Three

“Distinguished
And
Extraordinary
Service”

1

I had been aware for some time—because he never hesitated to telephone me at all hours of day and night to complain about it—that the President did not like our coverage of his shabby little war. But I did not realize how really unbalanced that unhappy conflict had made him until the day he attacked us directly. Then I needed all the reserves of strength and character I could muster to withstand the onslaught and preserve the integrity of my staff and my publication. Fortunately I found I had them. The attempt ended in complete debacle for him, complete vindication for me. Armored as we were with truth and justice on our side, there could have been no other outcome.

—ANNA HASTINGS, by Anna Hastings

It began with one of those phone calls. As she says, they were a pretty constant feature of Viet Nam war coverage in those days, and she was certainly not the only one in the press corps—there were dozens—to receive them. Sometimes when she proved uncooperative he would methodically go down the line, calling first Tal, who gave him no satisfaction either, and then me. While I was in general more sympathetic to his dilemma than they were, I too had serious reservations. Usually it would all end in a burst of prairie expletives and the heavily grieving statement, “Y’all over there are a bunch of no-good, propaganda-spoutin’ unpatriotic left-wingers. It’s past midnight, your President is down here in his office tired as a dog doin’ his level best to save your country’s honor and position in the world, and y’all are sittin’ over there on H Street with your ringers up your asses makin’ fun of me. I don’t like it, y’hear? I don’t like it!”

Followed by a few more carefully calculated expletives and the banging down of the receiver. We had learned to hold our own out a safe distance from our ears for just such a contingency.

This night, however, things were different. For one thing, he didn’t call Tal and me immediately after he called Anna. He waited awhile, figuring with his customary shrewdness that she would do his work for him. And so she did. She called me first and she sounded, for once, genuinely disturbed.

“Ed,” she said, a little breathless, “I’ve just received the strangest call from the President.”

“Don’t we all?”

“No, seriously. He really sounds very odd. Menacing. I—I really think he’s going to try to make real trouble for us.”

“Fair enough,” I said, not very sympathetic—it was almost 1 A.M. and I had been sound asleep, as no doubt she had too. “We certainly try all the time to make real trouble for him.”

“No, I mean really make trouble. For me. And Tal. And you, and probably Bessie.”

“How’s that?” I demanded sharply, beginning to take her seriously. “How can he do that?”

“I don’t know exactly, but he said he was going to call you and Tal and talk to you about it. ‘Tell ’em to be prepared,’ he said, ‘because this time I’ve got your damned newspaper by the knockers and I’m not aimin’ to let go. So tell ’em to watch out, girlie, and you watch out, too. I’ve had it and now yow-all are goin’ to git it.’ Then he just hung up, very softly. Has he called you yet?”

“No, not a word. Maybe he’ll just be content with that and let us stew around having nervous breakdowns trying to figure out what he meant.”

“I doubt it,” she said. “He sounds like business this time. So be very careful what you say to him. And call me back at once, all right?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I think it’s probably just some more hot air.”

Ten minutes later I learned differently.

“Ed?” he said, his voice gentle as butter, always a tip-off to be damned wary and keep your hand on your six-shooter. “Is that my old friend Ed the Managin’ Ed?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” I said cheerfully. “How are you?”

“You sound wide awake,” he said with a mild surprise. “Somebody talk to you already?”

“You know it, Mr. President,” I said, still cheerful. “Just like you wanted her to.”

“Well, I did,” he admitted, “but I wasn’t sure she’d do it. She’s a pretty cool cucumber, that Anna. I didn’t think she’d panic like that.”

“Anna doesn’t panic,” I said more sharply than I had intended—he had, as usual, put the other party on the defensive. “She said you’d called, and would be calling me. You are. What can I do for you?”

“Mebbe be a witness for your guv’ment,” he said softly. “Mebbe just be a fine old witness for your guv’ment.”

“About what?” I asked, really concerned now but trying not to let it show in my voice. There was never a man so astute and perceptive of the tremors of others, however—in that, as in everything, he was twice life-size, if not more. He chuckled.

“Now, don’t go gettin’ all steamed up, Ed. Just a little bit of treason, mebbe. Or again, mebbe not. I guess we’ll just have to let Congress and the courts find out.”

“Mr. President,” I said angrily, “if you think you can scare the Inquirer with that kind of phony threat—”

“I’m not phony,” he objected mildly, which was quite true. “I’m tellin’ you exactly what it’s all about. In my book, it’s treason. Now, you-all may call it somethin’ else, and it may be somethin’ else. But I sure as hell intend to find out.”

“The First Amendment—” I began. He snorted.

“You newspaper people think you hatched that First Amendment. Just sat on it like an old hen for a couple of hundred years and hatched it right out, all by yourselves. Well!” He snorted again. “You didn’t.”

“Mr. President,” I said, “maybe you’d better stop playing cat-and-mouse and tell me what this is all about, O.K.?”

“Did you room with Talbot Farson when you first came to Washington?” he asked with a sudden bluntness that totally surprised me. What the hell—? I had known the President for a long time on the Hill, and there wasn’t much I couldn’t imagine.

“I did indeed,” I said, trying to be as blunt as he but not, apparently, keeping my surprise and concern entirely out of my voice.

“Now,” he said soothingly, “I’m not implyin’ you slept together or anything, Ed. I’m just sayin’ you did room with him, and you did know him about as intimately as a man does know his roommate when they’re both young and strugglin’ to get along in Washington?”

“That’s right,” I agreed, more calmly. “We roomed together for approximately two years and then got our own places.”

“But you and he and Bessie Rovere and Anna did keep up a very close relationship after that, and for all these years since, isn’t that right?”

“We’ve always been close friends,” I said. “Everybody, including you, knows that. We’re close friends today, which is why we all wound up on the Inquirer together. It’s never been a secret.”

“Yes,” he agreed, his voice taking on a more somber note. “But there may have been one secret there, Ed. Yes, there may have been one around there, all these years.”

“What?” I asked, unable to restrain a certain flippancy brought on by an increasing annoyance. “Bessie’s harelip or my rudimentary tail?”

“Now, don’t you be funny, Ed,” he suggested gently, “or you’ll get your tail, rudimentary or not, in a pretty tight-ass wringer, and you won’t like that. All I want to establish right now is that you have known Talbot Farson for almost twenty-five years, and you have been on quite intimate terms with him all those years, as have Bessie Rovere and Anna Hastings. That is correct, isn’t it?”

“That is correct.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll be a good witness. Just keep ’em short and to the point. Don’t volunteer anything. Just tell us what you know. Thanks for your time, Ed. Somebody’ll be gettin’ back to you.”

“Mr. President—” I began, but the only answer was a gentle click.

He had no sooner hung up than Tal called.

“What the hell is that bastard up to now?” he demanded without preliminary. “Waking us all up in the middle of the night! What did he say to you?”

“Just asked me if we roomed together once and I said yes, we did.”

“Was that all?”

“That was all.”

“He didn’t ask about my political views, did he?” And suddenly with a chilling certainty I knew what it was all about.

“No,” I said cautiously. “Did he ask you?”

“No!” which I didn’t believe. “He knows what they are. The Inquirer makes them clear every day.… So he didn’t ask you.”

“No, he didn’t ask me.”

“He didn’t ask Anna. I wonder if he asked Bessie?”

“Probably not,” I said. “I think he expects that to come up at the hearing.”

“What hearing?” he said sharply.

“I don’t know yet, but all of a sudden I’m very sure there’s going to be one.”

“The devious son-of-a-bitch,” he said slowly. “Why doesn’t he leave us alone?”

“He seems to wonder that about us,” I replied, not without a certain tartness. “Often.”

“Yes, I know you’re for his son-of-a-bitching war. You always have been.”

“Not entirely, by any means. But I don’t think we’ve been very fair to him. You didn’t really expect him not to fight back when he got hold of something, did you?”

“What has he got hold of?” he demanded with a scorn I could almost believe was genuine.

“You tell me,” I suggested. “Apparently it involves you.”

“Nothing involves me!” he said angrily.

“O.K., then, what’s to worry? Go back to bed and forget it.”

“I would, if he weren’t such a persistent son-of-a-bitch. He never gives up.”

“That’s right,” I agreed, “especially when he thinks he’s got something. Have you talked to Anna?”

“She says she’ll stand by me, whatever.”

“So she thinks you’re the target, too,” I said thoughtfully.

“She does,” he agreed and repeated, giving it a significant emphasis, “She says she’ll stand by me, whatever.”

“So?”

“Yes, ‘so.’ Will you?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what he—”

“God damn it, I said will you?”

“See here, Tal,” I said sharply. “Within the limits of old friendship and honesty, yes, I will. But you’ll note I said honesty. If I’m under oath about something and am asked certain things, then I’ll testify to what I know.”

He was silent for a moment but there was no wavering in his reply.

“You don’t know anything because there isn’t anything to know.”

“Very well, then, there isn’t anything to worry about. May I call Anna now? She asked me to, after I finished with him.”

“You don’t know anything because there isn’t anything to know,” he repeated. And then added savagely, “Yes, call Anna!” And slammed down the receiver, leaving me to think: Well, well.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He asked me if Tal and I roomed together when we first came to Washington and if we had been close friends ever since. I said yes to both. He also said I might have to testify about it.”

“And what did Tal say?”

“How do you know he called me?”

“I know Tal.”

“Yes,” I said, “and you obviously think maybe the President really has something on him.”

“As Tal obviously thinks you’re the key to it,” she said. “I suppose he told you I said I’d stand by him.”

“He said you said you’d stand by him whatever, which struck me as a pretty broad commitment until all the facts are in.”

“We haven’t got time to get all the facts,” she said impatiently. “My newspaper and my staff are being attacked and I’m not about to hesitate. We’ll see it through just as I said: whatever. And that means you, too, Ed.”

“It does,” I said evenly, “as I told Tal: within the limits of honesty.”

“Protecting a free press is more important than honesty.”

“Well, I’ll be Goddamned. That’s stretching the First Amendment a bit far, isn’t it? Maybe you’d better stop wrapping the flag around you and think this thing through before Tal gets us in a real bind.”

“I suspect,” she said coldly, “that it may not be Tal who gets us in a real bind. Bessie called; the President’s just called her too. He got her all upset, as you might know: he’s so damned clever. I suspect between you and Bessie we really may be in trouble.”

“Now, see here,” I said sharply, “before this gets completely out of hand and into another ball park, suppose you remember it’s Tal who’s the problem here, not me and Bessie.”

“It depends on where you sit,” she said, still coldly. “From where I sit, charged as I am with responsibility for maintaining the integrity of my own paper and by implication the integrity of all the media, I don’t see any signs of Tal breaking ranks. It’s you and Bess I’m worried about.”

“Of course Tal isn’t going to break any ranks,” I said in exasperation. “It’s his neck that’s involved. He doesn’t have to be honest under oath.”

“Oh?” she said blankly. “You don’t think he would be?”

“I don’t know,” I said, suddenly feeling sick as the full implications of all this began to hit me. “I really don’t know.”

“Well, anyway,” she said decisively, “we’ve got to stand by him for the sake of the Inquirer, for the sake of a free press, for the sake of the whole effort to stop this damnable war, for—for everything …” Her voice trailed away; a genuine worry finally surfaced. “I wonder if he really does have anything on Tal.”

“Who knows? I think, myself, that he does. But as you say, he’s so clever there’s no way to be sure, at the moment. I can tell you one thing, though: if Tal’s vulnerable, and if through him the paper’s vulnerable, he’ll have found it out.”

“Yes,” she said moodily, “we know how he is: there isn’t a sparrow that falls that he doesn’t know about.”

“Yes,” I agreed, moody also as the prospects of a very unpleasant immediate future began to open up in my mind. “And this time I think he’s really got one.”

2

My first reaction—and, as it turned out, my entirely sound one—was to reject completely this unwarranted and egregious attack upon the integrity of my newspaper, my staff and, by implication, upon the whole free press that was opposing my opponent’s insane and useless war. This, too, I realized, was a war. I prepared to fight it with every weapon at my command, certain that he would not hesitate to use everything he could to defeat the critics whose arguments he had failed to satisfy in honest public debate.

—ANNA HASTINGS, by Anna Hastings

I will say for Gordon that it was he who insisted on having it out with Tal. The attempt didn’t get him anywhere, of course, but he tried.

I know now that in doing so he made inevitable what came later, with all its sad consequences for himself and the family; but this was not apparent at the time, and I could only admire the dogged determination with which he faced Tal and the rest of us in Anna’s office.

“Little gal,” he said, “I don’t give a good Goddamn’s worth of hot hog spit about your ‘faith in Tal’—”

“Don’t be vulgar,” she said coldly. “And stop talking Texan. You aren’t campaigning now.”

“—but I’m goin’ to insist, before you make any statement or commit this paper or any of us to anything, that we have it out with Tal right here and now and find out where we stand. I’m just not goin’ to permit you to say anything until we know what this is all about. I’m just not goin’ to permit it!”

“How can you stop me?” she asked, and for a second he looked genuinely taken aback and almost his usual humbled self. But this time he wasn’t.

“I can’t stop you,” he said slowly, “but I can sure as hell make it clear to everybody that I don’t agree. If you issue a statement without gettin’ to the bottom of this first, I issue a statement. If you attack the President without gettin’ to the bottom of this first, I’ll defend him. There won’t be any closin’ of ranks around here until I’m satisfied there isn’t anything to this. And that’s a promise, everybody, so don’t think it isn’t.”

For a moment or two, Anna in her turn looked genuinely taken aback. She must have been, for all she could muster was a rather feeble, “Just because you’re from Texas!”

“It has nothin’ to do with bein’ from Texas, God damn it!” he said sharply. “I don’t owe that man anything, except friendship and a fair break on things. Which, incidentally, I may say as I’ve said before, I don’t think he’s received from this newspaper or any others around here for a long time. I’ve said before I didn’t like it, and I say it again: we haven’t been fair.”

