Warren Rogers is a newspapermanýa great one. In 1962, he also became a key "witness" during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when his warnings to the KGB helped avert World War III, according to a recent best seller. For Rogers, friend of presidents and reporter on the most compelling events of the last half-century, it was all just part of the job.

Itýs a story with the suspenseful intrigue of a James Bond movie or John LeCarré novel. Heroes, villains, espionage and valor.

The time is October 1962, in the heat of the Cuban missile crisis. The place: Washington, D.C. A conversation in the Press Club bar between a reporter and his bureau chief is overheard by a Lithuanian emigrant bartender, who relays the story to a KGB agent. The story? In less than 48 hours, the United States will invade Cuba.

The bombshell throws Soviet intelligence for a loop and sends officials rushing frantically to corroborate. A KGB agent intercepts the reporter the next morning, and casually asks if President John F. Kennedy will stick to his guns. "Youýre damn right, he will," is the reporterýs response. The agent rushes back to the Soviet embassy and wires Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev: "The Kennedy brothers have decided to risk it all. The attack on Cuba will start in the next two days."

In Moscow, this latest intelligence reportýthe Kremlinýs clearest window yet into the White Houseýbolsters other indications that the United States has grown impatient. Khrushchev calls for a stenographer and begins dictating a letter that for the first time hints at a diplomatic solution.

In case you havenýt figured it out by now, the story is true, but it would take Warren J. Rogers (A&S ý44), the former Washington correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, more than 35 years to discover that his conversation with bureau chief Robert Donovan might have been responsible for averting World War III.

At least that is the claim made by Russian historian Aleksandr Fursenko and American historian Timothy Naftali in the best-selling book "One Hell of a Gamble": Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958-1964 (New York: Norton, 1997). After poring through thousands of recently declassified documents from the Kremlin and the White House, the authors conclude that Rogers was unwittingly the "the KGBýs best indicator of Kennedyýs intentionsýthe star of Khrushchevýs intelligence folder."

On a cold, grey January afternoon in the nationýs capitol city, Warren Rogers, 75, sits in the living room of the Georgetown townhouse he shares with his wife, Alla, an artist and gallery owner, and a 4-year-old Shar Pei named Bao Lu and recalls his stab at brink-of-war diplomacy. "Those were exciting times, Iým telling you," he says, his New Orleans accent still recognizable after 51 years away from his hometown. "Itýs interesting that when youýre living through those things, you donýt pay attention to them. You just go moment by moment, day by day."

Rogers has not only lived through and reported on some of the most important events of the 20th century, he also has participated in them. After serving in the Marines during World War II, taking part in the warýs first U.S. offensive at Guadalcanal, Rogers embarked on a journalistic career that hurdled him from the backrooms of Baton Rouge to the rice fields of Vietnam and behind the scenes of political administrations and assassinations.

After his stint with the U.S. Marine Corps, Rogers returned to New Orleans and joined the New Orleans Item as a cub reporter. In 1947, he jumped to the Baton Rouge office of the Associated Press, covering Louisiana politics and the first term of Gov. Earl K. Long, an unpredictable character even by Louisiana standards. In 1951 he moved to Washington, D.C., to cover the U.S. State Department for the AP. He also found time to cover the White House, Congress and national politics, including the McCarthy hearings and the 1952 and 1956 presidential conventions and campaigns.

In 1959, Rogers joined the Washington bureau of the New York Herald Tribune, specializing in military and foreign affairs, the presidency and national politics. He was nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes in that period, one for his 1960 series "Our Man on the Bus," in which he traveled the country interviewing ordinary voters, and one for his series reporting on combat in Vietnam with the Green Berets. In all, Rogers made 10 trips to the field covering the Vietnam War.

He covered civil rights disturbances in the South throughout the 1960s, and was present for Gov. George C. Wallaceýs legendary anti-integration stance in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama.

Rogers also was a close friend of Sen. Robert Kennedy, about whom he wrote two books, including When I Think of Bobby: A Personal Memoir (HarperCollins 1993). He has interviewed every president since Truman and countless foreign heads of state. Currently, he writes "White House Watch," a weekly political column syndicated in 80 newspapers across the country.