Henry M. Jackson

Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson (May 31, 1912 – September 1, 1983) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. representative (1941–1953) and U.S. senator (1953–1983) from the state of Washington. A Cold War liberal and anti-Communist member of the Democratic Party, Jackson supported higher military spending and a hard line against the Soviet Union, while also supporting social welfare programs, civil rights, and labor unions.

Born in Everett, Washington, to Norwegian immigrants, Jackson practiced law in Everett, after graduating from the University of Washington School of Law. He won election to Congress in 1940, and joined the Senate in 1953 after defeating incumbent Republican Party senator Harry P. Cain. Jackson supported the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and authored the National Environmental Policy Act, which helped establish the principle of publicly analyzing environmental impacts. He co-sponsored the Jackson–Vanik amendment, which denied normal trade relations to non-capitalist countries with restrictive emigration policies. Jackson served as chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources from 1963 to 1981. He was twice an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Party nomination in the 1972 and 1976 presidential elections. While still serving in the Senate, Jackson died in 1983.

His political beliefs were characterized by support of civil rights, human rights, and safeguarding the environment, but with an equally strong commitment to oppose totalitarianism in general and – with the start of the Cold War — communist rule in particular. Jackson's political philosophies and positions have been cited as an influence on a number of key figures associated with neoconservatism, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, both of whom previously served as aides to Jackson.

Jackson was born in the home of his parents, Marine (née Andersen) and Peter Jackson, in Everett, Washington, on May 31, 1912. His mother and father were both immigrants from Norway. Peter Jackson was born Peter Gresseth in the Kristiansund area, and changed his name when he immigrated. He met Marine, who was born in Alvenes at the Lutheran church in Everett, where they were married in 1897. Henry was the fifth, and youngest, of the Jackson children; he was nicknamed "Scoop" by his sister in his childhood, after a comic strip character that he was said to have resembled. Jackson was a member of the National Honor Society. He went on to graduate with a B.A. degree from Stanford University, and a J.D. degree from the University of Washington School of Law, where he joined the Delta Chi fraternity.

In 1935, the year of his law school graduation, he was admitted to the bar, and began to practice law in Everett. He found immediate success, and was elected to become the prosecuting attorney for Snohomish County from 1938 to 1940, where he made a name for himself prosecuting bootleggers and gamblers.

Jackson successfully ran for the U.S. Congress as a Democrat in 1940 and took his seat in the House of Representatives with the 77th Congress on January 3, 1941. From then on, Jackson did not lose any congressional elections. Jackson joined the Army when the United States entered World War II but left when Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered all representatives to return home or resign their seats. He visited the Buchenwald concentration camp a few days after its liberation in 1945. He also visited his native Norway, where he observed the repatriation to Russia of Red Army soldiers captured by the Nazis, in which he recalled

"I remember how reluctant most Russians were to return to the Soviet Union. They knew they would have even less freedom there."

He attended the International Maritime Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1945 with the American delegation, and he was elected president of the same conference in 1946, when it was held in Seattle. From 1945 to 1947, Jackson was also the chairman of the House Indian Affairs Committee. In the 1952 U.S. House election, Jackson relinquished his seat in the House for a run for one of Washington's Senate seats. Jackson soundly defeated Republican senator Harry P. Cain and remained a senator for over thirty years. He was Washington's first U.S. senator to be born in the state. Jackson died in office in 1983 after winning re-election for the fifth time in 1982.