provide oversight. “The two most abused things in Vietnam,” Kelly was quoted in media reports as saying, “are the American G.I. and the U.S. taxpayer’s dollar.”
In the administration of New York’s governor, Kelly’s responsibilities included mustering congressional support for passage of anti-organized crime legislation aimed at ending interstate cigarette bootlegging. The smuggling was siphoning $90 million of state tax revenue, with the money going into the coffers of three major organized crime families. Later, Congress enacted an omnibus anti-organized crime bill.
Also, Kelly helped develop New York's Parent and Student Savings (PASS) tuition savings program that allowed tax deductions for parents and/or guardians on their deposits for their dependents' future student tuition. Under the new law, students could declare the funds as income on their tax returns spread over a five-year, post-graduation period.
In retirement, Kelly served on the boards of the New York Symphonic and the Japan-U.S. Concert Society. He has also served on boards of trustees of philanthropic foundations that emphasize in grants in health, education and the arts.
Summing Up
John Kelly strongly encouraged me to join the OPC as a vital institution for journalists and press freedom. Kelly generously paid my OPC initiation fee and constantly provided our Justice Integrity Project with news tips, important new books and advice until his final months.
John was remarkably civic-spirited, creative and deeply knowledgeable. For example, he encouraged national security commentator and former Navy Intelligence officer Wayne Madsen to research and publish the 2017 book The Almost Classified Guide to CIA Front Companies, Proprietaries & Contractors, a unique, 413-page A-Z encyclopedia of organizations that have been publicly reported as linked to the agency (albeit not-necessarily conclusively).
Yet Kelly was reticent throughout his life about most of his first-hand observations obtained under conditions of secrecy. He declined almost all requests to be photographed and lived by what he regarded as an honor code about his confidentiality agreements and service, even while he irreverently used an email of his own devise that included the letters “xspook.”
In appreciation for John’s impressive career and inspiring personal qualities, Wayne Madsen and I collaborated last year in creating a 30-minute video homage,
, chronicling career highlights that recall the James Stewart film (portrayed below at right).
The Kelly video was viewable only privately until now. But we make the video public on YouTube (embedded here for this column for OPC colleagues, whom he so much admired. It primarily portrays the long-ago news events that Kelly covered and not his own role. That’s because his work habits encouraged him to focus constantly on his next story or civic project, and not collect an archive of personal clips and other memorabilia.
In that spirit, the video was presented a year ago to our then-ailing friend. It references a lingering mystery about one of his stories about Richard Nixon – and it calls for Kelly (just after the seven-minute mark) to go on the road once again to get to the bottom of the story.
The larger purpose? Not the Nixon tale. Instead, it was to remind him and anyone else that in a troubled and busy world some still know and deeply appreciate his kind of old-school dedication and skill.
In Memoriam: John Edward Hurley
1935-2021
John Edward Hurley, a longtime civic leader in the Metro Washington region and a co-founder of the Justice Integrity Project, died earlier this month at age 85 following complications from cancer.
He is shown above in a photo at the National Press Club that illustrated his characteristic good humor and desire to spread learning. He was a close friend, colleague and advisor to this editor and to many, many others.
To mark his passing on May 7, we have assembled below three obituaries, two of them tributes authored by two of his other close friends and admirers. One, John Edward Hurley, chairman of McClendon Group, friendly Reliable Source regular, 85, was by Kenneth Dalecki of the National Press Club (and also its American Legion Post, which John Hurley led for many years as Commander).
The other, Sad announcement, was by investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, who is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report and the author of 20 books.
The third, Obituary of John Edward Hurley, was prepared by his family for publication by Advent Funeral and Cremation Services.
We include also selected comments offered by others who worked with him during his long and varied career, which included White House news coverage working with the late, iconic Sarah McClendon, founder of the McClendon News Service that began in 1946.
Among other civic projects, he was a co-founder of the Capitol Hill Civil War Roundtable and he developed the public relations program that brought together the various breed registries that comprise the American Horse Council. He volunteered also to promote the Medical Musical Group, a symphony orchestra made up of doctors and care-givers in the Veterans Administration Hospitals who perform concerts worldwide to benefit U.S. veterans.
Throughout his career, he had a special interest in the integrity of the court system and hosted many news events on the subject. These included what for many years were presentations every month or so of newsworthy topics via the McClendon Speaker Group at the National Press Club, plus other events meriting coverage, including by C-SPAN.
The portrait above is a screenshot from a video interview in which he explained why he continued the McClendon tradition of a speaker group that featured diverse experts whose revelations and oft-controversial views might not receive the attention they deserved. Speakers would submit to questioning over small dinners at the Club. This editor, deputy chair of the group in recent years while its leader John Hurley was in failing health, plans to continue the dinner meetings under an updated name: The McClendon-Hurley Group.
