The Kingdom and the Power (62 page)

When Burros came out of the barber shop, his hair cut short to trooper length, Phillips stepped forward and introduced himself. Burros recognized the name immediately from the note and telegram.

“I need to talk to you,” Phillips said.

“Okay,” said Burros.

Burros did not seem sinister. He was civil, almost pleasant. He explained that he could not grant a formal interview, but was willing to sit down for a few minutes and confirm some facts that Phillips had. They walked a few blocks to a small luncheonette dimmed by the shadows of the elevated platform. They occupied a booth near the door and sat facing one another. Phillips ordered scrambled eggs, Burros a Coke. A waitress placed napkins, knives, and forks in front of both of them. Phillips was not able to get a good close look at Burros’ face because the latter, who seemed embarrassed, kept his eyes downward, or focused on a corner of the table, occasionally flashing a direct glance at Phillips, but then again looking down or away. Burros did not know exactly what Phillips wanted.

Phillips, very gently and courteously, began to reveal what he knew of Burros’ military career as a paratrooper, and his later activities with Rockwell’s followers and the Ku Klux Klan. The facts and minute details, the obvious time and effort that had been involved in the research, greatly impressed Burros, who more than once exclaimed, almost with pleasure, “Gee,
fantastic
.” Burros was not embarrassed by this side of his life, nor was it a secret. It had been in the newspapers in abbreviated form, and Burros was of course aware that the Congressional committee and the police had a file on him. And as Phillips, extemporaneously and uncondemningly, continued to recount Burros’ past, Burros began to relax, seemed to enjoy it; and instead of merely confirming facts, Burros proceeded to elaborate on them. He pulled from his pocket his Klan identification card and showed it to Phillips. He also displayed a small picture of himself wearing a white hood. He spoke at length about his days with Rockwell, his experience with the United States paratroopers in Little Rock, and his fears that Little Rock had signaled the beginning of a left-wing takeover of the nation, which Burros was dedicated to stopping. He fondly recalled his McCarthyite history teacher in high school, and he admitted that he had communicated through the mail with rightwing groups in Germany. He revealed his contempt for the Jews, adding that if the “purge” came to the United States it would be more viciously prosecuted in the “wild” atmosphere of America than it had been in the “civilized and highly cultured” society of Germany more than twenty years ago. Burros looked at his watch a few times during the interview, saying that he wanted to catch a bus for Pennsylvania, but he seemed content to remain with this
very tall stranger who knew so much about him, and with whom he felt free to expound upon his theories. Phillips was a good listener. He seemed to understand the fervor and dedication of the committed individual.

Finally, Phillips decided to raise the question that had been on his mind since their talk had begun. There was nothing else that Phillips needed from this interview except some clue into the essential paradox of Burros’ life.

“There’s one thing about you that just does not fit into the picture,” Phillips began, slowly, casually, “and I can’t figure it out.” Daniel Burros glanced at his watch. He said rather urgently that he had to catch the 1 p.m. bus for Pennsylvania. “Your parents were married by the Reverend Bernard Kallenberg in a Jewish ceremony in the Bronx,” Phillips said. He waited for the reaction.

Burros seemed to deteriorate physically before Phillips’ eyes. There was a visible sign of inner collapse, the blue eyes growing distant, cold, the round stocky figure seeming to sag and sink under the weight of a stunning blow. Then Burros leaned across the table at Phillips, looked directly into his eyes, and asked, “Are you going to print that?”

Phillips said that it was not in his power to withhold it—the fact of the marriage was a public record in the Bronx Supreme Court House.

“If you publish that,” Burros said, quietly tense, “I will be ruined. All my friends, all my associations, everything I’ve lived for for the last seven years will be gone.…” Then he added, in a voice regaining composure, “If you publish that I’ll come and get you and I’ll
kill
you.”

Now Phillips felt a sense of panic rising within him. He was aware that he was trapped in a booth, his long legs almost pinioned between the table top and supporting metal, and the luncheonette itself seemed to be shrouded in blackness, it did not look like the place he had entered. Burros’ threat had not been shouted, but it was rather more ferocious in its even-toned intensity. Phillips heard Burros repeating the threat, adding that Phillips would die
before
leaving the luncheonette. Phillips, knowing what he did about Burros’ past, knowing how desperately the latter had tried to conceal the secret, believed Burros to be quite capable of fulfilling his threat here and now. He felt Burros’ eyes upon him, heard him say that he had a vial of acid under his coat. He saw Burros put a hand inside his coat, waiting for Phillips’ reply to the
question—was he going to publish the fact? Phillips, praying
Lord help me
, did not really believe that Burros had a vial of acid inside. It seemed unlikely that a man would carry such an item into a barbershop at 8 a.m. But Phillips
did
see the knife and fork at Burros’ fingertips. He had to say something immediately. He did not want to lie, but he wanted to say something that would divert Burros from his threat. Phillips, trying to appear unintimidated, told Burros that he would not print the fact until he had talked to Burros one more time. This seemed to lessen the tension, slightly. But again there was the warning, “If you publish that, I’ll come and get you and I’ll kill you. I don’t care what happens to me. I’ll be ruined. This is all I’ve got to live for.”

