Merrill Mueller

Biography

Merrill Mueller was born in 1916 in New York City.

Mueller attended public schools in Connecticut before taking one year at Springfield College. Dropping out, he began his career as a reporter at the Buffalo Times before moving to New York and eventually moving to get a job at the Independent News Service (INS) in Washington, D.C. During the Battle of the Bulge, when Germany surprised the Allies by breaking out at the Ardennes Forest, Mueller reported on how the Soviets were refusing to communicate with General Eisenhower, the head of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, during the battle. Amid fears of scandal if the British and American public found out about Stalin's silence, the story was suppressed and Mueller was banished from the European theatre. Even after returning to the United States, Mueller covered international events; for example, in 1965, he co-anchored NBC's coverage of the state funeral of Winston Churchill with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley from London.

In 1968 he left NBC for the American Broadcasting Company before retiring in 1979; he died one year later.