THE WASMNGTON POST Compromising photos of Joseph Alsop and the Washington Estaldithment's response to them may MIS() said as much about the latter as the fernier. Magazine awards: Choosing the best of '95 The Family Filmgoer. 'A Goofy Movie'

THE HAWK AND THE VuLTvx Columnist Joe Also]) Had a Secret. Somehow, It Stayed That Irby.

years smce he had heroically refused to be By David Streitfeld Wasliogtoo Post Staff Witter blackmailed. He had written more than a thousand columns in that time, many of n 1970, political columnist Joseph them castigating the Soviets, ahvays know- Alsop saw his worst fear come true. ing he could be betrayed at any moment. It wasn't just that his enemies At first known only to a few, the basics learned his darkest secret. Much of the 1957 incident gradually trickled out. more painfully, some of his friends By Alsop's death six years ago, it had found out too. reached the stage of cocktail party fodder, ICharles Bartlett, for example. A colum- a gossipy footnote to the Cold War. nist here for the Field Syndicate, Bartlett It was a story that drew attention to the- opened his mail one day to find photos of a ways Washington had—and had not— • much younger Alsop and another man. changed. Forty years ago, this was a much Both were naked. Even now, talking pub- less forgiving town. If Alsop had been ex- licly about the pictures for the first time, posed as a homosexual, his career as a Bartlett declines to describe them precise- power. broker would have been abruptly ly. "I owe that much to Joe," he says. over. _ , Around the same time, humor columnist Art Buchwald was unsettled to find himself But if Alsop was intensely vulnerable, the recipient of a similar package. "It the tight political world of those decades scared the hell out of me," Buchwald says. also offered a peculiar shield. Washington I'm not comfortable with getting photo- was then run by an elite group of middle- graphs of people in compromising positions aged white men, a firmly entrenched Es- in the mail." tablishment. Alsop was part of it, and this How many other Washingtonians got gave him certain privileges. Its members the same pictures remains a matter of con- would protect him. jecture, but if the mysterious sender ex- Most of them, anyway. Two new books pected publicity he must have been disap- offer evidence that at least one membei of pointed. No one wrote about the photos, the Establishment was eager to see the even in a veiled way. Once again, Alsop world more fully informed about Alsop's had escaped exposure. "propensities." And the Soviets, of course, It had been 13 years since the columnist weren't bound by any gentlemanly rules. had committed the monumental blunder of It's astonishing that Alsop's secret re- 1NE WO.94111GTON PCGT letting himself be entrapped by the Soviet mained intact for decades. But as the 1970 a may have said as much about the latter as the former. secret police in a homosexual tryst, and 13 See AMP, tZ CoL 1

ALSOP, From Cl should have known they would be after him. photos prove, if he was never ruined, While many of the facts remain it wasn't because no one tried. Murky, what is known about the inci- dent is summarized in a new book "Joe • When Joseph Wright Alsop Jr. went *op's Cold War," by syndicated col- on his fateful trip to Moscow, he was umnist Edwin Yoder Jr. "I wasn't eager 46 and at the crest of his career. His t4 bring this episode in, but I realized it Column, "Matter of Fact," written then vas an integral part of the story and in alternation with his brother Stewart, lihd to be told," says Yoder, who teach- appeared four times a week in more ep journalism at Washington and Lee 'than 200 newspapers, including the ■■■ University. New York Herald Tribune and The : His treatment is circumspect and Washington Post Wet saying only that Alsop .met "an Alsop was a vibrant social presence agent provocateur from the secret po- as well. With its fine wines, elegant fur- hp," had sex with him in his hotel nishings and stellar guests, his Dum- barton Avenue home was one of Wash- ington's A-list salons. On June 24, 1950, to take a routine example, his guests included assistant secretary of pate Dean Rusk, Secretary of the Ar- my Frank Pace, Undersecretary of the Air Force John McCone, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and lbading Soviet expert George Ken- nan—the first three of whom had to cut the evening short after learning that North Korea had just invaded South Korea. If the columnist's work blended smoothly into his entertaining, his pri- Vate life was kept obscured. Friends and colleagues interviewed for this sto- ry said they had few clues about the longtime bachelor's sex life. "I do not golumnist Edviln Yoder Jr.: "I wasn't believe that Joe was a very active ho- eager to bring this episode In, but I rindlzed It ... had to be told." mosexual in Washington during those • years," says Congressional Quarterly Executive Editor Robert Merry, who is riom, and "was soon confronted with Working on a biography of the Alsop the photographs and the threat of brothers: "His sexual inclinations came blackmail and was urged—unsuccess- td the fore when he was traveling ' fQlly—to become an undercover In those less prying times, questions agent." of sexual identity weren't easily By one account that Yoder heard, Alsop was "crushed and distraught" broached. With. Alsop it would have aid contemplated suicide; by another, been unthinkable: A distant relative of 1* reacted with his usual bluster and •FDR and Teddy Roosevelt, the Grot- btavado." In either case the U.S. am- on- and Harvard-educated columnist bassador, Alsop's old friend Chip Boh- had a mannered, patrician air accompa- len, quickly got the columnist out of nied by an abrasive style that, even his tlie country. friends agreed, could be off-putting. Alsop would have been a prize catch „" As a young man he reportedly set for the Soviets. 'They thought, 'If we telf the goal of insulting at least can nail him, he'll be useful to us and one person by noon, and on many days tell us what's going on in Washing- Probably succeeded. A celebrated an- tdn,' " says former CIA director Rich- &dote has Alsop terminating an inter- ard Helms. "Espionage is not just turn- view with Lewis Strauss, chairman of ing_ up deep dark secrets. It's also the Atomic Energy Commission, with keeping informed about public things." * reproach, "Admiral, you have wast- •Aad who better to keep you informed ed half an hour of my time." than the man who knew everyone in While a longtime critic of Joe Mc- official Washington? Carthy and his wild charges that the "It was standard operating proce- State Department was overrun with dure—any tourist was potentially vul- Reds, Alsop was also a committed anti- nerable, any embassy staff employee Communist who had been denounced or foreigner was targeted on some lev- by the Soviet Young Communist el " says Hayden Peake, a respected in- League. This makes his behavior in telligence analyst "Alsop wasn't the Moscow particularly inexplicable. He first to have been caught, but he's cer- columnist consulted with CIA higher- tainly the best known." up Frank Wisner, another old friend. more or less the same thing I didn't (Alexander Mikhailov, spokesman He prepared, as instructed, a detailed know about Alsop and, even if I had, it for the Federal Counterintelligence history of both the incident and his sex wouldn't have mattered. Gentlemen Service, the successor to the KGB, life. The CIA, following standard pro- ran the world back then. checked the agency's files at the re- cedure, then forwarded the material Harold Stassen, special assistant to quest of this newspaper. Mikhailov said onto FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. the president for disarmament, put it he found nothing relating to Alsop.) By March 29, 1957, only about a most forcefully: "We respected the If the columnist considered suicide, month after the blackmail attempt, the right of people to write critical things. the thought was evanescent. His col- FBI had prepared an eight-page sum- Eisenhower was not thin-skinned." unms from those weeks give no indica- mary memo about the Alsop brothers, Stassen was adamant that no one in tion- anything momentous had hap- detailing previous investigations into the administration would have used Al- pened. His last Soviet dispatch, printed the columnists' publication of suppos- sop's homosexuality against him: "Ei- on Feb. 24 from the mining town of edly classified information as well as senhower never did engage in that Kemerovo, is upbeat, noting, "I have various "allegations of homosexuality" kind of consideration or tactic." enjoyed almost every moment of this involving Joe. Herbert Brownell, the attorney gen- Siberian journey." By March 1, he was In his book, Yoder all but accuses eral in 1957, concurs: "All. I heard was back in Paris, calmly offering measured Hoover of sleaze-mongering, writing gossip. I did not verify it." Instead, he assessments of Khrushchev. that the director "quickly grasped the says, he dismissed it. As for Alsop's The same seems true of his work material's possibilities for ingratiating writing, "I think he was very support- over the longer term. Yoder says he ive, in general, of Eisenhower's foreign found no evidence that the columnist policy." either hardened or weakened toward