Phillips told Burros to call him that evening, and then he took out a dollar and placed it on the check. “Let’s go outside,” Phillips said, and he was relieved when Burros stood up and quietly followed. Outside Phillips could at least duck or run. He had his story; now he wanted to get away. Phillips was a man of the Lord, but he had been a journalist this morning, totally journalistic. He believed that it was the Lord’s will that he write this story, recalling how one week before he had received a signal from the Lord urging that he not take the four-day weekend. It did not occur to Phillips now, nor had it occurred to him at any time during the past week, to forget the story and permit a desperate and demented young man to preserve his fantasy. Phillips considered himself a journalist by the will of the Lord. The judgments were sometimes harsh, but they were nonetheless as the Lord wished.

Still Phillips felt a need to reach this small, miserable man who stood next to him outside the luncheonette. “I’m through talking to you as reporter to subject,” he said. “The interview is over. Now I want to talk to you as one human being to another.” They began to walk slowly through the shadows under the train platform, and Phillips was not aware of anyone else on the streets, nor of any noise. Burros said that he felt trapped by what Phillips might print, but Phillips replied, “No, you’re trapped by who you are, by everything you’ve got mixed into.” Quoting from the New Testament, Phillips continued, “ ‘If any man be in Christ he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.’ ”

Burros looked up at him.

“You’re trying to con me.”

Phillips said that he was not. “What you have to do to break the
grip fascism has on you is to call upon the name of Jesus Christ,” Phillips said. “If you do that, He will take care of the rest.”

As he reached the entrance to the elevated platform, Phillips shook hands with Burros. Burros turned toward his home.

When Phillips had arrived in the newsroom, there was a message that Burros had called. Phillips called back, and Burros said that he wanted to trade some other story for the one about his Jewish origin. Phillips said he could not do that. When Burros called later in the afternoon, there was despair and anger in his tone.

“I know I can’t stop that story,” he said, “but I’m going to go out in a blaze of glory.” Without specifying when or how, he suggested that he was going to shoot up the
Times
building.

Phillips described this threat and the earlier ones in a memo to Gelb, who was in charge while Rosenthal was attending a conference out of town. Gelb notified Clifton Daniel, and he also called the New York police and
The Times
’ security guards. Photographs of Burros were reproduced and distributed to the security force. After Phillips had finished writing the story, a twenty-four-hour bodyguard was ordered for him, and he was driven home that night by detectives. The editors wanted him to leave town for a few days, but he said that he wanted to be close to his church.

On Sunday morning, October 31, after one of the paper’s legmen had obtained a record of Burros’ bar mitzvah—the proof that Gelb wanted before releasing the story for publication—
The Times
featured the article on page one. Daniel Burros was in Reading, Pennsylvania, on that morning, spending the weekend with other Klansmen who had been told by their leaders to remain inconspicuous while the “heat” was on from the Federal investigators. Burros had mentioned his interview with
The Times
, but his friends did not know the full extent of his concern until after he had purchased a
Times
at the newsstand and had returned with it. Then his friends heard him groan “Oh, my God,” and then he was upstairs yelling and breaking the furniture with karate kicks and chops—and finally, before anyone could stop him, he had taken a gun and put one bullet in his heart and another in his head.

During the next week,
The Times
received letters from readers who denounced the paper for “invading the privacy” of Burros. Others questioned the wisdom of exposing an obviously sick person; even some staff members in the newsroom felt that
The Times
in this instance had gone too far. Burros had not been a
major public figure, they reasoned, but merely an oddball, and they interpreted the story as another example of the overly dramatic journalism that was being condoned at
The Times
.

Other reporters and readers, however, disagreed. They believed that
The Times
had performed a public service in focusing attention on a potentially dangerous fanatic—the sort who would attempt to assassinate a President or other world leaders. Burros had relinquished his right to privacy, they said, when he had become a political activist.

A. M. Rosenthal was upset by the consequences and criticism of the story, and the first thing that he did after hearing the news was to call his friend from the Jewish agency who had supplied the tip on Burros. They spoke for a long time, both expressing sorrow at having been instrumental in the death of another human being, but both agreed that Daniel Burros had been pointing a gun at his own head for years, and that it was merely a matter of time before some individual or event would trip the trigger.

When Arthur Gelb had received the news, he was immediately concerned over how it would affect Phillips, and Gelb spoke very gently and slowly over the phone. Phillips was saddened, for he had regarded Burros as a man inextricably trapped in a web of evil; but Phillips had no doubt of
The Times
’ rectitude in publishing the story. On the eve of Burros’ suicide, Phillips had been at home reading the Third Psalm, which he thought appropriate in the case of Burros (“… 
there is no help for him in God
 …”), and after Gelb had telephoned, Phillips had suggested that Gelb also read the psalm.

“What I think we’ve seen here, Arthur,” Phillips said, “is the God of Israel acting in judgment.”

W
hen Abe Rosenthal first read
The Times
on this June day in 1966 he did not notice the item; it was on page 30, and it was printed in agate type deep within a long list that announced the names of City College students who had received awards: and yet there it was:

To anyone who has read Ernest Hemingway’s
The Sun Also Rises
, the references were clear: Lady Brett and the sexually impotent man who loves her, Jake Barnes. In
The Times
!

Rosenthal’s deskmen, who had edited and checked the story the night before, had obviously overlooked the item too, and perhaps it would have gone completely unnoticed by Rosenthal if he had not just received a telephone call from a
Newsweek
staff member who had asked about it, thinking it very imaginative and funny. But Rosenthal saw no humor in it. He was, in fact, infuriated, and was not assuaged by the fact that on the same page, spreading across the top, there was a story from Princeton with a five-column headline that read: “Goheen Tells Princeton Class a Sense of Humor Is Needed.”