Don Oberdorfer | Longtime reporter, 84

Don Oberdorfer, 84, a former Washington Post diplomatic correspondent who chronicled international news from the Vietnam War to the fall of the Soviet Union, died Thursday in Washington. He had Alzheimer's disease, said his wife, Laura Oberdorfer.

Mr. Oberdorfer spent 25 years with the Post, beginning in 1968, when he was hired away from the Knight Newspapers chain by Benjamin Bradlee.

Bradlee, named executive editor that year, would later write in his memoir, A Good Life, that Mr. Oberdorfer was "a mortal lock to become what he became, a foreign affairs expert who could and did peg even with the very best foreign affairs experts."

Mr. Oberdorfer's years of reportage filled an uncounted number of broadsheet pages and half a dozen books that made him known particularly as an expert in Asian affairs. He also earned a reputation as one of the most insightful, fair-minded reporters on his globe-spanning beat.

After retiring from the Post in 1993, he taught at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and chaired its U.S.-Korea Institute. - Washington Post