himself with members of the Eisen- It's a pretty picture, but another the Soviets. Leann Grabavoy Almquist, hower administration who had been re- new book makes clear the situation who wrote her doctoral thesis on "Jo- peatedly stung and irritated by Alsop's was nowhere near this benign. "J. Ed- seph Alsop and American Foreign Poli- columns." If the old boy network was gar Hoover, Sex and Crime," by Mar- cy," agrees. going to protect Alsop, Hoover would quette University historian Athan "I would think that deep down inside do his best to undermine it. Theoharis, spends a few pages retrac- [the blackmail attempt] had -to have But a closer examination of what ing the same material as Yoder, but some impact on his ability to assess the Comes to a different conclusion. Soviet Union, but I can't find it," happened to Alsop suggests Hoover Almquist says. "He was suspicious of was more servant than scoundrel. He A crucial memo by Hoover, recently them before he went there, and he was was really just doing his job. declassified, is used by both scholars. Back then, homosexuality was the Yoder; unfortunately, misdates it to suspicious when he returned." 1957, which allows him to further fin- Still, it's impossible to measure the unpardonable sin. In 1950, Republican incident's ultimate effect. In 'The Best National Committee Chairman Guy ger Hoover as the villain of this story. and the Brightest," David Halberstam Gabrielson said "sex perverts" in the Theoharis puts the memo in the true argues that Alsop masterfully baited government were perhaps just as bad context. President Johnson in late 1964 and '65 as Communists. A year later, Hoover It's now 1959, two years after the by asserting that if Johnson ducked the said he had uncovered 406 "sex. devi- challenge in Vietnam he was less of a ates" in the government. When a rou- man than Jack Kennedy. tine FBI check of Arthur Vandenberg Jr.—slated for a senior White House "Walter Lippman would read those blackmail attempt. The columnist columns with a sick feeling and tell post in the first Eisenhower adminis- is friends that if Johnson went to war in tration—threatened to reveal he was doggedly hammering away at the so- Vietnam, at least 50 percent of the re- homosexual, the aide hastily checked called missile gap (a term he coined) sponsibility would be Alsop's," Halber- into the hospital and then declined the } between the United States and the So- stam wrote. post for "health reasons." viet Union. Alsop confessed to his editors after It was against such a background l This issue, which was to continue in- the incident in Moscow, offering to that, two weeks after the FBI had pre- to 1960, and help give Kennedy an give up his column. If they had taken pared its summary memo on Alsop, an edge to win the election, was one of Al- him up on it, would the history of the employee in the White. House mail ! sop's great crusades. "[W]hen our dan- war be any different? It's an intriguing room solicited an undercover member ger is so apparent, everything possible notion, although ultimately unprovable. of the D.C. Vice Squad and was arrest- is still not being done," he complained `Joe Alsop may have made it easier ed. He in turn implicated two other in a March 4, 1959, column headlined for Lyndon Johnson to support Ameri- mail room employees, one of whom "The Smug Risk-Takers." On March can escalation in Vietnam, because confessed to having seen the confiden- 22, Alsop asserted that the administra- Johnson had to know that Alsop would tial FBI report on Alsop. tion was "playing Russian roulette with be there every step of the way, writing By this point, Hoover had evidence the whole course of human history at columns in support," says Almquist. of a ring of homosexuals in the White - stake." "But you can't say that without Joe Al- House as well as a major security In retrospect, Alsop was clearly sop we wouldn't have gone to war in breach—reason enough to personally wrong. The United States hadn't lost Vietnam." brief White House Chief of Staff Sher- strategic superiority. What's more, the man Adams about Alsop. The heavy Eisenhower administration knew it, Washington's Response hitters in the administration soon knew thanks to the secret U-2 flights. If Alsop managed to put to one side exactly what had happened to one of It must have been maddening for ad- his unpleasant and humiliating experi- their least favorite columnists. ministration officials to see themselves ence, some of those who heard about it From the vantage point of nearly 40 hammered for being weak on defense couldn't quite do the same. years, the few surviving members of when they knew they weren't—but After abruptly leaving