10 Facts About Earl Mazo

Earl Mazo was an American journalist, author, and government official.

Earl Mazo survived a remarkable 32 missions over Europe in the rickety but reliable B-17s of the era, remarkable because the standard task was 25 missions.

Earl Mazo stopped at 32 missions because the military offered him the opportunity to become a staff writer for Stars and Stripes, the newspaper published by the army in all theatres of action.

Earl Mazo had been a journalist in Greenville, South Carolina, when the war began before joining up in the spring of 1942.

In later life, Earl Mazo was employed as head of the professional staff of the United States Congress Joint Committee on Printing.

In 1959, Earl Mazo authored a biography of Richard Nixon titled Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait.

Earl Mazo's reports prompted a failed attempt by Nixon to convince Mazo to cease his reporting, followed by a successful appeal by Nixon to Mazo's editors to terminate the series of stories on the grounds that the United States could not afford a constitutional crisis at the height of the Cold War.

Earl Mazo was both stunned and disappointed at the decision, adding that he believed the series would have put him in contention for the Pulitzer Prize.

Earl Mazo was married to his first wife, Rita Vane Earl Mazo, for 62 years until her death in 2003.

Earl Mazo died at a hospital on February 17,2007, in Bethesda, Maryland, from complications resulting from a fall at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland.