About George Bliss

George Bliss was one of the BGA’s most influential investigators. In 1961, the Executive Director of the BGA, George Mahin, along with Charles Percy, Chairman of Bell & Howell, and George Watson, Dean of Students at Roosevelt University, established “Operation Watchdog,” a task force evaluating the performance of public officials and employees in Cook County. Bliss, then at the Chicago Tribune, participated in Watchdog’s first major project, an investigation of the Metropolitan Sanitary District, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize and resulted in savings of $38 million over four years.

Operation Watchdog set the standard for the BGA’s role over the next thirty years, building the investigative tradition now an established part of Chicago’s civic community. Using hands-on investigations and building relations with sources and media partners, Bliss and the BGA produced award-winning investigative pieces that resulted in legislative action and judicial proceedings.

Bliss later become Chief Investigator at the BGA, most famously portraying a heart attack victim in a sting operation on private, unscrupulous ambulance services (the investigation won a Pulitzer Prize for Bill Jones at the Tribune).

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