William Beecher, who exposed the secret bombings in Cambodia, dies at the age of 90

William Beecher, who as a reporter for The New York Times exposed President Richard M. Nixon's secret bombing campaign on Cambodia during the Vietnam War and who later won a Pulitzer Prize at The Boston Globe, died on February 9 at his home in Wilmington, N.C. 90.

His daughter Lori Beecher and son-in-law Marc Burstein confirmed the death.

President Nixon ordered the bombings, codenamed Operation Menu, in March 1969 in response to intensifying attacks by the North Vietnamese army and South Vietnamese guerrillas in Cambodia, a neutral country. The campaign was so secret that even William P. Rogers, the Secretary of State, knew nothing about it.

Mr. Beecher's article on the bombings, which appeared on the front page of The Times on May 9, 1969, noted that some 5,000 tons of ammunition had been dropped on Cambodia in the previous two weeks alone.

He also noted that while there were no plans for a major land invasion, “small teams” of U.S. reconnaissance troops infiltrated Cambodia “to ensure that accurate intelligence can be obtained to provide 'lucrative' targets for the bombers.”

The article caused immediate reaction in the White House. Within two weeks, Gen. Alexander Haig, a deputy to Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser, asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to tap Mr. Beecher's phone in an effort to identify who had leaked the information to him.

The decision to tap Mr. Beecher's phone, along with those of 16 other journalists and government officials, was an early demonstration of the Nixon administration's willingness to use legally dubious means to obtain information or silence critics to lay.

Mr. Beecher was already an irritant to the administration, and he remained so, with scoops on arms control plans and spy flights over China, all of which came from well-placed sources within the administration.

To many people's surprise, he left The Times in 1973 to work for the Defense Department as acting assistant secretary for public affairs. He returned to journalism in 1975 as a correspondent for The Boston Globe, where he covered international affairs.

He was part of a team that won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting with a 56-page article on the state of the nuclear arms race — a late-career achievement he wore lightly.

“It didn't hurt that I won a Pulitzer, but I didn't tell the news sources that I won,” he told The Harvard Crimson in 2005. 'I wouldn't say it made much difference. ”

William Beecher was born on May 27, 1933 in Framingham, Massachusetts, the son of Gertrude and Samuel Beecher. His father was a grocer.

He studied public administration at Harvard, where he worked as an editor for The Crimson and as a campus correspondent for The Boston Globe. He graduated in 1955; among his classmates were David Halberstam, J. Anthony Lukas and Sydney H. Schanberg, all of whom would also go on to legendary careers as reporters for The Times.

He earned a master's degree from Columbia Journalism School and then spent two years in the Army before joining the reporting staff of The St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

He married Eileen Brick in 1958. She died in 2020. Along with his daughter Lori, he is survived by three other daughters: Diane Beecher, Nancy Kotz and Debbie Spartin; and 10 grandchildren.

He moved to Washington in the early 1960s to cover the Supreme Court for The Wall Street Journal and then joined the Times in 1966.

During the war he made five trips to Vietnam. On one trip, their helicopter was shot down over the Mekong Delta along with Mr Haig, although everyone survived with only minor injuries. On the other hand, he learned that his wife would be having twins – news conveyed to him by his traveling companion, Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

After working at The Boston Globe, Mr. Beecher was Washington bureau chief for The Minneapolis Star Tribune and director of public affairs for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

He also wrote eight novels, a memoir and a cookbook, and taught journalism courses at the University of Maryland during his retirement.

Many successful reporters recognize their life's calling early. But Mr. Beecher said he didn't find his until late in his undergraduate career.

“I thought I was going to study journalism or law,” he told The Crimson. “I thought I might be bored in law, but I knew I wouldn't be bored in journalism.”