Physically handicapped, 1973

This series contains articles, correspondence, legal documents, government documents, notes, reports, and other textual material Jack Anderson gathered while researching his articles. They range in date from 1949 to 2004, documenting the extraordinary breadth of topics Anderson investigated during his half century of writing the “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column. While other series in this collection also contain correspondence, articles, and other materials similar to those in this series, the majority of the items in this series were intentionally gathered by Anderson and his researchers as subject files during the course of their research, and this original order has been preserved.

Second in size only to Series 1: Merry-Go-Round columns, this series represents the earliest stage in Anderson’s writing process, when a story idea first came to his attention or a source tipped him off to a potential story. In cases where such a source provided Anderson with classified government documents or clearly wished to remain anonymous, relevant documents have been removed and are restricted for 25 years from the date the collection was given to Gelman Library, in 2007.

This series contains four subseries. Within each subseries the folders are arranged alphabetically by folder title. The largest of these is the general subseries, containing general research topics. The other three subseries contain research material on particular topics for which large amounts of research material were gathered.

“Subseries 2: Thomas Dodd” contains materials Anderson and Drew Pearson gathered investigating the senator for ethics violations in the 1960s. Folders with titles beginning with asterisks have titles taken directly from Anderson and Pearson’s original folders and often require some explanation. One folder in the collection, which has been called “Dodd folder titles explained,” gives an outline of these titles.

“Subseries 3: FBI Files,” which contains FBI files of certain individuals that Anderson obtained from sources, has been restricted in its entirety due to the potentially classified nature of its contents.

“Subseries 4: Mow-Hsiang” is unusual in that it seems to have been collected not by Anderson or Pearson but by Warren Woods, a lawyer who once represented Anderson and Pearson. These materials concern Chinese military leaders Lieut. General P. T. Mow aide Colonel V. S. Hsiang, who were engaged in a legal dispute with the Chinese government under Chiang Kai-Shek in the 1950s and were represented by Woods.