Moscow, the the Eisenhower administration say couldn't say how they knew. Eisenhow- er's science adviser, George Kistia- kowsky, related in a memoir how the 'A Sword Over His Head' president. became "exceedingly angry" at one point during the height of the In 1961, Alsop married Susan Mary missile gap crisis, complaining that "Jo- Patten, the widow of an old friend. Al- seph Alsop is about the lowest form of sop was lonely, and so, as he wrote in his autobiography, "when the opportu- animal life on earth." nity arose to slip into the role of com- Robert Donovan, then with the New panion and father to a family I had nave seemed a likely choice to betray York Herald Tribune, provides further known intimately for so many years, I evidence that:the administration's poli- the columnist The two were in a pub- eagerly volunteered-." lic feud, although the only strong feel- cy toward Alsop wasn't the live-and- Among the couple's best friends was ings seem to have been on Alsop's let-live of remembrance. Donovan re- the new president Indeed, Kennedy side. members Eisenhower's press secre- had stopped at Alsop's Georgetown The spat arose out of Buchwald's tary, James Hagerty, telling him in late home for a bowl of terrapin soup on "Sheep on the Runway," a play depict- 1959, "We're going to lift Alsop's the night of his inauguration—the only . if* a hawkish American columnist who White House pass. The guy's a pansy. private residence he graced with a visit foments a war between the United The FBI knows all about it." that evening. Alsop was more firmly States and a small Asian country. Since Says Donovan: "They hated Joe for than ever a member of the in-crowd. Alsop was one of the few journalists the stuff he was writing on Eisenhow- This had definite advantages with who still believed in the war in Viet- er." regard to his secret In 1962, KGB nam—and since Buchwald had already Given this mood, a decision to try agent Yuri Nosenko offered his servic- lampooned him in a column as "the and neutralize Alsop was probably in- es to the CIA. Among the secrets No- famed hawk columnist Joseph Walls- evitable. It came from Attorney Gener- senko immediately revealed, his CIA trop"—the real-life model for "Joe al William Rogers, who called Hoover handler told writer David Wise many Mayflower" was all too apparent. on April 14 to say he was "amazed" to years later, was that the Soviets "had Friends of Alsop muttered the portrait learn that the new secretary of de- the goods" on Alsop. 'They have pho- was libelous. fense, Neil McElroy, "did not know tos and if he gets out of line they can It was the sort of donnybrook that about the Joseph Alsop incident in Rus- blackmail him if he doesn't write what made for good newspaper copy and sia." they want" presumably sold a few extra theater Rogers then told Hoover, according As Nosenko put it: "There is a tickets, but that didn't mean Buchwald to a memo the FBI director wrote for sword over his head." would deliver up an expose. Instead, he hiS files that day, that "he thought he A CIA higher-up ordered this piece called his friend Phil Geyelin, then the should get together what we have on Of news to be cut out of the tape "be- editorial page editor of The Post They Alsop as he believed very few people cause Alsop was a good friend of the met for lunch at Sans Souci, that era's president," Wise wrote in his 1992 Establishment . watering hole, and knew of this. . . . The Attorney Gener- mulled over the proper response. al then commented that he was going book, "Molehunt" Kennedy and his brother Bobby, the The main question was whether to see that certain individuals were attorney general, both knew about the they should tell Alsop. Says Geyelin: aware of Alsop's propensities . . . but blackmail attempt anyway, which is an- "After the 'Sheep on the Runway' trou- he would not take the responsibility for other indication about how a secret ble, it would have been impossible for such information going any further." spreads—along with how, if you know Art to take the photos around to Joe. Theoharis writes that Rogers's pur- the right people, it doesn't spread too And I couldn't have done it without pose "was decidedly hostile." In an in- far. bringing Art into it So we didn't tell terview, the historian adds that "Rog- The executive editor of The Post, ers's strategy in 1959 was to discredit Russell Wiggins, knew as well 'The As for the photos themselves, Buch- Alsop, and not simply in. the minds of climate was so completely different high-level Eisenhower administration then," he says. "Rumors about certain officials. He wanted Alsop's homosexu- individuals were discussed among ality to be known