“It’s true we’ve criticized your stand on the war, Gordon,” Tal said with a deliberately patronizing air, “but after all, that’s the privilege of a free press, and it seems to me you’ve been able to fire right back at us from the Senate, so it hasn’t really hurt either of us, has it? In fact, it’s made us both look good to the public. It’s proved the Inquirer really does have room for two points of view.”

“Not very damned much room,” Gordon said dryly. “It seems to me I wind up on page twenty like everybody else who backs the war. However, that’s not the point here. The point, Tal, is you and the spot we’re in because of you.”

“Not because of me!” Tal said sharply. “Because of that four-flusher in the White House!”

“You can call him anything you like,” Gordon said, “but the fact is, he thinks he has somethin’ and we’ve got to find out whether he does or not before we can back you with a clear conscience.”

“I have a clear conscience,” Anna said coolly, “and I’m backing him.”

“Yes,” Gordon said. “Well. That may speak better for your loyalty than your common sense, little gal.”

“Gordon Hastings,” she said angrily, “will you stop being so damned patronizing? What do you know that we don’t know? Has the President told you his big secret? If so, we’d better have it right now and save a lot of breath.”

“He hasn’t talked to me at all,” Gordon said, “and I don’t really want him to. I just want to be satisfied about Tal here. Doesn’t anybody else,” he asked, and for a second he did sound a little plaintive, “agree with me?”

Bessie shifted in her chair and so did I. We looked at one another; looked at Anna and Tal, both studying us severely; and then looked at honest, bumbling Gordon, beads of sweat beginning to dot his forehead, but standing his ground.

“I do,” I said (thereby assuring myself a date with the future, too, though I did not know it then). “I would like to be satisfied about Tal.”

“So would I,” Bessie said. “I think he owes it to us to tell us honestly whatever—whatever there is to tell.”

“God damn it,” Tal said angrily, “there is nothing to tell! There is nothing to tell! You people are unbelievable. We have known each other for twenty-five years and sometimes I don’t think you know me at all. What is the matter with you, anyway? Has that son-of-a-bitch in the White House really got you that mesmerized? I pity you, I really do!”

“I think Gordon has a point,” I said. “I think we want more than bluster about it. I think we want your solemn assurance.”

“Yes,” Bessie said. “It’s a big step, asking us all to go to bat for you, Tal, when—when there might—be something.”

“Christ!” Tal said with a sort of humorous, helpless frustration. “It’s impossible to win in a situation like this. I tell you there’s nothing, you don’t believe me. Then you say you want my ‘solemn assurance,’ whatever that is. Hell, I’m being as solemn as I know how: There is nothing to tell. And still you won’t believe me. How can I win?”

“Do you swear,” Gordon said solemnly, “that there isn’t anything we should know about before we commit the Inquirer to your defense?”

“Sure there is,” Tal said with a sort of wild, sardonic savagery. “I’m a sex maniac. I’m a Communist. I’m a pervert. I’m a mad bomber. I’m—I’m—Christ, what are we talking about?”

“Yes,” Anna agreed coldly, “what are we talking about? He has told us there is nothing; I believe there is nothing. I have asked George Harrison Watersill”—one of Washington’s sharpest, most successful, most—well, trendy—lawyers—“to meet with me and Tal here in half an hour to plan his defense—which is a little ironic, a defense against a charge we don’t even know yet. But we’ll be ready, anyway. And he will also help me prepare the statement that will appear in the paper tomorrow morning.”

“What will it say?” Gordon asked.

“It will say, in essence, that it has come to the attention of the management of the Inquirer that the President of the United States may be preparing to attack the reputation of a major member of the staff in an attempt to halt the paper’s efforts to terminate the futile and criminal war in Viet Nam. It will say that the management and staff of the Inquirer are united in their opposition to the President’s attempt and will oppose it with every legal and journalistic means at their disposal.

“Is that,” she concluded dryly, “all right?”

“I hope you know what you’re doing, little gal,” Gordon said, and suddenly Tal shot him a look of such open hatred that Gordon almost physically recoiled from it. But he concluded doggedly, “And I hope you’re playin’ straight with us, Tal, because if you’re not, there’s goin’ to be almighty hell to pay.”

“For somebody, maybe,” Tal grated, “but not for me.”

3

I had decided that offense was the best defense; and I was pleased to learn within the day that my statement in the Inquirer had caught my opponent completely off guard. He was, I was told, furious. He had underestimated me, I think. I did not underestimate him, however, and therefore I was not surprised when his reaction was immediate and aggressive.

—ANNA HASTINGS, by Anna Hastings

Actually, however, she was considerably surprised, because for most of that day she had basked in a glow of self-congratulation and the virtually unanimous commendation of her peers. The Washington press corps, reacting with that monolithic unanimity which has been its distinguishing feature ever since it first became united in the worship of John F. Kennedy, could not say enough in her behalf in those first, giddy hours. Her name was on every television broadcast starting with the “Today” show in the morning (she had ordered a copy of her statement rushed to the networks the night before), and her defiance of the President also led every radio broadcast on all three networks all day long. Congratulatory phone calls poured in, starting the moment she reached her office at 8:35 A.M. The Star ran an enthusiastically supportive editorial in the afternoon, and in both Senate and House antiwar members seized upon the incident to praise her and flay the President. The Times called from New York to read its enthusiastically approving editorial. It was even rumored, though she never said and no one could ever prove it, that sometime during the afternoon there had been a personal call from L Street: Queen Elizabeth had indeed talked to Mary Queen of Scots, in the interests of unity against the great universal enemy in the White House. At any rate, I do know that an advance copy of both the Post’s warmly approving editorial and its savagely anti-Presidential editorial cartoon for the next morning were sent over by special messenger sometime around five.

Sometime around five, also, the happy dream that she would get away with this without hearing from “my opponent” vanished with another call from Pennsylvania Avenue. Tal and I happened to be in her office at the time, going over last-minute details for the next edition.

“Yes?” she said, and instantly gestured to us to pick up the extension phones on her desk. “Put him on.”

“Anna, honey?” he said, sweet as pie. “Is this my little fightin’ wildcat from Punxsutawney, PA?”

“This is Anna Hastings.”

He chuckled.

“And mad, too, I can tell that. Well, this is your President.”

“By virtue of circumstances. I can’t claim ownership otherwise.”

“Why, now!” he said dryly. “Don’t tell me I dreamed all those editorials in my behalf before the last election. Don’t tell me you voted for him. You did vote for me, didn’t you, Anna?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then,” he said triumphantly, “I’m your President, aren’t I? That’s right, isn’t it, honey?”

“Yes,” she conceded, unamused, “technically that is correct. But I’ve withdrawn my mandate. What can I do for you, Mr. President?”

“Nothing at all in that hostile tone, Anna,” he said calmly. “Nothin’ at all. Shall I hang up, or do you want to hear what I have to say?”

For a split second she considered it but changed her mind even as Tal and I shook our heads vigorously: that was no way to deal with him.

“No, Mr. President,” she said calmly, “I don’t want you to hang up. I want you to stop playing games with us and tell us frankly what’s on your mind. You saw from my statement this morning what’s on mine.”

“Yes, I did,” he agreed, “and I admire your fightin’ spirit, Anna. I really do. Not many people in this town have your qualities of courage, integrity and determination in fightin’ for your own point of view, I will say that with real admiration. Not many.”

“You do,” she said, deciding to try a little of his own technique. “We may disagree with you entirely over here, but we’ve never said you weren’t sincere and determined in what you’re trying to do. Evil,” she couldn’t resist adding, “though we happen to think it is.”

“Anna, honey,” he said soberly, “‘evil’ is a mighty strong word. Too strong for old friends to use against each other.”

“It seems to me evil is what you’re trying to do to Tal and through him to this newspaper,” she said, not giving an inch.

“Evil,” he said, equally firm, “is what Tal may have been doing to this country for quite some time.”

It was all we could do to keep Tal quiet. Our joint glares sufficed but it was touch and go for a moment.

“I hope you can prove that statement, Mr. President,” Anna said, her voice thin with anger but inflexible. “From any other source, in any other form than over the telephone, it would be libelous per se unless you can prove it.”

“Libelous!” he snorted. “You press people have made libel an empty word. You’ve got the courts to say you can’t libel us public characters and by God it works the other way, too. You’re as much public characters as I am, nowadays. I can say any damned thing I please about you and you can’t touch me. Anyway, this is a silly argument. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t have proof.”

“Well, let’s have it, then!” she snapped. “I repeat, I haven’t got time to sit here playing games.”

“I haven’t got time either, Anna, honey,” he said, suddenly crisp. “I’ve got your country to run and your war to—”

“It isn’t my war!”

“Your war,” he repeated calmly. “Too busy running your country and your war to waste time either. I’m callin’ to tell you that evidence we’ve collected has been turned over to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and they’ll be contacting Tal and the rest of you about your appearances, which will probably take place next week. I thought I’d do you the courtesy of givin’ you a little advance warnin’, that’s all. Mebbe I was mistaken. I thought you’d want it.”

“What evidence?” she demanded in an exasperated voice. “And how did you get it?”

“They’ll be tellin’ you all about it before you can say ‘Screw the President,’ which is somethin’ you say pretty often, so I guess you can say it pretty fast. That’s how soon you’ll know about it.”

“It must have been wiretapping,” she said thoughtfully, “almost certainly illegal, and no doubt illegal search-and-seizure on top of that.”

“Nothin’ I do to protect this country is illegal!” he roared, turning on the full force of his personality.

But her response was unimpressed, because at that moment she knew she had him—in the presence of witnesses, too, though of course he didn’t know we were there. (This is known as entrapment and is good or bad in Washington depending on who the victim is.)

“We’ll see about that, Mr. President,” she responded calmly. “Thank you for calling.”

“That’s quite all right, Anna, honey,” he said, calm again because he, too, obviously realized his error. He couldn’t, however, resist one last dig. “Just want to help old friends of mine, that’s all. Just want to be helpful to y’all over there at that great newspaper.”

“We appreciate it,” Anna said coolly. “Thanks so much, Mr. President.”

And beat him to the draw by hanging up before he did.

“We’ve got him!” Tal shouted triumphantly. “We’ve got the slimy bastard! You heard what he said: Nothing I do to protect this country is illegal. It’s the worst Goddamned thing since the divine right of kings!”

“I’d go slow if I were you,” I suggested dryly, while Anna stared thoughtfully out the window. “People can understand the context of it, and a lot of them will agree with him. Why shouldn’t a President do everything he can to protect the country? He could also say that he meant he doesn’t do anything illegal to protect the country. It makes perfectly good sense in that context.”

“To hell with context!” Tal said. “We’ve got him!”

“Yes,” Anna agreed slowly, “I think we have.” She pulled her typewriter around, put in two pieces of copy paper and a carbon and began to type rapidly. We moved around to read over her shoulder as we had done so many thousands of times over the years:

“By Anna Hastings.

“The President of the United States declared today that all his actions—by implication including all of his actions in Viet Nam—are legal as long as he can claim that he is ‘protecting’ the country.

“He claimed that ‘Nothing I do to protect the country is illegal’—a statement of Presidential authority so broad and so arrogant that it appears to jeopardize the very foundations of democracy itself.

“The statement was made to this reporter in the hearing of two witnesses from the staff of the Inquirer, the executive editor, Talbot Farson, and the managing editor, Edward H. Macomb.

“It throws a glaring and most disturbing light upon the mood and mentality of a Chief Executive whose stubborn insistence upon prolonging the conflict in Viet Nam has already cost the nation many thousands of wasted lives and countless millions of wasted dollars.

“It also casts a most revealing illumination upon the President’s attempts to attack a major member of the Inquirer’s staff, and through him this newspaper’s opposition to the war …”

And so on for another ten paragraphs, each more biting than the last. Anna was always good and now she was mad through and through. Her paper was being attacked, her staff member was under fire—and by a man she had never really liked and now utterly despised.

When she had finished, Tal crowing delighted encouragement every word of the way, she tossed it to me and said:

“Banner headline, page one, Ed. I’ll have an editorial to go with it in a few minutes.”

I tossed it back, my mind finally made up.

“You put it in, Tal,” I told him. “I don’t want any part of it.”

“Whose side are you on?” Anna demanded angrily.

“Yours,” I said with equal anger, “as you know I always have been. But not when it comes to one-sided crap like this. This is deliberate twisting. It’s a journalistic stunt. You’re going to have to run a story about the Senate subcommittee, too, you know. They’re going to look damned peculiar side by side.”

“They won’t be side by side,” she promised grimly, and they weren’t.

“PRESIDENT SAYS ALL WAR ACTS LEGAL,” said the banner story, top right-hand column, page 1.

“Senate Subcommittee Subpoenas Inquirer Officials,” said a very small headline over a one-paragraph item tucked away in the lower left-hand corner of page 6.

So the battle was joined and even though first blood went to Anna, and even though the White House press secretary had to splutter on for hours with denials, explanations and clarifications, it appeared for a while that she, Tal and the Inquirer would be hard-pressed to win the final rounds.

4

At first we were startled, possibly even a little intimidated, by the rapidity with which my opponent called in his reserves in the Senate to do his dirty work for him. But very soon we recovered. They attacked us, as might be expected, one by one, beginning with what they obviously considered our weakest link. But Elizabeth Rovere did not fail me, remaining the faithful and reliable friend she has been ever since we were young reporters together in Washington, so many years ago.

