The UC Santa Barbara Library Department of Special Research Collections has acquired the archives of Ann Louise Bardach, an award-winning investigative journalist, author and Santa Barbara County resident.
The collection includes Bardach’s coverage of towering political and cultural figures, such as Fidel Castro and the Castro family members, as well as the life and trials of Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, the United States-Cuba relations, several political figures and murder cases.
Her coverage and people in the collection include 6-year-old beauty winner JonBenét Ramsey, Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, and Charles Manson follower Bobby Beausoleil.
It contains a vast array of Bardach’s research materials, documenting her deeply reported investigations from 1979 to 2018, as well as several books she authored or edited.
While the transfer was made in 2018, the collection was officially announced this month.
It features scores of photographs by several acclaimed photographers, state and federal files, financial records, handwritten notes and personal letters, interview transcripts, articles, correspondence and audio recordings of interviews with Bardach’s high-profile subjects.
“I had all these research files that never get in the bloody story because somebody is editing them,” Bardach said. “I just thought, ‘Somebody has got to want my research files.’
“You don’t just get an interview with Fidel Castro. In order to get to Fidel Castro, you have to do a hundred somethings before. You are always building the pyramid, and that is the thing that most people don’t understand.”
The collection includes her materials related to the U.S. government’s case and trial of Luis Posada Carriles, the militant Cuban exile and former Central Intelligence Agency operative, including those who were subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Posada’s handwritten notes and the audio of his three days of interviews with Bardach that were the basis for the New York Times series are housed at the library.
Bardach has extracted admissions from an array of political and cultural figures, such as Sex Pistols singer John Lydon, known as Johnny Rotten, and E. Howard Hunt, who helped organize the Watergate break-in.
“Journalism is about being almost the abrasion to those in power,” Bardach said. “It’s not about cozying up — being pals — it’s about the scrutiny and the revelation. And that to me is absolutely the safeguard of American democracy.”
The library said the materials will be available to researchers, students and members of the community who turn to Bardach for inspiration and research.
“There’s a lot of interest in her story as a female journalist in the era that she was reporting,” said Danelle Moon, director of UCSB Library Special Research Collections. “Annie is a fixture in our community life here.”
Bardach has lived in the unincorporated Santa Barbara County South Coast since 1989. She has been a friend of UCSB for many years and a supporter of the library, Moon said.
“It was kind of a natural partnership that evolved,” Moon said.
Bardach taught the first global journalism course at UCSB, and served as a board member for UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television and New Media. She also was a resident scholar with UCSB’s Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies.
Lou Cannon introduced Bardach to the UCSB Library Special Research Collections.
Cannon is her friend, as well as President Ronald Reagan’s biographer and a former White House correspondent. His papers also are at the library, and he urged her to consider gifting her archives and introduced her to the library’s patron, Sara Miller McCune.
“I began with Fidel in 1991 in Vanity Fair, thinking I’m going to do a one-off interview, which I did in 1993 and 1994,” Bardach said. “Lou and I kind of bonded on being the chroniclers of these titanic figures.”
She has written for almost every major media publication in the United States and the United Kingdom, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, the Los Angeles Times and Vanity Fair, where she was a reporter for 10 years.
Bardach is considered “the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami” by the Columbia Journalism Review.
“One of her practices as a young journalist was to record all of the conversations that she had, which is kind of how she made her mark in many ways as a cutting-edge journalist of that generation,” Moon said.
Bardach won the PEN USA award for journalism in 1995 for her reporting in Vanity Fair on Mexican politics, and she was a finalist in 1994 for her coverage of women in Islamic countries.
Her book, “Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana,” was a finalist for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, the PEN USA award for best nonfiction and named a “Ten Best Books of 2002” by the Los Angeles Times.
Bardach was a finalist for the 1993 PEN Award for her investigation into Europe’s homegrown Islamic fundamentalism for Vanity Fair, and she was a finalist in 2005 on several lists for her deep dive into former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ties with the tabloid press, which was published in Los Angeles magazine.
Bardach is among the featured guests in the new HBO documentary “537 Votes” that premiered in October. The film examines the voter recount in Florida during the 2000 election showdown of George W. Bush and Al Gore.
She discusses the case of Elián González, the 5-year-old boy who was found in the waters off Miami on Thanksgiving in 1999.
The creator and producer of Showtime’s “Homeland” is co-writing a new television series based on Bardach’s five-part New York Times 1998 feature on the Cuban exile militant.
Bardach was born in New Jersey, and her parents were politically active in civil rights.
She has lived locally since 1989.
Bardach’s collection details the methodology of journalism and sheds light on the exhaustive legwork and process of investigative reporting, a representative for the library said.
“It’s an opportunity for people to get a glimpse at the journalism and political life broadly,” Moon said. “We hope the collection will be well used.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Brooke Holland can be reached at bholland@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
