The Snowball

by Alice Schroeder

  45. Interview with Rhoda and Bernie Sarnat. Buffett recalls the story as well.

  46. At an anniversary party for the Thompsons a few weeks earlier, the Buffetts’ cook served what came to be known throughout Omaha as the “poisoned chicken.” Except for a rabbi and his wife, who ate tuna, everyone present came down with salmonella. By then, Buffett was so well-known that the episode made the Omaha World-Herald. Interview with Rabbi Meyer Kripke.

  47. Interview with Ron Parks.

  48. As Buffett tells this story he lost the game, but according to Roxanne and Jon Brandt, he was determined not to lose to a six-year-old—and won.

  49. According to a friend, Susie began to verbalize this attitude around the late 1960s. She later said these words, as quoted, to Charlie Rose in an interview.

  50. Interview with Milton Brown. Several sources confirm that Susie was frequently in contact with Brown during this period.

  51. Interviews with Racquel Newman, Tom Newman.

  52. His mortgage was $109,000 in 1973.

  Chapter 35

  1. “Warming Up for the Big Time: Can John Tunney Make It as a Heavyweight?” Charles T. Powers, West magazine (Los Angeles Times), December 12, 1971.

  2. A letter from Senator Ed Muskie to Buffett, September 23, 1971, said that Muskie was “especially intrigued by this concept,” which Hughes and Rosenfield had passed along to him. Later, the same notion, with the more memorable and attention-grabbing name “misery index,” played a role in President Jimmy Carter’s failure to win a second term.

  3. James Doyle, “A Secret Meeting: Hughes Rejects Presidential Bid,” Washington Evening Star, July 15, 1971.

  4. John H. Averill, “Hughes Drops Out as Democratic Contender,” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1971.

  5. Without naming the interviewer, this incident is cited by James Risser in “‘Personal’ Religion of Senator Hughes,” Des Moines Sunday Register, July 11, 1971. Hughes appeared on Meet the Press on April 4, 1971.

  6. James Risser and George Anthan, “‘Personal’ Religion of Senator Hughes.” Hughes said he “believes in the ability of certain people to foretell the future.”

  7. The way Hughes told this story (with Dick Schneider) in his autobiography, The Man from Ida Grove (Lincoln, Va.: Chosen Books, 1979), differed slightly from the press account. Hughes freely discusses his reputation as a “mystic” and mentions Rosenfield’s backing. He does not mention Buffett but recalls the meeting as taking place in a California motel room instead of Washington, as reported. On the plane on the way home, he saw “a vision of a red button” that would launch “an awesome nuclear attack” and says he realized that, as President, he could not press the button. After asking God’s guidance, he decided not to run for President.

  8. John H. Averill, “Hughes Drops Out as Democratic Contender.” Most likely, the media would have unearthed the story at some point anyway, and Hughes was saved from greater embarrassment later. Hughes’s advisers subsequently denied in the Los Angeles Times that disclosing his beliefs in spiritualism and his communication with his dead brother through a medium had influenced his decision not to run.

  9. Interview with Tom Murphy.

  10. This version of the story is an amalgamation of Murphy’s and Buffett’s versions. The stories are identical except for trivial differences in their recollection of the dialogue.

  11. The announcement of the sale of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the area’s AM and FM radio stations to Cap Cities for $80 million was on January 6, 1973. However, the closing of the deal was delayed until November 1974.

  12. “I should have done it,” Buffett says. “That was really dumb. We would have made a lot of money with that.”

  13. According to Boys Town (now renamed Girls and Boys Town), the home opened on December 12, 1917, with about six boys and grew to twenty-five within three weeks. The approximate date and number (“between twenty and thirty”) are cited in Omaha’s Own Magazine and Trade Review, December 1928.

  14. Howard Buffett “helped us greatly in securing our own post office for which we were deeply grateful, because he came to us to assist us when we were badly in need of a friend.” Patrick J. Norton letter to Warren Buffett, April 24, 1972. The post office was established in 1934 and the village became incorporated in 1936, according to the Irish Independent, August 25, 1971. The post office was a key element in the charm of Boys Town’s fund-raising appeals.

  15. The average contribution at the time of the Sun’s story was $1.62. Transcript, Mick Rood interview with Msgr. Nicholas Wegner.

