The Calculated Leak

Into the ornate Indian Treaty Room of the Executive Office Building last week crowded 239 reporters for President Eisenhower's 15th press conference. After a few pleasantries, Ike said with a flicker of a smile: "I could start off, I think, by confirming something that is certainly by no means news any more." Then he announced the appointment of California's Governor Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the U.S. (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Ike was dead right that it was no longer news. The reason it wasn't touched off one of the most heated battles newsmen have yet had with the Administration.

From the day Chief Justice Fred Vinson died, four weeks ago, newsmen have been trying to find out who Vinson's successor would be. Everything pointed to Warren, but no reporter could pin down the story. Fortnight ago, when Attorney General Herbert Brownell flew to California to see Warren, the San Francisco Examiner's alert Political Editor Clint Mosher said flatly that Warren would be named to the court within 24 hours. Brownell himself threw cold water on the prediction. The afternoon he returned to Washington and saw Ike, he told reporters: "I have made no recommendation. I have no announcement to make. No statement." But back in his office, Brownell changed his tune--for a special audience.

Responsible Source. Brownell, who wanted the appointment of Warren to get a favorable press reception, apparently thought he could accomplish that by leaking the story to five of his closest friends in the Washington press. He asked them to his home barely five hours after he had thrown other newsmen off his trail. The five: the New York Times's Arthur Krock, Scripps-Howard's Charles Lucey, Kansas City Star's Duke Shoop, Knight Newspapers' Paul Leach, and the New York Herald Tribune's new Washington bureau chief, Roscoe Drummond. "Gentlemen," said Brownell as he walked into his living room, "you have been good to me in the past. Now I would like to do something for you." Then he spilled the Warren appointment, strictly "not for attribution." Next day, papers represented at the secret meeting ran Page One stories saying that Warren would be named Chief Justice of the U.S. before the court convened.

The stories caught other Washington reporters flatfooted. Columnist Marquis Childs appeared in print the same day with: "When the Supreme Court convenes for the fall term, it will be without a Chief Justice." In Washington, where secret meetings with newsmen seldom stay secret long, every reporter soon knew that Brownell had leaked the story. Next day, after Ike had confirmed the news at his press conference, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's veteran Raymond Brandt, longtime specialist in Supreme Court affairs, got to his feet. "Pete" Brandt had been refused an interview with Brownell a few days earlier. Pointing his pencil menacingly at Ike, Brandt asked: "Is it going to be the policy of this Administration to leak such important news to friendly newspapers?"

None of Their Business. The President at first was taken off guard by Brandt's prosecuting-attorney manner, especially since right after Ike took office he had himself decreed an ironclad "no leak" rule for his staff. But now he had changed his mind. He had trusted subordinates, said the President to the newsmen at the press conference, who might occasionally leak stories when they thought they should. Snapped Brandt: "We would like to understand the ground rules because we are under a handicap if the others get a stroke a hole." The President replied that he would try to be fair with the press, and that if the reporters had any complaints, they should be submitted to Presidential Press Secretary Jim Hagerty. But that was not good enough for Francis M. Stephenson, correspondent of the New York Daily News, which had been soundly scooped by its Manhattan competitors, the Times and Herald Tribune, on the Warren story. "Mr. President," said Stephenson bitterly, "I would appreciate it if you would include us in [on any leaks]."

Next day at the White House, Press Secretary Hagerty faced an angry crowd of reporters. Asked one newsman: Did Hagerty or the President know in advance that Brownell planned to leak the story? "No," answered Hagerty hotly. "It's none of your business, but the answer is no." Few Washington newsmen were willing to concede that it was none of their business, although some dismissed the whole incident as simply a lucky break for the favored five reporters. Nevertheless, the majority of newsmen, who have not been happy lately with their relations with the Administration, were mad, and their bitter complaints showed how far Ike's relations with the press have deteriorated. The new permissible-leak policy would hardly help matters, if the Warren case was a sample. Any more playing of favorites would probably turn the hostility of many reporters into open warfare.

The 16-paper Hearst chain, not invited to Brownell's secret meeting, this week thundered against the "stupid leak." Said Hearst papers: "This is bad business any way you look at it. President Eisenhower should realize that, and if he doesn't, it should be explained to him with sufficient emphasis so as to induce him to put his foot down on any further such leaks...It was bad judgment. It was bad taste. And, from the practical aspect, it was putrid politics. [What Brownell did] reveals the imperceptive type of outlook that might permit a prosecuting attorney, say, to invite four of the jurors to lunch during an important trial, and think nothing of it."

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