—ANNA HASTINGS, by Anna Hastings

Looking back now upon that hectic episode, covered over with a haze of righteous vindication and universal glory, it is probably true that the public has only the vaguest, if any, memory of Bessie’s testimony. Our own memories are sharply different. Anna has chosen to forgive her because forgiveness fits in with Anna’s legend, but it could hardly be argued that the sum total of what Bessie was honest enough to say was a smashing triumph for Tal. On the contrary, though the fact was glossed over very smoothly in nearly all the news stories and broadcasts, she did him considerable damage at what could have been considerable cost to herself had Anna chosen to be vengeful. The Old Team held, however. Under the circumstances, Anna really had no choice … and, as I say, it wasn’t allowed to hurt Tal all that much, so it didn’t matter anyway.

The gist of it came midway through Bessie’s testimony. The Senate Caucus Room, scene of so many historic events in the Republic’s history, was jammed to the lintels, as it always is when a big show is scheduled. Every last inch of space at the press tables was occupied, television cameras were massed to catch each slightest Senatorial scratch, each noble look from the ranks of the Inquirer. The Senators were after Tal but the press, as always during the darker days of Viet Nam, was after the President. He knew this, of course, and so he had asked for, and received, a tough committee to handle it. Most were old personal friends of the four of us, and Gordon was one of their own (though conspicuously absent today); but too many had been stung by the paper at one time or another for friendship and association to weigh much now. The only way to turn this around was to play upon their fears of press reaction against themselves; and Bessie was simply not the one to do it.

They had questioned her at some length about the early days—politely, gently, almost casually. It was almost a reminiscence, painless and pleasant. A certain wistful realization touched my heart, and I think Bessie’s and Anna’s too: how earnest, wide-eyed and innocent we were in those far-off times! How purposefully and idealistically those distant youngsters strode the corridors of the Capitol in search of the beacon of Truth! How much had the beacon guttered and dwindled in the years between!

How old we all were now.

Suddenly Seab Cooley leaned forward and in his gentlest voice inquired:

“And did you ever hear Mr. Farson express criticism or hostility toward the United States, Miss Rovere? Did he ever express to you an active hatred of his country?”

The question took everyone by surprise, which was Seab’s intention. In the row of chairs behind Bessie an almost imperceptible tightening of the jawline was Tal’s only sign, but Anna gave it the full treatment, looking indignantly at me and at George Harrison Watersill. George was suitably indignant, too, but I’m afraid I looked a little less surprised than I should have. I could see Seab making a mental note and surmised accurately that he would come back to me about it later.

“He was sometimes a little—a little critical, yes,” Bessie said, somewhat flustered. “But, then, you know, Senator, most young people are. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh, I know that,” Seab agreed amicably. “I just wondered if he seemed unduly critical to you, Miss Rovere. Sometimes young people say things like that just to be saying them, but other times they mean it. Did Mr. Farson ever sound to you as though he meant it, Miss Rovere?”

“Well, sometimes,” Bessie said, more cleverly than we expected, “people mean things more than they do other times. I suppose sometimes he meant it more than he did other times.”

“Now, Miss Rovere,” Seab said, and I could see that Jim Eastland and John McClellan and some of the others were beginning to get a little impatient too, “I don’t like to be critical of a lady, now, I surely don’t, but I submit to you that you-all are bein’ just a wee mite disingenuous, now. Just a wee mite. Now I ask you directly again, Was Mr. Farson critical, bitter, hateful and derogatory toward his own country? Straight out, now!”

“Mr. Chairman!” George Watersill exclaimed, rising to his feet. “With all respect, I don’t think Senators should be allowed to bully this witness, who is doing her honest best to cooperate with the committee. I don’t think that’s fair at all.”

“I’m not bullyin’ anybody, Mr. Chairman,” Seab said mildly. “I’m just tryin’ to get at the truth here. Nothin’ to be afraid of, Miss Rovere. Just answer me honestly, now, as the experienced journalist and loyal American citizen you are. You know what I mean and I want you to answer it.”

“Sometimes,” Bessie said carefully, and again there was just the slightest tightening of Tal’s jaw, “he has been a little more—well, emphatic than—than I might be, for instance.”

“I’m not askin’ you what you might be, Miss Rovere,” Seab said sharply. “I know you’re a decent citizen and I know where you stand. What I’m askin’ you about is Mr. Farson. I think the committee would appreciate a straight answer, Miss Rovere.”

(All of this was relatively mild, for Seab. When Robert A. Leffingwell was nominated for Secretary of State we would see the senior Senator from South Carolina in all his rampaging glory. But of course he had a real dislike for Bob Leffingwell. Tal was a more impersonal target, though worthy of being exposed.)

“I think there have been times,” Bessie said, deciding at last to be firm, “when his views have been somewhat extreme, in my estimation.”

“So extreme that you may even have doubted his loyalty to the United States?”

For a moment Bessie did not reply; then in a helpless voice which was more damning than an outright accusation she confessed:

“I just don’t know, Senator. I just can’t say.”

“Then you have had doubts?” Seab demanded sternly, while along the committee table members leaned forward, suddenly intent.

“Sometimes,” Bessie murmured. “Possibly.”

Seab looked exasperated.

“Well, have you or haven’t you, Miss Rovere? Don’t wishy-wash with this committee, now. Don’t wishy-wash!”

“Yes, I have!” Bessie said in a sudden loud voice; and then added hastily, “Sometimes …”

“Yes,” Seab echoed softly, “you have. And whether sometimes or all the time, at least on enough occasions to create a real obvious concern—a real and valid doubt—in your mind. Isn’t that right?”

“I suppose so,” Bessie said miserably, “but as I said earlier, Senator, young people sometimes say things they don’t—”

“Young people!” Seab roared. “I submit to you, Miss Rovere, that you have heard Mr. Farson say treasonous things against his country as recently as a year ago! As recently as six months ago! Maybe as recently as two months, or a week, or a day! I submit to you, Miss Rovere, that he is habitually, incessantly, eternally critical and damning of his country, and that such criticism goes far beyond, in vigor and hatred of the United States, the tolerance allowed youth and the respect for differing opinions allowed their elders. I submit to you, Miss Rovere, that he is a subversive influence undermining the fairness and objectivity of his newspaper and through his newspaper the well-being and stability of his country!”

“Only sometimes, Senator!” Bessie cried, falling neatly into his trap as bedlam instantly took over the Caucus Room. “Only sometimes!”

“Very well,” Seab said gently when Senator Eastland had gaveled for order and finally secured it. “Very well, Miss Rovere. That’s really all I wanted to know.”

“ROVERE DEFENDS FARSON CRITICISM OF US AS YOUTHFUL INDISCRETION …” said the Inquirer and most others.

And nobody at all paid much attention to anything else she said, or picked up her remark to Tal as the chairman recessed the hearing until the next day, though she said it in a loud, defensive voice and many heard.

“I’m sorry, Tal,” she said defiantly, “but sometimes you are so terribly savage you sound almost hysterical.”

He did not even look at her, nor did Anna or George Harrison Watersill. Her eyes filled with tears and for a moment she stood there helplessly like some large untethered blimp uncertain which way the wind would take it. I went forward and gave her my arm and we walked out together, braving the glaring lights in our faces and the hostile looks of our fellow members of the Old Team at our backs.

5

I had known for many years, of course, that my husband did not entirely approve of Talbot Farson; but I was not prepared for the venom, which he revealed at the Senate hearing. It seemed curiously out of character for Gordon. It raised in my mind the first of those doubts, which were to result eventually in the termination of our marriage and the end, sad, but I can see now inevitable, of his plodding and undistinguished political career.

—ANNA HASTINGS, by Anna Hastings

At first, however, as with Bessie, all seemed to be proceeding on an innocuous reminiscent level. Gordon received all the deference Senators do receive when they testify before one another; he even, it seemed to me, received a little more. The reason for this became apparent when the committee, again led by Seab, began to concentrate on his impressions of Tal. It was very swiftly apparent that Gordon would be—indeed, eagerly wanted to be—a hostile and damaging witness.

“At what time did you first meet Mr. Farson, Senator?” Seab inquired. “At what time did he come into your life?”

“At the time I first met my future wife, Senator,” Gordon said; and added with an uncharacteristic dryness that indicated his mood, “They seemed to be rather inseparable at that time.”

“And still are,” Seab suggested gently.

“And still are,” Gordon agreed.

“In fact, with Miss Rovere and Mr. Macomb, your wife and Talbot Farson are quite a team, aren’t they?”

“I believe Mrs. Hastings likes to call it ‘the old team,’” Gordon said, again with that uncharacteristic acrid note. “I’ve been allowed to come along sort of as water boy, you might say, Senator. Somehow I’ve never quite considered myself really part of it.”

“Even though, of course, it has been your personal fortune which has brought your wife such success in the newspaper world as she has,” Seab said, which earned him an angry look from Anna and a noticeably sarcastic murmur from the press tables. Gordon, however, was too much honest old Gordon to go along with Seab on that one.

“Well, sir,” he said, and for a moment his antagonism toward Tal faded and his pride in Anna came to the fore, “I think mebbe that’s a little harsh on my wife, I really do. I think anybody who’s followed her career knows that she was a smashin’ big success before she ever got to me, and would have continued to be even if I hadn’t come along. My money came in handy in helpin’ her get the Inquirer started, but she’s made it what it is.”

“Do you agree with what it is, Senator?” Seab inquired gently, and again Gordon answered honestly.

“I have my reservations, Senator,” he said uncomfortably. “But I think in its own way it’s a great newspaper.”

“It’s not your way, though,” Seab persisted in the same gentle tone.

“No, sir,” Gordon said quietly. “It is not.”

“How would you change it, Senator?”

“I’d make it more evenhanded,” Gordon said promptly. “‘I wouldn’t be so blamed high-handed and self-righteous. I’d try to balance the news more. I’d try to give everybody a fair break. I’d keep my opinions on the editorial page and I’d keep ’em out of the news columns and the headlines. I’d be—well—‘fairer’ I guess is the word.”

“To whose influence do you attribute the fact that it isn’t ‘fairer,’ Senator?” Seab inquired, soft as the sucking dove.

“Well,” Gordon said, and hesitated.

“To your wife? Or to Mr. Farson? Or to Mr. Macomb and Miss Rovere? Or to all four, or to one or two, or what?”

“Well—” Gordon began again, and again hesitated.

“Is it your wife?” Seab asked, his voice challenging. “Is it your wife who has made that great newspaper the twisted, slanted, vicious thing it is?”

“No, sir!” Gordon said sharply, his defense of Anna instinctive and immediate—his lack of defense of the paper equally, I suspected, instinctive.

“Well, then, sir,” Seab pounced with equal sharpness, “who is it, now? Mr. Macomb? Miss Rovere? Are they the ones who have twisted this great newspaper and made it into an instrument of subversion and destruction of these United States?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that, Senator,” Gordon responded, recovering a bit. “I don’t like all they’ve done with it, but I don’t think it’s deliberately subversive … I think.”

“Then it is Mr. Macomb and Miss Rovere,” Seab said, and something about his teasing tone evidently prompted Gordon to decide to end the game and say exactly what he felt.

“No, sir,” he said firmly, “they aren’t part of it, they’re fair-minded people. My wife may be partly to blame, seein’ as how she’s publisher”—there was an amazed and angry sound from Anna, a murmur of surprise and excitement along the press tables—“but if there’s been any one single individual whose influence has been dominant over her and the whole paper, it’s been Mr. Talbot Farson. He’s to blame if anybody is, I do believe.”

For a moment the thought of anyone being dominant over Anna brought its own balance of amused sanity to the proceedings, but it did not last long in the excitement created by his direct accusation. The Caucus Room audience, ever eager to participate, burst into sound—the chairman banged his gavel—the cameras swung—the flashbulbs flashed—Senators looked suitably shocked—an outraged Tal exchanged a furious glance with Anna and made sure it lasted long enough for the TV cameras to catch it—confusion, as usual in such moments, reigned, and all who could profited from it.

Ultimately things settled down again, everyone breathing a little heavier.

“Do I understand you to say, Senator,” Seab said carefully, “that in your belief Talbot Farson is the evil genius who has influenced the Inquirer and turned it against the well-bein’, safety and security of these United States?”

“I believe Talbot Farson has been a consistently bad influence on the paper and on this nation, Senator,” Gordon said quietly. “Yes, sir, I surely do believe that.”

This time the charge was not so easy to ignore.

“SEN. HASTINGS SAYS FARSON BAD INFLUENCE ON INQUIRER, NATION … MRS. HASTINGS TO TESTIFY TOMORROW, PROMISES ‘COMPLETE REFUTATION OF THESE VICIOUS, IRRESPONSIBLE CHARGES.’”

Now it wasn’t only Bessie and me they wouldn’t speak to as the session ended; Gordon was in the doghouse too. He didn’t seem to mind, however. Something had changed in Gordon; or rather, I decided, something deep, long-hidden and probably not related directly to Tal at all, had surfaced. The immediate consequences were bad for Tal. Downstream I could see other possibilities.

So, possibly, did Anna. The statement she issued from the Inquirer an hour later sounded as though she had given some thought to warding them off.

She did promise “a complete refutation of these vicious, irresponsible charges,” but she went on to hold out a definite olive branch to Gordon, who was still on the Hill and deliberately incommunicado behind a silken screen of soft-spoken li’l Tex-is secretaries.

“I regret very much,” Anna said, “that my husband saw fit to attack Mr. Farson, thus playing directly into the hands of all the reactionary, illiberal forces in the United States. However, anyone who knows Senator Hastings is aware that he speaks his convictions honestly and courageously, no matter how mistaken they may be. That is his right and I do not challenge it.

“It seems to me imperative, however, that we at the Inquirer present a united front against the despicable attack upon us, and through us upon the First Amendment and the right of the free American press to criticize anything, particularly the senseless war in Viet Nam, that is deserving of criticism. I am sure my husband does not wish to challenge this most fundamental principle of our democracy, and I am sure that upon reflection he will put aside what appears to be a purely personal prejudice and rejoin us in our battle to save the free press.”

