MORAL MYOPIA CHAPTER THREE Jack Anderson and the Eagleton Case
Hume, Brit
MORAL MYOPIA CHAPTER THREE Jack Anderson and the Eagleton Case by Brit Hume When the wrongs of government are perpetrated by a Hitler-or even a Nixon-it is hard for decent men to see the...
...A couple of them were definitely drunk driving...
...Or something...
...Besides, this shows we’re willing to go after liberal Democrats...
...Louis Post-Dispatch has quoted a former Missouri official as saying that he personally stopped you three times- ’’ “Nothing to do with drunken driving,” Eagleton protested...
...I went out to Jack’s house to urge him to use the “Face the Nation” as an opportunity for a dramatic apology and not a chance to clobber Eagleton again...
...I just heard a slice of it on the CBS radio news at eleven,” she said...
...So we will probably neither of us ever know for sure whether we both received from the same individual, almost simultaneously this week, the same piece ofgossip about alleged drunken driving incidents involving Sen...
...The “Face the Nation” appearance now took on ever greater importance since Davis had emerged as the source and claimed that Jack was using information imparted four years earlier...
...Anderson, not Senator Eagleton who should be charged with reckless driving at this point...
...The statement went on to explain how newsmen are accustomed to relying on confidential sources...
...I just talked to True Davis,” he said...
...In the ironic way things often work in politics, Jack’s story was helping Eagleton, not hurting him...
...The assumption was that they would both be guests...
...What’s more, I couldn’t think of anything in his public statements that indicated the existence of any source besides True Davis...
...Eagleton has denied over and over that he’s ever had a drink problem...
...I said I had...
...The Mutual man had not been paraphrasing when he told me Jack had said he had “located’’ the photostats...
...It would be dramatic, occurring live on national television, and it would make Eagleton and the panel seem churlish if they were rough on Jack after his contrition...
...The show was to be broadcast at noon but was taped 90 minutes earlier...
...Even more reluctantly, she gave me the woman’s name...
...Although Davis repeated everything he had told Jack, he acknowledged under questioning that he had not authenticated the traffic citations himself and, what’s more, the state trooper who had handed them to him at a political rally was not in uniform and he could not prove that he really was a trooper...
...he said...
...The mail that poured into the office in the days after the Eagleton broadcast was averwhelmingly angry...
...Let me look at the Post and I’ll call you back,” I said...
...Well, in a separate interview with the Knight papers, he said something about still taking some ‘little blue pills.’ I wonder if they are barbiturates and, if so, what kind...
...He had risen to a position of fame and credibility never before achieved by a muckraking journalist and, almost overnight, he had lost it...
...I called the daughter again...
...Later that afternoon, True Davis did something very peculiar...
...I told her about Jack’s mood and said I was afraid he might go on the air and blast Eagleton...
...She was in her mid-thirties...
...Shortly after eleven, Opal called...
...He said that he had “discussed some of the thing that went on in politics” with Jack back during the 1968 campaigning and, at that time, had shown Jack the photostats of the d ru n k-driving citations “without realizing it might be made public without verification...
...I thought he might be willing to go along with’ an apology that fell short of being an assertion that the story was absolutely false...
...The office was immediately besieged with calls from newsmen wanting to know if Jack really was backing off...
...Biting the Bullet I found Jack at his desk when I came into the’office...
...Jack then intervened with praise for Davis’ integrity and remarks about what old and close friends they were...
...He was not the least reluctant to be interviewed by television or the newspapers...
...She gave me the name of a local night club, “Mr...
...In 1968 Davis ran in the Democratic primary for the Senate from his home state of Missouri, where he had accumulated a large fortune in business before deciding to go into government...
...The reason was not that Les was giving the best argument, but because Les was saying what Jack, at this point, wanted to hear...
...For example, I tried to reach one exprosecutor through his home telephone listing...
...The Phantom Trooper I got into the office later than usual that Friday morning, but I phoned Jack at the office earlier...
...I finally called Jack and asked him to get back to Davis for more details...
...Jack called the staff into the office and read the statement...
...He had done hundreds of stones as controversial without a slip...
...Jack thought the Times reporters had been antagonistic toward him...
...And Cheshire’s piece was accompanied by an equally scathing editorial...
...Why don’t you act like the Russians did when Napoleon was advancing...
...I went into the den and called Opal...
...The New York Times interview with Davis, he said, had gone badly...
...The phone rang...
...I told Jack I still had not reached all the prosecutors who might be the one Davis was talking about...
...Jack had assured me of Davis’ personal probity and said he thought his present job was just something to keep him in Washington while he awaited another opportunity for a political post...
...The worst thing about this episode now, it seemed to me, was that the longer it continued without some acknowledgment of major error on Jack’s part, the more it would look as if he didn’t know when a story was proved and when it wasn’t...
...I couldn’t find such a person listed with information in St...
