Word: seymour
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Meanwhile, Burnham and his Daily News competitor, William Federici, were sniffing out the story independently. At one point Seymour offered to fill in Burnham on an off-the-record basis, but the reporter declined and went on to gather the details on his own. In a later conversation, Seymour made what he now calls a "serious mistake": he informed Burnham of the arrangement with LIFE. "We really treated him like a brother," Seymour told TIME Correspondent James Willwerth. "We considered him one of the good guys out to help reform this problem." Trying to protect Leuci, Seymour pleaded with Burnham...
...Seymour and his aides hit on a novel way of providing that boost: they would arrange for the story of Leuci's exploits to be told-when the time was right-by LIFE. Last March one of Seymour's men got in touch with the magazine and offered to arrange for interviews with Leuci, provided the story be withheld until the investigation was completed. LIFE in turn agreed to allow Seymour to check the article for legal implications, such as information that might violate defendants' rights. Otherwise, he was given no editorial say. "It was an unusual...
...Times article otherwise was couched in fairly general terms. But the News and Federici came back with a fuller disclosure, including a series of vignettes under the heading CASE HISTORIES IN THE LIFE OF ONE COOL COP. No other names were mentioned aside from Leuci's, but Seymour claims that insiders could easily identify informants from the story. "That," said Seymour later, "really pulled the plug. Guys disappeared in all directions. You couldn't find anybody. It was a year's work flushed down the drain...
Important Flaw. Seymour was doubtless naive in thinking the Times would sit still once it knew that LIFE was getting exclusive information, or that the News would hold back after the Times broke the story. Rosenthal argued that "the public interest is generally best served by making information available rather than withholding it. The fact of an investigation that reaches into high places should be known." He pointed out that officials often request secrecy in their own interests rather than the public's, and added: "You can't be in a position of conspiring to keep something secret...
...Times story last month did not uncover corruption; it disclosed an investigation of corruption that was being diligently pursued. When pressed last week for his opinion about whether the inquiry had been damaged, Burnham replied: "I don't know. It's a matter of judgment, and Seymour has all the information." Seymour now expects perhaps ten indictments instead of the dozens he had originally anticipated. "If Leuci can produce ten cases," he lamented, "think how many cases ten others might have produced...