Thomas Wardell Braden (February 22, 1917 – April 3, 2009)[1] was an American journalist. He was best known as the author of Eight is Enough, which spawned a popular television program and as the co-host of the CNN show Crossfire.[2]
In 1940 he joined the British Army. He was later recruited by the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He moved to Washington DC and became part of a group of journalists known as the Georgetown Set. Braden joined the CIA and in 1950 became head of International Organizations Division (IOD).
His efforts focused on promoting anti-Communist elements in groups like AFL-CIO. From 1951 to 1954, the CIA provided $1,000,000 a year, through Braden, to Irving Brown, a CIA agent in charge of the international relations of the AFL-CIO, and Jay Lovestone ($1,600,000 in 1954).[3]
While head of the IOD, Braden played an important role in Operation Mockingbird. Many years later he revealed his role in these events:
Braden left the CIA in November, 1954, and became owner of the Oceanside, California newspaper, The Blade-Tribune. He became a popular newspaper columnist and worked as a political commentator on radio and television. He also was at one time a candidate for governor of California. After a 1967 Ramparts article exposed CIA involvement in groups like the National Student Association, Braden defended the agency's covert work in the student movement with "I'm glad the CIA is 'immoral'" in The Saturday Evening Post.[5][6] Although the Nixon White House initially included him on a list of friendly journalists,[7] his work eventually landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.
In 1975 Braden published the autobiographical book, Eight is Enough, which inspired an ABC television series of the same name with Dick Van Patten in the role of Tom Bradford, the name of Braden's character in the series.[8] The book focused on his life as the father of eight children and also touched on his political connections as a columnist and ex-CIA operative and as husband to a sometime State Department employee and companion of the Kennedy family, Joan Vermillion Braden. The television series, however, bore little relationship to the book other than naming the original characters after the Braden family and giving the lead character a job in journalism.
From 1978 to 1984 he co-hosted the Buchanan-Braden Program, a three-hour radio show with Pat Buchanan. He and Buchanan also hosted the CNN program Crossfire at the show's inception in 1982, with Braden interviewing guests and debating Buchanan and Robert Novak. Braden left Crossfire in 1989.
He was predeceased by his wife of 50 years, Joan Ridley Braden, who died in 1999. One of their sons, Thomas W. Braden III, a reporter on the Aspen (Colo.) Daily News and a specialist in the use of computers in investigative journalism, died in 1994 in a traffic accident near Gunnison, Colorado at the age of 33. Survivors include seven children, David Braden of Taipei, Taiwan, Mary Braden Poole of Arlington, Virginia., Nicholas Braden of Washington D.C, Susan Braden of Takoma Park, Maryland., and Joanie Braden, Nancy Braden Basta and Elizabeth Braden, all of Denver, Colorado; and 12 grandchildren.
Tom and Joan had an open marriage, and she had notable dalliances with Republican Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller, and Robert McNamara.[9]
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