"I was completely amazed." White House Press Secretary Jim Hagerty wrote the San Francisco Chronicle, "to read in the Chronicle . . . one of the most scurrilous pieces of gossip that I have ever seen printed. I am sure I do not have to tell you that this is completely false and was either maliciously invented or deliberately planted. Officially and personally, I want to protest the terrible injustice done to both the President and the Vice President."
The cause of Hagerty's rebuke, carried without comment in the pro-Eisenhower Chronicle (circ. 190,045) last week, was a gobbet of gossip in a...