The Press: Libel Confidential

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Jack Lait, editor of the New York Daily Mirror, and his nightclub columnist Lee Mortimer are old hands at libel. In their first three "Confidential" books they picked up no fewer than six libel suits.* By last week their latest slapdash gutter-side view of America, U.S.A. Confidential (TIME, March 17), was well on its way to outstripping the other three. A $1,000,000 suit brough by Maine's Senator Margaret Chase Smith, for bringing her into "scandals as an associate of and sympathizer with Communists," was the sixth in three months. The others:

¶ Dallas' swank Neiman-Marcus store (for saying that "some Neiman models are call girls"), for $7,400,000.

¶ International Teamsters' Union Boss Dave Beck (whose union members "control Seattle prostitutes" and use "imported thugs"), $300,000.

¶ Tulsa Sheriff George Blaine ("nothing goes" in his "practically lawless" city unless he "says so"), $500,000.

¶ Austrian Inventor and Munitions Salesman Antoine Gazda (who "beat an undesirable alien rap and got out, with McGrath's assistance"), $2,000,000.

¶ San Franscisco's Sally Stanford ("for girls . . . best stuff for sale is provided by bellhops at the best hotels. They phone Sally Stanford"), $300,000.

In Omaha, the book, No. 2 on the New York Times's bestseller list, earned another dubious distinction last week. It was cited by a federal grand jury along with such other evils as narcotics violations, official misconduct, Communism and juvenile delinquency. Said the grand jury: "[The book] is very irresponsible and most inaccurate . . . Your jury is lacking in words of fitting rebuke."