Ssh!

Confidential, whose 3,674,423 circulation now makes it the top single-copy newsstand seller in the U.S., has been attracting libel suits along with circulation. Last week Publisher Robert Harrison's bimonthly dirt digest admitted making its first payment for libel: a $9,000 out-of-court settlement to Lyle Stuart, editor of Expose (circ. 20,000), a muckraking monthly tabloid.

In its January 1954 issue Confidential called Editor Stuart, among other things, an admitted extortioner, a hate peddler and a coddler of Communists. To keep the $9,000 in settlement of his $250,000 suit (and presumably to keep Confidential's vulnerability confidential). Stuart had to agree not to discuss the case or publicize it beyond printing the outcome in his paper. Confidential's lawyers can now turn their attention to the magazine's other libel suits filed by such better-known figures as Doris Duke, Errol Flynn and Robert Mitchum, and totaling at the latest count $9,500,000.

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