OUT OF THE SPOTLIGHT BUT ON THE MARK

Robert Dreyfuss

'I have no patience or interest in gossipy insider Washington culture.'

Free-lance since 1992; formerly Public Citizen.

BEST-KNOWN INVESTIGATION: National Rifle Association series -- Four articles in Mother Jones, American Prospect, The Nation, and Rolling Stone that contributed to the downfall of NRA director Neal Knox, 1995-1996.

FAVORITE INVESTIGATION: "Left Out in the Cold," Mother Jones magazine -- Probed the mysterious death of ex-CIA agent Monte Overacre, January/February 1998.

Corporate abuse isn't a beat many people gladly take on; it's a secretive world, troublesome, time-consuming, and hard to sell to editors. Robert Dreyfuss relishes the challenge. He developed an antiestablishment edge early, during his involvement in the antiwar movement at Columbia University. Unlike many whose idealism waned over the years, Dreyfuss seems more committed than ever.

The Washington, D.C.-based freelancer has been an outsider from the beginning. "I have no patience or interest in gossipy insider Washington culture -- the journalism cliques, the correspondents' dinners, the National Press Foundation, the people who wear tuxedos. They're not even reporters, they're people to be investigated."

Dreyfuss got his start with Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, making the break to become a free-lancer in 1992. Now that he's on the mastheads of Mother Jones, The Nation, and American Prospect, and a regular contributor to half-a-dozen magazines, he has more work than he can easily handle.

"He's a virtuoso," says co-editor Robert Kuttner of American Prospect. "He's got the classic great reporter's ability to persuade sources to confide in him, and he's got the gift of a great storyteller."

Dreyfuss's reporting takes him through the halls of Congress and the Beltway bureaucracies, studying the influence of Big Tobacco, the insurance industry, and the National Rifle Association, to name a few. It's taken him to Vietnam and to the shadowy world of the CIA, interviewing spies and "slam-bam communist fighters."

Dreyfuss backgrounded himself on the CIA by attending meetings and conferences for intelligence types, and by hanging out online at a CompuServe forum dedicated to intelligence issues. One day, a man posted a message saying he'd just resigned from the CIA. He was angry, he said, and he'd like to tell his story to a journalist. It took several weeks for Dreyfuss to gain his trust, but eventually Monte Overacre, who had been recruiting for the CIA's economic espionage program, began to send Dreyfuss detailed memos on the program. Just before the two were scheduled to meet, Overacre was killed in a plane crash in Guatemala. Dreyfuss contacted Overacre's family in Idaho, who gave him permission to examine detailed files the agent had left behind. Dreyfuss's story for Mother Jones made a strong case that Overacre had secretly returned to spy work and was once again on CIA business when he died.

Dreyfuss and his wife adopted a Vietnamese child in 1996, and spent a few weeks in Vietnam while awaiting the final papers. He developed a strong affinity for the country and promised he'd return. He did, writing about the continuing legacy of Agent Orange, and about aggressive marketing by cigarette manufacturers.