  16. Ibid. Robert Dorr, “Hard-Core Delinquent Rarity at Boys Town,” Omaha World-Herald, April 16, 1972.

  17. Paul Williams, Investigative Reporting and Editing, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978. Williams was the editor during the Boys Town investigation.

  18. Michael Casey, new director of special projects brought in after the Sun story, described the atmosphere as a “minimum-security prison,” based on his experience working in prisons and mental hospitals, in “Midlands News” of the Omaha World-Herald, March 10, 1974. According to Casey’s account, he was forced to resign from Boys Town six months later and stated that reforms were window dressing. Father Hupp says Casey left because his job was done—but Casey was an outspoken ex-convict, which may have made him “too hot.”

  19. Paul N. Williams, “Boys Town, An Exposé Without Bad Guys,” Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 1975.

  20. The Sun had a “four-way” staff that reported stories that would appear in seven editions of the paper. These were the reporters working on the Boys Town story.

  21. According to Paul Williams, in Investigative Reporting and Editing, Boys Town got school-aid funds and state welfare and gasoline tax funds. While these were “relatively small change” in the context of the overall budget, about $200,000 a year, the discrepancy was real and pointed to other possible problems.

  22. Transcript, Mick Rood interview with Msgr. Nicholas Wegner. Wegner speaks of “this gal down there in the Lincoln welfare department [who] tried to make a big thing, a big blow out of this…” which, he thought, was personal rather than institutional. Nevertheless, he implied that Boys Town might move out of state if the regulators pestered it too much because “our bylaws say WE’RE NOT OBLIGED TO STAY HERE.”

  23. Paul Williams, Investigative Reporting and Editing.

  24. Interview with Mick Rood. According to several sources, the “Deep Throat” of Boys Town, a role that required courage in insular Omaha, was Dr. Claude Organ.

  25. Jeannie Lipsey Rosenblum described his appearance at that time in an interview.

  26. As a religiously affiliated organization, Boys Town was entitled to an exemption for the first two years and could have filed with the archdiocese of Omaha. But it had filed separately anyway.

  27. According to Paul Williams, the footwork in Philadelphia was done by Melinda Upp, a Washington reporter whom he previously had tried to hire. Finally, the call came: Are you sure you want this? she asked. The IRS charged a dollar a page and it was 94 pages long. The answer was, Hell, yes.

  28. Interview with Randy Brown.

  29. In his follow-up columns in the Sun.

  30. The $25 million is combined fund-raising and investment income.

  31. Interviews with Mick Rood, Warren Buffett.

  32. The Sun published on Thursdays and worked around its own production schedule while trying to cut off the opportunity for a preemptive response through the Omaha World-Herald.

  33. Paul Williams, Investigative Reporting and Editing, and Craig Tomkinson, “The Weekly Editor: Boys Town Finances Revealed,” Editor & Publisher, April 15, 1972.

  34. Transcript, Mick Rood interview with Msgr. Nicholas Wegner.

  35. The reporters interviewed thirteen of the seventeen board members. Two were too old or ill to be interviewed.

  36. Monsignor Schmitt, speaking at a press conference on May 22, 1972. Press conference transcript.

  37. Intervie
w with Randy Brown.

  38. Paul N. Williams, “Boys Town, An Exposé Without Bad Guys.”

  39. Michael D. LaMontia, director of the State Department of Public Institutions, which oversaw Boys Town, called the Sun’s criticisms those of a “vocal minority” that should be ignored in a letter to Wegner, May 25, 1972. The Sun, he said, speaks “from a very low profile and is really not heard by many people. The person being attacked can let it die a natural death….” He referred to the reporters as “scavengers” and “professional losers.” Possibly Mr. LaMontia was merely being empathetic, but his tone seemed a little more charged-up than that.

  40. Paul N. Williams, “Boys Town, An Exposé Without Bad Guys.”

  41. “Boys Town Bonanza,” Time, April 10, 1972; “Boys Town’s Worth Put at $209 Million,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1972; “Money Machine,” Newsweek, April 10, 1972; Tomkinson, “The Weekly Editor.”

  42. “Other Boys Homes Affected by Boys Town Story,” Omaha Sun, December 14, 1972.

