Name Victor Lasky | Role Columnist | |
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Died February 22, 1997, Washington, D.C., United States Books J. F. K.: the man and the myth, It didn't start with Watergate | ||
Victor Lasky (7 January 1918 – 22 February 1990) was a conservative columnist in the United States who wrote several best-selling books. He was syndicated by the North American Newspaper Alliance.
Life
On January 7, 1918, Victor Lasky was born in Liberty, New York. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1940. Then in 1942, he joined the U.S. Army and served during World War two; during that time, he did correspondence work for the army's publication Stars and Stripes (newspaper).
After World War Two, Victor Lasky joined the staff of the New York World-Telegram; while here, he assisted Frederick Woltman in writing a series of articles on Communist Party infiltration within the USA and this effort produced for Frederick Woltman a 1947 Pulitzer Prize for Reporting.
He came to prominence first with his book Seeds of Treason, co-authored with Ralph de Toledano, in which the authors argued in favor of Whittaker Chambers over Alger Hiss.
He was one of the first journalists to write a critical view of President John F. Kennedy. His 1963 book JFK: The Man And The Myth also took a negative viewpoint of the popular young president. Lasky questioned Kennedy's wartime heroics on the PT-109 and claimed he had a lackluster record as a congressman and senator. Lasky also wrote a similar negative book about Robert Kennedy.
Lasky's most controversial book was It Didn't Start With Watergate published in 1977. The author argued that the scandal that drove Richard Nixon from office was little more than a media event. He believed that the press disliked Nixon and subjected him to unfair scrutiny no other president had ever experienced. Lasky also claimed that Franklin D. Roosevelt had used wiretaps on political opponents as well as John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Lasky professed the greatest political "crime of the century" was not Watergate but what he describes as the "theft" of the 1960 Presidential election.
In 1979, Lasky wrote another controversial work called Jimmy Carter: The Man And The Myth, asserting that Carter was one of the most inept presidents of all time.
Lasky's last work was Never Complain, Never Explain (1981), a biography of Henry Ford II.