Russ Banham (born September 20, 1954) is an American author and reporter formerly with The Journal of Commerce and later a freelance journalist writing for The Wall Street Journal, Inc., Forbes, The Economist, Euromoney, Financial Times, Chief Executive and several other business publications and trade magazines.
Banham is the author of 31 books, including The Ford Century, an acclaimed history of Ford Motor Company translated into 13 languages; Higher, the best-selling history of aerospace giant Boeing and the U.S. aviation industry; Problem Solving: HBS Alumni Making a Difference in the World, a co-authored history of Harvard Business School (HBS), written with HBS Professor emeritus Howard Stevenson, and the first (2009) and second (2020) editions of The Fight for Fairfax, a 150-year political and economic history of Northern Virginia and the Greater Washington Region.
Banham is also a former actor known for co-starring with Bill Murray in the 1979 film Meatballs, and as a playwright and theatre director.
Education and early life
Banham graduated from St. John's University in New York City, where he studied Speech and Theatre. He later earned a Master of Arts in Drama Theory and Criticism from the University of Montana. On a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship at the university, he also earned a Master of Fine Arts in Directing and Playwriting, while teaching classes in drama for three years.
Early career
Banham made his Broadway acting debut in The Merchant, which starred Zero Mostel as Shylock, and was directed by two-time Tony award-winning director John Dexter. He also appeared in several Off- and Off-off-Broadway plays, and co-starred in the ninth biggest movie of 1979, Meatballs, directed by Ivan Reitman and starring Bill Murray in his first film role. That year he was cast as Brad Hopkins in producer Norman Lear's short-lived television situation comedy, Joe's World, opposite Christopher Knight from The Brady Bunch. The series ran for 12 episodes on NBC before it was cancelled.
With prospects as an actor quickly dimming, Banham produced the world premiere of Oliver Hailey's Kith and Kin at the Dallas Theatre Center and later at the White Barn Theatre in Greenwich, Connecticut, the latter directed by Tom O'Horgan, Tony Award nominee for the original production of Hair. He also produced the Off Broadway premiere of Hailey's Red Rover, Red Rover, with Tony Award winners Phyllis Newman and Helen Gallagher, at the Park Royal Theatre. Both received mixed reviews and failed commercially.
At the same time, he began his career in financial journalism, writing articles for The Journal of Commerce. The daily business newspaper, then owned by Knight-Ridder, asked him to join its staff in 1983 as a reporter and editor covering insurance and risk management. Banham left the paper in 1987 to pursue work as a freelance journalist.
Enron
Banham's CFO magazine profile of Andrew Fastow, one year before the Enron debacle came to light, was cited by writer Kurt Eichenwald in his book, Conspiracy of Fools. "Banham … captured everything pretty well: asset securitization, special-purpose entities, the reduction of balance-sheet debt," Eichenwald wrote.
U.S. Embassy
Banham was nominated for the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism by The Journal of Commerce for a series of articles he wrote disputing government reports that the Soviet Union had embedded the concrete walls of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with eavesdropping devices. The U.S. demanded that the Soviets tear down the embassy and build a new one at their expense. Through an anonymous source, a high-ranking government official in the Nixon administration, Banham learned that the government had purchased a secret insurance policy proving there were "no bugs," the source stated. Banham filed a Freedom of Information request for the insurance policy, learning that it was underwritten by American International Group, Inc., and reinsured by Ingosstrakh, the Russian state insurer. In effect, the Soviet Union would be on the hook financially for repairing damage to the building. The finding made it extremely unlikely the Soviets would deliberately damage to the Embassy building, given the impact of an exorbitantly expensive tear-down and geopolitical crisis. The articles were cited in the Congressional Record. The Cold War ended before the alleged eavesdropping devices were ever ascertained.