This was the first time she had formally wrapped the flag and the First Amendment around herself and indicated the line the defense was going to take; and it didn’t impress Gordon, who apparently regarded it as the attempt to put him publicly on the spot—which it was. We learned later that he didn’t come home at all that night or the next day. He went, in fact, to the Circle H, taking the kids with him. Both still passionately loved the ranch and jumped at every chance to go. They also, in spite of his views, which they knew Anna deplored, still deeply loved their father, which I don’t think Anna really realized yet, believing confidently that her antiwar stand would bridge the growing gap between them. But the time for realization, though we did not know it then, was rapidly coming, along with other things.

First, however, was the defense of the First Amendment. Sometime during the afternoon she affected an uneasy truce with Bessie and me, and against our better judgment we found ourselves locked in her office having a strategy session with her and Tal. He was grudging with us at best, though I hadn’t testified yet and presumably could still be persuaded (he didn’t really believe this, any more than I did). And Anna, while pretending to seek our advice, really knew exactly how she intended to proceed.

“We were just window dressing for her ego,” Bessie murmured to me later. “I only hope she knows what she’s doing.”

“She always knows,” I said. “It may not always be right—but she always knows.”

“She’d better be right,” Bessie said grimly. “An awful lot of things are riding on this.”

Next day Anna laid the groundwork for what would ultimately be her successful defense of the First Amendment, the Inquirer, Tal and her own permanent national fame. She also lost a few things, but she didn’t realize it then, and by the time she did, she had persuaded herself she could survive without them.

6

I had originally been scheduled to appear at the end of the hearings. With typical craft, acting no doubt at my opponent’s instigation, the committee tried to catch me unprepared by calling me unexpectedly to the stand the day after my husband testified. It did them no good. In fact, I believe they soon regretted it.

—ANNA HASTINGS, by Anna Hastings

I agree with Anna: I believe they speedily did. But for a brief while it appeared that they had succeeded in catching her off balance. Certainly she had one of her rare flustered moments when the chairman suddenly rapped the gavel smartly and said, “Mrs. Hastings, please!”

Dutifully George Watersill started from his chair to protest, but although her face was a study in surprise and annoyance, she reached up a white-gloved hand and pulled him firmly back.

“I’ll handle it,” she said, loudly enough so that amused colleagues heard and dutifully noted it down. And after a rather stumbling start, she did.

Her first interrogator was the committee’s newest and youngest member, and since he agreed with her views on the war and therefore was one of those the Inquirer invariably identified as “an outstandingly effective member of the new generation in the Senate,” his questioning was swift and painless. How long had she known Tal? Was he an old and respected friend? Had she ever had cause to doubt his loyalty? Did she trust him? Would she continue to trust him? Did she not agree that this was a vicious and unwarranted attack launched by a desperate President whom he and she both mistrusted? It all went very smoothly.

“Senator Cooley?” the chairman said, and Seab eased forward a bit, elbow comfortably on the table, chin in hand, eyes sleepy and thoughtful as he stared at Anna. She gave no sign to those who did not know her, but we who did could sense her immediate tension as she stared back at this old friend who now, she felt, had become her permanent enemy.

“There never was,” Seab said softly, “a cuter, more attractive, more intelligent, more capable reporter to hit this Hill than you were when we first met, Anna. You’ll never know what a breath of spring you brought to us tired old folks on this tired old Hill.”

Of all possible approaches this was the least expected, and for a moment she was genuinely and entirely taken aback.

“I—I’m glad you felt that way, Senator,” she said. “It was fun in those days. I hoped that you liked me.”

“We did, Anna,” Seab said, still softly. “We still do. That’s why we regret what’s happenin’ now.”

“You don’t regret it any more than I do, Senator,” she said, recovering a little.

“Yes,” Seab agreed. “Then why is it happenin’, Anna? Why is it happenin’? How come you’ve gotten so far away from that sweet, smart, pretty little gal who used to walk this Hill? Where’s she gone, Anna? Where’s she gone?”

“She’s still here, Senator,” Anna said, trying not to let herself be moved by this direct assault on her emotions, but not succeeding entirely. “She just sees things from a little different perspective now, that’s all.”

“Mighty different, I’m afraid, Anna,” Seab said with a heavy sigh. “Mighty different … Well, now.” He paused, blinked, straightened up a bit: we could see the consummate old actor pulling himself out of the sweet reveries of the past to turn with exaggerated reluctance to the unhappy realities of the present. “Well, now, Anna, let’s talk about why you’re here.”

“I’m here,” she said, alerted by his shift of tactic, herself again, as tough and shrewd as he, “‘because an unprincipled President has seen fit to attack my newspaper and my staff, and through us the First Amendment and the fundamental freedoms of this country.”

“Now, now, Miss Anna,” Seab said mildly. “Y’all are speechmakin’, now. You’re jes’ speechmakin’. You know there’s more to it than that.”

“Do I, Senator?” she inquired calmly. “Pray tell me what.”

“The safety of your country!” Seab thundered. “The well-bein’ of these United States! The very foundations and security of this great nation!”

“Poof, Senator!” she replied, fully recovered and in command. “Who’s speechmaking now?”

This brought her a vigorous round of laughter and applause from the audience, snickers from our colleagues at the press tables, some quickly suppressed smiles along the committee table. It also brought her a sudden warmly embracing beam from the senior Senator from South Carolina and a recovery as swift as any she could manage.

“Miss Anna,” he said, an amiable smile creasing the sly, wrinkled old face, “you know me too well, now, you really do. You’re thinkin’, ‘There goes that old fakir again!’ And you may be right, Anna, you may be right. But”—and suddenly his voice dropped and he looked deadly grim—“that doesn’t help either of us with the problem of Mr. Talbot Farson, does it?”

“I wasn’t aware it was a problem, Senator,” she said coolly. “Exactly what is the problem? The President has never told me, the committee has never told me—I’m quite in the dark. Insinuations—innuendoes—dark hints—dire forebodings—I’m so confused I just don’t know what to do!”

“The day you don’t know what to do, Miss Anna,” Seab said with a chuckle, “will be the day they move hell to the North Pole. I think you suspect what it’s all about jes’ a leetle bit—jes’ a leetle bit. You suspect there may be more to Mr. Farson’s talk than talk. Well: so do we, Miss Anna. So do we.”

At this there was a soft but unmistakable hiss from somewhere in the room. It turned swiftly to applause at her reply.

“I know no such thing, Senator!” she said sharply. “I know only that a vindictive President, seeking to find a scapegoat and distract attention from his brutal and heartless war, is seeking to destroy the First Amendment and the media that criticize him. He seeks to do so through the medium of my newspaper and my editor. He is using this committee as his instrument. But he will not succeed, Senator. He will not be permitted to succeed. He cannot be permitted to succeed, if the free press and with it a free nation are to remain free.”

The applause swelled up, doubled, redoubled. Seab was not impressed, though he decided to adopt still another approach.

“You-all are bestin’ me in speeches, Anna,” he said with a relaxed smile. “You really are. So let’s talk about Mr. Farson for a while. How long have you known him, now?”

“The better part of thirty years, Senator, as you very well know. You’ve known him that long yourself. Has he ever seemed disloyal or traitorous to you?”

“I’m askin’ the questions,” Seab said mildly. “You’re not a Senator yet, Miss Anna, though”—he chuckled—“nothin’ you do surprises me, and I shouldn’t be surprised if it happened any day, now.”

Again came applause and again he chuckled.

“You see, you’ve got yourself plenty of votes right here in the Caucus Room. Plenty right here.”

“Watch out, Senator,” she said with a sudden gurgle of laughter that sounded for a reminiscent second like that original Anna he had talked about earlier. “I may run in South Carolina!”

Again laughter, in which Seab joined heartily.

“I hope not!” he exclaimed. “Lordy, I hope not! But still,” he said, face returning to somber lines, “we have the problem of Mr. Farson, don’t we, Anna?”

“He is no problem to me, Senator,” she said calmly. “I believe in his innocence. I trust him. I rely upon him. I have never found him traitorous or disloyal. I have no qualms. I would say he is your problem and the President’s, Senator, and not really a concern to me.”

“Ah, but he may be,” Seab said softly. “He may be.”

“So you keep telling me,” she said coldly, “but never yet is there any proof. It’s getting a little boring, frankly, Senator.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t let it bore me if I were you, Anna,” he said dryly. “I wouldn’t let it bore me for one little minute. I just want to run over this with you, now.” He paused. “All right?”

“Certainly,” she said blandly. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“You’re here to make a case,” Seab said, “and you’re doin’ it mighty well. I just hope I can do as well, Miss Anna; just one whit as well. So you have known Mr. Farson for almost thirty years. Have you been intimate friends with him during all that time?”

“Miss Rovere, Mr. Macomb, Mr. Farson and I have been close and intimate friends all that time, Senator. We were joined in due course by my husband. All of us have been intimate friends for a long time.”

“Yes,” Seab agreed gravely. “But you and Mr. Farson have been the most intimate of all, is that right?”

Again came a hissing, again changing to applause as Anna replied with a continuing coldness:

“I don’t know what that is supposed to mean, Senator, but if it means what I think you intend it to mean, then it is unworthy of you and I won’t dignify it with an answer. Mr. Farson has been my executive editor ever since the founding of the Inquirer in 1956. Our working relationship has been most close and most intimate. It could not have been closer. It could not have been more intimate. What about it, Senator?”

“Well, then,” Seab said, still mildly, when the applause finally died down, “you have certainly had occasion to know him thoroughly, to sound out his views and opinions most extensively, to know, more perhaps than anyone, what he thinks. Is that right?”

“Possibly so, Senator,” she said; and then added impatiently as he cocked an exaggeratedly quizzical eyebrow, “Yes, I suppose I have known his views and opinions better than anyone else. What of it? What sinister thing do you make of that?”

“And you have always found them helpful, encouraging and friendly to the United States?”

“I have found him consistently determined that the United States should live up to the principles upon which it was founded and remain true to the dream that gave it being,” she said calmly, and got another big round of applause.

“You are satisfied that he is loyal?” Seab asked, unperturbed.

“I am.”

“You have never heard him say anything subversive or destructive about this country?”

“I have not.”

“But you have heard him say sharply critical things about it?”

“Many times.”

“Even harshly and savagely critical?”

“Sometimes.”

“This has not disturbed you?”

“Never.”

“Why is that, Miss Anna?” Seab asked softly. “Why is that, now?”

“Because in most instances I have agreed with him,” she said calmly. “Not always with his tone or his terms of expression, but almost always with his opinion. Certainly I agree with his opinion of this criminal and useless war, which we have done”—her voice, though remaining calm, became steely—“and will continue to do—everything in our power to oppose, to thwart and to end.”

Again Seab let the applause tumble over and subside. Then he remarked mildly, “If we were in a state of war, Anna, that statement would be mighty close to treason.”

“Give the President a state of war!” she challenged sharply. “Go ahead and give him one! He doesn’t dare ask for one because he knows Congress wouldn’t give it to him. He missed the boat on that as he has on everything else in this ghastly and inexcusable situation. So give it to him, Senator! Go on! Line up Congress and give him a state of war, and then declare me treasonous, and Mr. Farson treasonous! But don’t come around in the meantime and do his dirty work trying to destroy the First Amendment and the freedom of the press and the freedom of the United States of America!”

After that, with a few more face-saving attempts to throw her off balance, Seab gave up, very well aware that he had lost the battle of the news and the headlines for that day; even though, knowing him, not even Anna in her triumph was euphoric enough to believe that he was finally routed. He obviously still felt he had something, and as the expressions of other committee members revealed when they left the Caucus Room, they felt so too. But for the moment, of course, it was all Anna.

“ANNA HASTINGS DEFENDS FREE PRESS IN HEATED SENATE HEARING … TELLS COMMITTEE SHE SUPPORTS FARSON FULLY IN ATTEMPTS TO ‘OPPOSE, THWART AND END’ VIET NAM WAR … COUNTRY GIVES PUBLISHER FULL SUPPORT IN BATTLE FOR FIRST AMENDMENT.”

There may have been some doubt about this last assertion, which was the Inquirer’s own headline, but there was no doubt that she received full support from the media. Not for the last time, her name that night was the biggest in the country and the tributes flowed in nonstop.

We all expected a call from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when we got back to the office but there was none. Instead there was a brief and frigid statement from the Press Secretary:

“It is with deep regret that the President has noted Mrs. Anna Hastings’ assertion before the Senate committee that she and her executive editor, Mr. Talbot Farson, are doing ‘everything in our power to oppose, to thwart and to end’ the conflict in Viet Nam.

“Under other circumstances such a statement would be clear treason, subject to the full prosecution of the law. Under any circumstance it is an inexcusable attempt to weaken the United States and the President in the conduct of a necessary and vital attempt to hold back the tide of ruthless Communist imperialism.

“The President cannot prosecute, but he does deeply regret that Mrs. Hastings and her executive editor, Talbot Farson, have deemed it necessary to strike so grievous a blow at the very heart of their nation’s defenses.”

“‘Nation’s defenses!’” Anna sniffed angrily. “What on earth has Viet Nam got to do with the ‘nation’s defenses’? He’s getting paranoid.”

“He can’t prosecute because there’s no law giving him the authority and he knows it,” Tal said contemptuously. “You’ve got him on the run and now all he can do is squeal.”

I said nothing. It was my turn to testify next and we all knew that my testimony might be damaging to Tal; but my mind was made up. They seemed to sense this, for neither spoke to me about it. The only comment came from Bessie, who called me at home that night.

“I just want you to know I wish you well.”

“Thanks, Bess. I’ll do it for the Old Team.”

She snorted.

“The Old Team is a little frazzled now, I’m afraid. I think we’re both going to get the ax, if you ask me.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I doubt it. Anna can’t afford to crack the facade now.”

