CONVENTION '96: INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: IS THIS STORY TRUE?

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Along with those diaries (which could, of course, have been fabricated), Rowlands provided other corroborating evidence, including tapes of Morris' voice on her answering machine and a canceled check for a college speaking engagement that he had signed over to her. Star editors were also impressed when Rowlands said Morris had confided in her a "military secret"--that signs of life on Mars had been discovered. It wasn't until a week later, the Star reported, that the news was announced.

Still, says Gooding, "there was a good circumstantial case, but nothing that absolutely nailed it." Starting on Aug. 14, Gooding says, he spent "virtually every waking hour" with Rowlands in an effort to come up with visual confirmation. Four days later, the Star reserved a room overlooking the balcony of the suite (No. 205) at Washington's Jefferson Hotel where she and Morris supposedly met, and Gooding plotted to take pictures. (A photographer would shoot stills while Gooding operated a video camera). Rowlands came up with the idea of bringing along her Yorkshire terrier, Bijou, to make sure she could lure Morris onto the balcony.

The Star sleuths spent five more days waiting, as Morris' work delayed a planned assignation with Rowlands; finally they met on the night of Aug. 22. While Morris was on the phone, Rowlands went onto the balcony. Morris soon followed, and the rest is tabloid history. "I didn't want her to do anything out of the ordinary," says Gooding, in response to charges of entrapment. "I didn't ask her to ask him any questions, to pump him or anything. But the only way that people would believe this story was to have pictures."

Once he had them, Gooding called Morris last Tuesday for comment (Morris hung up on him once and did not respond to several messages) and prepared to run the story. But five days before the issue was scheduled to hit the newsstands, the Star offered its scoop to several newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Wall Street Journal. Only the New York Post went for it. Releasing it to other papers before its actual publication, Bunton insists, was simply an effort to protect the Star's scoop after Morris had been alerted to the story. Said Bunton: "The White House spin doctors might well try and do some damage control, and Dick Morris might resign quietly for personal reasons before we came out. We had five days before we were going on sale. So we got a bit nervous."

Other editors were nervous too--about having to pursue the tawdry story in the midst of reporting on loftier matters like Clinton's acceptance speech. Still, it was a story no news outlet could ignore, one serious enough to bring down the President's chief strategist. As happened so often during the O.J. Simpson trial, the mainstream press had to acknowledge that the tabloids, and tabloid tactics, can sometimes unearth legitimate news. And the Star got another notch in its gun belt.

--By Richard Zoglin. Reported by Andrea Sachs/New York