...Still, though, a number of other newsmen told me they thought Jack had acted terribly on the show...
...There was too much to count it all, but someone did tally one day’s worth-there were 67 letters denouncing Jack, five praising him or telling him he was on the right track...
...I was stunned...
...Playing For Time A heated argument ensued...
...I can’t be responsible for that,” Jack said...
...The New York Times had asked to interview Jack’s source, with the promise that the name would not be revealed...
...But no one knew anything about drunk driving...
...Now he was president of the National Bank of Washington, which was owned by the United Mine Workers during the UMWs most corrupt years under Tony Boyle...
...The interview was to be held the next morning...
...Well, I hope SO,” I said...
...Well,” responded Eagleton, “let me say, Mr...
...He was close to losing patience, and it was hard to blame him...
...The fact that Jack yolg’) wasnow saying that he had “traced” the documents instead of “located” them was not enough to quell the interest, even though Jack’s correction made it clear that he had not seen the photostats himself...
...And the Times, too, ran a sharply critical editorial...
...He and Jack had become friends during Davis’ years in Washington...
...From those I had spoken to, I had gotten virtually unanimous recollection of the one speeding charge and unanimous ignorance of any dmnkdriving charges, although several people said there had been persistent rumors that Eagleton had a drink problem...
...In Missouri, though, the drunk-driving report was getting no substantiation...
...I know, but the correction didn’t do the job,” I said...
...Davis finished third in the primary behind Thomas Eagleton and the incumbent senator Edward Long...
...It could not have gone better...
...At the end of the piece, she wrote : “Mean while, Anderson yesterday was still holding press conferences and issuing statements and making headlines, defending himself and the ‘veracity’ of his source on the one hand, and conceding on the other hand that he ‘probably should have withheld’ the original report until he had checked it out...
...I called Opal back to commiserate...
...There was something about his compulsion to come up with a story on Eagleton, about his stubbornness in backing away, and his insensitivity to his own standards that was unfamiliar and unexpected...
...And once he had slipped, it was more difficult than ever to accept the humiliation of admitting the error...
...If he says he saw the photostats, then they existed...
...When I got to the office, I sat down at my typewriter and drafted a statement...
...He now had an issue to get himself off the defensive...
...The first two were about The New York Review of Books arid the staff of the Senate Watergate committee...
...Shortly after I sat down at my desk, one of Mutual’s correspondents called me...
...He had heard a lot of noisy advice from me in the past days, and it hadn’t been what he wanted to hear...
...Two state troopers, one retired, the other still on the force, had told him confidentially that Eagleton had gotten the tickets, that the arresting officers had kept their own copies and the others had been quietly disposed of...
...He said also that he apologized to Eagleton and “to the American people” for making the story public without further checking...
...He says Eagleton was arrested 11 times for drunk driving in Missouri...
...He believed the citations had existed and that Eagleton was lying...
...The important thing was to try to persuade him to use the Sunday television appearance to get out of this jam...
...I argued that this was all “mumbo-jumbo” that added up to a chronicle of how we had failed to get a story...
...If they don’t report what we say accurately, it’s not my fault...
...I didn’t disagree...
...And he would do hundreds more before the stain of the Eagleton case was removed, if, indeed, it ever could be...
...Oh...
...I was still asleep when the phone rang at 8:30 the next morning...
...B’s.’’ I called there, hoping the mother would know how to reach her husband-or ex-husband’ I couldn’t be sure...
...Jack asked Eagleton some other questions, then began the following exchange : “This is the first time I’ve had a chance to face you,” he said, “and I do owe you an apology...
...But I felt that I hadn’t been dealing with the same man I had known the past several years...
...You might as well get up, it’s worse than ever,” she said...
...What’s more, he was now saying that Jack had seen the photostats in 1968, though Jack professed to have no such recollection...
...He agreed to, but at first was unable to reach him...
...But Mutual had been calling all over town to say that Jack Anderson, their new star attraction, had the documents on Eagleton’s drinking...
...What exactly was Mr...
...He looked up at me...
...I asked...
...More calls turned up no information on drunk driving...
...The correction attributed the story to a “former high official from Missouri whose reliability is beyond question...
...Opal Ginn, Jack‘s secretary, was strongly in favor of the apology...
...But Les, himself the most careful reporter of us all, didn’t agree...
...The man looked, then returned to the phone to tell me she had just left...
...But instead, it had created a sensation and done an injustice to . Eagleton...
...Metaphorically speaking, it is Mr...
...True Davis was certainly not one of my heroes, but he seemed too much the solid citizen to fabricate a story of this kind and feed to a reporter whose friendship he clearly valued...
...to offer the Senator an apology...
...The statement would be rewritten and the apology would go...
...I kept trying after Mike left but still hadn’t turned up a thing to support the drunk-driving story...