Which just goes to show that after all those years I still didn’t know Anna. Nor, I found, did I know Gordon, who had a few surprises for us, too.

7

Although I have long since forgiven Ed Macomb, and he still remains one of my closest and dearest friends though no longer in my employ, I must confess that I could not find it in my heart to forgive my husband. I realized I had underestimated the depth of his antagonism toward Talbot Farson and his basic dislike for me and the principles I have always tried to maintain. The committee hearing temporarily became a shambles as his feelings were displayed for the public record. When it was over I am afraid our marriage was a shambles too.

—ANNA HASTINGS, by Anna Hastings

Actually, as Bessie and I saw it, Gordon was quite reasonable and quite calm. He was just fearfully determined, with a grim persistence that not even Seab could match. He obviously did have a personal motivation but on the whole he handled it and himself with a considerable dignity. His appearance certainly took us all by surprise, though. “Out of Seab,” as Alice Roosevelt Longworth (the capital’s only real wit for the past seventy years) once remarked, paraphrasing Pliny, “always something new.”

Like Anna, I was handed first to the minor lions on the committee and found their questioning routine and not very difficult. They were all friends of hers, darlings of the Inquirer, and not about to extract from me anything that might be damaging either to it or to their own cozy relations therewith. Nor did I volunteer anything, figuring that Seab would be more than enough to handle. And also I was not really in a mood to volunteer. I had lain awake most of the night. Though I may have sounded a bit flippant here and there in the narrative, this was not all that easy for me. For all his often prickly personality, Tal and I had been close friends for a quarter of a century and it isn’t that comfortable to testify to things that may permanently damage an old friend. Possibly I was naive in thinking my testimony could have that effect, but, anyway, I did. My mind was made up, but it hadn’t been a simple matter: it had caused me, in fact, a lot of genuine turmoil and unhappiness in the days since we had received that first call from the White House. I was therefore an easy target for confusion when Seab, instead of sailing into me himself, said blandly:

“Mr. Chairman, if it’s agreeable to the committee, I think we might invite the distinguished junior Senator from Texas to sit in with us this morning and ask a few questions. He’s expressed that desire, and he does have an interest, so I think perhaps we might accede to his desire if that’s agreeable to you-all.”

There was a tensing in the room, a few murmurs of protest along the committee table. But before anyone had a chance to speak, Jim Eastland in the chair said calmly:

“I expect nobody can object to that. Senator Hastings, join us, if you please.”

And as we swung around to look, we saw him leave a seat toward the back and come forward. Accompanying him, looking neither left nor right and certainly not at their mother, were Gordie and Lisa, tense, white-faced and nervous. They looked like two little hippie tramps at this point in their lives, but, as befitted fifty million dollars on the hoof, give or take a few, their lengthy hair was combed, their carefully tattered T-shirts and carefully faded jeans were clean, and they carried themselves with that ineffable air of the inherited rich that shows through even the most determinedly casual attire. They were obviously on Daddy’s side; and when he had taken his place beside Seab and they had taken seats in the row of chairs behind him, their eyes sought mine with shy but warmly affectionate smiles. It was obvious they were on my side, too, which made me feel a lot better.

“Mr. Macomb,” Gordon said while the room quieted down and behind me I could sense Anna and Tal leaning forward intently, “you have known Mr. Farson intimately for many years, is that correct?”

“Yes, Senator.”

“Please describe that relationship.”

“Well,” I said, “it began, as you know, when Anna—Mrs. Hastings—Miss Rovere, Mr. Farson and I first came to Washington as young reporters. That was early World War Two days, we didn’t make very much and so to save expenses we doubled up, as a lot of young people in Washington did in those days.”

“Not as they do in these days,” Seab interjected with a smile, and a little wave of amusement broke some of the tension in the room.

“No, Senator,” I said. “This was girl-girl and boy-boy, and not even that was the way it sometimes is in these days. We were just trying to save money and make ends meet.”

“So you did know Tal—Mr. Farson—very well from almost the moment you got to Washington,” Gordon said as the audience finished its chuckle and became attentive again.

“Tal, Anna and I met our very first day on the Hill, the day after Pearl Harbor when F.D.R. came up here to ask for the declaration of war. We met Bessie a week or so later.”

“And you began rooming with Tal—Mr. Farson—almost immediately thereafter.”

“Within a month.”

“So that you were in a position to know his thoughts on things as fully and completely as roommates do know each other’s thoughts, when they are young and strugglin’ to make their mark in Washington.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Particularly if they genuinely like each other.”

“Yes, sir.”

“As you and Mr. Farson genuinely do like each other?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, offering Tal a smile which he did not return, “although I think he’s always rather considered me the dumber partner. But I’ve managed to keep up. Anyway, I think he knows I’ve always liked him.”

“So there is no personal animus in any testimony you may give here.”

“None on my part,” I said, slightly nettled by Tal’s lack of response.

“But perhaps on his?” Gordon asked quickly.

“I can only testify for myself, Senator. I’m fond of Tal, we’ve always gotten along. Maybe we’d better let it go at that.”

“All right,” he agreed, somewhat to my surprise, for Seab wouldn’t have abandoned it so quickly. “I surely don’t want to come between two old friends, now, I surely don’t. But I do want you to testify fully about his beliefs.”

“I’m under oath, Gordon—Senator. Ask me what you like.”

“Has he ever said anythin’ to you that indicated a lack of faith in the United States?”

“He has been very critical of this country on many occasions. But, then, who hasn’t, from time to time?”

“Lots of people,” Gordon said crisply. “Lots of good, simple, decent, honest people who love their country.”

“I don’t know about that, Senator,” I said, “and I think there you’re getting into a very subjective and pejorative area. Lots of serious criticism of this country is based upon love for it and disappointment because of its apparent failure to live up to its best potentials. It doesn’t mean that those who criticize are always hateful or subversive toward it.”

This was when I got my round of applause. It was the first and last.

“You feel, then,” Gordon said when it had subsided, “that Mr. Farson’s criticisms have always been based upon love for the United States. He has never seemed to you unduly harsh, savage and unbalanced in his comments.”

“He has sometimes been a little strong.”

“How strong?” Gordon asked sharply.

“Very.”

“Has he ever advocated the overthrow of the government of the United States by force and violence?”

“No, sir.”

“So you believe him to be entirely loyal and devoted to the best interests of this country.”

I hesitated, just long enough for Seab to nudge Gordon sharply in the ribs.

“So you believe him to be entirely loyal and devoted—” Gordon began again dutifully.

Days and nights of agonizing uncertainty suddenly coalesced. It was one thing to say that my mind was made up and another to find that it really, finally, was.

“Senator,” I said, and I’m afraid my voice trembled a little with unexpected emotion, “I am not entirely sure of that, no.”

There was a gasp, a hiss and finally a boo from the audience, an uneasy and disapproving stirring along the press tables. I was conscious that all the television cameras were staring intently into my every pore. I was also conscious that Gordon, Gordie and Lisa were all smiling at me encouragingly. I tried to return their smiles but I’m afraid I did not look as confident as I wanted to. Behind me I heard Tal whisper savagely to Anna, “Goddamned traitor!” I did not hear her reply.

“Why do you say that, Ed?” Gordon asked, and without conscious volition I think I sighed heavily before replying.

“A number of cumulative things,” I said finally. “Hard to put my finger on, exactly … cumulative.”

“Have you ever known him to be associated with anyone known to you, or suspected by you, to be subversive and disloyal to the United States?” Jim Eastland interjected.

“No, Senator,” I said, again slowly. “At least, I think not.”

“That seems an odd answer,” he observed.

“Well, there have been a few people over the years who were pretty far over, but I believe Tal always knew them as news sources. Not, to my knowledge, as ‘associates’ in the sense you mean.”

“But you still have this ‘cumulative’ feelin’.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did it begin?” Gordon inquired. “Was there any one point or moment? Surely there must have been some-thin’ to make you feel that way, some single thing. What was it?”

“Well,” I said carefully, and now the room hushed down to a sort of sibilant intensity as I spoke, “it may go back to the night of V-J Day.”

“V-J Day!” Gordon exclaimed. “But that was almost twenty-five years ago!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’ve had this feelin’ all that time and you never told anybody, you went along workin’ with him on the Inquirer, you let us allow him to run the Inquirer, virtually as he pleased, you never said anythin’, you still regarded him as your friend—how could that be?” Gordon demanded in a wondering tone. “How could you betray us like that, Ed, when you knew this man—”

“I didn’t know, Gordon!” I said sharply, struggling hard to maintain some semblance of control over the proceedings and myself as all sorts of abysses opened before us. “I don’t know now! It was only an impression I had, a suggestion, a feeling—”

But now my colleagues in the media were giving me openly scornful glances, the audience in the Caucus Room was in full voice; behind me I did finally hear Anna exclaim sharply, “This is character assassination pure and simple!” It was obvious there was no choice left.

“He turned to me,” I said loudly, loudly enough so that they all grumbled into tense and intently watching silence, “in the midst of all that happy, excited crowd in Lafayette Park, and he said, ‘We’re top dogs now, but in twenty years’ time we’ll have things turned completely around so that America will be the most hated country in the world!’”

“Repeat that!” Seab ordered, hunching forward over the table in his excitement, the sleepy old face no longer sleepy now but sharp-eyed and alert.

“‘We’re top dogs now, but in twenty years’ time we’ll have things turned completely around so that America will be the most hated country in the world.’”

“I see,” Gordon said, while a confused jumble of sound filled the room. “I see.… Did he say whom he meant when he said, ‘we’ll have things turned completely around?’”

“No, sir.”

“But it obviously wasn’t you and he,” Seab said dryly.

“No, sir.”

“He meant himself and someone else—or several others—or even many others. Isn’t that correct?”

“That was my impression.”

“He could have meant Communists,” Seab said.

“Or fellow Communists,” Gordon suggested with a sudden surprising anger in his voice. “Or fellow Communists. That’s what he could have meant, isn’t it, Ed?”

There was a great well-up of boos, eventually gaveled into silence.

“He could have,” I said carefully, “but I have no knowledge of whom he meant exactly, Senator. I just know he was very confident that these people, whoever they were, could turn world opinion around so that we would become a very hated nation.”

“And he would help them do it,” Gordon said flatly. “‘We’ll turn things around.’ He was part of them, don’t you think so, Ed? You do, don’t you? You thought so then and you think so to this day. Isn’t that correct?”

“Yes,” I said quietly, sure I was bidding farewell to almost thirty years of friendship, very likely to the Inquirer and certainly to at least two members of the Old Team, “yes, Gordon, that is what I thought then, and that is what I think today.”

For a while after that, pandemonium claimed the Caucus Room. Senators exclaimed, press colleagues made skeptical remarks, members of the audience groaned, hissed, booed. Behind my back Tal cursed and Anna joined him (the first time, I remember thinking, that I ever heard her use those ostentatious four-letter expletives that soon were to become the sign and seal of her trendiness). Gordie and Lisa looked frightened but kept on smiling at me with an earnest determination that in retrospect seemed very touching though I had no time to notice then.

Eventually order was restored, the hearing proceeded. I was handed back to the minor lions, who now had a Cause, the cause of demolishing my testimony. They made a few speeches; I tried not to compete. I repeated Tal’s statement whenever asked, emphasized again that I had no personal knowledge whom he meant by “we,” no personal knowledge that he had ever associated with anyone actively subversive or disloyal to the United States. I told what I knew and stuck to it without embellishment. Later there were many scathing editorials and television newscast statements to the effect that I was attempting to give a sinister implication to a “silly statement, made with youthful exuberance, that should be dismissed out of hand by any sane and reasonable mind,” as Anna’s signed front-page editorial put it; but it was clear that I had done him a lot of damage with the public. Not eagerly, not happily, and not with relish, as some of my colleagues—and Tal and Anna—seemed to think; but because I felt that in all honesty I had no choice.

This time the White House statement was one sentence long:

“At last the testimony of an honest man, Mr. Edward Macomb, has put the loyalty of Mr. Talbot Farson in proper perspective.”

“Shit!” Anna said, quite startling me at the time. She then suggested, without noticeable rancor but very firmly, that I knock off for the rest of the day and perhaps for the rest of the hearing.

“How about for the rest of forever?” I couldn’t help snapping, annoyed by her obvious feeling that I had been engaged upon some kind of carefree enjoyable picnic for myself in testifying against an old friend.

“Perhaps,” she agreed calmly, “but not until I decide it’s the proper moment.”

“I’m about to decide right now,” I said, and I was. But she only laughed, tucked my arm through hers and walked me to the door.

“Go home and get a good night’s sleep, Ed,” she suggested, “and don’t worry. We’re almost out of the woods on this. Tal and I recognize you did what you felt you had to do. We don’t hold it against you. Your testimony won’t hold up long. I started things moving our way yesterday and this is just a minor interruption. It will work out for us, you’ll see.”

Which was all very patronizing and designed deliberately to make me angry, which it did, for a while; until the next day, in fact, when we all returned to the hearing room and took our seats beside one another as though nothing had happened, to the great edification of the audience, the continual snapping of flashbulbs and the constant zooming-in of television cameras.

“Yeay, Old Team!” Bessie murmured as she took her seat beside me. And in some odd and wryly sentimental way, I suppose that was still what it was; and probably still is; and probably always will be.

Then the next witness was called and the good cheer of the Old Team’s leader and her right-hand man suddenly took a turn for the worse.

8

The day on which my opponent and those who wished to destroy the Inquirer, the free press and the First Amendment brought all their efforts to bear in a last attempt to demolish us was a difficult and traumatic one for me. For a time it seemed they might succeed. Only in retrospect did the event appear for what it was: the opportunity to make a full, final and utterly devastating refutation of all the vicious charges made against Tal, against the paper and against me. But it had its tense moments, and I do not minimize the fact that for a little while I was seriously concerned about the outcome. I need not have been, really: all worked for the best even though, again, my husband did his hostile worst to assist my enemies.

