Nation: The Case of the Purloined Pages

New tales about Watergate lead to a Scrantongate

I was drinking alone in the office one night when this dame wanders in. Real sweet, she was, with coal dust in her long blonde hair and a crumpled bus ticket in her fist. “Scranton,” she sighed by way of explanation, in a voice that trailed off like the Doppler effect of a passing 18-wheeler on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I poured her a stiff one, and she poured me her story: “I have this terrific manuscript, but please don’t ask how I got it, and I just have to get into the newspapers before they do.” “They?” “The syndicate.” “Which one?” “The New York Times Syndicate.” I lunged for the phone and dialed my editor. “By the way, babycakes, who are you?” She thought a minute: “Just call me … ‘Deep Book.'”

That may not be how the Washington Post obtained the final two-thirds of The Ends of Power a week in advance of its official release—but then no one outside a handful of Post employees knows for sure.

The episode does have all the marks of a grade-Z whodunit, complete with an anonymous woman caller, a mysterious motel room in Scranton, Pa., purloined pages and sotto voce allegations of bad faith and perhaps even criminality. What is known is that Post Reporter Nancy Collins penetrated perhaps the most elaborate security precautions ever thrown around the birth of a book, and that her coup touched off a divisive row in the publishing community that some newsmen quickly dubbed “Scrantongate.”

Last Thursday morning, when the Post’s front-page summary of the book appeared, editors at Times Books, a New York Times Co. subsidiary that had paid H.R. Haldeman and Co-Author Joseph DiMona a $140,000 advance for the book, began rushing copies into major bookstores more than a week early. Angry editors at the New York Times Syndication Sales Corp., a subsidiary that had sold Ends serialization rights for a total of $1 million to more than 40 newspapers and magazines round the world, authorized those customers to rush into print four days before the official release date. Times editors reluctantly printed the paper’s five-part series of Ends excerpts in one hasty lump and accused the Post of excerpt envy. (The Post had been prevented from buying rights to the book because the Washington Star had first bids, as a regular Times Syndicate customer.) Said a top executive of the parent Times Co.: “Officially, we’re pissed.” The ill feelings had not subsided much by week’s end. On Sunday the Times carried an editorial reflecting on Watergate, which began with an acid reference to the Post’s “second-rate burglary of H.R. Haldeman’s memoir of a third-rate burglary on the eve of its publication by Times Books.”

Nowhere were editors angrier than at Newsweek, which is owned by the Washington Post Co., and which had agreed to pay the Times Syndicate $125,000—plus the promise of advance publicity—for U.S. magazine rights to the book. “We have had better days,” said Newsweek Editor Edward Kosner the day the Post version appeared. Katharine Graham, chairman of the parent Washington Post Co., would not comment on whether she permitted her newspaper to upstage her magazine; but obviously she had, as she had learned of the Post’s acquisition the night before it was published. Her observation: “Newsweek and the Post are very competitive. Sometimes it gets to be a pain in the neck.” Added Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee: “I wouldn’t give Newsweek the time of day, and they wouldn’t give us the time of day. That’s the way it should be.”

Who did get the Post its copy of the book? Times Co. officials are astounded that anyone could have, considering the firm’s extraordinary steps to prevent such leaks. The manuscript was set in type at Haddon Craftsmen, Inc., in Bloomsburg, Pa., under the eyes of uniformed security guards, on old-fashioned Linotype machines. Their output of hot metal was melted down as soon as it was used. The pages were bound at a Haddon plant in Scranton, also under guard; and finished books were sealed in tough plastic wrappers and then stored in locked trucks and warehouses.

Times Books President Thomas Lipscomb hand-carried a copy of the manuscript to editors of the Book-of-the-Month Club, which had chosen Ends as a main selection. On short notice, a handful of book reviewers were offered an opportunity to see the book, but each was required to sign a secrecy agreement before receiving his copy. Editors of the Times Syndicate offered serialization rights only to publications here and abroad that would sign secrecy agreements before inspecting a summary at Times Books’ New York offices. One of the publishers who signed and saw was Australian Rupert Murdoch; after an unauthorized detail from the book appeared in his New York Post and New York magazine two weeks ago, the syndicate threatened legal action and the disclosures stopped. Meanwhile, a false story spread that the book was being typeset in Kingsport, Tenn.