  43. Undated two-page letter from Francis P. Schmitt to Boys Town supporters printed on Boys Town stationery; “Boys Town May Take Legal Steps to Initiate New Programs, Policies,” Omaha Sun, December 14, 1972; correspondence between Paul Williams and the “Irreverent Reverend” Lester Kinsolving of the National Newspaper Syndicate Inc. of America, a muckraking religious columnist widely syndicated through the San Francisco Chronicle. Schmitt was angry because, among other things, Boys Town’s marketing domicile had backfired: Kinsolving wrote a follow-up story in the Washington Evening Star, “Boys Town Money Machine” (November 4, 1972), and datelined it Boys Town, Nebraska. Schmitt (incorrectly) felt that he had no right to do so.

  44. Paul Critchlow, “Boys Town Money Isn’t Buying Happiness,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 20, 1973.

  45. The Reverend Monsignor Wegner, letter to a man who said he was an employee of the San Francisco Examiner and worked in the composing room, June 1, 1973. The man wrote Lester Kinsolving at the San Francisco Chronicle and asked that his name not be used in a story, probably because he was offering it to a competing paper. Kinsolving apparently forwarded this material to Buffett.

  46. Used with permission of the Omaha Press Club Foundation.

  47. Warren Buffett letter to Edward Morrow, April 21, 1972.

  48. Memo from Paul Williams to Buffett, October 13, 1972, including Buffett’s comments.

  49. Mick Rood note to personal files, January 19, 1973. Transcript, Mick Rood interview with Msgr. Nicholas Wegner.

  50. The award was to “The Sun Newspapers of Omaha, of The Sun Newspapers of Omaha: For uncovering the large financial resources of Boys Town, Nebraska, leading to reforms in this charitable organization’s solicitation and use of funds contributed by the public.” It was the first time a weekly paper won for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting (although according to Pulitzer Center staff, weeklies had won before in categories other than investigative reporting).

  51. However, Monsignor Wegner was described as “frail” and had had several recent surgeries. See Paul Critchlow, “Boys Town Money Isn’t Buying Happiness.”

  52. Among the consultants’ findings was that the Boys Town staff morale was now low, with many long-tenured employees having worked for years on church-mouse wages on the impression that Boys Town was barely getting by. In 1973, Boys Town actually raised more money than in 1972 (over $6 million), according to the Omaha World-Herald (March 21, 1973). The main result of the exposé and reforms was increased transparency and accountability over how the money was spent.

  53. George Jerome Goodman (writing as “Adam Smith”), Supermoney. New York: Random House, 1972. Goodman (known as Jerry) chose his pen name after Adam Smith, the father of market economics.

  54. John Brooks, “A Wealth of Notions,” Washington Post, October 22, 1972.

  Chapter 36

  1. Interview with Stan Lipsey. Scripps Howard owned 60% of the paper but had been ordered by the Department of Justice in 1968 to divest it on antitrust grounds because it also owned the Cincinnati Post & Times-Star, a competing paper. Blue Chip bought 10% of the Enquirer’s stock and tried to get the rest for $29.2 million in February 1971.

  2. Scripps would have been interested in selling because it was looking at buying Journal Publishing and Albuquerque Publishing and could not own all three.

  3. Graham thought that the only alternative to going public was to sell one of the company’s TV stations, which she did not want to do. To protect the business from an unfriendly bidder, Beebe and family lawyer George Gillespie structured the stock sale in two tiers, with class A shares in the family’s hands and class B stock, which carried diluted voting privileges, sold to the public. Katharine Graham, Personal History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

  4. Graham told this story to Buffett.

  5. Katharine Graham, Personal History.

  6. Katharine Graham letter to Charlie Munger, December 23, 1974.

  7. Katharine Graham, Personal History.

  8. Katharine Graham interview with Charlie Rose, February 5, 1997.

  9. Some of the nonvoting B shares went to Kay’s brother, Bill, in exchange for an investment in the company. Kay’s sisters were not investors in the Post. At the time, the unprofitable newspaper was less a financial asset than a public responsibility and a source of prestige.

  10. Buffett’s former golf coach Bob Dwyer was the office boy who performed this task, in between running copy for the Post’s editorial department.

