"Nothing Halts Him"

"When Eugene Gleason, World-Telegram reporter, goes to work on an assignment which calls for exhaustive digging, nothing halts him," glowed the New York World-Telegram and Sun last June. "Time is of no consequence: he will work 24 hours without thought of rest. Weather never daunts him . . . No one awes him." The paper, about to start a new series by Reporter Gleason, listed some of his exploits: he had discovered the cause of a fatal 1956 explosion on a Brooklyn pier (improperly stored explosives); he had uncovered skulduggery in Manhattan's slum-clearance program; he had broken a story about the New York Transit Authority's having illicitly taped meetings of the Motormen's Benevolent Association. Gene Gleason, 32, was indeed in the mold of the crusading reporter --until last week, when he suddenly found himself a confessed liar and out of a job.

The Shame. Gleason's troubles began when he appeared as a participant on a television panel show, David Susskind's Open End, with his World-Telegram partner Fred J. Cook. Teamed with Gleason on numerous expose stories, Cook, 49, a World-Telegram veteran of 15 years and a sometime author (The Unfinished Story of Alger Hiss), did most of the writing. Husky, broad-shouldered Gene Gleason did most of the reportorial digging. They worked together on the 1956 slum-clearance expose, collaborated again this year on an extracurricular writing assignment for the Nation. Titled "The Shame of New York," it was a 62-page rehash of previous Cook-Gleason investigations that added little new to the encyclopedia of New York's seamy side. The Nation piece earned Cook and Gleason an invitation to Open End.

Midway in the television show, Moderator Susskind turned to Fred Cook with a question that he had been primed by a Nation pressagent to ask: "Did you in your research [on the 1956 slum-clearance series] ever encounter a lack of cooperation, or bribes?" Yes indeed, said Cook. Thereupon he proceeded to tell how, during the investigations, a "high city official" had offered Gleason $75 to $100 a week for laying off. "We can put your wives on the payroll," the city official supposedly said to Gleason, "and you won't have to do anything for it, just stop looking." Moderator Susskind turned to Gene Gleason: "Can I ask you if the city officer who made the offer is still functioning?" Replied Gleason: "He is still a part of the city administration."

The Answers. Within hours of the Open End show, as Cook and Gleason must have anticipated, New York District Attorney Frank S. Hogan began an investigation into the Cook-Gleason bribery charges. Summoned, with Cook, to Hogan's office, Gene Gleason went in smiling confidently, emerged shaken and white-faced. Excerpts from his testimony:

Q. Can you give me a direct answer? Did this high public official offer a bribe to you. yes or no?

A. I would have to say no.

Q. Then you lied twice: once in telling it to Fred Cook, and having it repeated on last night's program?

A. Well, because I was exuberant and was carried away.

No sooner had Gleason's confession been made public than the World-Telegram fired him. As for Colleague Cook, he had declared on the television show that he had reported the bribery attempt to his World-Telegram superiors. Later, he toned down that flat statement, merely claimed that he had mentioned the matter to City Editor Norton Mockridge "in the course of a long lunch" several weeks after the bribe was allegedly offered. But Mockridge denied ever having heard of the sorry business--and at that point Rewriteman Fred Cook followed Legman Gene Gleason right off the World-Telegram payroll.

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