Reporter Hedrick Smith spent 26 years at the New York Times, where he was among the team that produced the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pentagon Papers. He also spent several years as the Times’ Moscow bureau chief, for which he won a Pulitzer for international reporting from Russia and Eastern Europe. That experience also yielded his bestselling book “The Russians.” Another of his books, “The Power Game: How Washington Works,” is considered a modern classic and essential reading for DC’s power players. Since 1989, Smith has created more than two dozen primetime specials for PBS, on topics ranging from Duke Ellington’s Washington to “Inside the Terror Network.” He has won numerous awards—among them two Emmys—for this television work.

E.N. Thompson Forum website