—ANNA HASTINGS, by Anna Hastings

Back in those ancient times, protected by the aura of its dictatorial and untouchable leader, the FBI almost never appeared in person before Congressional committees. There was a tacit and generally unbroken agreement, inspired by awe, respect and a lively and omnipresent fear of the Director’s files, that great delicacy would be exercised with regard to this particular agency. It was treated with kid gloves reinforced by cotton muffs ten inches thick. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, there was an almost universal tendency to “walk wide o’ J. Edgar Hoover, for ’alf o’ creation he owns.” Or so it was thought in the White House and on the Hill.

Therefore, aside from an occasional dour appearance by the gentleman himself to fend off some upstart so ignorant and beyond the pale as to dare to criticize him, committee investigators were usually entrusted with the task of placing the results of the FBI’s discoveries before the members; and so it was today.

Clarence Dobson was small, neat, bright-eyed; ineffably, if somewhat unjustly, ferrety. In some hard-to-define way he always gave the impression of one immured forever in files musty, dusty, dark and dank, from which, from time to time, he would emerge with a bucket of devastating information and dump it upon the unsuspecting head of some evildoer. Actually he was an amiable, hardworking soul who lived in a modest home in Alexandria, supported a wife, three kids, two dogs, a cat, an old station wagon and a heavy mortgage. He got along excellently with the press and had slipped us all many interesting leaks over the years. When he zeroed in, as we had come to learn, he really zeroed in; and when he was backed by the FBI he could be quite devastating.

It is no wonder Tal and Anna both noticeably tensed when the chairman called him blandly to the stand. Their expressions—hers in particular—changed to an openly impatient anger when Gordon, at Seab’s prearranged urging, was once again permitted to lead the questioning.

In the ritual that was always dutifully observed, Clarence first was sworn in like any other witness. Then the Old Team’s water boy got down to work with a persistence that showed clearly that he thought he had Tal on the run.

“Mr. Dobson,” he said, “you were present here yesterday?”

“Yes, sir,” Clarence agreed in that level, courteous, completely noncommittal tone he had long ago perfected for these occasions.

“And you heard Mr. Macomb testify concernin’ Mr. Far-son’s sentiments on V-J Day?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You heard Mr. Macomb say that Mr. Farson said, and I quote, ‘We’re top dogs now, but in twenty years’ time we’ll have things turned completely around so that America will be the most hated country in the world.’”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you heard the concludin’ portion of my exchange with Mr. Macomb in which Mr. Macomb agreed with me that when Mr. Farson said ‘we’ll have things turned completely around,’ he was associatin’ himself with those who might possibly be Communists, and even fellow Communists?”

“I heard Mr. Macomb so testify, Senator, yes, sir.”

“Do you have any reason, of your own knowledge, to believe that this conclusion about Mr. Farson, with which Mr. Macomb and I found ourselves in agreement, might be true?”

“Not of my own knowledge, no, sir,” Clarence said, beginning that gentle sifting through papers which had many times before marked the beginning of the end for some unhappy witness, “but I have here a document prepared by”—he paused before the fateful words, while many committee members made their silent, invisible but inevitable genuflection toward the drab-corridored building downtown—“the FBI.”

“Mr. Chairman,” Seab said promptly, “I move that the document referred to be admitted as evidence in this hearing.”

“So ordered,” Jim Eastland said laconically from behind his cigar. “It will be listed as Exhibit One. Or mebbe,” he added with a sudden chuckle, “Exhibit One-A. Or even One-A-plus.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Seab said.

“Happy to oblige, Senator,” said Jim Eastland.

“Christ!” someone murmured audibly at the press tables. “What a love feast!”

“Now, then, Mr. Dobson,” Gordon said calmly, “can you-all kindly give us the gist of Exhibit One, please?”

“Yes, sir,” Clarence said, his tone still level, dispassionate and businesslike. “It relates that Mr. Talbot Farson was associated secretly during his college days with at least three youth organizations that were Communist-inspired and Communist-dominated. He was an active member of them. It relates that in more recent years he has been in constant secret contact with a member of the Soviet espionage network based in the Soviet Embassy on Sixteenth Street, Northwest, in this city. It relates that he both gave information to, and received information from, this individual.”

“Who is this individual?” Gordon demanded, while the room suddenly became very quiet and the tension very great.

“Was, Senator,” Clarence said gravely. “Unfortunately, he was killed by a hit-and-run driver two months ago while crossing the street in the rain near his apartment in Southwest Washington. His name was Valerian Obolenski, known to the FBI to have been a member of the KGB ever since he was assigned to the embassy, ostensibly as a records clerk, five years ago.”

“Oh,” Gordon said in a disappointed tone that was reflected in the faces of Seab and several other committee members. “He is no longer living, then.”

“No, sir.”

“And it was a hit-and-run accident, so nobody knows who killed him?”

“No, sir.”

“Was it known to his superiors that he was under surveillance by the FBI?”

“It seems a fair presumption.”

“Then the hit-and-run ‘accident’ might not have been an accident at all?”

Clarence paused, as always scrupulously fair. “That is possible,” he said slowly. “We have no means of knowing that.”

“Do you have any practical, tangible, concrete evidence of his associatin’ with Mr. Farson, then, or of Mr. Farson’s associatin’ with him?”

“Only once, to the FBI’s knowledge, did they converse by telephone,” Clarence said. “There is no written evidence.”

“But there is evidence of the telephone call?”

“It was taped,” Clarence said, and beside me I felt Anna’s arm go suddenly tense. I glanced quickly beyond her at Tal. Both their faces were set and grim. The room stirred with sound.

“Is it available here today?” Gordon asked, his voice showing strain and excitement.

“It is, Senator,” Clarence said, and gestured to one of his, junior staff assistants, who came forward with a small recorder and placed it carefully at his elbow.

“This will be Exhibit Two,” Jim Eastland said. “Play it for us, Mr. Investigator.”

“Yes, sir,” Clarence said, and turning to the machine, he adjusted it carefully—started it—stopped it—started it again (he was not above milking his dramatic scenes when they were good ones, and this certainly was) and finally glanced up.

“Go ahead,” Senator Eastland ordered with his wry little smile. “We’re all listenin’.”

And indeed we were as the voices, somewhat muffled but quite distinguishable, began.

First came Tal.

“Valerian?”

And the thick-accented reply:

“Da, Tal. Have you got it?”

“Yes. Have you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Where do you want me to leave it?”

“The usual place is still safe, I think.”

“I’m not so sure. I think somebody’s onto us.”

“Oh?” Valerian said blankly. “What makes you say that?”

“Just a hunch,” Tal said.

“I have seen no evidence.”

“Neither have I.”

“Well, then—”

“All right,” Tal said. “But we’ve got to be very careful.”

“Have you got everything I asked for?” Valerian wanted to know.

“It’s all here.”

“Including the figures on production of the new bomber?”

“Yes.”

There was a deep gasp from the room, no slightest sign from rigidly controlled, desperately impassive Tal and Anna. But it was not a good moment for them.

“Very well, then. Leave it this afternoon and I will pick it up.”

“And what you have for me,” Tal said. “Does it include all the instructions?”

“Everything.”

“Very good. We will proceed as planned, then.”

“As planned,” Valerian said. “Good-bye until next week.”

“Good-bye.”

There was a scratch or two, the sound of phones being hung up, silence. The tape ended with a little click, and gravely Clarence punched the reverse button and sat back. The whirring of the machine was the only sound. Even our colleagues at the press tables, who should have been out filing bulletins, were too stunned to move.

“Mr. Chairman!” someone said abruptly in a harsh, half-strangled voice.

Abruptly the room came to life as the still cameramen sprang into action around us, the television cameras zoomed in, committee members leaned forward, the audience let go in a great burst of babble, noise and unpent emotion.

“Mr. Farson,” Jim Eastland said calmly.

“Mr. Chairman,” Tal said, standing up, his body visibly shaking with tension, a great indignation on his face. “Mr. Chairman, when is it your intention that the committee meet again?”

“I believe we’d been thinkin’ about tomorrow mornin’,” Senator Eastland said, “but if you’d prefer somethin’ earlier—”

“I would, sir,” Tal said, obviously struggling to hold his voice steady. “This is a matter so grave and so—so damaging to me that I don’t want to let it rest on the public record any longer than I can help. I’d like to respond immediately, if I may—”

“Mr. Chairman,” Gordon interrupted, not looking at Anna or Tal, his face excited and triumphant, “it’s almost noon. Can’t we wait until two o’clock? Or even three, so Senators will have time to check in, over on the floor?”

“But that means only one side will get out to the country before I have a chance to answer!” Tal cried in a harsh and angry voice.

“Now you know how it feels,” Gordon shot back, so sharply and bitterly that Tal’s jaw literally dropped with amazement and Anna’s arm against mine gave a sudden involuntary jerk. This was the new Gordon with a vengeance.

“But—” Tal cried again. “But—”

“Three o’clock it is,” Jim Eastland said. “That’s perfectly fair, Mr. Farson. The FBI has had its say, now you can have yours. It won’t hurt you to wait three hours. It may even be, as Senator Hastings suggests, a worthwhile and enlightenin’ experience. The committee stands adjourned until three P.M.”

9

The interval was a tense and greatly disturbed time for us. Ed and Bessie went off together to lunch, virtually ignoring us. My husband, having done his damage and achieved his goal, disappeared instantly with the children. Tal and I were surrounded by the media but managed to fight our way through without responding to the incessant questioning which was, I know, almost unanimously friendly and well meant, but could only be highly distracting at that time. Somehow we managed to reach my car and I instructed the driver to take us straight to the Inquirer. There in my office, talking quietly together over salads brought up by my secretary—though neither of us really felt like eating much—we discussed our problem. Tal convinced me then, as I remain convinced to this day, that he was completely and unequivocally innocent. We decided that the best thing for him to do would simply be to tell the truth.

—ANNA HASTINGS, by Anna Hastings

For some of us, whether he did so remains to this day, and will always remain, a most serious unanswered question. But there was no doubt that from the moment he began to speak, soon after the committee reconvened at three o’clock, he had both the audience and the media solidly with him. He was greeted with an enormous burst of applause when he took the stand and many of our colleagues came over and shook his hand for the cameras. Senator Eastland patiently let this run for ten minutes or so, then gaveled for order. The room settled down to a tensely watching, highly partisan silence. Tal made the most of it.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, before anyone else had a chance to speak, “may I be accompanied by counsel?”

“Certainly,” Jim Eastland said. “Mr. Watersill, make yourself at home … although,” he added dryly, “I’m not so sure Mr. Farson needs you. I seem to get the feelin’ he’s loaded for bear.”

“Wouldn’t you be, Senator,” Tal demanded sharply, “if your life and career had been put in jeopardy by twisted, one-sided testimony based on implications full of lies?”

There was a round of hearty applause during which Senator Eastland studied him, face impassive.

“The witness will be sworn,” he said; and after it was done, and after George Harrison Watersill had busily seated himself at Tal’s side, he turned to Gordon. “Senator Hastings, would you like to interrogate the witness?”

“If the committee pleases,” Gordon said. He paused. Tension rose. He and Tal stared across the table as though they had never seen one another before—as perhaps, in a sense, they never had. Finally Gordon spoke.

“You have heard the testimony, Mr. Farson?”

“‘Mr. Farson!’” Tal echoed bitterly. “It’s been ‘Tal’ for twenty years, Gordon. Yes, I heard it, every bit of it. Including yours.”

“Then you know,” Gordon said, a rising irritation in his voice, “that it looks most damagin’ to you.”

“It has been made to look that way, yes,” Tal agreed. “By some pretty expert twisters.”

Again he got his applause, but this time Gordon was ready for him.

“Does this apply to Mr. Macomb’s”—he began, and then modified it as Tal shook his head impatiently—“does this apply to Ed’s testimony? Was that twisted? Is he a ‘pretty expert twister?’ Did you or did you not say what Ed says you did? What about it”—he spat out the name with a hostility that showed us the old amiable Gordon was gone forever—“Tal?”

“Ed’s testimony is correct as far as it goes,” Tal said, more mildly. “My own memory is vague, but it is possible I said something along the lines he has reported. I may or I may not.”

“You may or you may not,” Gordon repeated with an exaggerated thoughtfulness. “You may or you may not. That’s a pretty clever twister itself, Tal, old friend. Did you or didn’t you?”

“I don’t really remember, Gordon,” Tal said blandly. “But supposing I did, what of it?”

“What of it?” Gordon demanded sharply, while along the table Seab and Jim Eastland looked affronted and the minor lions looked pleased. “It’s a treasonous remark, if true. That’s what of it!”

“Oh, now,” Tal said, voice deliberately and insultingly chiding. “Oh, now, Gordon. ‘Treasonous if true.’ What kind of overstated nonsense is that? Suppose it were true, how could it be treasonous? If I said it at all, which I don’t remember, it was probably just an observation about the state of things.”

“It was more than that, mister,” Gordon said sharply. “It was a statement of deliberate intent that you and some other persons unknown were goin’ to embark on a deliberate campaign to make the United States ‘the most hated nation in the world.’”

“‘Some other persons unknown,’” Tal repeated thoughtfully. “Yes, they are unknown, aren’t they, Gordon? And that bothers you, doesn’t it? Suppose I did say this fantastic thing—or let’s say I said it, and it wasn’t fantastic—how could there possibly be anything treasonous about it when it involved ‘some other persons unknown?’ Who were they? How were they involved? And did I even say it at all? I don’t remember.”

“Try, Tal,” Gordon said, breathing hard but managing to hold onto his temper. “Just try, now. It’s highly important for what it says about your state of mind and about your associates.”

