TABLE TALK
Death of a public eye
DENIS BROGAN
Late in May in 1942, I was informe&by some British official in one of the military missions in Washington that I was to go and talk to a group of high officials under the general auspices of American Intelligence. My host was to be a Colonel X who was, I think, then head of G2, but I won't swear at this distance of time as to the exactitude of the code title. I went down in a taxi to one of the long series of shacks that then disgraced Washington (this was before the Pentagon was built). I told someone that I had come to see Colonel X at a specific time, was given a blank form to fill up and a round label to wear in my lapel and after looking for someone who could guide me to Colonel X, I asked Where his office was.
I was told, walked upstairs, entered. a totally unguarded office, and sat down at his desk. There were a number of extremely interesting maps on the wall and, although I don't remember this very clearly, there were some interesting documents on his desk. I got bored, and after half an hour descended, to find Colonel X, whom I had never seen before, surrounded by a group of Top Brass looking Anxiously for me. I was asked where I had been. I said, 'I was in your office'. 'But no one stopped you?' 'No, and I have had a very interesting half- hour.' Near-collapse of slim gentleman.
Next day, the British Embassy sent me back, but this time accompanied by "a British Intelligence officer in a rough equivalent of an armoured car. I then addressed the Brass and answered a eat many questions on North Africa. Why °!° was sent I have never had any clear idea, except that I had been in North Africa just before the outbreak of the war, and knew a good deal about the French political situation in North Africa in 1942.
Next day, I was given a very tony lunch at the Metropolitan Club by a very close friend of mine, then in the closest touch with the White House. During lunch I was called to the telephone, and a voice told me, 'This is Drew Pearson's office. We know you were talking to G yesterday abbut North Africa. We know who was there. What did you tell them?' I said I had nothing to say and, going back, said to, my host, 'I know you see the President every day. Could you tell him that Drew Pearson has an agent or informant in the very centre of the military intelligence organisation?'
This is the only time at which I came across Mr Pearson's organisation, although I knew and in a sense still know his associate, Jack Anderson, and met the late Mr Pear- son more than once. There has been in his obituaries a very marked note of de tnortuis nil nisi bonum, for he was not nearly as universally admired as one might have gathered from the obituaries in the British press. His methods of accumulating inform- ation were open to some ethical criticism. One of his greatest triumphs was exposing the financial activities of Senator Dodd of Connecticut.
Senator Dodd is, I suppose, one of the least useful members of the United States Senate and is certainly a good distance downward from the normal level of Connecticut Senators. His only claim to any kind of respect is that he is a supporter of rigorous legislation for the control of hand guns. Nevertheless, as Mr William Buckley of the National Review has pointed out, a great deal of the information which led to the exposure of Senator Dodd was provided by present or former employees who copied out or, if you like, stole con- fidential documents from the Senator's official files. Since I strongly dislike Senator Dodd, and, like many other people, think that the contrast between the mild slap on the wrist he got from the Senate and the severity displayed by the House of Repre- sentatives to Adam Clayton Powell, the most eminent Negro Congressman, was un- edifying, I was unwilling to be as censorious about Mr Pearson's methods as was Mr William Buckley.
But there is a point of ethics involved and perhaps Mr Drew Pearson's public services, which were often significant, were tainted to some degree by the notorious fact that he was open to 'information' from many discontented people, not all of whom were telling the truth, and some of whom were carrying on private feuds and possibly not quite inventing the information, but certainly colouring it badly. After all, one of the pieces of Joe McCarthy's behaviour which was most resented was the fact that he encouraged Federal officials to supply him with information stolen or removed from official files!
That Mr Pearson exposed a good many abuses is not to be doubted. So in one or two cases did the late and unlamented Westbrook Pegler. Yet no one ever described Mr Pegler in his lifetime or after in the laudatory terms applied to Mr Pear- son. And the fact that Mr Pearson was a Quaker did not totally abolish my doubts about him because I am one of that very small body of people who don't think that being a modern Quaker is a guarantee that the standards of George Fox and William Penn are being observed. (President Nixon, incidentally, is a Quaker.) The fact that Mr Jack Anderson is a devout Mormon is much more impressive in my slightly prejudiced view.
Nor is the fact, as Alastair Cooke has told us, that the late Mr Pearson was a conservative and very gentlemanly dresser, perhaps a little in the manner of Dean Acheson, itself conclusive. An, even more elegant dresser and even more cultivated man was the late John O'Donnell of the Chicago Tribune, a product of Harvard and not of Swarthmore. He was a man of great charm in private life and of very genuine cultivation. Nevertheless, I don't think his role on the Chicago Tribune was any great addition to the sum of human happiness in the United States or even to the political success of the American system of government.
But on the whole I am inclined to believe that irreverence, if you' like the unscrupulous irreverence of people like the late Drew Pearson, is a good thing. It is not a matter of what often appears as the rather ugly malice of Private Eye. It is due to people like the late Drew Pearson, like Jack Anderson, and to a number of other columnists who 'private dirt in public spirit throw', that there is not such a contrast in the United States between the public and the private image as there, is in Britain. Partly, of course, this is due not so much to the American law of libel as to the view taken by most American juries that people who get in the public eye have no right to a private life.
When one considers some State legisla- tures, and some State courts, one is rather glad that the New York Times won a famous case which ended blackmailing actions against newspapers which criticised public men and public issues with a candour quite unknown in this country. It would be possible to name a good many British statesmen, living and recently dead, whose reputation would suffer a great deal if they were treated with American candour. This does not necessarily improve the behaviour of some American statesmen. For example, there are one or two notoriously 'unethical' members of Congress in very powerful positions whose habits are commonly re- ferred to but who have not been chastened into reformation even by the most vigilant cepsores morum in the public prints.
Of course, the censors themselves may be mere blackmailers like the famous founder two generations ago of Town Topics, the great pioneer in this form of art. Con- fidential in its disgraceful life was far worse than Private Eye has ever been, and I was always pleased with the story (which I recorded in this journal some years ago) of the reaction of Humphrey Bogart to a black- mailing article which, it was broadly hipted, was to be followed up by others. 'Bogy' went into the office of Confidential and told the proprietor that he would beat him up very badly indeed if Bogart's name or the name of Lauren Baca (Mrs Bogart) ever appeared in Confidential again. It never did.
The United States probably needs Drew Pearson or his equivalent. It also needs people like Humphrey Bogart. We now have to put up with very inferior versions of both of these useful American tyne
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