...After two hours, though, I still had not reached all the present and former prosecutors in the two counties in question...
...I agreed, and so did Joe Spear, another staff writer...
...On Tuesday, July 25, Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, the man selected by Senator George McGovern as his running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket, held a news conference in a resort lodge in the Black Hills of South Dakota where McGovern had been resting before the campaign...
...But how do you know...
...I wasn’t ready to give up on this story, but I wasn’t optimistic about it...
...Clare and 1 looked at each other in horror...
...Jack had seemed to be out of trouble but now he had gone so far to make clear that his apology wasn’t a retraction that it sounded as if he had retracted the apology...
...The person damaged by the episode was Jack...
...Jack read the statement I drafted, then turned to his typewriter and began to fashion his own...
...He had just done his morning radio show and was going through some papers at his desk...
...Well, look,” I said, “why don’t you come over here...
...Anderson’s conscience would not permit him to retract the story (for which he had already apologized) because it might still prove true...
...Everyone in the office continued to follow leads in an effort to find the elusive proof that Eagleton had been caught driving drunk...
...His daughter, who sounded like a young teenager, told me, though, that he no longer lived there...
...No problem,” he said, smiling...
...What is clear, however, is that the information we both received was remarkably similar, down to quite specific details...
...How could he “reluctantly come to the conclusion” that Jack was now using some four-year-old information when he had discussed it with Jack two days earlier and been interviewed about the matter by The New York Times only the day before...
...Beyond that, there were differences...
...As long as no proof of drunk driving was forthcoming, Eagleton appeared to have been wronged by Jack...
...That raises questions about when they were prescribed and if they were prescribed by a psychiatrist...
...When my wife, Clare, and I tuned in at noon, we were expecting to watch some very favorable developments...
...No, but he’s seen photostats of “Has he still got them...
...He thought Jack ought to ride out the storm...
...I could see he was having a hard time taking my pitch for going on the air with an apology...
...It wasn’t hard to believe that he could have been stopped for offenses which were promptly and thoroughly covered up because of his office...
...I have never seen him looking so depressed...
...Maybe so,” Jack said...
...They might press it all the harder...
...Can you help...
...She thought the panel of reporters would chop Jack to pieces...
...According to plan, I sought to soften Davis up with polite but skeptical questions about his role with the union and the bank...
...An apology, no matter how hedged with explanation and defense, would take the sting out of any outraged comment...
...Jack also went to the studio and confirmed that Davis was the source...
...I had worked on this story with him...
...You should see the Post...
...Certainly, I thought Jack had behaved disgracefully in the Eagleton affair...
...Then came his pitch for the information...
...They were given to him by a state trooper...
...I began making calls to try to find out the name of the prosecutor of whom Davis had spoken...
...It was the first sign that he was becoming a bit uncertain about the story...
...This is why we embarked on our Moral Myopia series about the sins of people we on the whole admire...
...There was no way for me to signal to him my doubts about Jack’s version of what had happened...
...That option is foreclosed,” I said...
...Les was eager for Jack to outline all the steps Jack said he had taken to check the story...
...He went to the CBS studios in downtown Washington and made a public statement that he was Jack’s source...
...That doesn’t make a bad little item...
...I just don’t want you to act like Drew [Pearson] used to,” she said...
...You can’t tell how the press will react...
...Of course...
...Just sit tight and let them wear themselves out...
...I’m not going to let a lie drive me off the ticket,” he told cheering crowds upon his return from Hawaii...
...It seems to me,” I said, “that this Eagleton press conference left some questions unanswered...
...Jack had made up his mind...
...They may decide to drop the subject...
...But plausibility and provability are not the same...
...Eagleton had not been damaged by Jack’s charge for more than 24 hours...
...Bright, energetic, and resourceful, he took over a variety of tasks, and performed them well and reliably . “I’m looking for something on Eagleton for radio tomorrow,” he said...
...Anderson, that the true test of moral character is, I guess, to admit when one makes a mistake...
...It began as follows: “Columnist Jack Anderson does not reveal his sources and I don’t reveal mine...
...No...
...Asked if he should have waited until he had the proof in his hands before going ahead with the story, Jack conceded that he probably should have...
...It was Jack...
...I’ve talked to these other sources...
...Truth Will Out Eagleton, who was by now in Honolulu, quickly called a news conference to denounce the story as a “damnable lie.’’ Les seemed surprised when he heard that...
...Eagleton had been driving 85 in a 65-mile-per-hour zone, had been pulled over at 8:45 p.m...
...the front page was a story by Bob Walters under the headline “Anderson Backs Off...
...In an editorial e n t i t l e d “ J a c k Anderson’s ‘Apology,’ ” the Post said that Jack had revealed “some very peculiar and unsatisfactory notions concerning journalistic responsibility-and some absolutely bizarre notions concerning ‘conscience.’ ’’ The editorial went on, “Having first invoked competitive pressures as an excuse for his behaviorwhich was no excuse at all-Mr...
