Columnists: Tilting at Rumor Mills

For weeks, newsmen had been hearing rumors that Nelson Rockefeller's second marriage was on the skids and that he had a new romantic interest. Rumors of that sort trail almost any well-known politician, but this one seemed particularly persistent, perhaps because of the recollection of the Governor's rather abrupt divorce, and remarriage in 1963. The item appeared in print in a few places, but without Rockefeller's name. Then last week, with Rocky out of the race, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson added the name.

A bit self-righteously, they announced they were printing it only because so many people had asked them about it. Readers had even assumed that Rockefeller withdrew because the scandal was about to be exposed in their column. They were happy to report, they said, that there was "no truth" to it. Their own investigation had proved that the "Rockefeller second marriage is most harmonious and compatible."

Not that Pearson-Anderson left it at that. Who, after all, had started the rumors? They said it was supporters of Richard Nixon, who has "compiled dossiers" on all possible Republican competitors for the presidency. "The rumor mill is going to play a part in the coming campaign," they declared solemnly, "and we write this to warn that the American public should be prepared for it." Disputing the Pearson-Anderson thesis, the New York Times said that the source of the rumors was not the Nixon camp but "aides of Governor George Romney."