Eavesdropping Made Easy

"I suppose some of this will leak out," growled jowly Congressman Charlie Halleek in the midst of a closed-door battle with other top Indiana Republicans last week. "It always does." What Halleck feared was that the press would get wind of a new, wide-open schism between right and left wings of Indiana's Republican Party. What he did not know was that for two hours of gory infighting in an Indianapolis hotel room, a live microphone on the table had faithfully broadcast almost every feuding word to newsmen clustered around a loudspeaker in a nearby press room.

During the supposedly secret conference, Charlie Halleck and Indiana's Senator Homer Capehart bellowed their defiance across the table at Indiana's Republican State Chairman Robert Matthews and Governor Harold W. Handley, who is hungrily eying the U.S. Senate seat that William E. Jenner will put up for grabs next year. Roared Senator Capehart: "We're split right down the middle. All you do is beat the brains out of the Eisenhower Administration. All you do is assure the election of a Democratic President in 1960." To State Chairman Matthews, who all but read Eisenhower Republican Halleck out of the party last month, the veteran (23 years) Congressman shouted: "I don't think two Republican Parties can beat one Democrat. We might as well face it. We're the minority party. I've heard talk I'm going to be purged. Well, a lot of people have tried that and I'm still here."

It was not only a rare stroke of luck for the electronic eavesdroppers, but, in Indiana, where hard-bitten politicians jealously funnel most news tips to favored reporters, it was also one of the few occasions when dailies and wire services were able to report a big political story unequivocally and simultaneously. Not until the long wrangle was nearly over did the feuding politicos discover that their fight was on the air. One of the first to hear of the leak was a secretary at G.O.P. headquarters, who trustingly telephoned the press room and asked Indianapolis Newsman Ed Ziegner to relay the news to Matthews. "I did, too," said Ziegner. "After the meeting was over."

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