...What also is clear is that it did not stand up under the sort of examination that any responsible news reporter would be obliged to give it before making it public...
...March 11, 1962, on State Highway 40, a two-lane road, near the town of Ful t on...
...Jack was finishing breakfast in the kitchen when I arrived...
...Anderson,” it said, “aired the story without supporting evidence, managed to do an incredible disservice to Senator Eagleton, and now seems to be backing off with a series of lame excuses...
...That will be fine,” he said...
...I agreed...
...There was a period of silence...
...Instead of feeling more secure, he felt more compelled...
...He was wearing the seedy, threadbare bathrobe he often wore around the house and which was a symbol to us in the office of his easygoing, unpretentious ways...
...He had also spoken to ex-Senator Edward Long, who said he remembered someone on his campaign staff being given some photostats, but the Senator couldn’t remember which staff member and had never seen the photostats, according to Jack...
...What’s more, Jack seemed to have no doubt that the story would be vindicated, even if he had exaggerated it originally...
...Anderson an-nounced, positively stricken with more-in-sorrowism, that he only wished he could ‘retract the story completely...
...We all sat in his living room...
...A Man of Probity True Davis had been ambassador to Switzerland and Undersecretary of the Treasury during the Johnson Administration...
...Les argued that Jack had done something any reporter might have done-gone out fast with a story to stay ahead of the competition...
...Carefully hedged, Davis’ information could be a legitimate story...
...First let me say,” he began, “how much I appreciate your coming...
...He did not expect the Times story to be favorable . “They were asking things like, ‘Do you think this kind of reporting is worthy of a Pulitzer Prize winner?’ ” Jack told me ruefully...
...But there was no certainty of what he would do...
...It takes quite a man to go on nationwide television to say he made a mistake and I commend you for your courage...
...YOU mean,” I said, “that you had this before you broadcast the story...
...They won’t let me use their names, but their stories all add up to the same thing...
...But that isn’t all I did...
...Davis was lying, of course...
...Eagleton ,would say he was vindicated...
...Eagleton had three times been hospitalized for mental disorders...
...Eagleton was an attractive and articulate man, considered a remarkably talented politician by his colleagues...
...There wasn’t anything to say, so I left the room...
...What did you think...
...Look, True Davis is a reliable guy...
...I jumped in with my argument for an apology, dramatic and gracious, at the beginning of the show...
...If the story later turned out to be true, Jack might appear foolish, but not irresponsible...
...And that makes me wonder if he isn’t still seeing a psychiatrist...
...On the news that night, everyone was saying simply that you had reported that Eagleton had been arrested for drunk driving...
...I argued that that was the worst possible justification, but to no avail...
...He said it could possibly have been as few as six...
...I cannot do that yet,” he said...
...Later in the afternoon, Jack stepped across the hall to get a glass of water, between interviews...
...Repeated checks with authorities in Missouri did not substantiate the report . ’ ’ Jack’s statement began just as Les had urged: “For competitive reasons, we went out fast yesterday with a story that Senator Tom Eagleton has been cited for drunken and reckless driving...
...Suppose I threaten to quit if he doesn’t apologize,” I suggested...
...There was no use arguing...
...He interrupted to explain all the reasons he was reluctant to back away from the story completely . Everyone else was as ignorant as I had been about Jack’s conversations with the two state troppers...
...So I’m not worried about it...
...I had repeatedly urged Jack to say nothing about retraction, just to apologize and let that speak for itself...
...Jack apologized to Eagleton,” she said...
...Well, it was fine,” I stammered...
...With the Knight papers poised to break the story, Eagleton and McGovern decided to make a public confession immediately...
...I’m sure it’s true, and I think it’s great that Jack’s got the documents...
...That’s the word we want.’’ “You’re right,” Jack said...
...Jack looked at the newspaper and I just sat there...
...Davis struck me as such a colorless, solemn figure that it seemed strange that he would emerge as a leading light of society...
...That is exactly what Jack had just recorded for broadcast on the largest radio network in the nation...
...MORAL MYOPIA CHAPTER THREE Jack Anderson and the Eagleton Case by Brit Hume When the wrongs of government are perpetrated by a Hitler-or even a Nixon-it is hard for decent men to see the roots of those wrongs in themselves...
...He gave each interviewer the most ringing assurances of the reliability of his source...
...Eagleton, incredulous, began to question Jack about why he could not retract, and Jack responded with reasons why he still thought there were unanswered questions raised by information he had obtained from sources...
...George agreed to go to Missouri to see what he could come up with...
...It means a lot...
...Believe me,” he said, “I was tempted not to...
...Jack said he thought it was still worth trying to confirm the story...
...True has never misled me before,” Jack said...
...She agreed to come...
...I put the NBC man off with a promise that Jack would return his call...
