X-Nico

2 unusual facts about Ken W. Clawson


Ken W. Clawson

According to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their 1974 best-selling book All the President's Men, Clawson bragged about having written the Canuck letter to a friend, Marilyn Berger, who happened to be a Washington Post reporter, whom he had known from his days with the newspaper.

He became a labor reporter for the Toledo Blade newspaper, and was honored for his work there, winning a Nieman Fellowship to attend Harvard University in 1967.


L.D. Clawson

He also worked for the American Film Company and Ince-Triangle-KayBee, where photographic superintendent and future director Irvin Willat would remember Clawson as “sort of like a news cameraman” who was not especially noted for his lighting style.

Marilyn Berger

Berger reported that Richard Nixon White House staffer Ken Clawson had bragged to her about authoring the Canuck Letter, a forged letter to the editor of the Manchester Union Leader that played a large part in ending the campaign of Senator Edmund Muskie.


see also