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...When the conservative Chicago Tribune began running Columnist Nicholas von Hoffman's left-leaning iconoclasms last June, it warned readers that "his provocative and controversial style will shock and anger some." Sure enough, shock and anger quickly appeared-in Tribune editorials. "We can't sit by," the Trib huffed in July, "while he refers to Israel as 'the Prussia of the Middle East.'" The next month, the paper hopped up again to skewer Von Hoffman's critical description of Republican partying at the Miami convention: "If some [of the delegates] appeared to be affluent, well...
...earlier stories on election fraud, got a break last spring when he learned of a vacant patronage job at the election board. Of 200 positions, only four were for Republicans, including the $20-a-day clerk's post. To fill it Bliss needed an "inside man" at the Trib, one who would not be recognized by city officials. He chose William Mullen, 27, who has only limited reporting experience. "His chief asset," says Bliss, "is that he is a very low-key but very alert...
Sponsored by a Republican acquaintance of Bliss, Mullen applied for the job under his own name, neglecting only to tell the commissioners' chairman, Stanley T. Kusper Jr., that he was a Trib employee. He went to work last April and soon satisfied his suspicious Democratic co-workers that he was on the level. Finally he got access to the office vault and old ballot applications (the slips signed by voters just before entering the booth). Mullen found an apparent forgery almost immediately, one so obvious that "it almost knocked me off my chair." It was only the first...
Mullen's mission was a closely held secret, known only to top Trib editors and the U.S. Attorney, who already had an election-fraud investigation going. His cover was nearly blown one day when a Trib colleague happened into the commissioners' office. "I dived into the files," Mullen recalls...
Prosperity is a relatively new fact of life at the Trib. For much of its history, it was a red-ink case, belying the efficacy of the owls with which Founder Bennett decorated the paper's original Paris office as a good-luck fetish. But the Trib has been solidly profitable since 1968, and an enormous owl still holds the place of honor in its offices. Appropriately, the metal bird is gilded...