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For example, Pearson's charges that Democratic Senator Elmer Thomas was speculating in commodity markets with inside government information finally got Republican Senator Homer Ferguson's investigating committee after Thomas. When Ferguson suddenly stopped investigating, Pearson's nose twitched, and off he went on the scent. Finally, last September, he sniffed out the story. The Merry-Go-Round ran an eye-opening letter from Thomas to Ferguson, threatening to denounce the Michigander for taking favors from big automen, unless he called off his investigation. Since neither Senator would want the note made public, where did Pearson get it? Apparently from. Tom Clark's Department of Justice.
Pearson also counts on the common failing of Congressmen: they can't help talking. "I often tell a friend or two to keep their ears open at a closed-door meeting," says Pearson. During the war, the Merry-Go-Round spilled the news that F.D.R. had irritably snubbed General de Gaulle. "One of the Congressmen who heard it took a few notes," Pearson recalls.
Lone Wolf Pearson rarely attends press conferences. "I'm criticized so much for running off-the-record stuff," he explains mildly, "that I'd rather not even hear it." But he makes it a practice to pump other newsmen and print what they heard. Last week he broadcast a partly accurate, partly distorted version of Secretary Marshall's views on China, which had been given in confidence to reporters in a Statler hotel room. (A Pearson legman had bragged in advance that he would find out what Marshall said.) To some extent Pearson is thus endangering the whole system of off-the-record conferences that help newsmen interpret the news. But Pearson argues, with considerable cogency, that most of the information should not be off the record in the first place.
Peek Up a Rope. If necessary, he will twist an arm. Last year he called John Sonnett, who was taking over the Justice Department's anti-trust division, to point out that he was accustomed to getting anti-trust scoops. Retorted Sonnett: "Aw, go peek up a rope." Sonnett was punished with rough rides on the Merry-Go-Round. The column is equally open about rewarding those who do cooperate: some newsmen spot Pearson's sources simply by seeing who gets his backpats.
Operation Pearson proceeds in a supercharged atmosphere of tapped wires, shadowed cars, anonymous phone calls and secret files—and he glories in it. The GHQ, his combined home and office, is a cluster of yellow brick buildings on a quiet corner in Georgetown. Its head man, "DP" in the office lingo, is up at 6:30 a.m. in bathrobe and slippers, to tinker with a first draft of The Column. Precisely at 8 he shaves, turning the bathroom radio to an NBC news roundup that often brings the voice of his brother Leon, a commentator, from Paris.