by Gay Talese
You’re leaving California two days after the primary to fly cross-country to your next assignment in Boston. In early morning, from the L.A. airport, you phone the national editor to tell him you have a California story you want to write, if it’s OK with him and the L.A. bureau. He says fine. You write the story on the plane and as soon as you land in Boston, you phone the L.A. bureau to check a couple details; the aide on duty there says nothing to indicate any conflict in plans, so you dictate the story from the Boston airport to New York. When you reach your hotel an hour later, you call in to the national desk to see if there are any problems, and you are told your story is being held out because L.A. has decided to file a Q-header [news-analysis piece] and there isn’t room for both. You protest but are overruled. Inexplicably, the next day’s paper contains neither the Q-header nor your story. Your story finally runs two days later and the Q-header never shows up.…
David Broder was one of many Washington reporters who had become disenchanted with Claude Sitton, expecting him to stand up to the bullpen and the other senior editors as Abe Rosenthal was doing, demonstrating the stubborn partisanship that had enabled the New York staff to make its strong showing. But Sitton seemed to have neither Rosenthal’s chutzpa nor his editorial leverage. As the national-news editor, Sitton presided over a dozen regional bureaus around the nation as well as the national copydesk in New York that edited both the regional stories and those filed from Tom Wicker’s bureau in Washington. When Wicker’s men became angered by the editing or cutting of the copyreaders, or by the imputations from Salisbury or Daniel that a certain Washington story had been inadequately covered, they usually channeled their explanations or objections through Claude Sitton, but they did not often feel that he was sufficiently sympathetic; or if he was sympathetic, he seemed powerless to avert the continued second-guessing that emanated from Daniel’s office, or from the desk of Harrison Salisbury, or from the bullpen. In the old days when the Washington bureau had such ranking figures as Arthur Krock or Reston to do its bidding, it had been accustomed to getting quick results, and usually favorable results; but now in 1966 it felt mainly frustrated, and it believed that Sitton was partly to blame, and Washington reporters sometimes wondered aloud over what had become of the raw nerve and toughness that had once characterized Sitton’s stand against Bull Connor and the Klan.
Sitton was aware of his image in Washington and of the Broder memo, and he considered both to be unjustified. Sitton was, after all, answerable to Salisbury and Daniel, and if they were displeased with Wicker and the bureau, which they were, there was little that Sitton could do about it. One of the complaints against Sitton in Broder’s memo was that, as the national political correspondent, he, Broder, had been refused the necessary freedom to do a proper job: it was Broder’s contention that the national political correspondent should have the right to visit any state where he (and the national-news editor) thought there was a political story of national significance, and that the correspondent should be in charge of that political coverage unchallenged by the regional bureau chief in that state. But such free-floating reportage was rare on The Times, being limited to such men as Reston and Salisbury, and if it were permitted in the cases of less-established correspondents, it could be dispiriting to those bureaumen permanently located in those regions. Nevertheless when Broder quit and joined the Washington Post, it was not taken lightly in New York by Daniel, which was one reason why Daniel had asked for the memo. It was not often that a political correspondent on The New York Times quit to become a political correspondent on another newspaper. The fact that that other paper was the Washington Post, the major competitor of The Times in the capital, added to the significance of Broder’s resignation, and he quickly became a kind of martyr in Wicker’s bureau, a symbol of its frustrations with the New York office. Xerox copies of Broder’s memo were bootlegged out of the bureau and were distributed through the mail to Timesmen in Paris and other foreign posts. Sitton, not knowing how much importance Daniel had attached to the memo, was feeling increased pressure from many sides. He was being doubted in Washington, was feeling the daily squeeze of the New York desk, was being pressed from above and within himself to meet challenges that were rather unfocused. He wanted to be fair both to the regional correspondents and to the staff in Washington, but felt sometimes that there were prima donnas in Washington who were incurably spoiled by the privileges of the past. He tried to live with their criticism, however, to work long hours in New York and to react quickly to any incident or angle that might produce stories for the national desk. He allowed his bureau chief in the Southwest, Martin Waldron, to spend several weeks investigating the increased land holdings of President Lyndon Johnson, recording the fact that as President Johnson had purchased new land in Texas, the state highway improvements were never far behind. Sitton also kept an alert eye on the daily activities of the Civil Rights movement in the South, his old beat, and he put particular pressure on a reporter who had succeeded him, Roy Reed. After James Meredith had been shot in Mississippi, and a wire service photograph of his prone body on the road was received in New York, Sitton grabbed the photo and scanned its edges, asking, “Where’s Roy Reed?”
