Dusko Doder

Legendary Washington Post Moscow correspondent Dusko Doder passed away on September 10, 2024, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, after a years-long struggle with the cruel disease of Lewy Body dementia. He was 87. His wife of three and a half decades, Louise Branson, was by his side.

Dusko's storied life and dedication to the truth-telling of American journalism were shaped by the historical events and trauma he was born into in Sarajevo, in the former Yugoslavia, in 1937. His once-privileged family was swept up in World War II and its aftermath, suffering under repressive governments - fascist, Stalinist, communist. Dusko recalled nearly starving as a young boy, his family burning valuable books to keep warm, and the humiliation of being branded "enemies of the people." As a child, peeping through curtains, he saw the bodies of "traitors" strung from lampposts along the street. His parents risked execution for surreptitiously listening to the Voice of America and the BBC World Service.

His lifelong mentor, the journalist Clyde Farnsworth, who covered World War II for the Associated Press, changed and set the course of Dusko's life. He helped Dusko escape to the United States and inspired in him a reverence for the truth-telling principles of US democracy and US journalism - both unimaginable in Communist Yugoslavia. In America, the young Dusko was further inspired by President John F. Kennedy. With the help of relatives who had escaped to St. Louis before World War II, he earned degrees from Washington University, Stanford, and the Columbia Schools of Journalism and International Affairs. He worked for the Associated Press in New Hampshire and Albany before joining United Press International (UPI) in its Moscow bureau in 1968 under legendary bureau chief Henry Shapiro. Two years later, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, impressed by Dusko's Moscow dispatches, hired him. Dusko's various positions at The Washington Post included the foreign desk, State Department correspondent and Canada correspondent.

One of the first of his many scoops came about in typical fashion: Trying to figure out how to get an exclusive interview with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, he wrote him a letter full of the kind of flattery he thought would appeal to the dictator. It succeeded. Such scoops combined with Dusko's workaholism, his determination to go above and beyond in the service of accurate reporting, set his star on the rise at the Post.

In 1973, Ben Bradlee gave him his first foreign assignment: covering Eastern Europe based in Belgrade. He was almost too afraid to take it because he would be working in the native land he had escaped from. His Yugoslav family had in the meantime cut off most contact with him and been subject to persecution by disapproving authorities. But Dusko decided to take the risk. He had already renounced his Yugoslav citizenship and been granted US citizenship through an act of Congress. His first wife Karin and young son Peter accompanied him to Belgrade. But with little news of US interest in Eastern Europe in an era of détente, The Washington Post sent him on often-dangerous assignments for months at a time, including Lebanon's civil war and the Cyprus hostilities between Greece and Turkey. On his return to the United States in 1978, he wrote the bestseller The Yugoslavs which remains a classic. Its success made him immensely proud. He toyed with the idea of writing books for a living but his de facto religion, US journalism, exerted too powerful a pull.

In particular, his sights were set on excelling in the one place he thought he could: the Soviet Union. His ambition was to be the best reporter in Moscow, to pull aside, a little, the curtain of secrecy that shrouded the politics of America's Cold War enemy. His plan for how to do this was audacious in a country where journalists were followed by the KGB, bugged and confined to foreigners' compounds with Soviet guards. But Dusko spoke fluent Russian, including mastering the many swear words Soviet officials used (which usually involved doing unspeakable things to the other person's mother). Having grown up in Communist Yugoslavia, he understood that the system was made up of human beings who could be approached on a human level if done in the right way. He also knew he could use his background to make contacts within the Yugoslav community: Its diplomats and journalists had more access and information than Westerners. Perhaps most importantly, he took seriously the dictum Clyde Farnsworth had drummed into him: To go out and see, feel, talk and think for himself rather than rely on second-hand sources, even in the Soviet Union. He was also a workaholic in his single-minded pursuit of excellence.

