'Eight Is Enough' Author Tom Braden Dies at 92

[Zoneboy]

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Tom Braden, 92, author of the memoir-turned-television series "Eight Is Enough," and a former CIA official who became the liberal voice on CNN's talk show "Crossfire" in the 1980s, died of cardiac arrest April 3 at his home in Denver.

Mr. Braden, a syndicated newspaper columnist, was best known for his autobiographical novel about his life as the father of eight children, which was published in 1975 and adapted as an ABC comedy-drama two years later. Mr. Braden was also one of the early practitioners of the televised arguments that masquerade as interview shows as the sparring partner of Pat Buchanan on "Crossfire" in 1982.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Braden's Chevy Chase home became an informal salon for the journalistic and political elite, where Henry Kissinger spent Christmas Eves, AFL-CIO chief Lane Kirkland spent Thanksgivings and Mr. Braden and his vivacious wife, Joan, entertained everyone from former defense secretary Robert McNamara to next-door neighbor and NBC anchorman David Brinkley.

A CIA official in the early 1950s, Mr. Braden was head of International Organizations Division, which promoted anti-communism by secretly funding groups like the AFL-CIO, the National Student Association and the Communications Workers of America, sending the Boston Symphony Orchestra on a European tour and publishing Encounter magazine. After Ramparts magazine exposed the CIA's system of funding anti-communist front organizations all over the globe, Mr. Braden wrote an article defending the program in a 1967 issue of the Saturday Evening Post titled "I'm Glad The CIA Is Immoral." The program was his idea, he wrote.


"Were the undercover payments by the CIA 'immoral'? Surely it cannot be 'immoral' to make certain that your country's supplies intended for delivery to friends are not burned, stolen or dumped into the sea. Are CIA efforts to collect intelligence anywhere it can 'disgraceful'? Surely it is not 'disgraceful' to ask somebody whether he learned anything while he was abroad that might help his country. People who make these charges must be naïve. Some of them must be worse. Some must be pretending to be naïve," he wrote.

Keeping secrets from Congress, he wrote, simply made good sense: "In the early 1950s, when the cold war was really hot, the idea that Congress would have approved many of our projects was about as likely as the [ultraconservative] John Birch Society's approving Medicare."

In 1977, Mr. Braden replaced Frank Mankiewicz, a former Robert Kennedy campaign aide, on a three-minute nationally syndicated WRC radio spot called "Confrontation," paired against conservative Buchanan, who had been an adviser to President Richard Nixon. The radio show jumped to late-night TV on WEVM's "After Hours" with local broadcaster Gordon Peterson serving as the moderator. Mr. Braden and Buchanan became known as the Punch and Judy of Washington commentators. Guests left the premises telling reporters that they felt like they'd been in a bar fight and some guests never got to speak at all, because Mr. Braden and Buchanan were so intent on attacking each other's positions.

He was not universally acclaimed. His voice, Washington Post reporter Stephanie Mansfield wrote, "sounds like a cement mixer stuck in reverse."

Later, CNN picked up the show and renamed it "Crossfire."

Left-leaning media critic Jeff Cohen, in a 2006 retrospective look at liberals in the media, objected in Mr. Braden being cast as the voice of liberalism on television, calling him "a haplessly ineffectual centrist . . . a guy who makes Alan Colmes look like an ultraleft firebrand." But Mr. Braden's critical columns in the 1970s landed him on Nixon's enemies list, along with many other liberals.

Thomas Wardell Braden II was born Feb. 22, 1917, in Greene, Iowa. He dropped out of high school during the Depression and was sent to New York by his parents to work as a printer for a family friend. It was there that he discovered Dartmouth College would admit high school dropouts. He gained admission to the school, became student newspaper editor, and graduated in 1940.

Mr. Braden was one of a handful of Americans who went to England in 1941 to serve in the King's Royal Rifle Corps in the British army during World War II. He served in Africa, Italy and Australia, and in 1944 transferred to the U.S. Army, serving in the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime forerunner to the CIA.

At the war's end, he returned to Dartmouth and taught English, and befriended Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Frost, who also taught at Dartmouth and urged the young man to enter journalism.

Mr. Braden joined the CIA in 1950, working as an assistant to Allen W. Dulles, who became CIA director. Mr. Braden's cover job was executive secretary of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He worked at the agency until 1954 when he bought the Blade-Tribune newspaper of Oceanside, Calif., with a $185,000 loan from industrialist and later New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, for whom his wife worked. In California, Mr. Braden served on the state board of education and unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor in 1966 on the Democratic ticket with then-Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown.

Two years later, Mr. Braden sold his newspaper and returned to the Washington area. His memoir, "Eight is Enough," grew out of the syndicated newspaper column he wrote -- after another Washington journalist, Joseph Alsop, told him his best writing was about his family.

Mr. Braden also wrote "Sub Rosa: the OSS and American Espionage" (1964) with fellow OSS alumni and columnist Stewart Alsop. He served on the Dartmouth board in the early 1970s when women were admitted, and on the board of the Carnegie Endowment as well. He moved to Bald Head Island, N.C., in 1999, and then to Colorado in 2004. His wife of 50 years, Joan Ridley Braden, died in 1999. One of their sons, Thomas W. Braden III, died in 1994.

Survivors include seven children, David Braden of Taipei, Taiwan, Mary Braden Poole of Arlington, Nicholas Braden of Washington, Susan Braden of Takoma Park and Joanie Braden, Nancy Braden Basta and Elizabeth Braden, all of Denver; and 12 grandchildren.

[Marvo301]

Tom Braden

[Brian Damage]

[catlover79]

[Retro4Life]

Tom Braden was a class act. I loved him on "Crossfire".

RIP, Sir. You certainly had a rich and productive life.

[janet42]

Tom Braden I enjoyed his book.

[OH Nuts!]

Sorry to hear of his passing. May he rest in peace.