Scoops On Target and Off

THOUGH the jury is still out on the ITT case, verdicts have already come in on many Jack Anderson scoops. The record is impressive, despite a few serious lapses.

It was Anderson, while still working under Drew Pearson, who in 1966 exposed the misuse of campaign funds by Senator Thomas Dodd; the Connecticut Democrat was then censured by the Senate and defeated by the voters. Anderson was the first to report that California Republican George Murphy remained on the Technicolor Inc. payroll while serving in the Senate; Murphy lost the next election. The columnist also dug up many of the facts in the case of the late Washington Fixer Nathan Voloshen and Martin Sweig, aide to then House Speaker John McCormack, who used McCormack's office for profitable influence peddling. Voloshen and Sweig were convicted of perjury. More recently Anderson branded Pennsylvania Congressman J. Irving Whalley a "backcountry Bobby Baker," accusing the seven-term Republican of taking kickbacks and padding his payroll. Whalley has announced that he will not seek reelection. Anderson does not confine his muckraking to Capitol Hill. Two weeks ago he implicated top Latin American officials in a heroin smuggling scheme. So far there has been no convincing rebuttal.

Perhaps the biggest story on which Anderson erred was Chappaquiddick. Among his mistakes was the assertion that both John and Edward Kennedy had often visited the island. In fact, J.F.K. had never been to Chappaquiddick, and the day of the fatal accident was the first time Edward Kennedy had visited it.

Actually, most Anderson boners have occurred in relatively minor stories--though that is little consolation to the victims. A year ago, predicting "a sex scandal that will rock Britain," he implicated two members of the royal family and hinted that photographic proof of hanky-panky existed. No such story has come out. He accused the Pentagon of trying to cover up Admiral Thomas Moorer's visit to Spain last year. In fact, the Pentagon had announced the trip two weeks in advance. With another shot from the hip, he implied that New York Senator James Buckley was seeking a seat on the Interior Committee in order to protect his family's limestone and oil holdings, some of which came under federal jurisdiction.

In his retraction, Anderson wrote:

"We have now had an opportunity to visit with the Conservative Senator, who has completely convinced us that he sought the Interior Committee assignment because of his interest in ecology, not his interest in profit."

Anderson also apologized in print for a column published last year in which he accused President Nixon of ignoring B'nai B'rith appeals for a strong U.S. stand against the persecution of Soviet Jews. The White House letter on which the charge was based, Anderson conceded, "did not represent the President's views."

The blunder that has haunted Anderson the most involved another marginal story. Shortly before Donald Rumsfeld left the Office of Economic Opportunity to become a Nixon adviser, Anderson obtained blueprints for a lavish renovation of the OEO chief's private office. Assured by his source that the work had been completed, Anderson ran a column accusing Rumsfeld of frittering away tax dollars while the poor languished. Actually, no alteration had been started. Admits Anderson: "I had the poverty czar living in luxury. It was a terrible error--the worst mistake I ever made."

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