Bert Andrews was a Washington-based reporter for the New York Herald Tribune who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his article "A State Department Security Case. "
Background
Bert Andrews was born on June 2, 1901 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States. He was named for his father, Bertrand A. Andrews, although he used Bert throughout his life.
His mother was Laura Whitaker Andrews.
When Bert Andrews was a small boy the family moved to San Diego, California.
Education
While living in San Diego he graduated from high school in 1921.
He majored in liberal arts at Stanford University and did well enough in his courses, but he dropped out of college in 1924.
Career
In 1924 he got his first newspaper job as a reporter on the Sacramento Star. After only a few months in Sacramento, he returned to San Diego as a reporter on the San Diego Sun (now the Tribune-Sun), where he remained until 1927, advancing to city editor and then to local columnist. Andrews spent most of the next two years in the Midwest. For a month and a half in 1928, he was a reporter on William Randolph Hearst's Chicago Herald-Examiner.
In 1928-1929 he worked on the news staff of the Detroit Times. In mid-1929 Andrews joined the New York Herald Tribune organization and was assigned to its international edition in Paris. But after only six months in France he came back to the United States, in January 1930, to work for Hearst again, this time on the New York American as a reporter and rewrite man. He liked the wide variety of assignments that came to him on a popular New York City daily well enough to remain on the American's staff until the latter part of 1937.
In the 1930's many newspaper reporters, including Andrews, aspired to a job on the New York staff of the Herald Tribune. In October 1937, he joined the organization for a second time. Through the four years ending in May 1941 he was a reporter and rewrite man on the local staff in New York City. By that time Andrews had gained a reputation for enterprise and persistence in gathering the news and for intelligence in reporting it. In recognition of these qualities and of his outstanding work as chief of its Albany bureau, the Herald Tribune management assigned him to head its Washington bureau, beginning on June 2, 1941.
By widely accepted standards, this was one of the most desirable positions in the news world at the time. Andrews and his fifteen-member Washington staff were quickly caught up in the coverage of World War II.
In 1943 he went to England to report on the impact of the war there, and the following year he traveled 25, 000 miles as one of eight correspondents on a Navy Department tour of American outposts in the Pacific. He reported on the San Francisco conference of 1945 at which the United Nations was formed, and the following year covered a meeting of the United Nations Assembly in London. His many contacts in Washington and overseas led him to notable scoops; for example, he was the first to report the Yalta agreement.
At White House press conferences Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman came to know him as a correspondent who regularly asked tough questions. Andrews' most distinguished reporting, a series of probing articles entitled "A State Department Security Case, " appeared in the Herald Tribune beginning November 2, 1947. The investigation arose from the discharge of seven government employees without specific charges.
Writing up the case of "Mr. Blank, " Andrews quoted extensively from the official transcripts to show that a dismissed State Department employee was confronted with neither charges nor accusers. The substance of the series was widely circulated in news articles, with the result that on November 17 the State Department reversed its policy. Reconsidering its course, the department authorized the resignation "without prejudice" of the seven employees. Moreover, it assured all employees "the right to appeal to the Loyalty Review Board in the future. "
The series continued with articles on the FBI's role in loyalty cases and on the inquiry into the political beliefs of Hollywood filmwriters and other investigations and allegations by the House Un-American Activities Committee. These articles, and others that came in their train--for example, a piece exposing the "political hysteria" that centered on Edward U. Condon, director of the Bureau of Standards--were assembled in a book, Washington Witch Hunt, published in June 1948.
Andrews, who was regarded as a conservative, now was praised for defending and applying constitutional civil liberties.
After Richard M. Nixon arrived in Congress in 1947, Andrews entered a new and different phase. He and Nixon became friends who helped each other in developing the Alger Hiss perjury case. Nixon took Andrews to Whittaker Chambers' farm for an interview with Hiss's accuser.
According to Nixon, Andrews played a "decisive role" in the investigation that led to the conviction of Hiss. Drew Pearson reported on February 24, 1950, that Andrews had been offered the "man-sized job of breathing life into the Republican party" as its public relations director at $40, 000 a year. Nothing came of that tender, if such it was.
As a diversion from his investigative reporting Andrews enjoyed preparing skits that poked fun at high political figures for the annual Gridiron Club dinners. He was covering President Dwight D. Eisenhower's activities on vacation in Colorado in August 1953 when he had a heart attack. Andrews died in a Denver hospital at the age of fifty-two.