Sam Jaffe

Photo: with permission from Deborah Jaffe.

Sam A. Jaffe was a journalist who covered the United Nations for CBS News and reported from Moscow, Hong Kong and Vietnam for ABC News. He opened ABC’s first bureau in Moscow and covered the trial of Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of the U-2 spy plane that was shot down over the Soviet Union. The Overseas Press Club gave him an award for his reporting on the Vietnam War. But Jaffe, described by many as a brilliant and prominent reporter, would later disclose that he for several years had reported to the FBI on his Soviet contacts. And, in a bizarre plot twist, he’d spend more than a decade working to clear his name of persistent suggestions by the FBI and the CIA that he was a Soviet agent. Newly released documents from the FBI and National Archives describe Jaffe as a “confidential informant,” but also detail surveillance of him and his contacts by the agency. One document also mentions that a CIA psychologist briefed Jaffe on ways to observe a person’s behavior and demeanor prior to his reporting on the Powers trial. Jaffe’s life is a fascinating tale of the gray area between spying and reporting, and the full story has yet to be told.