“Free Press Wins in Underhanded Fashion”: Columnist Drew Pearson’s Blackmail of General Douglas MacArthur

Abstract

Syndicated columnist Drew Pearson was one of the most important figures in the history of US investigative journalism, holding up its lonely banner in mid-twentieth-century Washington before its resurgence during the Vietnam War and Watergate scandals. His lacerating exposés of high-level political officials sent scoundrels to prison and made the crusading reporter the most feared and reviled journalist in the nation’s capital from the early 1930s to the late 1960s. Yet a little-studied 1934 libel case against the muckraker by General Douglas MacArthur, settled out of court, nearly strangled Pearson’s column in its infancy. Pearson’s novel extralegal defense—blackmailing the general with secret love letters from his much younger Amerasian mistress—forced MacArthur to abandon his lawsuit, emboldened Pearson’s aggressive reporting in the decades ahead, and prevented a potentially ruinous defeat in court that could have established a legal precedent that chilled press scrutiny of public officials. An analysis of previously unpublished archival materials—correspondence, diaries, memos, legal motions, and declassified FBI reports—reveals an intricate story of political and journalistic intrigue.

Notes

1 Dan Schwartz, “The Sensational Love Affair of 50-Year-Old Gen. Douglas MacArthur—& a 16-Year-Old Filipino Girl,” National Enquirer, September 13, 1976; Oliver Pilat, Drew Pearson: An Unauthorized Biography (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1973), 142.

2 Letter, Drew Pearson to George Carlin and Monte Bourjaily, November 21, 1934, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Drew Pearson Papers, LBJ Library, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, hereafter referred to as Pearson Papers.

3 Mark Feldstein, “A Muckraking Model: Investigative Reporting Cycles in American History,” Harvard International Journal Press/Politics 11, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 105–120.

4 Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021), 17.

5 Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, 6.

6 Carol Morris Petillo, Douglas MacArthur: The Philippine Years (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1981), 154.

7 Petillo, Douglas MacArthur, 16, 21, 26, 85.

8 Letter, Drew Pearson to S.S. Hahn, January 21, 1935, box G-210 MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers. Pearson recounted the tale to high-level sources he had befriended, including Interior Secretary Harold Ickes and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, who suggested the plot would make a good novel. Harold Ickes, unpublished diary entry, May 24, 1942, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Drew Pearson, unpublished diary entry, August 25, 1967, Tyler Abell papers, LBJ Library, University of Texas (henceforth referred to as Abell Papers).

9 Letter, Drew Pearson to Ferdinand Pecora, December 27, 1934, box G-210 MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

10 Cong. James Morrison, Congressional Record, May 20, 1943, 4724.

11 Memo, E.E. Conroy to J. Edgar Hoover, March 7, 1944, Douglas MacArthur FBI file, 62-HQ-75104.

12 Redacted memo, July 9, 1953, Drew Pearson FBI file, 162-99722-11.

13 Robert G. Sherrill, “Drew Pearson: An Interview,” The Nation, July 7, 1969, 15. A month later, PARADE magazine, a widely circulated supplement to Sunday newspapers, briefly summarized the Nation article without mentioning Pearson or naming Cooper. Otherwise, the story faded. Walter Scott, “Personality Parade,” PARADE, August 24, 1969, 2.

14 Pilat did not conceal his antipathy toward Pearson—the two had a falling-out when the muckraker stopped cooperating with the biographer—and Pilat was denied access to Pearson’s invaluable archives. Among Pilat’s many factual errors: stating that MacArthur’s mistress was named Helen Robinson rather than Isabel Cooper; that she was from Singapore rather than the Philippines; that she was Chinese rather than Filipina-American; and that she was greeted at Pearson’s door by a “Negro manservant” when Pearson’s butler at the time was white. Pilat, Drew Pearson, 142; author’s interview with Tyler Abell, August 2, 2019.

15 Donald A. Ritchie, Keyhole Columnist: Leaks, Lies and Libel in Drew Pearson’s Washington (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 57–8. In 1976, the National Enquirer published a sensationalized article that quoted portions of MacArthur’s love letters to Cooper, which the tabloid located in the archives of her deceased lawyer, Morris Ernst. A dozen other newspapers, mostly in Texas, picked up on the story. MacArthur’s estate sent a “cease and desist” letter to the Enquirer threatening legal action, claiming that it owned publication rights to the letters, and the tabloid stopped publishing them. Schwartz, “Sensational”; Janie Frank, “Enquirer avoids legal action,” Daily Texan, December 3, 1976, 2.