“It doesn’t say a thing about my ‘associates!’” Tal said sharply. “They’re ‘unknown,’ remember, and don’t you forget it. As for my state of mind, supposing I did say this fantastic thing”—and he turned and glanced back at me with a sudden exaggeratedly kindly smile—“and I’m not disputing Ed’s memory, although it was the end of a long, hard war and everybody was a little confused that night—I repeat, what of it? I had often been critical of policies of the United States that seemed to me to betray the country’s finest principles and its historical purposes, and I never made much secret of that. I didn’t agree with a lot of things that were done during the war—just”—he paused and looked directly into the television cameras—“just as I don’t agree with a lot of things that are being done in this present shameful, awful, inexcusable conflict in Viet Nam—” and received his applause, and went on, “But that doesn’t mean I was plotting any deep dark revolution. I thought it likely that the inevitable trends of history would soon reveal US foreign policy for the hopeless and self-defeating fraud it was and still is, and I thought it very likely that this would result in worldwide dislike and disrespect for America. But this seemed to me, as I say, more an inevitable trend of history than anything I would personally be involved in, and I would say history has certainly borne me out.… Gordon,” he said, and he looked at him with a puzzlement that appeared to be completely genuine, “if I really did say that some mysterious and unknown we would do all that, I swear to God I don’t know what I meant by it or why I said it … if I really did say it at all, which I honestly don’t remember.”

And he sat back amid approving murmurs from the audience and stared about him with a troubled, innocent look.

“Well,” Gordon said heavily at last, defeated on that one and knowing it, “the committee will just have to decide who it believes, as between you and Ed.”

“I’m sure, Gordon,” Tal agreed calmly. “I never said Ed was a liar. I think he is telling the truth as he remembers it. I just don’t remember it that way myself, that’s all.”

“Beat that!” Anna whispered triumphantly in my ear. “Let’s see you beat that!” I just gave her a look and shrugged, for of course nobody could.

“Well,” Gordon said again, seeming momentarily at a loss. “Well—”

“Why don’t we get along to the tape now?” Seab suggested smoothly, coming to his aid so obviously that it provoked a little wave of laughter. “It doesn’t exist in the realm of who remembers what, does it, Mr. Farson? It exists.”

“It certainly does, Senator,” Tal agreed crisply, “and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the opportunity to explain it.”

“We appreciate your willingness to do so, Mr. Farson,” Seab said calmly. “We surely do. Senator, do you wish to interrogate further—?”

“I do,” Gordon said doggedly. “Mr. Reporter, will you please read back the portion of this morning’s testimony by Mr. Dobson in which he played for us the FBI tape contain-in’ the telephone conversation between Mr. Farson and Mr. Obolenski—the late Mr. Obolenski—of the Soviet secret police.”

“Yes, sir,” the official stenotypist said, and proceeded to do so while everyone listened very closely. Heard a second time it seemed even more damaging, but it did not appear to bother Tal in the slightest. At one point George Watersill started to lean over ostentatiously and whisper in his ear, but he shook his head and waved him away. This conveyed the message that he was entirely calm, entirely in charge; and I will say for him that when he began his explanation he certainly appeared to be. Gordon took him over it line by line.

“You knew Valerian Obolenski?”

“Certainly,” Tal said calmly. “He had been a news source of mine ever since he came to the embassy five years ago.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“At some party,” Tal said indifferently. “You know how one meets people in Washington, Gordon. You go to so many parties that nine times out of ten you can’t remember.”

“But you decided to become intimate with him?”

“Not ‘intimate.’ He indicated to me that he was not too happy with things at home and it struck me he would be a good news source for an inside look at our enemy.”

“‘Our enemy,’” Gordon repeated. “Do you regard the Soviet Union as ‘our enemy?’”

“Doesn’t everybody?” Tal inquired blandly. There was an appreciative burst of laughter as Gordon flushed and looked annoyed. It was beginning to become very clear to me, as it was to many others including Anna, smiling slightly at my side, that Tal was indeed in command of the situation and very likely to remain so. Gordon plowed doggedly on.

“How did Obolenski indicate to you that he was dissatisfied with things in the Communist world?”

“Again, Gordon,” Tal said airily, “you know how it is in Washington: people in a highly sophisticated political context don’t always have to spell out their feelings to you. You sense them. I was sure he would be a good news contact.”

“And was he?”

“Splendid,” Tal said. “He told me many things I never would have learned otherwise.”

“What use did you make of them, inasmuch as you were an editor and not a reporter?”

“I passed them along,” Tal said. “I made sure our stories reflected them. I did what a good editor does. You know how I operate on the paper, Gordon.”

“I surely do,” Gordon said, his tone making the audience titter. “I surely to goodness do. What did Obolenski mean when he said, ‘Have you got it?’”

“He meant did I have the money I usually paid him for his tips.”

“How much was it?” Gordon asked quickly, and for just a split second, so tiny that only Anna, Bessie and I, I think, sensed it, Tal hesitated. Then he spoke with perfect certainty and I could feel Anna relax beside me.

“It varied according to the item. I think in this instance it was a couple of hundred.”

“Dollars?”

“Not kopeks,” Tal responded, to increased laughter. “Sure, dollars.”

“What was the ‘usual place’ where you and Obolenski left your goodies for one another?” Gordon inquired, with a sarcasm that revealed his realization that things were beginning to slip out from under him.

“A mailbox at the post office. Really very amateurish, but that’s probably why it worked.”

“Do you still have it?”

Tal looked surprised.

“Not since his death, no.”

“Do you have any record of it?”

“Certainly not. It wasn’t in his real name or mine. Who would be so foolish? I dropped my key in the letter slot the morning after his death and never went back. I presume the other key was lost with his effects, which I believe were claimed immediately by the Soviet Embassy. I wouldn’t know, and I doubt”—a little genuine savagery came into his tone, indicative of a growing confidence—“if even the great FBI can trace down anything as elusive as that. It’s all utterly gone, Gordon. What’s your next point?”

“My next point,” Gordon said with a careful control, “is your assurance to Obolenski that you would give him ‘the figures on production of the new bomber.’ What was that about?”

“Oh, that,” Tal said easily. “Well, once in a while Valerian thought money wasn’t enough, once in a while he would complain that he was giving me all the information but I wasn’t giving him anything of interest to take back to his superiors. So I promised him some figures on a new bomber.”

“Where did you get them?” Gordon demanded sharply, and along the committee table minor lions and greater leaned forward intently.

“Out of a Pentagon press release,” Tal said calmly, to the accompaniment of rising laughter from audience and press tables. “It just happened to come across my desk marked for release on Saturday so that it would catch the late remakes of the Sunday front pages and also Monday morning’s papers. I believe our conversation was on the previous Thursday. So, yes, Gordon, I really did violate national security. I really did give Obolenski some American secrets. I broke the release date on a Pentagon press statement.”

The room exploded. I was conscious of Gordon’s and Seab’s angry faces, the gleeful amusement on many others’, Tal’s grin as he looked into the television cameras, Anna’s delighted clapping of hands as she almost literally crowed with laughter. Bess and I exchanged a look: it was impossible not to laugh but we still shook our heads at one another. We were not convinced but it was obvious now that it was all over but the shouting.

Gordon, however, had no choice but to continue doggedly to the end. The response was as smooth as all the rest.

“What were the ‘instructions’ you received from Obolenski?” he asked, breathing a little hard but managing to preserve such small shreds of dignity as were still left to the proceedings.

“They were instructions for an antiwar demonstration to be held in Washington next month,” Tal said. “I’m preparing a special article about it. He had given me most of the details but had told me there was an actual set of written instructions to the demonstration leaders that he would give me. This was it. The article will appear sometime next week, Gordon. I invite you to read your own newspaper and learn all about it.”

Again applause and laughter, during which Gordon flushed with anger. Seab came to the rescue for the last time.

“Do you have an advance copy of that article available, Mr. Farson?” he asked softly. And again, for a second so infinitesimal that only Anna, Bessie and I were aware of it, Tal hesitated. But his response came so quickly and smoothly that there appeared to be no hiatus at all.

“Just my notes, Senator,” he said, “and those I don’t like to let people see, because for one thing they’re usually so disorganized in the early stages, and for the second, my handwriting is so bad that only I can read it—and even that isn’t certain.”

“I’d like to try,” Seab said gently. “Do you suppose you might—”

“They’re at the office, Senator,” Tal said, never missing a beat. “It will take me a little while to get them together for you. How about sending them to the committee tomorrow morning?”

“You don’t have them ready for us now,” Seab said, still gently.

“No, Senator,” Tal said firmly. “I have them, but not in readable form. Why can’t I submit them tomorrow morning?”

“No,” Seab said. “No, I think not, Mr. Farson. If you haven’t got them now, then I don’t really think they’d be much use to us if you presented them tomorrow morning. Somehow I just don’t think so. No, sir, I really just don’t think so.”

“Well,” Tal said shortly, “I don’t quite know what that is supposed to mean, Senator, but the offer stands. The committee will have them tomorrow morning.”

“As you like, Mr. Farson,” Seab said, giving him an amiably sleepy look. “Just as you like.”

“I do like,” Tal snapped, his voice beginning to fill with a righteous anger, “and they will be here. Now, Mr. Chairman, have we reached the end of this charade? Because if so, I would like to ask that my employer, Mrs. Anna Hastings, publisher of the Washington Inquirer, be recalled to the stand for a final statement.”

Jim Eastland looked up and down the committee table, taking his time; but there was obviously only one thing to do and presently he did it.

“Why, certainly, Mr. Farson,” he said calmly. “Mrs. Hastings—if you please.”

Beside me, while the room buzzed with excitement and the photographers swarmed forward and the television cameras again zoomed in, Anna stood up with a slow and deliberate air, straightened her gloves and her simple five-hundred-dollar white dress, smoothed her hair—unnecessarily, for she had gone to her hairdresser early each morning of the hearing and always looked immaculate—picked up her purse, turned and walked thoughtfully forward. Tal and George Watersill rose and started to withdraw but she waved them down again. Someone at the nearest press table leaped up and offered to bring her a chair but she waved him down too. She was going to stand: small, trim, blonde, perfectly dressed, completely composed.

She placed her purse on the committee table, opened it and took out a piece of paper, which she unfolded and glanced over, taking her time while every movement was recorded by the cameras. Then she carefully refolded it, returned it to her purse, snapped it shut with a decisive motion, faced the committee and began to talk in a clear, unhurried voice. Gordon visibly braced himself but she ignored him. Her target was much greater than a husband she had already, I know now, decided to discard.

“Mr. Chairman,” she said quietly, “members of the committee: I thank you for giving me this opportunity to conclude what can only be regarded as a most sorry episode in the history of the relations between the American government and the press. Perhaps I can put things in perspective before we leave this room.”

She paused, and with his characteristic dryness Jim Eastland said: “Mrs. Hastings, please do.”

“I will, Senator,” she said, a slight edge coming into her voice. “And the first thing I should like to discuss in doing so is the war that forms the background and, I believe, the only reason for this shabby and inexcusable attempt to harass me and my newspaper.”

“Mr. Chairman,” Seab inquired in a tired voice, “do we really have to get into the war again? Don’t we really all know Mrs. Hastings’ views on the subject? Don’t we, now?”

“I believe you do, Senator,” Anna said, and now the edge was very apparent, “but I think it is important to discuss it again if you wish to understand why we have all had our busy schedules disrupted by unimportant things this week. May I continue, Mr. Chairman?”

“Continue.”

“Thank you,” she said icily; appeared to calm herself (though Bess and I did not think for a moment that she was really upset) by taking a drink of water, and proceeded in a quiet but still emphatic tone.

“This war,” she said, “ill conceived, ill begun, ill fought and ill continued, has brought to America great tragedy, untold waste, inexcusable demands and unjustifiable burdens. It has thrown the nation off balance, torn apart the normal restraints of society, turned us against one another, made bitterness and hatred daily fare for all of us. To those of us who oppose it, it has brought, I will admit, a desperation and an agony, grown out of frustration, that perhaps have made us a bit intolerant—”

“A bit?” Seab interjected dryly, but she ignored him.

“—a bit intolerant as our national course has spun down into disaster, dragging with it national unity, national purpose, national hope. To those who support and direct it,” she said, and her tone became somber, “it has brought a much greater bitterness and intolerance, a veritable rage against all who would stand in the way.

“That bitterness, intolerance and rage have now tried to focus upon me and my newspaper. Mr. Chairman, it will not work!”

She acknowledged the applause with a slight bowing of the head, suitably grave, becomingly modest. Gordon’s face was a study; disapproval and annoyance fighting with a still-great pride and love for her which he was powerless to deny or dissemble. Behind him the kids watched, solemn-faced and absolutely still.

“The sole purpose behind this attack upon the Inquirer and upon me, Mr. Chairman, is to discredit us and make it impossible for us to continue opposing the war. It is an attempt by my opponent to get us indirectly because he cannot best us in fair argument. It is, furthermore, a naked attack upon the very freedoms of this country, given fundamental expression by the Founding Fathers in the First Amendment and given life and substance by the untrammeled operations of a free press and a free media. These are the things that are at issue here, Mr. Chairman, not Anna Hastings or the Washington Inquirer.”

“Mr. Chairman,” Seab said in his sleepy way, “now, I didn’t know this was an attack upon Mrs. Hastings and the Inquirer, did you? I thought all the time it was Mr. Farson who was at issue here, not Mrs. Hastings, the Inquirer, the First Amendment or the free press. Why doesn’t Mrs. Hastings discuss Mr. Farson, Mr. Chairman, since he’s the issue here?”

A little hissing began but Anna didn’t need help.

“I’m coming to that, Mr. Chairman,” she said calmly, “and I do not need the Senator from South Carolina to instruct me on it. I am coming to that. Right now.”

“Good!” Seab said with a heavy irony. “It’s what I’m waiting to hear.”

