The Kingdom and the Power (60 page)

In some ways the article had told as much about Gelb as it did about Rosenthal; as when Gelb concluded:

Rosenthal and Gelb worked closely and well together, and they drove the New York staff as never before. The reporters sometimes referred to the new team as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. While they were both serious and creative editors, they provided an electric, almost show-biz snap and tension to the newsroom, much of it the result of the restless Gelb’s unending flow of ideas. It seemed that every five minutes he would propose a new idea for a story to Rosenthal, who would respond with delight—or a look of nausea. Each morning just off the train from Westchester, Gelb’s tall, thin, dark bespectacled figure would come breezing into the newsroom with pockets packed with ideas—twenty ideas, thirty ideas: people to interview, tips to check, angles to investigate, grand “projects” that might take weeks to complete. Some of these ideas were brilliant, most had merit, a few were wild, all meant work, lots of work. So the less-ambitious
Times
men, whenever they saw Gelb getting up from his desk and about to look around, would pick up their telephones, or would walk to the dictionaries located behind posts.

Inevitably, most of Gelb’s ideas went to the eager younger men,
and he employed an almost hypnotic manner in communicating his ideas to them. He would whisper. First he would put an arm around a young man, would walk him down the aisle, and then would whisper, very confidentially, hand over mouth, into the young man’s ear—the inference being that this particular idea was so great that Gelb did not want to risk its being overheard by other reporters who would surely become envious. Finally, before the reporter would leave the room to embark on the assignment, Gelb would whisper again, “And remember,
there’s a great deal of interest in this story
.” There was the barest hint that this idea might be Rosenthal’s, or maybe even Daniel’s or Catledge’s, and the young reporter had better do his best. Then, after the reporter had gone, Gelb would have his arm around another reporter, and again there would be the parting whisper, “And remember,
there’s a great deal of interest in this story
.”

Rosenthal and Gelb would later read the stories as they came in, page by page, and would check to see that the touches and angles that they had requested were there. Then they would try to assure that the story was not overedited by a copyreader; on occasion, in order to prevent the cutting of a certain paragraph or phrase, Rosenthal would carry the appeal to Bernstein himself. When Rosenthal was particularly pleased with the way a story had been done, the reporter would receive a congratulatory memo, and Rosenthal also pressured Daniel and Catledge into quickly producing big raises for certain of his favorites. One of his young stars was R. W. Apple, Jr., whose popularity with older
Times
men was hardly enhanced by the rumor that, after a few months on Rosenthal’s staff, he was making $350 a week.

If so, he was earning it. An indefatigable young man with a round smiling face and a crew cut, the look of a slightly overweight West Point cadet, Apple was very gung-ho; he never stopped running, the perspiration showing through his shirt by 2 p.m., and he never dismissed one of Gelb’s ideas without giving it a try. The result was that Apple got more good stories into the paper than anybody on Rosenthal’s staff. This is not what bothered his older colleagues so much, for they soon recognized his ability to get a story and write it; what really unsettled them was Apple’s incredible enthusiasm for
everything
he had been assigned to cover—a Board of Estimate hearing, a talk by the tax commissioner, a repetition of political speeches—and Apple’s insistence, once he had returned, on telling everybody in the newsroom about what
he had seen or heard, or what had happened to him while on the story. Once, returning from the Democratic National Convention in 1964, Apple burst into the newsroom to report that Ethel Kennedy had sneaked up and pinched his behind on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Later, sent to Vietnam to work with two other
Times
men, Charles Mohr and Neil Sheehan, Apple reported back that while pinned down under enemy fire, a bullet had slit open the back of his trousers. When he returned to New York briefly on home leave he revealed that he had actually killed a few Vietcong, to which one of his skeptical colleagues replied, “Women and children, I presume.”

Perhaps Rosenthal’s most dramatic story as editor of the New York staff occurred during the winter of 1965. It began with a letter from a friend who worked in a Jewish agency. The letter from Rosenthal’s friend claimed that a New Yorker named Daniel Burros, who had two days before been identified in
The Times
as the New York head of the Ku Klux Klan and also a member of the American Nazi Party, was Jewish. The
Times
article had not mentioned this last fact, having no knowledge of Daniel Burros’ religious background, a secret well kept by Burros as he had traveled around the country with his fellow Nazi “troopers” advocating hatred and death to Jews everywhere.

Rosenthal stood up at his desk as he read the letter. He was fascinated, excited. He considered his friend to be a very reliable man, and yet Rosenthal’s excitement was mixed with disbelief, a skepticism that always grips an ambitious journalist whenever he is handed a story that seems too good to be true, too shockingly odd and marvelous; he desperately wants the facts to finally fit the fantastic story that is already forming in his mind, building within him, expanding, he can almost start writing it, but he must suddenly stop and wonder with cool detachment whether the facts are accurate: Rosenthal looked around the newsroom for the right reporter to handle this story. He wanted a reporter of unquestionable reliability—a patient researcher and subtle writer. Two things had to be answered: first, was Daniel Burros indeed Jewish, and if so, how and why did a Jewish boy become a Nazi? This assignment might take days to complete, and would require
following many small leads that might be unproductive; the ringing of strangers’ doorbells, the waiting on street corners in the hope of locating Burros’ friends or parents, who would most likely be uncooperative. There should also be attempts made at contacting Burros’ former teachers, his friends from his days in the United States Army, his rabbi. (According to the letter, Burros had been bar mitzvahed.)

