The Press: Scoop!

Columnist Drew Pearson, whose inside stories sometimes have the facts wrong side out, had a sizzling inside story early this month for his readers in 600 papers. Wrote Pearson: "Here is some of the vitally important backstage byplay which took place immediately after the President was stricken in Denver." The story: Vice President Nixon had attempted "to take over the reins of Government" on the night of Sept. 24.

"Just after the news," wrote Pearson, "Vice President Nixon went to the home of his intimate friend [Deputy Attorney General] William Rogers, at 7007 Glenbrook Road, in nearby Maryland. This was in the dark hours when the President was so sick he was blinded in both eyes . . . The Vice President went there . . . to ask Rogers to make a legal ruling that he, as Vice President, could take over the powers of the President." Only timely intervention by the backers of Tom Dewey, who was traveling in Spain with Attorney General Brownell, said Pearson, had foiled this plot to seize power.

Reading the column in the Washington Post and Times Herald, Deputy Attorney General Rogers promptly blew up and called Executive Editor Russell Wiggins. Rogers said the story was not true, demanded a swift retraction. After a meeting with Pearson and Rogers, in which Rogers gave the facts and the proof of them, Wiggins told Rogers that he had a "solution." He would have a reporter check up on the story.

Last week, under the byline of Post and Times Herald Reporter Robert C. Albright, Executive Editor Wiggins published the facts under the head: PORTRAIT OF A GOVERNMENT WHEN LEADER IS FELLED. Wrote Albright: "So far as this reporter could determine, at no time during this first night was there any talk of a presidential delegation of powers to Nixon or to anybody else . . . During ensuing conversations with other Cabinet officials Nixon expressed the view that there should be no delegation of powers to himself, even if such a delegation were constitutionally feasible." Furthermore, it developed, Attorney General Brownell was not traveling with Dewey in Spain, nor had President Eisenhower even for a moment lost his sight.

But the Post and Times Herald made no mention of the column, which Pearson still insists was "correct." Said Rogers: "About the only accurate statement in [Pearson's] entire column was the address of my house."