Les Whitten
| Les Whitten | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Leslie Hunter Whitten Jr. February 21, 1928 Jacksonville, Florida |
| Alma mater | Lehigh University |
| Occupation | journalist, poet, translator |
| Employer | "Washington Merry-Go-Round" |
Leslie Hunter "Les" Whitten, Jr. (born February 21, 1928) is an American investigative reporter and novelist.
Whitten started his education at Lehigh University, majoring in civil engineering. However, after three semesters he left school, did a stint in the U.S. Army and moved to Paris to become a poet. He returned to Lehigh, this time majoring in English and journalism, became the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper and graduated magna cum laude in 1950.
Whitten then moved to Mexico and again to Paris, continuing to try to be a writer, before shifting back to journalism in order to support his new family.
Whitten began his reporting career working for Radio Free Europe from 1951 to 1957. He was an investigative reporter at the Washington Post beginning in 1969, and shared the "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column with Jack Anderson there.
In 1972 he was arrested with Hank Adams for removing boxes of documents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs after the Trail of Broken Treaties protest led to the occupation of the BIA offices, but the case was quickly dismissed. In 1975 Les Whitten and Jack Anderson started another project called, "The National Suggestion Box" headed by Marty Devolites. This office in Washington, D.C. conducted on the ground research on topics suggested by the general public. Reports were culled from the general research for short spots on the Good Morning America TV show and other media Jack Anderson was responsible for in print, radio and TV.
In 1978, he stepped away from journalism to concentrate on his other writing. He wrote multiple novels, as well as other books including a children's book, a biography of lawyer F. Lee Bailey, and a translation of French poet Charles Baudelaire, in his spare time while working as a journalist and then full-time later. His 1967 Gothic horror novel Moon of the Wolf became a made-for-television film, also called Moon of the Wolf, broadcast in 1972.
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