...This city being the giant rumor mill that it is, it is entirely possible that our sources were not the same...
...And I felt that the imDact of it would be the same, anyway...
...Louis, so I called the young girl back to find out where her mother, who was not home, might be reached...
...Most people doubted it...
...So eager was Hamilton to convince me that the 1962 case was actually speeding and not a reduced charge stemming from a drunk-driving arrest, that he dug out the ticket itself from the county records and read the details to me over the phone...
...Louis...
...I finally got through to all the other people I had planned to call and some others as well...
...I had met Davis only once, during lunch with Jack in the Montpelier Room, a swanky French restaurant in the Madison Hotel in downtown Washington...
...Jack didn’t want to back off when he thought the story might be vindicated at any moment...
...I’ve been thinking about it,” I said, trying to be as tactful as possible...
...I’ve got to go out and I’m going straight home later, so why don’t you try to reach this prosecutor and call me at home tonight about it...
...I’m afraid this won’t keep for the column, but we might be able to use something on radio...
...For part, we believe Senator Eagleton was right on the money when he objected to the distinction and observed that it hardly seemed equitable to him...
...The Washington Post that morning reported that one day before Jack went on the air with his report, it had gotten a strikingly similar tip...
...I could recall no case where he hadn’t filled me in completely on a story we were doing together...
...Hey,” I said, “you can’t say you’ve ‘located’ the photostats, can I don’t know,” Jack said...
...But I was doing the best I could...
...It was typical of the office...
...One was his arrangement with J. Edgar Hoover, as we once reported in Tidbits and Outrages, whereby he agreed to write only %ice things” about the FBI director in exchange for access to the Bureau’s file...
...Has he got proof...
...He talked Davis into it...
...I would have to wait until morning, when I could reach the man himself at his office in St...
...Cheshire went on to set forth in considerable detail her own efforts to check out the drunk-driving report, which undoubtedly had come from True Davis-someone she would know well from covering the city social scene...
...Someone’s going to get this story, so I’m inclined to move ahead with something so we don’t lose it...
...And so it went, for the better part of an hour...
...I suppressed a gasp when I saw what he had written in its place...
...A large portion of the editorial page was taken up with a piece by Maxine Cheshire, the Post’s redoubtable society columnist, whose reputation for accuracy was roughly equal to Drew Pearson’s...
...Jack has to give an answer...
...I called Eagleton’s office and was told the Senator could be reached at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles...
...I pressed her, and reluctantly she told me he now lived with another woman in St...
...The next morning, he went on the “Today” show and repeated the retraction in a 30-minute, meaculpa interview with Frank McGee...
...Anderson proceeded...
...Some of my sources in the Senate have told me the same thing...
...Nevertheless, he acknowledged that he had undergone electricshock treatment on two of the occasions when he had been hospitalized...
...Then the allegation became a sympathy factor and actually helped him generate support...
...I want you to know that I appreciate your giving it...
...I had to agree...
...Taking a Pasting from the Post Meanwhile, Eagle ton was counterattacking hard...
...You said you’d located the documents when you hadn’t located them...
...Gene Hamilton, the present prosecutor in Calloway County, told me that other reporters had asked about the drunk-driving reports...
...But it occurred to me that Jack might yet redeem himself with an apology to Eagleton on the show...
...The man who answered said over the noise and laughter that he had no way of paging anyone, but if I could tell him what the woman looked like, he would try to find her...
...His information turned out to be absolutely accurate, and it made an excellent story...
...The headlines the next morning were very large...
...There could be no doubt that it was a devastating development for the Democratic ticket...
...he snapped...
...The correction Jack phoned to Mutual might have been enough to soften the impact of the story if he had made it before the taping...
...they have given me specific incidents which I would like to go over with you...
...She told me her mother was wearing black slacks, white sandals, a white and black longsleeved cotton blouse...
...It took the tack that the report was based upon limited evidence and was intended for only limited use...
...End of incident...
...I told him what I knew...
...Clare and I were shaking our heads in relief and elation...
...I don’t think he’s actually located them...
...Soon after I finished talking to Hamilton, a newsman with a Washington television station called to ask me if we had heard the drunk-driving rumors...
...But at the end of the day, no proof had been uncovered...
...A roiling squabble over substance, with no hard feelings...
...Traced...
...That would have been the easiest thing to do...
...said Les...
...But he is also capable of making some serious errors...
...It emphasized that Jack’s source had never verified the authenticity of the citations...
...I can’t-I cannot in good conscience do that...
...Both Jack and Les, however, were elated about one development...
...A humble apology and a gracious acceptance...
...I admired Jack for taking his medicine publicly...
...It quoted Jack’s remarks on the interview on Channel 5 the night before, which the rest of the press had missed...
...After an extraordinary streak of major stones, Jack didn’t want the humiliation of announcing he had blundered when events might still bail him out...
