Bill Lichtenstein - Investigative Reporter

Investigative Reporter

In 1986, Lichtenstein was one of the two show producers of the ABC late-night program "Jimmy Breslin's People," featuring the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.

Lichtenstein worked briefly in 1986 for The Investigative Group, at the law firm of Rogovin, Huge and Lenzner, then out of house council for the CIA. Headed by former Watergate counsel Terry Lenzner, Lichtenstein worked with IGI on several projects including tracking missing royalties for the Beatles' Apple Records, and working undercover in Perth, Australia with Australian mining and steel-making company Broken Hills Proprietary (BHP), the country's largest corporation, to stave off a hostile takeover by conservative industrialist Robert Holmes à Court and a then group of pro-Apartheid South Africans, who were seeking control of BHP to shift their mining operations from South Africa to Australia as Apartheid was ending in South Africa

Lichtenstein uncovered and reported on efforts by the White House under President George H.W. Bush, involving staffers Bill Kristol and John Sununu, to pressure the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, John Frohmayer, to cancel four grants to Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck and Tim Miller, because of the controversial nature of their art. The NEA Four, as the artists became known, later sued the NEA in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley. Lichtenstein's article in the Village Voice, "The Secret Battle for the NEA"The Secret Battle for the NEA," captured third place in the National Headliner Awards for magazine coverage of a major news event.