In 1981, he became The Washington Post's Moscow bureau chief and achieved his ambition to excel. But his success also laid the ground for a vicious vendetta against him. He covered the Soviet Union at a momentous time in the early 1980s - from the end of the 18-year stagnation under leader Leonid Brezhnev, through the short leaderships of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, to the hopeful glasnost era of Mikhail Gorbachev. Dusko's scoops and outstanding analysis were the result of dogged hard work that he detailed in his 1986 book Shadows and Whispers: Power Politics in the Kremlin from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. His success and insights made him a foremost authority on the Soviet Union in the United States, frequently commenting on TV and elsewhere and sought out by such people as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

But his outstanding reporting often embarrassed some at the US Moscow embassy, within US intelligence and US Soviet experts. His Washington Post dispatches often contradicted - and proved more correct than - theirs. In 1984, most spectacularly, he scooped the world on the death of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. He did this through a textbook case of superb reporting: He roamed the streets of Moscow late one night and noticed lights blazing at KGB headquarter; he then noticed changes on official radio and TV, and more unusual signs. His detailed account reads like a John Le Carre thriller. It can be found in his 1986 book Shadows and Whispers and in his 2021 memoir The Inconvenient Journalist.

The Andropov death and other scoops set the stage for revenge. It came in the shape of a 1992 Time Magazine story stating that Dusko's reporting in Moscow had been "too good." The article suggested he was a KGB agent. A Who's Who of 42 American journalists, who had reported from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and knew Dusko's work, wrote a letter of protest to Time. Dusko took Time to court, won an apology both in court and in the magazine (he rejected Time's offer of an extra $50,000 not to have to print it), plus damages. In the process of discovery for the trial, Time's shoddy, unsubstantiated reporting and lack of sources beyond a relative of a former US intelligence officer were exposed. The single named source in the story, former US ambassador Arthur Hartmann, testified that his quote about Dusko having KGB sources was taken out of context (omitted from the Time quote was that Hartmann went on to say that all diplomats and journalists had KGB sources, that was how they worked in Moscow). New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis and others excoriated Time for persecuting a US journalist and compromising the foundations of US journalism. Former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee kept up Dusko's spirits during the long legal process and wrote in his memoir that revenge by US intelligence was behind the false story. The career of the young journalist who wrote the Time story was terminated. As part of the settlement, Time agreed to remove the false story about Dusko from its searchable database but has never actually done so.

Despite Dusko's victory, the Time story was a serious blow. Dusko went on to write more books, including a novel, The Firebird Affair, plus a biography of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic with his wife Louise Branson, the former London Sunday Times foreign correspondent and former USA TODAY editorial writer. Louise completed his 2021 memoir The Inconvenient Journalist after illness prevented him from doing so. It is her fervent hope that the book will be widely read and perhaps be made into a movie so the world will know the journalistic hero Dusko was, particularly at a time when US journalism and truth-telling are under attack. Among Dusko's numerous awards were two Overseas Press Club citations for Excellence and the Edward Wiental Prize for Diplomatic Reporting.

In his final decades before his illness, Dusko was a devoted family man. After covering China from 1988 to 1990 for US News and World Report, including the Tiananmen Square uprising, and then the Yugoslav wars from 1990 to 1996, he and Louise settled in the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC and raised their two sons, Thomas and Nicholas. Dusko was a stay-at-home father, writing books, attended their soccer and basketball games, and practicing his unique style of parenting. Whenever Thomas and Nicholas wanted a ride somewhere when they were younger, for example, he would first make them play him at chess and beat him. Dusko's numerous passions included tennis, the opera and classical music. Those who knew him will never forget his irreverent humor, his chain-smoking of cigars or a pipe (until his son Thomas persuaded him to quit), and his habit of being provocative to stimulate debate.

Dusko's final years were spent in the grip of a devastating disease that robbed him of his ability to speak, walk, feed himself and understand much. It was the same disease that drove actor Robin Williams to suicide. He and Louise moved to Thailand in early 2020 in search of compassionate care in sunshine and tropical surroundings. They were featured in the 2020 Al Jazeera documentary Thailand's Last Resort. In 2023, Columbia University hosted a discussion of Moscow reporting in his honor titled: Reporting the Kremlin from Dusko Doder to the Present. It can be accessed online, as can a 2021 Zoom presentation of his memoir for the Washington bookstore Politics and Prose, the last time Dusko was well enough to appear in public.

Please send donations in his name and memory to the Lewy Body Dementia Association. A memorial ceremony and cremation were held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on September 13, 2024. A celebration of his remarkable life will be held at a later date in the United States. Dusko is survived by his wife Louise Branson, his sons Peter, Thomas and Nicholas Doder, daughter-in-law Olga Doder and grandchildren Emma and Joshua Doder. He is predeceased by his first wife Karin Doder and brother Mladen Doder.