Burros had no telephone, his address was uncertain. His parents, who possibly had no knowledge of his Nazi activities, lived in the Richmond Hill section of Queens, in New York City. Burros was twenty-eight, was said to be stocky, blond, blue-eyed—“a knowledgeable and virulent Nazi” who was out of jail pending appeal on a two-year term for rioting and possessing a switchblade knife. Burros might become violent after he had learned of
The Times
’ interest in publicizing his secret. The story would undoubtedly ruin his career as a leader on the far right fringe. For this reason Rosenthal wanted a reporter who was a perceptive and skilled interviewer, a reporter who also had empathy for the people he was interviewing. This was not to be a crime story for an aggressive police reporter, or an odd tale for a clever feature writer; Rosenthal believed it would be a complex personal portrait of a Jewish boy’s self-hate, and it would have to be written with care and compassion.

Continuing to look around the newsroom, Rosenthal focused on a tall, skinny, pale reporter seated in the first row behind the rewrite bank. His name was McCandlish Phillips. At thirty-seven, Phillips’ black hair, slicked down and precisely parted, was graying at the temples; he wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, and blue tie, and, as usual, there was a Bible on his desk near his typewriter. Rosenthal knew, as everybody in the newsroom knew, that McCandlish Phillips was an evangelical Christian who, when not working on a story, sometimes sat reading his Bible or praying. On Phillips’ days off, or at night, he regularly preached in churches, or in private prayer meetings, or sometimes at a sidewalk pulpit near his apartment at 116th Street and Broadway. Once seen, he was hard to forget. He stood six-feet five-inches, and he spoke eloquently in a high-pitched voice that was filled with conviction but was never overbearing. He did not preach in the rasping, flailing Damned-Shall-Perish style of those barely literate philosophers who gathered each night in Times Square. Phillips was a man of quiet dignity and learning. He had a sense of humor, but more than that, he had a tranquil manner, a serenity that
was based on his absolute faith in God and his belief that, come what may, it was God’s will.

In the newsroom Phillips never preached to his fellow reporters, although he was always approachable and even eager to discuss with them, if they wished, the teachings of the Bible or any other subject, including the sins of copyreaders. When one of Phillips’ stories had been butchered, Phillips did not immediately attribute it to the will of God, but rather to the dumbheadedness of deskmen, and he was never reluctant to complain—although he always did so with a certain decorum and never with profanity. He was well liked and admired by the staff, and he was often referred to as “Long John”—John was his first name; nobody called him “McCandlish,” his middle name, except those many readers who knew him through his by-line. Stories
by McCandlish Phillips
were invariably distinguished by their fine use of language, their slightly archaic, almost biblical precision and conciseness, often their humor, and always the author’s compassion for his subject.

When Rosenthal approached Phillips’ desk, he tried to convey his enthusiasm for the story without overdoing it.

“Look,” Rosenthal said, pulling up a chair next to Phillips and handing him the letter, “here’s the head of the K.K.K. for New York, and he’s a Jew. Let’s take a look at it. Get hold of this guy and see if you can find what makes a Jewish kid from Queens grow up to be a Nazi. It could make a terrific story.”

Phillips was interested. Not only was it an unusual story, but it confirmed for Phillips a premonition that he had had earlier in the week about working on this day. He had planned to take a four-day weekend, having accumulated many days owed because of overtime work; but while praying at home he had felt the Lord, clearly and unmistakably, telling him not to take the four-day weekend. And so on this Friday morning, October 22, 1965, Phillips was at his desk.

After Rosenthal had relayed everything that he knew about Daniel Burros, Phillips, assisted by two younger reporters, began to pursue the leads. There was information to be gotten from the police, who in recent years had arrested Burros at Nazi rallies; from the Anti-Defamation League, which had a confidential file on Burros; from the schools that Burros had attended and the places where he had worked. In Washington, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was aware of Burros; it had included him in a list of “prominent Klansmen,” and it knew that Burros had attended a meeting of the United Klans of America in North
Carolina during August of 1965. Phillips also had found, in
The Times
’ morgue, the names of a few members of local Nazi or racist groups who might know something about Burros.

He compiled a list of people and places to check, divided it with the two other reporters, and later in the afternoon Phillips, accompanied by a photographer named Carl Gossett, set out for a neighborhood in Queens where he believed he might find Burros.

The address was of an apartment over a shop on Lefferts Boulevard, but when Phillips inquired he was told by the shopkeeper that no one named Burros lived in the apartment upstairs. A few youngsters standing nearby, however, recognized the name and pointed to a brick apartment house a few blocks away. There, within a small vestibule, among four name plates on an old brass mailbox, Phillips saw “Burros.” He rang the bell; no answer. He rang the other bells; none answered. Noticing a traffic cop outside, Phillips walked over and asked if he knew anyone named Burros. The policeman said that he did, an elderly man who had just left the apartment house about an hour ago, and would probably return soon. The policeman did not know if the man had a son. Phillips and Gossett waited. As people passed the building, Phillips, leaning low to be heard, courteously asked if they knew Daniel Burros. A few of them did, and they proceeded to describe him. He was somewhat stocky, short, and wore glasses. He was blond. They did not know exactly what he did for a living, but he was in and out of the neighborhood at odd hours. He was an only son, a very good boy, never destructive. His mother worked as a sales clerk in a department store; his father, ill, usually remained at home. Nobody in the neighborhood, Phillips realized, seemed to know about Daniel Burros’ political activities.