The Calculated Leak

Into the ornate Indian Treaty Room of the Executive Office Building last week crowded 239 reporters for President Eisenhower's 15th press conference. After a few pleasantries, Ike said with a flicker of a smile: "I could start off, I think, by confirming something that is certainly by no means news any more." Then he announced the appointment of California's Governor Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the U.S. (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Ike was dead right that it was no longer news. The reason it wasn't touched off one of the most heated battles newsmen have yet had with the Administration.

From the day Chief Justice Fred Vinson died, four weeks ago, newsmen have been trying to find out who Vinson's successor would be. Everything pointed to Warren, but no reporter could pin down the story. Fortnight ago, when Attorney General Herbert Brownell flew to California to see Warren, the San Francisco Examiner's alert Political Editor Clint Mosher said flatly that Warren would be named to the court within 24 hours. Brownell himself threw cold water on the prediction. The afternoon he returned to Washington and saw Ike, he told reporters: "I have made no recommendation. I have no announcement to make. No statement." But back in his office, Brownell changed his tune—for a special audience.

Responsible Source. Brownell, who wanted the appointment of Warren to get a favorable press reception, apparently thought he could accomplish that by leaking the story to five of his closest friends in the Washington press. He asked them to his home barely five hours after he had thrown other newsmen off his trail. The five: the New York Times's Arthur Krock, Scripps-Howard's Charles Lucey, Kansas City Star's Duke Shoop, Knight Newspapers' Paul Leach, and the New York Herald Tribune's new Washington bureau chief, Roscoe Drummond. "Gentlemen," said Brownell as he walked into his living room, "you have been good to me in the past. Now I would like to do something for you." Then he spilled the Warren appointment, strictly "not for attribution." Next day, papers represented at the secret meeting ran Page One stories saying that Warren would be named Chief Justice of the U.S. before the court convened.

The stories caught other Washington reporters flatfooted. Columnist Marquis Childs appeared in print the same day with: "When the Supreme Court convenes for the fall term, it will be without a Chief Justice." In Washington, where secret meetings with newsmen seldom stay secret long, every reporter soon knew that Brownell had leaked the story. Next day, after Ike had confirmed the news at his press conference, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's veteran Raymond Brandt, longtime specialist in Supreme Court affairs, got to his feet. "Pete" Brandt had been refused an interview with Brownell a few days earlier. Pointing his pencil menacingly at Ike, Brandt asked: "Is it going to be the policy of this Administration to leak such important news to friendly newspapers?"