Pete Earley | |
|---|---|
 Earley in May 2016 | |
| Born | September 5, 1951 Douglas, Arizona, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, writer |
| Website | peteearley |
Pete Earley (born September 5, 1951) [1] is an American journalist and author who has written non-fiction books and novels.
Born in Douglas, Arizona, [1] Earley became a Washington Post reporter and also wrote books about the Aldrich Ames and John Walker espionage cases. His book Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town (1995), about the wrongful conviction of Walter McMillian in Alabama, won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Fact Crime Book in 1996 [2] and a Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award. [3]
His book about the John Walker spy ring, Family of Spies, was a New York Times bestseller. It was adapted as a CBS miniseries starring Powers Boothe and Lesley Ann Warren. In 2007, Earley was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for his book Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness, about a man seeking help for his son. [4]
His 2008 book, Comrade J , is about Russian SVR defector Sergei Tretyakov. [5] His most recent book, No Human Contact: Solitary Confinement, Maximum Security and Two Inmates Who Changed The System, [6] describes Earley's 33- year relationship with Thomas Silverstein, who was held under the harshest conditions allowed by law, after he murdered a prison guard.
Earley was a third child. His oldest sibling, George Earley, was a history professor and administrator at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, S.D. before retiring. Pete's older sister, Alice Lee Earley, died at the age of 17 on June 14, 1966, after being hit by a car while riding Pete's scooter. [7] (Pete was 14 years old and at church camp when his sister was killed.) [7] Years later, in a 1985 Washington Post article called "To Find a Sister" (1985), Earley wrote about Alice's death and its effect on his life. (As part of it, he interviewed the woman driver who had hit his sister.) [7]
Earley graduated from Fowler (Co.) high school in 1969 and attended Phillips University, Enid, Oklahoma, where he met and married Barbara Ann Hunter, a fellow student. They were divorced in 1996 and the parents of three children. In 1998, he married Patti Brown Luzi, a elementary school reading specialist with four children. Her first husband, Steven Francis Luzi, died from cancer in 1994. Earley later adopted her four children.
On March 1, 2024, Earley announced on his author's blog that he had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and was retiring from writing. [8]
Earley served as an editor of his high school and college newspapers. After graduating from college in 1973, he was hired by William Lindsey White at The Emporia Gazette in Emporia, Kansas. In 1975, he joined The Tulsa Tribune In Tulsa, Oklahoma, becoming its Washington D.C. correspondent in 1978. He was hired by The Washington Post in 1980 where he was assigned to what was called the "Holy Shit Squad" by Executive Editor Ben Bradlee who encouraged a small team of writers to make readers exclaim that expletive when reading their morning paper. [9] After the Janet Cooke Pulitzer Prize scandal rocked the paper, the team was disbanded and Earley was promoted first to the paper's national staff and then its Sunday magazine.
Earley's September 14, 1985 profile of Arthur Walker in the Sunday magazine led to him interviewing and obtaining exclusive cooperation from Arthur, John Walker Jr. Michael Walker, and Jerry Whitworth, the four members of the Walker Spy Ring for his first book [10] in 1988. The New York Times reported that Earley had obtained their cooperation in return for a percentage of any book royalties. [11] At the time, there were no laws that banned spies from "check book" journalism. Earley acknowledged his arrangement in his book, but noted that he'd maintained full editorial control. Earley's book was well received. The Washington Post bought first serial rights. New York Times Book Reviewer Lucinda Franks wrote: "What distinguishes 'Family of Spies' is that Pete Earley, a former reporter for The Washington Post, uses Mr. Walker's words not to try to understand him but to expose his superficially slick but profoundly distorted mind. The result is an unusually penetrating portrait of the banality of evil, or a psychology that usually defines intimate understanding - the narcissist whose rationalization make his wrongdoing seem almost normal." [12] Publishers Weekly noted Earley "constructed a masterful psychological portrait of a man seemingly without a soul. A Family of Spies is a classic of the genre." [13]
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