Among those fondly remembering Hurley in recent days was Tony Culley-Foster, founder & director of the International Youth Peace Forum Inc. in Washington, DC. He shared this overview:
Once again the page has turned in the National Press Club history book with the passing of a true gentleman who had a great love of journalism, people and horses.
I reveled in introducing John to hundreds of NPC members and guests over the past 20 years, as he was indisputably one of the standard bearers of the small but mighty NPC Irish Division — and of those ‘wanna be’s,’ all of whom he gladly embraced, as “Irish by Association!“
It was my privilege to call John Hurley friend. I treasure all the golden memories of good times shared in his company, his mischievous sense of humor and wonderful twinkling eyes and smile.
In Ireland, one of our highest compliments to others about the death of a decent man like John Hurley is “Take a good look at that man. For when he is gone, it will be a long time before you will see his like again!”
More Fond Remembrances
National Press Club, John Edward Hurley, chairman of McClendon Group, friendly Reliable Source regular, 85, Kenneth Dalecki, May 12, 2021. John Edward Hurley was not one to follow the herd in journalism or other endeavors. Like his close friend and eventual business partner, pioneer female journalist Sarah McClendon, the 29-year National Press Club member pursued his own course while being a friendly and familiar figure at the Club's Reliable Source. Hurley died May 7 at a hospice in Arlington, Va., of lung cancer. He was 85.
Hurley was chairman of the McClendon Group, which hosted meetings with newsmakers in the Club's 14th-floor room Hurley helped have named after the maverick White House correspondent. He noted that McClendon often went after stories mainstream journalists ignored, such as shortcomings at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
"More often than not, she proved to be right in the long run," he said. Reliable Source manager Mesfin Mekonen called Hurley a dear friend.
"Mr. Hurley was clearly a man who loved to make people laugh and smile," Mekonen said. "When he would arrive at the Reliable Source, he would ask me if anybody was looking for him or if he owed anybody money. He will be dearly missed here at the NPC."
Wayne Madsen, editor of the Wayne Madsen Report, said of Hurley: "John always had a kind word for those he knew and even those who he had just met. When my mother was in a nursing home with dementia, John, a deeply religious man, always let me know he was praying for her and that he had lit a candle in his church for her upon learning of her passing."
Hurley worked as a White House correspondent and was a commentator on News Talk America, and was a member of the public information committee of the National Academy of Sciences. He was born in D.C. and raised in Arlington.
A devout Catholic, Hurley graduated from Gonzaga College High School and attended Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He and his wife, Doris, who predeceased him last year, had lived in his boyhood Arlington home until his illness.
Like McClendon, Hurley was a proud veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard who served as commander of the Club's American Legion Post 20.
"John kept Post 20 going through some lean years, bridging the gap between World War II veterans such as Don Larabee and John Cosgrove and Vietnam-era vets," said Jim Noone, current commander of the Post, which now has some 70 members. "John was Commander from 2007 to 2012 and stayed active as the Post's historian."
History was one of Hurley's passions, especially that of Washington, D.C., and the Civil War. He loved comparing current political foibles to similar ones from the past. He was the historian for the John Barry Division of the Hibernians and co-founder of the Capitol Hill Civil War Roundtable.
He had a special interest in the integrity of the court system and hosted several news events on that subject. Andrew Kreig, who called Hurley "a dear friend of mine and so many others," worked with him when Hurley became co-founder and director of the Justice Integrity Project 11 years ago.
Hurley served on the board of directors of the Veterans Administration Music Group, and was a member of the Club's History and Heritage Committee. An accomplished horseman, Hurley was a patron of the Thornton Hill Fort Valley Hounds fox hunting club and a sponsor of the Rappahannock Hunt, and he developed a public relations program that combined various breed registries in the American Horse Council.
Survivors include his brothers, Michael and Robert.
Visitation: St. Agnes Catholic Church, 1914 North Randolph Street, Arlington, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. was on Thursday, May 13, followed immediately by Mass. Interment was on May 14, at Mt. Olivet Cemetery, 1300 Bladensburg Road, Washington, D.C.
It is with deep sadness that I report that a longtime personal friend and colleague and a major booster of WMR, John Edward Hurley, passed away earlier this morning from cancer. John was a fixture at the National Press Club and someone whose work was reported extensively by WMR.
John, who was also known as John Edward by those like President Carter's Press Secretary Jody Powell, President Kennedy's Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, White House correspondent Helen Thomas, and conservative pundit Pat Buchanan, worked with the longtime doyenne of the White House Press Corps, Sarah McClendon, who died in 2003.
John was also the deputy White House bureau chief for the McClendon News Service, which Sarah established in 1946 as a wire service.
