State Department Spokesman-Turned-Journalist Bernard Kalb Dies at 100

Global affairs reporter Bernard Kalb died on Sunday at his home in North Bethesda, Maryland, due to complications from a fall, according to his family. He was 100. The centenarian worked for six decades as a journalist, writing several books while serving as a travel companion (and later, a biographer) of Henry Kissinger. He also served stints as a media commentator and host of CNN’s Reliable Sources, but was probably best known for the job he walked away from—submitting a famed 1986 resignation from the Department of State while protesting a government disinformation campaign under President Ronald Reagan. After serving as an Army journalist in World War II during his youth, Kalb went on to work at the New York Times, covering the radio desk and, later, overseas assignments that took him to the far corners of the globe—including a career-making expedition to the South Pole. “You face a choice — as an American, as a spokesman, as a journalist — whether to allow oneself to be absorbed in the ranks of silence, whether to vanish into unopposed acquiescence or to enter a modest dissent,” Kalb once said during a State Department press conference.