Reportage

George Dixon, fortyish, is a Canadian-born, curly-haired, chunky Washington correspondent for the New York Daily News whose gay, lemonish journalese is often the frosting to a cardboard cake. Any Dixon story is entertaining, but readers can never be quite sure what is true and what is plain flapdoodle. Last week Dixon ran a delightful story in the News:

". . . The Adams family of Massachusetts . . . owns a priceless draft of the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson in his own hand. Recently Archibald MacLeish wrote, asking if he could borrow it for display in the Library of Congress. . . . He got no reply. So he wrote again, saying he would be glad to send an armed guard for it. Still no reply. MacLeish wrote a third time, saying he would not only send an armed squadron but would insure the document for $100,000. This likewise went unanswered. MacLeish gave up. . . . [Then] he received a penny postcard. It advised him that the article he wished to borrow would be along in a couple of days. The next day it arrived--done up in ordinary brown paper. . . . And it was insured for $25."

George Dixon, for the umpteenth time, was telling some 4,000,000 readers a typical tarradiddle. Actually the Adams papers are owned and managed by the Adams Manuscript Trust. MacLeish negotiated for the loan of the Declaration through the Massachusetts Historical Society. It is in John Adams' hand, not Jefferson's. It was insured for $5,000, taken to Washington by Julian Boyd, Princeton University librarian, accompanied by a Library of Congress guard. There was no correspondence between MacLeish and the Adams family. There was no penny postcard, no $25 insurance--in fact, until Dixon made one, no story.

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