Those precautions served only to whet journalistic appetites. Dozens of reporters tried to come up with the book’s contents, without success. But ABC News cameras were allowed ten days ago to film the interior of the printing plant on the condition that its location not be revealed. TIME, which had made an offer for magazine rights to the book, attempted to determine the highlights of its contents by talking to some of those who were familiar with the work. Lipscomb two weeks ago offered to confirm or deny some details TIME had learned, but changed his mind after he had heard them.

Meanwhile, journalists at the Post were also trying to learn what was in the book, Collins among them. “I knew the Haldeman book was the best story in town and I went after it,” says Collins, 29, a tall, blonde former model and Women’s Wear Daily reporter. Collins was hired by the Post last year to launch a gossip column for the paper, presumably in imitation of the Washington Star’s saucy “Ear.” The column was dropped after a few desultory months, and Collins became what she calls “a feature writer and society reporter.” Collins says it took her five days to come up with part of the Haldeman manuscript, but is stingy with other details. “It was real cloak-and-dagger stuff, Nancy Drew stuff,” she allows. “Bob [Woodward] had his ‘Deep Throat,’ and I had my ‘Deep Book.’ ”

If there is a Deep Book, he or she probably lives in Scranton. A week before the Post’s scoop, Lackawanna County Prosecutor Ernest Preate was notified by a security official at the Haddon bindery that four copies of the book were missing. About that time, the Times news desk received a call from a woman who said she was a reporter for a Scranton newspaper, had a copy of the book, was angry at her paper for refusing to publish it and would sell it to the highest bidder. The caller, who called herself Nancy, did not phone again, but the New York Post reported receiving a similar call. Last week TIME confirmed that Collins had checked into the Sheraton Motor Inn in Scranton around 11p.m. on Feb. 10 and left on Feb. 13, roughly when the Post received the partial manuscript. ABC News reported that she had stayed in Room 620 and used a motel copying machine to run off 190 pages of something.

Some officials at the Times Co. believe that Collins may somehow have compromised an employee of the bindery. No charges have been filed, however, and Collins hotly denies any impropriety. “No violation of the law occurred,” she says. “It was just good, straight reporting, just like the Washington Post always does.” But just what is the legal situation? The Post may be open to a Times Co. lawsuit, if it can be proved that the paper is bound by the Newsweek secrecy agreement by virtue of Graham’s dual role as publisher of the Post and as one of the few people authorized to see Newsweek’s two copies of the Haldeman book. In addition, the Times Co. could ask a court for damages under a common-law doctrine that punishes unfair competition, as the Associated Press did successfully in 1918 after a rival service was found to have pirated A.P. reports. After the Post story, Newsweek released to the public its excerpts from the book, but went ahead with plans for a Haldeman cover; this week’s special issue will cost $1.25, or 25¢ more than the regular newsstand price. Officials of the magazine are not ruling out the possibility of refusing to pay some of the $125,000 fee should they decide that sales of this week’s issue were hurt by the leak. If other publications that bought parts of the book also were to refuse to make final payments, one top Timesman figures, the Times Co. could be out as much as $500,000.

Even those losses could be partly recouped by the effect that last week’s skulking in Scranton was having on sales of Times Books’ $12.95 hard-cover version. Lipscomb reported at week’s end that the initial printing of 275,000 had been shipped out, that an additional 50,000 copies were on order, and that some bookstores were calling to double their orders.

The publishing world is divided on both the motives and the ethics of the participants involved in the Haldeman caper. Did Haldeman or DiMona leak a copy of the manuscript in shrewd hopes of hyping sales of the book? They would deny it, and, anyway, the co-authors stand to lose more from the canceled syndication deals than they may gain from their royalties on increased book sales. Is the Post guilty of dealing in stolen property, an even worse journalistic excess than those Haldeman used to complain about during Watergate? Or did the paper merely outreport both its rivals and its partner publication once again? Said Bradlee rather provocatively: “You gotta admit it’s fun. I’m happy as a pig in —.”

Whatever happened, the episode demonstrated the difficulty of keeping any secrets nowadays from publications bent on discovering them, even each other’s secrets. As for the real story of Scranton-gate, publishers may have to wait a while to find out exactly what happened last week. Promised Nancy Collins: “My memoirs will tell the tale.”