The Press: Navy v. Tribune

• Share

(2 of 2)

Several papers which published the Tribune story may be indicted, including the papers of Colonel McCormick's cousins—Cissie Patterson's Washington Times-Herald and Captain Joe Patterson's New York Daily News. Ironically, one paper which published the story (in one edition) was the San Francisco Chronicle, whose editor is Paul C. Smith, now on leave in the Navy's press bureau.

So far there was nothing to show that Publisher McCormick had any knowledge of the Tribune story before it was printed, or that his well-known isolationism and his feud with the Administration had anything to do with the publication of the story. To try to keep the issue politically clean Attorney General Francis Biddle announced that William D. Mitchell, Herbert Hoover's Attorney General, would present the case for the Government.

Colonel McCormick, as always, reacted vigorously. The Tribune unfurled the U.S. flag (in color) on page one. Cried Colonel McCormick, dragging a red herring across the trail: "The attack on the Tribune is now in the open. An Administration which for years has been seeking by one sly means or another . . . to intimidate this newspaper has finally despaired of all other means and is now preparing criminal prosecutions."

It looked very much as if Publisher McCormick might make the public believe that he was being persecuted unless the Government, would loosen up enough to tell what real damage the Tribune story had done.