...George Clifford thought it might be a good idea to duck the appearance, but Jack was unwilling...
...said Jack...
...This article is adapted from his book, Inside Story, to be published in August by Doubleday...
...Of course Jack, having sworn by Davis’ veracity, was in no shape to start calling him a liar...
...Everyone I spoke to seemed to remember one case, in 1962, when Eagleton had been arrested for speeding in a radar zone and had paid a fine...
...The press, he said, would understand that...
...It seemed the word was out all over town that Jack had the goods on Eagleton’s drunk-driving record...
...After dinner, I got on the phone again but made little progress...
...I asked...
...We can talk about it when you come in...
...Now I violated my own rule, and I want you and the nation to know that I violated it.’’ Jack went on with some explanatory remarks about how he had gotten the story, but he concluded by saying, “I went ahead with a story that I should not have gone ahead with, and that was unfair to you, and you have my apology...
...It began as Mike Kiernan had indicated it would, telling how re p o rt e r s w ere “streaming in to Missouri” to check out “rumors” of Eagleton’s being nabbed for drunk driving...
...Brit Hume’s story explores the reasons behind another of Anderson’s mistakes...
...I want to be able to write an item that will have Jack sitting here in Washington giving the inside dope on what all these other reporters out in Missouri are trying to get...
...One of the last interviews Jack held that day was with Channel 5, the local Metromedia station where he taped his television commentaries...
...It sounded great...
...A widower, he entertained lavishly and often at his huge home in Washington’s embassy district...
...But there was nothing relaxed about him that Saturday morning...
...I It could hardly have been worse...
...He had to go along...
...But he says if you reach the man who was the prosecutor in the county just north of Jefferson City in 1968, he will know all about it...
...It was about noon by now, and the first edition of The Washington Star was on the streets...
...That way, you’d be out of this thing clean...
...Les and I were just talking about that...
...It seemed that Jack had had an upside-down reaction to his own success...
...Moments later, an NBC radio reporter called...
...As an example, he said, The Washington Post quoted an unidentified former Missouri official as saying, ‘that a highway patrolman approached him at a 1968 political rally with a sheaf of traffic citations allegedly issued to Eagleton.’” That, of course, was a quote from the Post story mentioned earlier, which had gone on to say that no substantiation had been found for the report...
...If this faith should ever turn out to be unwarranted, I will issue a full retraction and apology...
...I thought the statement was not likely to get Jack off the hook, but I hoped that it would...
...The reason he didn’t give me the state trooper’s name is that he didn’t know him...
...I thought it was probably enough to extricate Jack from this worsening jam...
...The point, to the extent that one was discernible, seemed to be that Mr...
...He has since told me he was a little irritated by what seemed to him a half-hearted effort...
...And Eagleton, whatever he said, did not lose his place on the Democratic ticket because of Jack’s unsubstantiated charge...
...Opal, as I knew she would, agreed...
...Jack would stay ahead of reaction, apologizing before he was forced to...
...Well,” he said softly, “your advice was right all along and I wish I had taken it...
...But Jack had drawn a line through that with a black felt-tipped pen...
...My impulse was to cross-examine him, but I knew that would never do...
...Invoking conscience as justification for clinging to this discredited story was outrageous...
...True can’t remember exactly how many photostats he received,” Jack said, “but he had a stack of them and the figure 11 sticks in his mind...
...And it occurred to me that the best thing to do might be to apologize to Eagleton...
...Then I turned to the editorial page...
...No it wasn’t, Jack,” I said...
...The Washington Post,” the story said, “received a report from a former Missouri official that a highway patrolman approached him at a 1968 political rally with a sheaf of traffic citations allegedly issued to Eagleton...
...He had told her that morning that he planned to really “go after’’ Eagleton...
...The morning’s radio scripts were lying on the desk...
...He refused to ever apologize, even if he was wrong...
...The statement said, in closing, “In retrospect, I believe I broadcast the story prematurely and should have waited until I could authenticate the traffic citations personally...
...Well,” I said...
...It ended in an apology...
...Then I managed to make things worse by seeming incredulous when he told me he had all along possessed evidence besides the say-so of True Davis that the Eagleton story was true...
...But if they drop it, there might be an additional story there...
...Outside Eagleton’s office, Jack walked up to a battery of microphones and television cameras to announce that he was giving a “full retraction” of his story...
...True never showed the photostats to any member of his staff...
...But Les, who wasn’t aware that I had tried hard and without success to confirm the story, thought it was likely to pan out at any time...
...There turned out to be two counties side by side just north of Jefferson City, which doubled the number of calls I had to make...
...Jack and Eagleton were shown together in the studio after the show in a front-page picture in The Washington Post...
...It was Opal...
...When he called back later, he seemed to have less than he had before...
...Jack wanted to get some confidential information from Davis for a story we were working on...
