Jim Hougan

Who is Jim Hougan?

James Richard Hougan is an American author, investigative reporter and documentary film producer. A best-selling novelist in both the United States and Europe, his books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He is best known for Secret Agenda, perhaps the first investigative work to question the orthodox narrative of the Watergate scandal as propounded by the Washington Post.

Born James Richard Edwards in Brooklyn, N.Y., he graduated from William Horlick High School in Racine, Wisconsin. In 1966, he earned a degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Soon afterwards, he wed Carolyn A. Johnson and began work as a newspaper reporter and photographer for the Prince George's Sentinel in suburban Maryland. After winning awards from the Maryland-Delaware Press Association, he joined the Capitol Times newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1971, while working at the Cap Times and as a stringer for the New York Times, he was named an Alicia Patterson and Rockefeller Foundation fellow. Reporting from Mexico City, Amsterdam, Ibiza, Athens, and London, his articles for the two foundations about "contemporary Western youth movements" were published in an array of national newspapers and magazines. During this time, while covering counter-cultural movements in the West, he reported as well on the massacre of student dissidents in Mexico City's Tlatelolco Square and on the violent repression of their Greek counterparts by the military junta in Athens. Both assignments were considered dangerous.