Senators Butt Heads with FBI Over Jack Anderson's Papers, and a New Detail Slips Out

The Senate Judiciary Committee quizzed Federal Bureau of Investigation officials about their interest in the papers of the late muckraking journalist Jack Anderson, which are now held at George Washington University, at a hearing on Tuesday. The session had its share of fireworks, with senators butting heads with a Department of Justice official.

But, to borrow from the parlance of journalism, the lede was buried. An intriguing nugget of information could be found in the written testimony of Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the university.

Although the topic was never mentioned aloud at the hearing, the printed testimony says that the FBI's interest in the Anderson archive may have been spurred by a tip from a former Anderson assistant who Mr. Feldstein says was once imprisoned for child sodomy. Mr Feldstein says he told FBI agents this and that the man had admitted having a history of mental illness and fabricating stories.

In his testimony, Mr. Feldstein writes that when FBI agents visited him, they named the former Anderson assistant. They "implied," Mr. Feldstein says, that the assistant had told them that Jack Anderson collected secret documents related to a current espionage case against two pro-Israel lobbyists.

Recently, the FBI sought access to the Anderson archive to find those documents. The agency has also said it wanted to review the entire archive and remove any documents deemed confidential. The FBI's request has outraged journalists, librarians, and historians who believe that granting it would compromise the identity of sources and the integrity of the archive. Anderson, who died in December at age 83, wrote a syndicated column called "Washington Merry-Go-Round" from 1969 until 2004.

The FBI informant is unnamed in the testimony, and Mr. Feldstein would not elaborate when contacted by The Chronicle. "Was the FBI's rationale for conducting such a fishing expedition into the Anderson archives based on the word of this former prison inmate?" Mr. Feldstein muses in his written testimony.