In the spring of 1966, a novelist and biographer named William Manchester had completed a 380,000-word book on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It would be called The Death of a President, and would be published by Harper & Row. The Kennedy family had first approached Theodore White and Walter Lord to write the book, but both were unavailable—the book was to be an “authorized version,” and the Kennedy family would have prepublication approval of the manuscript. Manchester, however, agreed to the Kennedy conditions, and no great difficulty had been anticipated by either side. The Kennedys regarded Manchester as a friend—he had in 1962 published a pro-Kennedy book, Portrait of a President, that The Times’ book reviewer had described as “adoring”—and after being approached in 1964 by Pierre Salinger, in behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, to consider writing a book about the assassination, Manchester felt that it was both an honor and an obligation to history to do so. This was to be the book on the Dallas tragedy. It would be done with the utmost in accuracy and good taste, it was hoped, and would negate attempts by other authors to produce books about the assassination that might be crassly commercial or inaccurate.
So William Manchester, with humility and dedication, accepted the assignment in 1964. During the next twenty-one months, sometimes working fifteen hours a day, he interviewed hundreds of people who had known President Kennedy, had worked for his administration in Washington, or had been involved in some way with the fatal day in Dallas. Manchester had also taped two interviews with Mrs. Kennedy, during which she had revealed intimate and poignant details about her last hours with her husband, and her first hours as his widow. Manchester had also received close cooperation from other family members and friends, had received access to personal letters and other memorabilia. The book was to be edited by Harper & Row’s executive vice-president, Evan Thomas, who had edited John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage. Harper & Row had published Robert Kennedy’s The Enemy Within, also edited by Evan Thomas, as well as other books by such Kennedy associates as Theodore Sorensen. Thus the publishing house, the editor, and the writer had seemed ideally suited for the production of a historical work that would be pleasing to the Kennedy family, and the first indication that this was not exactly the case was learned by Claude Sitton during the early winter of 1966. He had heard rumors from some of his sources in government, and had also read an item in a tabloid-sized monthly trade paper called Books, that Mrs. John F. Kennedy had requested the cancellation of the Manchester book.
As Books/October went to press, it was exclusively learned that Mrs. John F. Kennedy had requested Harper & Row to cancel publication of William Manchester’s official and candid account of her husband’s assassination, “The Death of a President.” Mrs. Kennedy has been quoted as having said, “If I decide the book should never be published—then Mr.
Manchester will be reimbursed for his time.” Reimbursement talks have begun.
Top-level meetings have been held at Harper’s to determine its response to Mrs. Kennedy’s request. Should Harper’s elect to ignore Mrs. Kennedy’s request—the moral issue of censorship, $3,000,000 in international book and magazine sales, and future relations with the Kennedy family are at stake …
The “candid” details that Mrs. Kennedy found objectionable dominated the news and gossip channels for the next two months. The details were leaked to the press each day from both Kennedy partisans and the forces rallied behind Manchester—each side sought the sympathy of public opinion in its attempt to ban the book as an invasion of privacy, or to publish it as a testimony to truth. The book, it was said, contained scenes of the Kennedys’ last night together in Texas; Mrs. Kennedy’s thoughts following her husband’s death; how she had wrestled with a nurse at Parkland Hospital, how she had placed her wedding ring on the late President’s finger. The book also was said to describe tensions on the flight from Dallas to Washington, the bitterness between the Kennedy and Johnson factions on board; how Johnson occupied Kennedy’s quarters, how Johnson’s aides, while shocked and saddened by the assassination, could barely conceal their pleasure over Johnson’s takeover; and how the loyal Kennedy aides, namely Kenneth P. O’Donnell, had literally blocked Johnson’s exit from the plane at the Washington airport, preventing the new President from descending with Jacqueline Kennedy and the other close Kennedy mourners.