...The Eagleton item was on the top of the stack...
...Is he going to make them public...
...I didn’t know what to say...
...Well,” said Jack, “I think you’re right...
...Whereat-or shortly after-Mr...
...I thought it was too long, too full of explanations and defenses...
...Jack sounded as if he was unsure I was giving it my best...
...Then Joe and Les arrived...
...The story was based on the recollections of a competent source, who personally saw photostats of the traffic citations...
...About 30 minutes later, it was done...
...And he accepted it graciously and praised Jack for his ‘moral character.’ ” “That’s great,” I said...
...His hands shook, not much, but noticeably...
...I don’t think that’s the word you want...
...Nevertheless, I have faith in my sources and stand by the story...
...And now Jack’s agreed to go on ‘Face the Nation’ with Eagleton tomorrow...
...The story will be that reporters are swarming all over Missouri checking out these rumors of drunk driving, but all they have found is this speeding arrest...
...Jack felt that Davis would inspire confidence and the result would be a story tending to support him...
...E. I. Hockaday, the State Police Superintendent, said the files of his department revealed no drunkdriving arrests of Thomas Eagleton...
...For example, I had received a call from Paul Duke of NBC News, who said he was appalled that Jack had gone with the Eagleton story without the documents in hand...
...But on Tuesday, The Washington Post criticized Jack as he had never been criticized before...
...Late in the afternoon, Mike Kiernan came into my office...
...Thomas Eagleton...
...In a situation like this, the truth has a way of coming out...
...The story we had was technically true...
...The meeting broke up with Jack again expressing his gratitude to everyone for coming...
...I personally felt that an outright apology as succinct and complete as possible would have been preferable, but I doubted I could sell it to Jack...
...By way of added justification for what he had done, he said The Washington Post, in a dispatch in last Friday’s editions, had quoted an unidentified former Missouri official as saying that a highway patrolman had approached him at a 1968 political rally with a sheaf of traffic citations allegedly issued to Senator Eagleton...
...Jack listened to everyone, but I could tell he was fmding Les persuasive...
...Mike was a young reporter who had recently joined the staff...
...And the show began much as the radio report had indicated...
...But I wish you hadn’t brought the whole thing up all over again...
...Are you worried about this...
...Everyone, Jack included, seemed to agree that an apology was in order...
...I called the hotel and left a message for the press secretary...
...Davis said he had “very reluctantly come to s +0 r n IT .C0 Thomas Eagleton the conclusion” that he was the source...
...He said he had never heard of any such thing...
...I sensed that he was in for some severe criticism for this story...
...He told me that all he and other reporters digging into Eagleton’s past had found was a 1962 speeding arrest...
...God, it’s a hell of a story,” I said...
...Anderson apparently did not think it necessary to add that the Post went on to say, in the same dispatch, that ‘repeated checks with authorities in Missouri did not substantiate the report.’ ” Whew...
...This one is about Jack Anderson, a man whom both we and the author, Brit Hume, believe is one of the truly outstanding reporters in America...
...But he had raised it and he was giving Eagleton a lengthy explanation of why he couldn’t “retract the story completely...
...That was never mentioned...
...A Pretty Good Source’ When I got to the office the next morning, Jack and Les Whitten, his senior assistant, had not yet returned from taping the radio show at the Mutual Studios farther downtown...
...The Post’s story mentioned the retraction disagreement but placed more emphasis on the apology...
...Soft Facts and Hard Truth The New York Times story, carried on page one, was as unfavorable as Jack had feared...
...Listen,” he said, “I just heard Jack’s report that he has located the photostats on Eagleton’s drunkdriving arrests...
...Why do you have to make any statement at all,’’ he said...
...Yet Jack was indignant that I had questioned him about it...
...Opal came with George Clifford, a veteran Washington newspaperman who had helped Jack with books and was a close friend...
...Louis...
...At the time of the supposed arrests, Eagleton was attorney general, then lieutenant governor, of the state...
...The reaction among Jack’s colleagues, at least those I spoke to, was also overwhelmingly negative...
...But I think I did the right thing...
...In the years I had known him, I had never seen him as tense...
...I then called Joe Spear and Les and urged them to come over so the whole staff could discuss the matter...
...But would the public place a man with a history of mental illness a heartbeat from the presidency...
...Although he had been a political opponent of Eagleton’s, he was now supporting him and Davis’ son was working for Eagleton...
...The public wouldn’t be interested in such details, I said...
...And she had achieved the same resultsnothing...
...I’ve always told my reporters, Senator, that a fact doesn’t become a fact for our column until we can prove it...
...He agonized over what to do with them, whether to use them in the campaign or not and finally decided to tear them up...
...About three o’clock that afternoon, Jack crossed the hall into my office...
...Sunday’s exchange on the television program did nothing to alter our opinion that the Anderson performance has been a reckless and wholly regrettable excursion into the worst kind of ‘journalism...