John took over also as chairman of her McClendon Group, which featured special speakers at the National Press Club that were often eschewed by the establishment press.
Among the speakers who John invited to speak, normally off-the-record, at the informal study group were the then-director of the Defense Intelligence Agency General James Clapper (shown at left as later National Security Advisor to President Obama), Washington, DC Mayor Marion Barry, former U.S. ambassador to Gabon Joe Wilson, current Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari (below right), and former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK).
John always had a kind word for those he knew and even those who he had just met.
We are opening this announcement for comments by those who may have either known John or read about his past accomplishments and ordeals. Many of John's friends have hours of stories about him, so this is an opportunity to share some of them with our other readers.
John Edward Hurley, RIP.
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Advent Funeral and Cremation Services, Obituary of John Edward Hurley, John Edward Hurley was born on December 13, 1935 in Washington, D.C. and spent his entire life in the area. He is the son of Robert Emmett Hurley and Agnes (Mattingly) Hurley, brother of Robert and Michael and husband of the late Doris (Martin) Hurley. He graduated from Gonzaga College High School and attended Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
John, known as Jack to his family, had the gift of gab and regaled everyone with his vast vocabulary and knowledge of local, family and Civil War era history. He was an avid storyteller famously known to declare, “True story,” if a questioning look came into a listener’s eye. And while they very often were true, he conceded hyperbole on occasion. Jack loved animals, especially horses and was a skilled trainer of dogs and squirrels. His nieces and nephews fondly remember trick-or-treating with Nutley the Squirrel sitting on Uncle Jack’s shoulder.
His numerous connections with a wide range of organizations appear unusually diverse at first glance, but they share the common thread of an appreciation for integrity and commitment to truth — two things close to John’s heart.
He was a long-time member of the National Press Club, commentator on News Talk America, veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard who served as commander of the Club's American Legion Post 20 from 2007 to 2012 and stayed active as the Post's historian, co-founder of the Justice Integrity Project, sponsor of the Rappahannock Hunt, and dedicated member of St. Agnes Catholic Church in Arlington, Virginia.
As a devout Catholic, John was a member of the Legion of Mary, led the Rosary Group and organized all night Adoration for the parish. He was a devoted member of the Workers of St. Joseph and along with his friend, Tony Silvia, for years anchored a weekly radio program discussing topics of interest to the faith. He loved God and sharing his faith with others.
John passed away on May 7, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia of lung cancer. He is survived by his brothers and their families: Robert and Carol Hurley of Alton, Illinois and Michael and Mary Hurley of Arlington, Virginia along with fifteen nieces and nephews and thirty-six great nieces and nephews.
John will be missed by many but his eloquent command of the English language, his passion for the relevance of history, and his simple joy at knowing God loved him will be long remembered. Rest in peace, Jack. We love you.
Robert Ames Alden retired from the Washington Post in 2000 after more than 48 years as an editor, making him the longest-serving editor in the paper’s history until that point. As night news editor in 1963, he put together the Post's first extra edition since Pearl Harbor to cover the assassination of President Kennedy. As world news editor in 1974, he was the principal architect for the Post’s coverage of the resignation of President Nixon. Culminating a seven-year effort in 1975, he co-founded and later led the National Press Foundation to improve journalism education. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was the leading male advocate for the admission of women into the National Press Club, where he served as president in 1976.
The first native Washingtonian to lead the Press Club, he began his career as a sportswriter for the Cleveland Press in 1947. He helped innovate the use of more statistics in baseball coverage and was an award-winning writer. He was a visionary community leader in planning a green, central park, library, outdoor stage, community center and theater for McLean, VA, whose Alden Theatre carries his name. He earrned bachelor and master’s degrees from the George Washington University, where he won the university's top history award as a student for 17 years in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2005, university officials bestowing a distinguished alumnus award described Alden as “a living legend” in Washington journalism.
Robert Ames Alden, a former Washington Post editor, was the 1976 National Press Club president. Photo: Marie Marzi for the Washington Post.
Excerpted Biographies
Justice Integrity Project, In Memoriam: Post Editor, JIP Co-Founder Robert Alden, 1932-2020, Andrew Kreig, June 21, 2020. Longtime Washington Post editor Robert Ames Alden died this month at age 87, leaving an inspiring leadership legacy in journalistic and other civic affairs. Of particular note here, he was one of five founding directors of the Justice Integrity Project (JIP) a decade ago and provided active encouragement and other support until his final illness.
National Press Club, 1976 Club President Bob Alden dies, Gil Klein, June 15, 2020. Former National Press Club President Robert Alden, who had been an active member for more than six decades, died June 7 at his home in McLean at the age of 87.
The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease, his wife, Diane Alden, told the Washington Post.