These details, and many more, were leaked to the press by individuals who had read, or who claimed to have read, Xerox copies of the Manchester manuscript—individuals employed in the publishing house, or within the magazine that had purchased the book’s serialization, or the literary agency, the book club, the law firms, the friends of friends—these people collectively became the press’s “spokesmen,” and for weeks their revelations and opinions dominated the news. Prior to the Manchester controversy, there had been front-page articles in The Times and other metropolitan dailies about a dispute in Washington between Senator Robert Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover that Time magazine had described as the “Battle of the Bugs”: Hoover had charged that Kennedy, while he was the United States Attorney General, had known that the F.B.I. was using bugging devices to invade the privacy of private domains and conversations; Kennedy denied the charge. It seemed that a larger story might emerge, festered by the old hostilities of these two men. But then the Manchester—Jacqueline Kennedy affair suddenly mushroomed—and the Hoover-Kennedy story faded.
The New York Times’ first major story about Jacqueline Kennedy’s objections had been reported by one of Rosenthal’s men, responding to reports already published in other newspapers; it had occurred during a weekend, while Claude Sitton was off, but Sitton immediately asserted that this story was a national-desk assignment, and it was. To Rosenthal’s displeasure, Sitton took it over on the second day. Sitton now had an episode that could produce front-page stories for weeks—and it did.
Normally, the national-news editor did not have direct control over a single reporter in the newsroom; all the newsroom reporters were under Rosenthal. Sitton’s closest reportorial subject, geographically, was in the Philadelphia bureau. So if Claude Sitton wished to assign a newsroom reporter to an out-of-town assignment that was perhaps more quickly or easily reached from New York than from a regional bureau, or if Sitton wished to use a newsroom reporter on a New York story that was deemed to be of national political significance, as was the Kennedy-Manchester issue, then Sitton had to approach Rosenthal and ask for the loan of a reporter. Sitton would naturally desire the services of one of Rosenthal’s best men, such as Homer Bigart, but whether or not he got Bigart might depend on how Rosenthal felt toward Sitton on that particular day. If Rosenthal was feeling kindly, and if Homer Bigart himself liked the assignment and wanted to work on it, Sitton might get Bigart. But if Rosenthal was piqued, he might claim that all the top reporters were occupied on other stories and assign Sitton the reporter he was most anxious to get out of sight.
When the Kennedy-Manchester story broke, however, Sitton was very lucky. He happened to have working in the newsroom, on temporary duty, his Philadelphia bureauman, an individual named John Corry. Corry had been part of a team of Timesmen assigned to travel around the country, including Dallas, to check the findings of the Warren Commission’s Report. When Sitton took charge of the Manchester coverage, Corry was sitting quietly in the newsroom reviewing his Warren Commission notes—but there proved to be nothing very newsworthy in this venture, and so Corry was reassigned to the Manchester affair, a story that would influence Corry’s future career on The Times.
John Corry was a clean-cut, outwardly bland but pleasant man of average height and build, hazel eyes and light brown hair, neat but not fastidious. At thirty-four he was happily married, the father of two girls. Although he did not inspire confidence, he did not discourage it, and as seen by Sitton he was entirely reliable, solid, possessing keen powers of observation balanced by good judgment—Corry was not the sort who, wishing to call attention to himself, would overdramatize a story or distort it with clever or conspicuous phrases. But simmering within Corry, unknown to Sitton, was a deep dissatisfaction with the image that people like Sitton had of him. What Corry really wanted out of life, precisely, he was reluctant to admit, conceding that his ambition was possibly inconsistent with his character and probably beyond his reach. Corry wanted fame. Not great fame, just a touch, enough to lend a bit of flicker to his name, a few nods of recognition around New York—enough to justify the secret little outbursts of absurdity and wildness that he knew were within him, awaiting the slightest excuse to erupt. Usually, he suppressed the urge.
