Walter Trohan

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Walter J. Trohan (July 4, 1903 - October 30, 2003) was a former Chicago Tribune reporter and bureau chief in Washington, D.C., and was regarded as the last of the legendary metropolitan newspaper Washington bureau chiefs whose bylines made them famous.

Trohan began covering Washington in the second year of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency (1934) and stayed on the job through Richard Nixon's first term. He began his career as a reporter in 1929, and was also first on the scene of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre when Al Capone's gang gunned down several members of the rival Bugs Moran gang.

Trohan was legendary for almost breaking the scoop that President Truman planned to fire General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of UN forces in Korea. Truman found out that Trohan knew about his plan of action and publicly announced his decision.

In 1975 Trohan wrote his memoirs and titled the book Political Animals. In the book, he recalled how when he arrived in Washington in 1934 as an assistant correspondent in the Tribune's Washington Bureau. He could remember freely wandering Roosevelt's White House and interviewing cabinet members and other staff. Due to tightened security measures, this freedom no longer exists.

Trohan was president of the White House Correspondents' Association in 1937-1938 and the Gridiron Club in 1967. He died in late 2003 at the age of 100.