The Sued Sue

The New York Post's smart, stocky Editor James A. Wechsler, 36, serves up Fair-Dealing, "see here now!" editorials along with a leavening mixture of sex, sin and revelation. By now, the Post's formula for revelation has become pat: a continuous series of wordy but provocative sketches of favorite Post whipping boys, e.g., Senator McCarthy, Walter Winchell, Westbrook Pegler. When U.S.A. Confidential began making headlines and the bestseller lists, Wechsler spotted ideal subjects for his next serial scorcher: the book's authors, the New York Mirror's editor, Jack Lait, and its nightclub columnist, Lee Mortimer, who are already defendants in twelve libel suits for their offhand reporting (TIME, May 19).

Wechsler set a task force to work, but Old Newshands Lait and Mortimer refused to see them. Instead, they wrote Wechsler that he would be accountable for any "unjust and damaging" statements. When Wechsler wrote back that one way to avoid inaccuracies was for Lait and Mortimer to give the Post an interview, Mortimer replied darkly: ". . . Your . . . letter . . . has been referred to our attorney for his attention." Last week, the oft-sued Lait and Mortimer became plaintiffs themselves: they began suits against the Post for $1,000,000 (half for each author). They had been libeled, said their suits, by Post Labor Columnist Murray Kempton (named a defendant along with Wechsler and three other executives), who had reviewed U.S.A. Confidential under the title "Ordure au Lait." By the title, complained Lait and Mortimer, they had been described as "foul excrement."

In an editorial last week, Wechsler denounced the suit as "an attempt to prevent publication" of the three-week-long series which the Post still says it will start next month.

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