As a boy in Brooklyn, Corry had planned to become a minister. His father had been a bank clerk, rigid and predictable, an Irish Protestant antipathetic to most Irish Catholics, a man whose suit-and-tie to work each day were his mark of elevation in this lower-middle-class neighborhood. John Corry hated the place, the repressed existence within tight rows of apartment houses with fire escapes in front; he was happy to be off to Hope College in Michigan, run by the Dutch Reformed Church, and he lived in a boarding house with other students. One night after a house party, drunk and wearing only his Jockey shorts, Corry crawled down the steps into the bedroom of the landlady, through her room as she became hysterical, into the hall, out the front door, and into the cool night air. He spent the next three years at Hope College on probation.
In the Army, where he conveyed an impression of high discipline, he was trained for the Military Police. But one day, harassed by a young lieutenant, Corry became wildly insubordinate and was court-martialed. Later he received an honorable discharge. He returned to New York in 1956 and found a job as a copyboy in the Times’ Sports department, and soon he was promoted to agate-clerk, his concern being the tiny type of baseball batting averages and team standings. Within a few years he was made a copyreader, editing stories about the great outdoors—but he could barely stand it. He was transferred in 1961 to another long desk in the newsroom, the national desk, which was more interesting for him, although he really wanted to become a reporter, to get outside the office and see the city. On his own initiative he began writing stories for the daily Times and the Sunday Times’ Magazine that displayed an uncommon perception, and in 1966, ten years after joining The Times, he became a reporter. In October of that year, he was assigned to Philadelphia.
When Claude Sitton approached Corry with the Manchester assignment, he did not want it. There had been so many books about the Kennedys since the assassination, so much merchandising of the myth, that Corry did not want to be part of any more of it. Corry had greatly admired John Kennedy and had voted for him, but he also felt sympathy for William Manchester. During Corry’s visit to Dallas earlier in the year on the Warren Commission assignment, he had been cursed and threatened one evening by a mob, and he could imagine how difficult Manchester’s research in that city must have
been, and he could understand Manchester’s anxiety now that his book, his years of sweat and total commitment, was being threatened with sudden suppression. A writer rarely pleased the people he was writing about if he tried to write with honesty—Corry knew this already from personal experience. On two recent occasions he had sent Magazine articles in advance to the persons being profiled, and in both cases they had tried to change what he had written. One of the men, Algernon Black, had carried his case to an executive on The Times. He did not get very far, but it was nonetheless unpleasant for Corry. The other man, the novelist Ralph Ellison, thinking Corry’s article hinted at Uncle Tom-ism, suggested that this might be grounds for a law suit. Ellison did not sue; in fact, he later wrote Corry a complimentary note about the piece. But Corry vowed that he would never make that mistake again. And yet had he been faced with Manchester’s decision, with the stakes so high and opportunities so great, he honestly did not know how he might have reacted. Perhaps he also would have consented to write the authorized account of the most dramatic event of his lifetime. Every word he wrote for The Times, after all, was authorized.
But Corry’s instinct was to shy away from this assignment and let some other Times reporter take it. It was a fine opportunity to move with the Kennedy crowd, to bask in the limelight, to get some feel of fame, Corry admitted, but his ultrasensitive side urged him not to take it. Claude Sitton, however, seemed to exude such Gelb-like enthusiasm for the story, such confidence in Corry, that Corry found himself reacting. There was a great deal of interest in this story, Sitton said, hinting that someone high up, perhaps Daniel, was personally involved in the coverage—and if Daniel were fascinated by this story, Corry knew that the space would be almost unlimited. It was the kind of story that almost every editor, and particularly Daniel, would be intrigued by, for it combined the elements of history and tragedy with high fashion. Corry deliberated momentarily, and then he told Sitton, yes, he would be glad to take on the assignment.