A journalist, Mariano was sent by a German tabloid to cover the Vietnam war. Overseas Weekly delighted in uncovering problems, and reported on war profiteering, drug use by soldiers, officers dealing in the black market, racial discrimination in the ranks, and other hard-hitting topics.
The U.S. military reacted by refusing to allow the publication on military bases. “Our only recourse was a lawsuit,” Mariano said later. They lost the suit, which claimed the military violated the paper’s First Amendment rights, but won on appeal. “
Ann Bryan Mariano was the consummate investigative reporter during her years in Saigon,” said Joe Galloway, a war correspondent and co-author of We Were Soldiers Once … and Young *. “She was the real deal.” After the war, Mariano went back to Vietnam and helped her co-workers escape, and then was an editor at the Washington Post until she retired in 1996. She died February 25 from Alzheimer’s disease at 76.