...He lost it because of his own misjudgment of the mental-illness issue and the insistence of the Democratic party hierarchy that someone without such a history take his place...
...The Anderson charges, in short, are a classic example of precisely the sort of reporting practices that have brought the news business under increasing attack...
...The article was headed: “Anderson on Eagleton: A Charge That Didn’t Stand Up...
...I called the night club again...
...It went on to explain how Jack had apologized and Eagleton had accepted and even praised Jack...
...I wish I could retract completely the story and say there’s nothing to it...
...Just after I got off the phone, I heard Jack and Les come in the front door of the office...
...I thought everything was fine when I read the Post’s story on Eagleton...
...But in the end, he had faced the facts and taken his lumpspublicly...
...He seemed glad to get what little I had...
...I really would prefer to retract everything right here, but I cannot retract a story that still hasn’t Answers to the June Political Puzzle: been pursued to a final end...
...He looked drawn and the muscles in the back of his jaw were working visibly as he sat listening to my entreaties, his mouth a tight line...
...But so far, I said, I had turned up nothing to substantiate the drunk-driving report...
...She was worried about Jack’s going on “Face the Nation” the next day with Eagleton...
...It ran about a page and a half, doublespaced...
...My conscience won’t allow me to...
...When a guy like True Davis says he saw those photostats, there’s obviously something to it...
...The Star’s out with a story saying Jack’s backing off...
...She had spoken to virtually the same officials and the same state troopers...
...The other papers are doing it, but we’re the only ones who are catching hell for it...
...Eagleton’s statement to a roomful of stunned reporters contained assurances that he was fully recovered, that his problem had been “nervous exhaustion” and that he had learned to “pace” himself so that he would not have the problem again...
...Two reporters for the Knight Newspapers, Robert Boyd and Clark Hoyt, had established that Brit Hume is a former associate of Jack Anderson...
...Since then I hadn’t seen Davis, except in the society pages of the newspapers...
...The next day, Davis came through...
...We also discussed the story with other responsible sources who had been told of Eagleton’s traffic violations...
...I never heard from him...
...I’ll go and phone in a correction...
...If we can’t quote competent sources, we’ll go out of business...
...I was out with a correction of that within ten minues,” he said...
...What I hoped, of course, was that the apology part of the show would overshadow all the other discussion...
...The worst thing was that I wasn’t sure I believed him...
...Don’t you want to say you’ve ‘traced’ them or ‘traced their existen ce...
...True Davis had been a reliable source and Jack told me he gave this information most reluctantly...
...I walked out to the reception room...
...She had jet black hair with gray streaks...
...The entire press corps has been on the phone wanting to know if it’s true...
...Played False by True Soon, they began arriving...
...They all had heard of the speeding charge, even state troopers who worked in other parts of the state...
...One of the reasons I was so eager for Jack to back down was that I suspected the rest of the press, which had also been hearing reports of drunk driving by Eagleton, was beginning to doubt that those reports were true...
...But the next thing we knew, the subject had been raised again and Jack was talking...
...But it ended with an apology to Senator Eagleton for not waiting until the story was fully verified before using it...
...I stopped in Jack’s office the next day before going to my own...
...Jack, though, had a different feeling about the story “I’m inclined to go ahead with something about this on radio,” he said...
...the citations,” Jack said...
...And Monday morning’s papers seemed to indicate that it might...
...He isn’t sure what county is the one, but he said there is a prominent Democrat who owns the largest funeral home in Fulton who would probably know some thing about this...
...I told him that was all I had found...
...Jack was visibly touched at seeing his staff rally around at a time of crisis...
...But this story just didn’t feel like one that was likely to pan out...
...It was not a good example for Jack to cite...
...Far from being America’s number one investigative reporter, Jack would appear a dimwit with no conscience and no recognition of the distinction between a soft fact and a hard one...
...It was the lead item on the hourly network radio news broadcasts...
...Anderson refusing to retract if not the allegations which, by his own account, it had been irresponsible to broadcast...
...In addition, The St...
...Jack Anderson would have apologized...
...No, that wouldn’t work...
...That morning, Jack went up to Senator Eagleton’s office to play out the last inevitable scene in this dreary drama...
...I’m being criticized for talking to only one source,” Jack said...
...He’s learned about them from a pretty good source...
...Well,” said Jack, “I would like to exhaust these...
...The logic in all this really devours itself,” the editorial continued...
...Her chronicle was almost an exact copy of the steps I had taken in trying to verify Davis’ information...
...It would just make him mad...
...Mike had gone on to say that the reporters had found nothing but one speeding violation...
...Why don’t you go after it...
...Jack raised the questions he had mentioned on “Face the Nation,” and Eagleton gave his answers-all of them denials, of course...
...I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before...
Vol. 6 • July 1974 • No. 5
