Hedrick Smith

Hedrick Smith is a

In 1971, Smith and fellow New York Times journalist Neil Sheehan were members of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that produced the Pentagon Papers series, based on Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's top secret history of the Vietnam War under four U.S. presidents. Prior to publishing, Smith and Sheehan spent over three months studying 7,000 pages of classified documents and history, hiding from the government in New York's 6th Avenue Hilton hotel under an assumed name.

Recalling his work with Sheehan on the Pentagon Papers, Smith said: "What Neil Sheehan did was bring to the public a reckoning with the truth.. It was a real pleasure and real honor for me to have had the fun and the accomplishment of sharing the experience with Neil Sheehan."^[5]

In 1975, Smith became deputy national editor of the Times and then moved on to serve as Washington Bureau Chief (1976-79) and Chief Washington Correspondent (1979-88). During his Washington tours he covered five American presidents and their administrations.

Smith's book The Russians (1975), based on his years as the New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief from 1971-74, was a No. 1 American best-seller. It has been translated into 16 languages and widely used in university courses. His next book, The Power Game: How Washington Works (1988), was another major best-seller. In a video tour of the White House, C-SPAN filmed the book sitting on President Clinton's bedside table. It became a political bible for many newly elected members of Congress and their staff.

Nearly three decades after his first Moscow tour, Smith returned to Russia to witness the crumbling of Soviet Communism and the breakup of the old Soviet Union. In The New Russians (1990), Smith gave a first-hand account of Mikhail Gorbachev's dramatic political and economic reforms known as perestroika.

Over the past 25 years, Smith has focused on the American domestic scene, producing two books - Rethinking America (1995) and Who Stole the American Dream? (2012) that provide extended reporting and analysis on the causes of sharply rising economic inequality in the United States and its increasingly dysfunctional political system as well as efforts to restore greater fairness, transparency and inclusion in both the American economy and American politics.

In 1989-90, Smith converted his best-selling book, The Power Game, into a four-hour documentary series giving his inside analysis of how power politics work - or don't work - in Washington and launched a 25-year television production career that generated 26 prime-time specials and mini-series for PBS.

Smith followed up with a pioneering PBS four-hour documentary series Inside

His most recent PBS documentary The Democracy Rebellion (2020) shows how grass roots citizen movements have challenged entrenched politicians and power brokers to win election law reforms against dark money, gerrymandering or vote suppression and to make America's broken democracy fairer, more open and more inclusive. It is now featured 24/7 on Smith's YouTube channel, "The People vs the Politicians".

Over 25 years, PBS viewers also came to know Hedrick Smith as a regular panelist on

Smith received a Fulbright Scholarship to study Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) at Oxford University in 1955. In 1969, he won a Nieman Fellowship to study at Harvard University, concentrating in Russian studies.

In 1971, he was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its work on the Pentagon Papers.^[6] He won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1974 for stories from Russia and Eastern Europe.

Smith has also won many television awards. His Frontline shows, The Wall Street Fix and Can You Afford to Retire? won Emmys and two other awards and his Frontline shows, Critical Condition and Tax Me If You Can were nominated. He has won or shared the Columbia-Dupont Gold Baton for the year's best public affairs program on U.S. television twice. He has also won the

Smith is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Gridiron Club.

Smith has produced 24 programs and miniseries, four one-hour PBS specials, 11

• The Power Game: How Washington Works (4 hours, 1989)
• Transition to Power - George HW Bush: Election to Inauguration (1989)
• Inside Gorbachev’s USSR (4 hours, 1990)
  • (Hosted) Soviets (1991)
  • (Hosted) Baltic Requiem (1991)
• Challenge to America (4 hours, 1994)
• Pathways to Success (1995)
• Across the River (1995)
• The People and the Power Game (4 hours, 1996)
• Surviving the Bottom Line (4 hours, 1998)
• Seeking Solutions to Hate Crimes and Prejudice (4 hours, 1999)
• Duke Ellington’s Washington (2000)
• Critical Condition: The State of US Health Care (3 hours, 2000)
• Juggling Work and Family (2001)
• Rediscovering Dave Brubeck (2001)
• Making Schools Work (2 hours, 2005)
• The Democracy Rebellion (2020)

PBS Frontline productions

• After Gorbachev's USSR (1992)
• Guns, Tanks and Gorbachev (1992)
• Dr. Solomon's Dilemma (2000)
• Inside the Terror Network (2002)
• Bigger Than Enron (2002)
• The Wall Street Fix (2003)
• Tax Me If You Can (2004)
• Is Wal-Mart Good for America? (2004)
• Can You Afford to Retire? (2006)
• Spying on the Home Front (2007)
• Poisoned Waters (2009)

PBS NewsHour segments

• Issue of Control - The Greening of the Republican Class of 1994 (1996)^[7]
• Surviving the Revolution - How Republicans fared in the Election (1996)^[8]
• The Money Trail (3 segments, 1997)
• Surviving the Bottom Line (2 segments, 1998)
• "Grow-Your-Own" Workers (2 segments, 1998)

Mr. Smith appears in episode 17 of the

• The Russians (1975),
  ISBN 978-0-8129-0521-2
• The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War (co-authored with
  ISBN 0-552-64917-1
• Reagan: The Man, the President (1980)
• The Power Game: How Washington Works (1987)
• The New Russians (1990)
• The Media and the Gulf War (1992)
• Rethinking America (1995)
• Who Stole the American Dream? (2012)