(2 of 2)
Early Warnings. After the war, Maggie moved to Washington, D.C., where she gave up the grind of daily reporting for the more leisurely life of a roving reporter and pundit. She lived in an elegant town house with her husband, Lieut. General William Hall (her first marriage to Philosophy Professor Stanley Moore ended in divorce in 1948), raised two children and cultivated an impressive list of sources. In 1963, she left the Trib to become a columnist for Newsday. She knew how to take a cool, levelheaded look at world affairs, and she disdained those commentators who were addicted to "romantic nonsense." In 1962, long before most other pundits got around to it, Maggie warned that the Russians were entering Cuba in ominously large numbers. She was one of the first to report that the Viet Nam Buddhists, who had been characterized by other reporters as innocent victims of oppression, were actually political opponents of the Diem regime.
Still a restless reporter at heart, Marguerite Higgins always liked to take a firsthand look at the world's trouble spots before she made up her mind. And it was that determination that took her back to Viet Nam.