beyond the adminis- newspapermen but never printed." tration." Sending out the photos in 1970 was Rogers, who went on to become obviously an attempt to force some- Nixon's first secretary of state and one's hand. An accompanying note— now practices law here, was sent the unsigned, of course—saki something relevant pages of both books by:'The to the effect of, "I thought you should Post with the request that he clarify know that Joe Alsop is under the con- his intentions with regard to Alsop. He trol of Israeli intelligence, who took declined to do so. these pictures of him. That's why he's been defending Isiael with such vigor." Both of the known recipients imme- diately suspected the Soviets instead. For one thing, says Charles Bartlett, Alsop had just written a column excori- ating "the black lies" of the Soviet am- bassador, and the other man in the photo looked Russian. Bartlett was a friend of Alsop's. Art Buchwald, on the other hand, may wald had no doubts. dealt with them - mends. Those who were a generation in the only way I wanted to deal with behind him, he felt, could understand it. them, which was tear them up," he more readily." says. "I don't give a damn what a guy's By this time, too, the Moscow inci2." sexual proclivities are, as long as they dent had assumed a life of its own as a don't involve me." high-level tidbit at the most exclusive' Bartlett, meanwhile, told a source in Washington parties: Adam Platt, ar' the CIA about his set of photos, mean- freelance writer who helped Alsop fin." while mailing them anonymously to Al- ish his autobiography, "'I've Seen the sop. "I thought you should have these," Best of It " recalls that in the late he wrote in a note. "I'm not signing '80s, "people would tell me about the' this because I don't want it to be an story who were journalists or social-, embarrassment to us when we meet." ites. They certainly weren't Eisenhow-- A couple of days later, Alsop er administration officials." "Did you send me those pictures?" he. It inched out in print as well. Alsop' asked. When Bartlett admitted doing was rather callously "outed" in 1990, so, Alsop didn't say thank you, didn't the year after his death, in a book of explain, didn't say much of anything. portraits by Brendan GM. The next 'The conversation sort of dribbled year, a footnote in Michael Besdiloss's,. off," recalls Bartlett. 'The Crisis Years: Kennedy and lihrit, shchev 1960-1963" referred to Attor- Beneath his cool demeanor, &sop. was angry and upset. He invited a ney General Robert Kennedy being" friend, someone who knew all about warned that "a prominent journalist the incident, to lunch. "Those bas- and friend of the president's had been tards!" he said. Perhaps he should get. 'compromised' " during a visit to Mos- them off his back by making a public', cow. Then came David Wise's "Mole confession. Once he did, no one would hunt," which named Alsop and detailed be able to threaten him again. the story in two succinct paragraphs The friend says he counseled against and two footnotes. "I debated whether such a tactic. "You have your wife and this was legitimate news, and decided, stepchildren to think about, as well as it was, because of the involvement of your brother and other close relatives,71 Soviet intelligence. It was part of the he reminded Alsop. "Consider the im- history of the Cold War," says Wise. pact such a declaration would have on Unfortunately, no one noticed his them." scoop. "It dropped like a stone, like so- A chastened Alsop agreed. He many things one writes." talked to a lawyer, left town for a: Late last year, Jack Nelson of the while. Whoever was mailing out the Los Angeles Times got a manuscript of photos—presumably the Soviets, al- Yoder's book and wrote a story. Sud-, though there's no direct evidence of.' denly, the incident was "news." A brief this—finally quit. version of the story ran in The Post and other newspapers. Part of History Susan Mary Alsop was naturally dis-, Joe and Susan Mary Alsop separated tressed, but has reconciled herself to , in 1972; three years later, he gave up this being public. "I think the thing to, his column. Those who were close to do is emphasize how brave Joe was,". him eventually began to detect a trace' she says. "He was a very unsex-pitying• of mellowness. man. Instead of being sorry for himself, Robert Merry, the biographer of the he went on and did his work." .„ Alsop brothers, says that "at the end She didn't want to say anything, he was pretty open [about his homo- more. sexuality], particularly to his younger 1HE WASHNGTON POST Joseph Meer) never shied away from attacking the Soviets, even when he knew they had compromising photos of him.