16 Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress 17, 23. Gonzalez argued that the MacArthur-Cooper relationship was not a romance but an exchange of “sexual and emotional intimacy for room, board, and lavish gifts.” Gonzalez’s detailed reconstruction and reinterpretation of Cooper’s life, based in part on documents supplied by this author, contained two fictional chapters: an imaginary script with invented dialogue for a pretend silent film and a make-believe review of a non-existent movie. Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, 26, 89–92, 170–1.

17 These archives include: National Archives, Washington, DC (lawsuit, docket, and legal motions, Douglas MacArthur v. Washington Times Co., Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen); University of Texas (Drew Pearson and Morris Ernst papers); University of Wisconsin (Robert S. Allen papers); George Washington University (Jack Anderson papers); Library of Congress (Harold Ickes papers); Wesleyan University (William Manchester papers); American University (“Washington Merry-Go-Round” columns). Additional Pearson papers were loaned to the author by the columnist’s stepson, Tyler Abell, who also provided oral history interviews. MacArthur’s FBI files were at the National Archives, College Park, Maryland and George Washington University’s National Security Archive. Pearson’s FBI file was provided by journalism historian Michael Sweeney. The author’s FOIA requests to the FBI in 2019 turned up records for Douglas MacArthur, Drew Pearson, Robert S. Allen, Morris Ernst, Leon Pearson, Ferdinand Pecora, and Cong. Ross Collins but nothing on Isabel Rosario “Chabing” Cooper or other figures in the case.

18 “The Press: Querulous Quaker,” Time, December 13, 1948, 75.

19 Richard Weiner, Syndicated Columnists, 3rd ed. (New York: Richard Weiner, Inc, 1979), 30.

20 “News and Comment From the National Capital,” Literary Digest, June 2, 1934, 12.

21 “Drew Pearson, Columnist, Dies,” New York Times, September 2, 1969, A1, 46.

22 Charles Fisher, The Columnists (New York: Howell, Soskin, 1944), 214.

23 Washington Merry-Go-Round (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1931), 321; Jack Anderson with James Boyd, Confessions of a Muckraker (New York: Random House, 1979), 147; Geoffrey Perret, Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur (New York: Random House, 1996), 72, 107, 115.

24 Perret, Old Soldiers, 154–160.

25 Pilat, Drew Pearson, 226. Pearson was “in an Army automobile just behind MacArthur’s during the eviction of the Bonus Army” and saw the General “pose for photographers and in every way possible put himself to the front as the man in charge of the drive against the Bonus Army.” Drew Pearson, memo, “First Count,” ND, box G-237, MacArthur folder 10, Pearson Papers.

26 Drew Pearson & Robert S. Allen, “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” March 9, 1933 & April 25, 1934, American University digital research archives, Washington, DC—hereafter referred to as AU Digital Archives. Although the column had a joint byline, Pearson was the author of its attacks on MacArthur.

27 Pearson & Allen, “Merry-Go-Round,” January 10, 1934; June 19, 1933; March 5, 1934; September 19, 1933; August 19, 1933; March 7, 1934, AU Digital Archives.

28 Eisenhower believed that assistant White House press secretary Steve Early may have “inspired” the attacks on MacArthur by “these two busybodies” because “much of the material that comes out in the muckraking column drags the ‘White House’ into the matter.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eisenhower: The Prewar Diaries and Selected Papers, 1905–1941, Daniel D. Holt, ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 268–269.

29 “Press: A General on Merry-Go-Round,” Time, May 28, 1934.

30 Pearson and Allen first wrote about MacArthur’s “tremendous amount of wire-pulling” in their anonymous 1932 book More Merry-Go-Round, which included the allegation that MacArthur’s first wife got him promoted through her influential stepfather. More Merry-Go-Round (New York: Liverwright, 1932), 194, 207–209.

31 “Two members of the Cabinet, who felt this to be a most unethical way to suppress journalistic enterprise, promptly told me about it,” Pearson wrote decades later. Drew Pearson, “My Life in the White House Doghouse: Confessions of an S.O.B. Part II,” Saturday Evening Post, November 10, 1956, 38–39.