“Naturally,” Anna said, looking slightly less composed but still far from disconcerted, “I have been alarmed, annoyed and, yes, enraged by the attempt to destroy Mr. Farson’s reputation and career, and through him, me and my newspaper in its defense of the First Amendment and the freedom of the press.”

“Ah,” Seab said gently. “Now I get the connection.”

“Mr. Chairman,” she said sharply, “do I have this floor or do I not? And if I do, may I not have it without the snide interruptions of the senior Senator from South Carolina?”

This time the applause was loud and prolonged while she stared angrily at Seab and he stared sleepily back. When it ended, Senator Eastland said calmly, “Proceed in order, Mrs. Hastings. And, Senator, if you can, refrain as much as possible from interruptin’ the witness.”

“I’ll try,” Seab said softly. “Oh, yes, I’ll try. But I can’t be sure, now. I really can’t be sure.”

“I hope you will, Senator,” she said icily, “because it does your cause no good. It only creates greater sympathy for me and Mr. Farson.… Now, Mr. Chairman, I am asked about Mr. Farson. What is the situation about Mr. Farson? Testimony that he expressed some vague anti-American sentiment on the night of V-J Day, when he was very young and the world was full of confusion; testimony that he belonged to three youth groups in college, supposed to have been dominated by Communists—no testimony that he ever knew any Communists then, or knew they ‘dominated’ the groups—and a ridiculous tape—based on an illegal wiretap, as far as evidence shows here—of a conversation with a man now dead, which Mr. Farson has shown conclusively to be anything but the sinister plotting that some, including my opponent, would apparently like to have us believe. So what does it all add up to, Mr. Chairman? What does it prove? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! A silly waste of time for everybody. And a glaring example of the desperate lengths to which those who favor the war will go to try to discredit the honest members of the media who disagree with them.

“Mr. Chairman,” she said, and her voice took on a solemn and emphatic note, “the First Amendment and the free press have survived this attack. But there will be others, Mr. Chairman—many others, as the war drags on to its preordained and dismal finish. To all who would attack us, I say: We defy you! You cannot destroy us! Anna Hastings, the Inquirer, and all our colleagues of the free American media will continue to say what we think about the war. We will continue to oppose evil and corruption wherever we find it in this government and in this society, high or low. You can never frighten us, you can never silence us you can never hide from us! We will expose you and defy you always, because the very life of this free nation depends upon our doing so!

“Thus do I assure you, Mr. Chairman, believing that I speak in true allegiance to the Constitution and the best interests of this great nation.”

And she bowed gravely, picked up her purse, turned and moved gracefully back to her seat amid the tumult and the shouting. The audience was on its collective feet applauding wildly; many were crowding forward to shake her hand. At her side Tal and George Watersill stood beaming happily into the cameras as Bessie and I moved unnoticed toward the door. Anna’s secretary was there, busily placing mimeographed copies of her final words into eagerly outstretched reportorial hands.

“The committee will stand in recess!” Jim Eastland cried above the noise. Gordon turned and spoke to the children and together they, too, slipped unobtrusively out. One or two reporters tried to waylay them but Gordon simply shook his head and refused comment. Not even Seab said anything. The battlefield was Anna’s, all the way.

10

It was apparent to me in that triumphant moment that there must be fundamental changes both in my working associations and in my family. The committee hearing was a turning point for several things. We who had come through its crucible together would never be the same again. A sadness touched my heart as I sensed this, but I knew that from now on my destiny would rule and that I could only obey and follow. In a sense I had become a symbol of all that the free press stands for in this turbulent, unhappy country. From now on my dedication would be to that great ideal, forsaking all others.

—ANNA HASTINGS, by Anna Hastings

“That’s what she told me to write,” Bessie remarked later, “but actually I don’t think she had the slightest compulsion about forsaking all others. After all, when you’re queen bee others don’t matter much, do they?”

Which I told her was entirely too feminine and bitter, but essentially quite correct. After that little sermon to the committee Anna was what the media, not very originally but with a fair accuracy, promptly dubbed her: a legend in her own time. She made the most of it.

The immediate impact was evident in every headline and broadcast in the hours and days following the hearing. “From Coast to Coast, Anna’s The Most,” the New York Daily News lead editorial put it. And so she was, her name omnipresent, her picture everywhere, her concluding words to the committee printed and reprinted in every conceivable place. (My line to Bessie was “I hear they’re going to put them on a brass tablet and add them to the Lincoln Memorial.” She told me, probably rightfully, that I was jealous.)

“She’s even driven the war into the left-hand column,” Tal informed me with great cheerfulness when the Inquirer came out with its banner story. “What a gal!” He looked admiring, complacent and overwhelmingly gratified.

And so he should have been, because that was the end of any attempt to expose Talbot Farson. He had gotten home scot-free: so much so that he had apparently forgiven me on the spot for my testimony. I did not trust this mood—correctly, as it turned out—because underneath I knew that he knew that I remained unconvinced. But I had no proof, and if any others had any, they were successfully intimidated by the triumphal conclusion of the hearing and never came forward. He did take off early that evening, with the jovial comment—delivered in the newsroom so that everyone would be sure to hear it—“Well, I’ve got to run along and get my notes ready to send to the committee tomorrow morning.” And sure enough, next morning they were sent. And a week later an article signed by the executive editor—a most unusual procedure, but hailed by all—appeared in the Sunday paper, describing in great detail the instructions given by the Soviet Embassy to the leaders of an antiwar demonstration which might (or might not) occur in the capital three weeks hence. The embassy promptly denied it, to universal disbelief. When the protest did not occur, Anna wrote an editorial entitled, “Alert Journalism Prevents A Phony Protest,” about how Tal had saved the day for the real protesters, who should be protected from “dangerous outside influences that have no place in a vigorous American democracy whose citizens are fully capable of taking care of their own problems.” Everybody was very happy. And from that day forward the Inquirer became the most vitriolic and most relentless of all the enemies of the FBI.

For me and for Bessie the results of the hearing were delayed a little longer; but they came. Bess was the first to get the news. It reached her, significantly enough, when Gordon was away in Texas with the kids. They had left immediately after the hearing, apparently not even calling Anna, only leaving a note at the house. Gordon came back a couple of weeks later to a sort of uneasy truce, stayed a few days for Senate business, then left again. It was during his second absence that I received a call one afternoon from Bessie.

“Don’t look now,” she murmured quietly, “but I think I’m about to walk the plank. I’ve just been summoned to the Presence.”

“Oh?” I said, rather lamely. “Well, good luck. Do you want company? Or a shoulder to cry on?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she said with a surprising firmness. “I’ve just about had it, anyway.”

“Maybe you can get the first word in.”

“She’d never allow it. But at least I plan to make my sentiments clear.”

And this she apparently did. Once again the newsroom watched her march to Anna’s door, not agitated this time but outwardly quite serene, and rap upon it sharply. Once again Anna appeared on the threshold, a vision of kindly welcome. Once again the door closed and life resumed, only to halt again abruptly fifteen minutes later when the door opened and Anna emerged, arm linked cozily through Bessie’s, and walked her over to my office. Bessie looked more annoyed than devastated but it was obvious something had happened. I ushered them in and drew the draperies that screened my windowed office from the newsroom on occasions of high state and world import.

“That isn’t necessary,” Anna said, “but if you think anybody is watching—”

“Only the entire staff,” Bessie said with a trace of bitterness. “Why don’t you invite them in?”

“There’ll be an announcement on the bulletin board. Ed, dear, Tal and I have concluded, reluctantly but I’m afraid finally, that our arrangement with Bessie has about run its course. And I think Bess agrees, don’t you, dear?”

“For God’s sake, Anna,” Bessie said with an unusual sharpness, “what on earth does it matter whether I agree or not? It’s your paper, do as you please.”

“Well, yes, dear, but I want to feel that we’re still friends, you know. I want the old team”—she actually said it—“to continue as always, even if our paths from now on seem destined to become somewhat divergent.”

“‘Somewhat!’” Bessie exclaimed, and now she did sound bitter. “I’ll say ‘somewhat!’ She and Tal have fired me as secretary of the corporation and terminated my writing status with the paper, Ed. You’d better watch out. You’re next.”

“Well, well,” I said, which struck me later as a rather flat response. “Whose idea was this, Anna, yours or Tal’s?”

“All the ideas in this organization are mine!” Anna said sharply. “Others may make their input, as they have always been welcome and encouraged to do. But the decisions are mine.”

“What about Gordon? Does he approve of this?”

“Gordon is at Circle H,” she said, eyes narrowing, tone becoming distant. “I believe the kids are with him. He doesn’t know of this and there’s no need to bother him with it.”

“What about a stockholders’ meeting?” I asked, casting about for something to stop what I saw as a move to take complete control of everything. “Shouldn’t we vote on something as important as the removal of the secretary of the corporation?”

“She’s already thought of that,” Bessie said, and for the first time her eyes filled with tears. “Anna always thinks of everything.”

“Yes, dear,” Anna said kindly to me. “You see, Bessie has already been separated from the company, and so therefore under our agreement her stock automatically reverts to a nonvoting status. There’s no thought whatsoever of depriving her of income derived from the dividends, which as you know, and which I am proud to say, are quite substantial nowadays. So she’s more than taken care of on that score. But she can’t vote anymore. That means that at the moment my fifty voting shares and Tal’s twenty-five rather outnumber your twenty-five, now, don’t they, dear?”

“That’s why you waited until Gordon was out of town.”

“Gordon doesn’t have to be out of town!” she said, her voice suddenly trembling with anger. “He doesn’t always have to be taking my children away from me and running off with them to his damned ranch! It’s his choice, not mine! And don’t you ever think it isn’t!”

For just a moment we thought she might actually be going to cry, which would have been a great release for her and would probably have saved the day for a lot of things later. But Anna was Anna. She made an obvious effort, composed herself and spoke more calmly.

“So, that’s the situation. Because I do want to keep the team together we’re going to pay Bess a retainer for her counsel and advice, and she and I are going to bear down on the matter of getting her more subjects for her books. She’ll still be one of us. You’ll see.”

“I’ll bet Tal didn’t want to be that lenient,” I said. “I’ll bet he wanted her out of here completely.”

She managed to look quite blank, which neither Bess nor I believed for a minute.

“Why on earth would he want that?”

“Because of her testimony.”

“Her testimony!” Anna said and laughed a merry laugh. “What an absurd idea! Neither of us holds anybody’s testimony against anybody. It was just one of those things, all over and forgotten now.”

“Anna,” I said quietly, “do you really believe Tal is completely innocent of all those charges?”

She looked at me for a long moment, perfectly steady and unperturbed.

“If I didn’t, could I keep him around and still face the world?”

“You could if you had no other choice,” I said. “You could if you were stuck with him.”

“Which you are because of your testimony,” Bessie pointed out with something as close to spite as I have ever heard from her. “And we all know it.”

Very thoughtfully she looked at us, first one, then the other, while we stared back with the unrelenting candor of thirty years of friendship. Her reply was quite characteristic.

“So,” she said, rising briskly, “that’s the situation, and I wanted you to know it, Ed, before it becomes public. Thanks for being so understanding, Bess, dear. It will all work out better for you now, you’ll see. You have some great books in you and we’re going to see to it that they get written. And as for you, Ed, dear: keep up the good work!”

And with a graceful flare of her skirt she drew back the drapes, leaned down to give startled Bessie an unexpected and outwardly affectionate kiss in full view of the newsroom, and swept out and away.

“You mark my words,” Bessie said grimly. “You’re next.”

“I’m sure of it,” I agreed. “Well, the least we can do is let people know.”

So I batted out an item to the effect that Elizabeth Rovere, one of Washington’s best-known reporters and authors, was resigning as secretary of Hastings Communications and severing her writing connections with the Inquirer, adding a straight-faced line at the end to the effect that, “Miss Rovere appeared recently before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee to testify in the investigation of alleged Communist associations on the part of Talbot Farson, executive editor of this newspaper.”

I took it to the news desk and then Bessie and I settled back in my office to await the reaction. It unfolded like a little movie through my window. First the head copy editor read it with an expression of surprise. Then his expression turned slowly to one of great thoughtfulness. Then he called a copy-boy, gave him instructions. Then the copyboy took the story over to Anna’s office and knocked on the door, disappearing briefly inside. Then he came out, looking upset, and brought the item straight over to me while the staff watched with various degrees of covert fascination.

Scrawled across it in the familiar large, sloping hand, in the familiar red ink, was exactly what we expected to see:

“This item will not run. There will be no publicity on Miss Rovere’s resignation. Now or ever. A.H.”

And there wasn’t, because our colleagues of the media took their cue from us and when we didn’t run it they didn’t either. Which did not surprise any of the Old Team, except maybe Gordon when he came back, dismayed, to find out about it a week later.

A month after that the Pulitzer committee met and the legend was made secure. The judges, acting in perfectly good faith on the basis of the information known to them, issued a Special Citation to:

“Anna Hastings, publisher of the Washington Inquirer, for gallantly withstanding alarming and unwarranted pressures from those in high authority attempting to intimidate her newspaper; for valiantly defending the honor, reputation and career of a trusted employee against false allegations designed to inhibit the expression of honest dissent from governmental policies she believes abhorrent; for bravely rejecting the implication that any official, no matter how high, can threaten or control the dissemination of news and opinion in this free country; and for distinguished and extraordinary service to the cause of the First Amendment and the preservation of a free press and media in the United States of America.”

After that, life was clear sailing for Anna. She only foundered on a few little things, and I think by now she has convinced herself they weren’t really that important … or almost convinced herself. If she had really convinced herself I would think she was quite inhuman, and I don’t think that is her problem. I think she is all too human. Her trouble has always been that she just won’t admit it.

From that day to this, incidentally, no occupant of the Oval Office has ever again called the Inquirer about anything. Anna talks to a President once in a while, particularly this newest one, but he doesn’t call her. She calls him.