Anthony Bruce Summers (December 21, 1942) is the non-fiction author of seven best-selling investigative books. He is an Irish citizen, and has been working for some twenty years with Robbyn Swan, who is now his co-author and fifth wife.[1] After studying modern languages at Oxford University, his early work took him from labouring jobs to freelance reporting to London newspapers, to Granada TV’s World in Action[1][2] – the UK’s first tabloid public affairs programme, to writing the news for the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, then back to England to the BBC’s 24 Hours, a pioneering late evening show that brought viewers coverage from all over the world. Summers became the BBC’s youngest producer at 24, travelling worldwide and sending filmed reports from the conflicts in Vietnam and the Middle East, and across Latin America.[2][3][4] A main focus, though, was on the momentous events of the 60s and 70s in the United States – with on-the-spot reports on Martin Luther King’s assassination and on Robert F. Kennedy’s bid for the presidency. He smuggled cameras into the then Soviet Union to obtain the only TV interview with dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov – when he was under house arrest, having just won the Nobel Prize.[2] Before moving on from the BBC, Summers became an Assistant Editor of the prestigious weekly programme Panorama. Long based in Ireland, he has since the mid-70s concentrated on investigative non-fiction, usually taking from four to five years to produce a book – conducting in-depth research, combining digging in the documentary record with exhaustive interviewing.[5][6]
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The Eleventh Day: The Ultimate Account of 9/11 (July 2011) is an investigation of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, published by Random House to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11. It is the first comprehensive independent account of the event that traumatized America and the world, the product of five years’ research and access for the first time to tens of thousands of previously withheld 9/11 Commission documents.[7]
"Ten years have passed, and Osama bin Laden is no more. Yet there is a lingering sense that the nation and the world have been let down, deprived of the right to know — deceived, even — on a matter of greater universal concern that any event in living memory."[8]
Summers has written about historical figures including Tsar Nicholas II, President John F. Kennedy, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Richard Nixon. He also wrote biographies of celebrities Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra. Summers has received scathing criticism by scholars and other authors for a sole-source allegation that J. Edgar Hoover was a cross dresser. The source was paid by Summers, and had a deep, personal grudge against Hoover. Summers' book on Hoover originated this widespread belief. There has been no evidence supporting the claim since the book was published.
His main works include: The File on the Tsar (1976), "Meticulous research... elegantly controversial" Harrison Salisbury, The New York Times
Conspiracy (on the John F. Kennedy assassination, 1980, reissued as Not in Your Lifetime, 1998), "Deserves to be read and taken seriously by all those who care about truth or justice." Professor Robert Blakey, former Chief Counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassination. The book won the Golden Dagger, The Crime Writers' Association's award for non-fiction.
Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe (1985), "A remarkable performance... the ghost of Marilyn Monroe cries out on these pages" New York Times
Honeytrap (on the Profumo sex/spy scandal, 1987), one of several books used as background for the film Scandal (1989), starring John Hurt
Official and Confidential, The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1993), "An important book that should give us all pause, especially policy makers" Philadelphia Inquirer
The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon (2000) "Devastating... no one interested in history, politics, government or the American presidency should ignore it." Chicago Tribune
Sinatra: The Life (2005), "The first fully documented biography... a definitive, 'generational' work." Vanity Fair.
In addition to the coverage listed above, Anthony Summers sent reports on subjects as varied as:
With his book on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Summers took a middle road – avoiding the wilder conspiracy theories while throwing doubt on the findings of the Warren Commission. He reported in detail, adding the results of his own interviewing, on the finding of Congress' Assassinations Committee that the "committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy". As did the Committee, he allowed for the possibility that major organized crime figures combined with anti-Castro elements – perhaps with the connivance of some CIA personnel – were behind the plot.[13]