Alden had been a Washington Post news and layout editor for 48 years, helping to design and lay out the newspaper’s first section with stories that included the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974.
Joining the Club in 1957, Alden took an active role in the Club’s governance in the early 1970s and was elected president for 1976.
Before his death, he was the most senior past Club president.
In 1970, he took a leading role in pushing the all-men’s Club to admit women. During a debate among members that year, Alden came down hard for finally including them.
“The Club is the most important non-government news forum in Washington,” Alden said. “Women are now an important segment of the national press. A court challenge under the 14th Amendment would be disastrous.”
In the final vote taken at the Club’s annual meeting Jan. 15, 1971, the measure passed 227 to 56.
After that, Alden became an advocate for advancing women into Club leadership positions.
“I will always be grateful for the moral support Bob gave me and other women journalists who joined the Club right after the official barriers to our membership came down,” said Vivian Vahlberg, who was elected the Club’s first woman president for the year 1982.
“Not everyone was welcoming, but Bob surely was,” Vahlberg said. “He fought hard for women to be admitted and was jubilant when we were. And, he supported me every step of the way as I moved up the ladder.”
During his year as president, Alden led the drive to create the National Press Foundation, a non-profit, tax exempt foundation that was designed to support the Club’s library, professional development and scholarship work. The Foundation later split with the Club, which then created the National Press Club Journalism Institute as a separate entity.
Alden was born in Washington on Feb. 5, 1933. He spent some of his childhood in Ohio and his first journalism job was with the Cleveland Press from 1947 to 1951.
He returned to Washington first as a statistician for the Office of Price Stabilization before joining the Washington Post in 1952.
While working at the paper, he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1965 and a master’s degree in history in 1968 at George Washington University.
In 1958, he married Diane Heidkamp, who survives him along with four children, four grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
A resident of McLean, Virginia. since 1953, he was a longtime civic activist helping to plan McLean’s downtown, including a park and community center. The 386-seat community theater is named for him.
“I had the pleasure of getting to know Bob Alden later in his life,” said current Club President Mike Freedman. “I remember him as a gracious and dedicated person who was justifiably proud of his many contributions to both The Washington Post and the National Press Club. Our time together left a lasting impression of a good and decent man who made a positive difference personally and professionally. It was an honor to know him.”
Washington Post, Robert Alden, Washington Post news and design editor, dies at 87, Bart Barnes, June 13, 2020. Robert A. Alden, a Washington Post news and layout editor for 48 years who helped design the inside pages of the newspaper’s first section, died June 7 at his home in McLean, Va. He was 87.
The cause was complication from Alzheimer’s disease, his wife, Diane Alden, said.
Mr. Alden retired from The Post in 2000. His career included the design and layout of newspaper pages containing stories, photographs and headlines about happenings that ranged from routine procedures of local governing boards to airplane crashes, natural disasters and historic events including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974.
On busy nights, the page designs and layouts had to be changed several times to keep up with fast-breaking events.
Mr. Alden was also president of the National Press Club in 1976, and he was a co-founder of the National Press Foundation, which supports educational programs for journalists. He was among the early advocates of the admission of women to press-club membership, which came about in the 1970s.
Mr. Alden had lived in McLean since 1953 and saw it evolve from a rural community of dairy cows and farms into a bustling suburb of shops and expensive houses. He was a longtime civic activist who helped plan McLean’s downtown, including a park and community center. The 386-seat community theater is named in his honor.
Robert Ames Alden was born in Washington on Feb. 5, 1933, and he spent part of his childhood in Rocky River, Ohio. As a high school student, he worked part-time at the Cleveland Press from 1947 to 1951 as a writer and reporter.
Returning to Washington after high school, he was a statistician at the Office of Price Stabilization before joining The Post news staff in 1952.
While working at the paper, he attended George Washington University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1965 and a master’s degree in history in 1968.
U.S. Military, Security, Intelligence, Foreign Policy, JFK Death
China's President Xi Jinping, right, listens to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,during a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 17, 2015. The death Wednesday of Mr. Kissinger — a centenarian, former secretary of state and figurehead of American power on the world stage — has sparked a wave of reaction across the globe to his polarizing legacy. (Jason Lee/Pool Photo via AP)
Broadcast and lecture audiences can count on the Project's director to deliver blunt, entertaining and cutting-edge commentary about public affairs, with practical tips for the millions of Americans caught up in unfair litigation or regulation.
Based in Washington, DC, Andrew Kreig is an accomplished fighter for the public interest. Learn from his decades of reporting, analysis and advocacy:
• Shocking tales of recent corruption, deception and cover-up by both parties in communities ranging from small towns to world capitals; and • Practical how-to tips for reformers on action that brings real-world results.