Anthony Leviero

Leviero worked as an auditor for maritime insurance and steamship firms in 1925-6. In 1926 he became a copyboy for the New York American, earning $10 a week. He worked for that newspaper as a night police reporter in the Bronx from 1926 to 1928. In 1928, he became a general assignment reporter for The Bronx Home News at $35 a week.[1][2]

He was hired by the New York Times in 1929 and worked as a reporter for the newspaper until 1941, when he entered the U.S. Army.[1][2] His last contribution to the Times before devoting himself full-time to military work was a magazine essay entitled "The Making of a Soldier." "For most of them," he wrote about new Army recruits at Fort McClellan, Alabama, "learning to be a good soldier is accomplished with surprisingly few jolts. All the important adjustments are made within a few weeks. They are learning to fight, these average citizens, and they are also finding their own landmarks."[3]

In 1941, Leviero was called up for active duty in the Army as a reserve first lieutenant. He served overseas in military intelligence and left the Army in September 1945 as a lieutenant.[1]

Returning to the Times in 1946 as a Washington correspondent, he followed President Truman around the country "on a ski lift, train, airplane, seaplane, tender, destroyer, crash boat, bus, jeep, ferry, and by foot,"[2] and wrote many major stories about landmark speeches and actions by Truman, including his 1948 State of the Union address,[4] his introduction of the military draft,[5] his multiple refusals to cut Marshall Plan funds,[6][7] his June 1948 warning to the Soviets that they had the entire "free world" ranged against them,[8] and his April 1949 assertion that he would not hesitate to use the atomic bomb again if necessary.[9] Leviero was in the White House when two members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party tried to assassinate Truman at Blair House. Leviero ran across the street and wrote a report on the attempt.[2] After Truman left the White House and returned to Missouri, Leviero visited him there and profiled him for the Times. "He has slipped back to the soil that nurtured him – which is not to say that he has slipped," wrote Leviero. "[H]is mood is that of a prisoner released. He is carefree yet careful...He is accessible."[10] When Truman turned 70 in May 1954, Leviero visited him again, finding him busy working on his memoirs.[11]

In August 1949, Leviero wrote for the Times Magazine about the presidential press conference, calling it "a great institution" that had become "a factor in our checks-and-balances system of government. Nothing anywhere else in the world compares with it."[12] In a book about Truman's relationship to the news media, Franklin D. Mitchell cited Leviero's article with admiration, stating that no one else had "offered a more thoughtful analysis of the significance of frequent and regular presidential news conferences."[13]

In January 1948, J. Edgar Hoover was apprised of rumors that The American Mercury magazine had commissioned Leviero to write "a highly critical 'smear' article in the nature of a profile" that would accuse Hoover of "perversion." When contacted by an FBI official, Leviero denied the piece would be a "smear." There is no indication that such a piece ever appeared.[14]