Famed NY Times reporter RW Apple dies at 71

NEW YORK, Oct 4 (Reuters) New York Times journalist RW Apple, a lead writer on war and politics for decades before he returned to the noodle shops of Saigon and restaurants of Paris to write about the food and wine he loved, died today.

He was 71.

He died in Washington of complications from thoracic cancer, a Times spokeswoman said.

Nicknamed ''Johnny,'' Apple made his name covering foreign wars and American politics, and his front-page news analyses were must reading for the Washington elite.

Late in his career, he took to writing about travel, architecture and especially food, describing with equal zest a mouth-watering grilled hot dog or the aroma of the finest Armagnac.

''With his Dickensian byline, Churchillian brio and Falstaffian appetites, Mr. Apple, who was known as Johnny, was a singular presence at The Times almost from the moment he joined the metropolitan staff in 1963,'' the Times' obituary read.

''He remained a colorful figure as new generations of journalists around him grew more pallid, and his encyclopedic knowledge, grace of expression - and above all his expense account - were the envy of his competitors, imitators and peers,'' it said.

Apple joined the Times in 1963 and became the paper's bureau chief in Albany, Lagos, Nairobi, Saigon, Moscow, London and Washington. He covered conflicts such as the Vietnam war, the Iranian revolution and Persian Gulf war.

Among his many journalistic successes was catching on early to the campaign in 1976 of little-known presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, who went on to capture the Democratic presidential nomination and the White House that year.

The journalism magazine MORE pronounced Apple ''America's most powerful political reporter'' in 1976. He had been featured in Timothy Crouse's 1973 book ''The Boys on the Bus,'' about the 1972 presidential campaign.

Apple was known for piercing questions directed at official spokesman.

In Vietnam, the afternoon military briefing became known as the ''Five O'clock Follies'' with help from his role in the press gallery, and the Times obituary credits Apple with forcing President Richard Nixon's press secretary to admit his previous explanations about the Watergate affair were ''inoperative.'' All that cemented his reputation as a premiere political reporting, and he became a fixture on the front pages with ''News Analysis'' stories for many years.

REUTERS DKA BD2347