Word: reston
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There are no films of Scotty Reston in his starring days, but as a reporter he was the real thing. He won the first of his two Pulitzer prizes in 1945 after publishing plans for the United Nations drawn up by each of the five powers that would become permanent members of the Security Council. He got all the papers at once but created a bigger sensation by doling out his scoops for days, one at a time. The FBI was put on his trail; an enraged Secretary of State called up Lord Halifax, the British Ambassador, demanding to know...
...stocky, courtly, self-deprecating man, Reston likes to say that "scoops don't come from the top, but from the periphery -- from allies, or from congressional committees that have to be told something in advance." Nonetheless, as his reputation as a diplomatic correspondent grew, scoops came from the top too. It was John Foster Dulles who leaked the Yalta papers after Reston persuaded him that Senator Joe McCarthy was making Dulles look bad with informed innuendos about their contents. The Times published the full text in 32 pages...
...eleven years as Washington bureau chief of the Times, Reston proved a shrewd man at spotting talent. He also instituted a practice, like a Supreme Court Justice's, of selecting young interns to "clerk" for a year; out of this group came the present bureau chief, Craig Whitney, as well as Times correspondents at the White House, the State Department and on Capitol Hill. In Reston they found a hard-working, long-hours boss, congenial colleague and fierce defender of his troops...
...poor and Calvinist upbringing (he was born at Clydebank in Scotland, brought to the U.S. at eleven) instilled a strict moral sense in Reston. As a young reporter covering Franklin Roosevelt he refused to join the "coterie of reporters who played cards with the President at night at Warm Springs" and then in the 1944 election failed to report his weakened health. Such dereliction shocked Reston and put him on guard against presidential intimacy. "In 40 years, I've only been in the living quarters of the White House five times," he says, and disapproves of Columnist George Will...
...newer readers may not have known that recently retired Timesman James ("Scotty") Reston was the best journalist of his time...