  11. Katharine Graham, Personal History.

  12. These anecdotes are from Personal History.

  13. C. David Heymann’s The Georgetown Ladies’ Social Club (New York: Atria Books, 2003)—a well-researched account of the most influential Washington hostesses and the private power they wielded—gave examples, such as a black eye, that indicated that on at least some occasions Phil Graham physically abused her.

  14. Stories of the women with whom Phil Graham was involved and the allegation that he swapped girlfriends with Kennedy, including the actress-model Noel-Noel, are contained in The Georgetown Ladies’ Social Club.

  15. In her memoir, Graham attributed this partly to the subservience of women in her time and partly to her emotionally abusive upbringing. She seems to have had at least a partial grasp of her own role in enabling Phil’s behavior.

  16. Katharine Graham interview with Charlie Rose, February 5, 1997.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Interview with Don Graham.

  19. Beebe had been a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York and, under the direction of Don Swatland, in 1948 was instrumental in designing the structure that protected the Post from a sale outside the family.

  20. Katharine Graham, Personal History.

  21. McNamara later said he commissioned the “History of the United States Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy” to “bequeath to scholars the raw material from which they could reexamine the events of the time.” Sanford J. Ungar, The Papers and the Papers: An Account of the Legal and Political Battle over the Pentagon Papers 23-27. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972.

  22. Dialogue between Graham and Bradlee has been condensed and edited for clarity from Personal History and her interview with Charlie Rose. Description of the scene is from Personal History.

  23. Bob Woodward, “Hands Off, Mind On,” Washington Post, July 23, 2001.

  Chapter 37

  1. Nixon made explicit threats about the licenses, but a paper trail did not surface to document this until May 1974 (Katharine Graham, Personal History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997). Graham filed an affidavit with the FCC on June 21, 1974, saying the challenge was “part of a White House–inspired effort to injure…the company in retaliation for its Watergate coverage.” Morton Mintz, “Mrs. Graham Links White House, TV Fights,” Washington Post, June 27, 1974; David E. Rosenbaum, “Threats by Nixon Reported on Tape Heard by Inquiry,” New York Times, May 16, 1974.

  2. Katharine Graham, Personal History.

  3.
Ibid.

  4. All quotes on Meyer are from Cary Reich, Financier: The Biography of André Meyer: A Story of Money, Power, and the Reshaping of American Business. New York: William Morrow, 1983.

  5. Cary Reich, Financier.

  6. “The whole company at one point got down to where it was selling for eighty million,” Buffett says. “We spent a little less than ten million bucks when all was said and done and paid a price that valued the company on average at a hundred million.”

  7. Graham’s memoir, which downplays her relationship with Meyer, credits Gillespie and Beebe for the idea of the two-class stock. Meyer’s biographer, Cary Reich, credits Meyer for the idea. Given Meyer’s talents as a banker, it seems unlikely he had no involvement.

  8. Warren Buffett letter to Katharine Graham, May 1973.

  9. Jim Hoagland, “A Journalist First,” Washington Post, July 18, 2001.

  10. Robert Kaiser, “The Storied Mrs. Graham,” Washington Post, July 18, 2001.

  11. Cary Reich used the term “irate” in Financier.

  12. Interview with Arjay Miller.

  13. Katharine Graham, Personal History.

  14. “A Sure Thing? What Is Inside Information? Forget the black-and-white definitions. The real world often comes in gray, like at the San Jose Water Works,” Forbes, September 1, 1973.

  15. The company had disclosed in 1971 that the city was interested in buying it.

  16. Interview with Bill Ruane.

  17. Warren Buffett letter to Malcolm Forbes, August 31, 1973.

  18. Interview with Bill Ruane.

  19. Katharine Graham, Personal History.

  20. Patrick Brogan, The Short Life and Death of the National News Council: A Twentieth Century Fund Paper. New York: Priority Press Publications, 1985. The Council survived for eleven years before giving up—a decade before the Internet became available—for lack of a viable outlet through which its findings could reach the public.

  21. Interview with George Gillespie.

  22. Interview with Don Graham.

  23. Katharine Graham, Personal History.

  24. October 20, 1973.

  25. Graham’s foreword to Meg Greenfield’s Washington. New York: Public Affairs, 2001.