Osgood Caruthers, Former U.N. Press Aide, Dies

Osgood Caruthers, a veteran journalist who served as press spokesman for the United Nations in the early 1960s, has been found dead at his West Stockbridge, Mass., home.

A family spokesman said Caruthers’ body was found Tuesday morning. He was 70 and being treated for a muscular ailment.

A former bureau chief for both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, Caruthers was a graduate of Bucknell University in Pennsylvania and worked for papers there and in Denver before World War II service with the Army Air Force. He earned an Air Medal and nine battle stars flying missions in the Pacific and at war’s end joined the Associated Press. He was assigned to Jerusalem and then became AP bureau chief in Belgrade.

In 1955 he moved to the New York Times where he was Cairo and then Moscow bureau chief. His coverage of the Suez crisis while in the Middle East was widely praised. Dag Hammarskjold made him his press aide in 1961, the same year the United Nations secretary general was killed in a plane crash. He continued to serve in that capacity until 1965 when he returned to newspapers, joining the Los Angeles Times where he was based in Bonn and later Vienna.

He retired in 1977 and is survived by his wife, Virginia, two stepdaughters and a grandson. Funeral services are pending.