32 Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Random House, 1989), 266; and Russell D. Buhite, Douglas MacArthur: Statecraft and Stagecraft in America’s East Asian Policy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 17.

33 Ritchie, Keyhole, 37, 39, 41–2, 47–8; Perret, Old Soldiers, 172; Pilat, Drew Pearson, 140–1. FDR did not allow minutes to be taken in his meetings and no contemporaneous White House records have been found that document any discussions he had with MacArthur or his Cabinet about suing Pearson. Commerce Secretary Harold Ickes was undoubtedly one of Pearson’s sources about FDR’s role, though Pearson had other high-level Pearson sources in the Roosevelt administration as well, including Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, Attorney General Frank Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles, and press secretary Steve Early. March 10, 1934, FDR “day by day” calendar, Pare Lorentz Center, FDR Presidential Library; Ritchie, Keyhole, 45, 74.

34 Douglas MacArthur v. Washington Times Co., Drew Pearson, and Robert S. Allen, Supreme Court of DC (1934), US District Court, appellate jurisdiction case files, 1792–2017, record group 267, entry 21, National Archives, Washington, DC. The Washington Times Co. was the corporate owner of the Washington Herald.

35 “MacArthur Seeking $1,750,000 On Charge of Libel in Paper,” Washington Evening Star, May 16, 1934; “M’Arthur Charges Libel,” New York Times, May 17, 1934, 20; J.B.M., “A General Is Wounded,” Winnipeg Free Press, June 2, 1934, 1. Other news outlets, including the Associated Press and United Press wire services, also disseminated the story widely.

36 “Gossip Columns: ‘Tidbits’ Raise Gen. MacArthur’s Ire,” Newsweek, May 26, 1934, 22.

37 Anderson and Boyd, Confessions, 148.

38 Letter, Monte F. Bourjaily to F.H. Bartholomew, July 3, 1934, Abell Papers.

39 Tribune Washington Bureau, “General M’Arthur Sue Robert Allen, Pearson for Libel,” La Crosse, WI Tribune, May 32, 1934, 12.

40 Clifton O. Lawhorne, Defamation and Public Officials: The Evolving Law of Libel (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971), 111–12.

41 “The columnists have virtually defied [MacArthur] to do his worst,” the magazine added, and his lawsuit will show “how far a gossip columnist may go.” Until then, “the more-venturesome columnists are treading easier.” “News and Comment From the National Capital,” Literary Digest, June 2, 1934, 12.

42 Your “criticism of the swaggering soldier was justified because he is a public official,” the general counsel of the Scripps newspaper chain reassured Pearson. “Libel laws touching upon the question of public officials are very liberal and broad. You can say almost anything and justify it in court.” Letter, S.S. Hahn to Drew Pearson (May 23, 1934), MacArthur, Pearson Papers.

43 “Press: A General on Merry-Go-Round,” Time, May 28, 1934.

44 Letter, Monte F. Bourjaily to F.H. Bartholomew, July 3, 1934, Abell Papers.

45 Letter, Drew Pearson to Edgar H.A. Chapman, October 12, 1934, box G-238, MacArthur folder 1, Pearson Papers; Perret, Old Soldiers, 168–70.

46 Letter, Monte F. Bourjaily to F.H. Bartholomew, July 3, 1934, Abell Papers.

47 Letter, Drew Pearson to Charles H. Houston, August 13, 1934, box G-238, MacArthur folder 1, Pearson Papers.

48 Letter, Drew Pearson to Edgar H.A. Chapman, October 9, 1934 & letter, Drew Pearson to S.S. Hahn, January 21, 1935, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers; Ritchie, Keyhole, 42.

49 Letter, Drew Pearson to George Carlin, October 11, 1934, Abell Papers.

50 Another tip Pearson was chasing: that MacArthur violated a regulation against desecrating his Army uniform by parading at a party with semi-nude chorus girls who were scantily “dressed in Army uniform with their breasts cut away so their bosoms hung out.” That was tame compared to what a military aide later disclosed about MacArthur: that he hired prostitutes in Washington and patronized a brothel in Baltimore. According to Lt. T.J. Davis, MacArthur would charm each of the prostitutes—“take her to dinner, quote poetry, buy her flowers, generally get her built up until she was enamored with him”—and then abruptly “denounce her as a ‘little whore,’ and walk away.” Tyler Abell, ed., Drew Pearson Diaries: 1949–1959 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974), 28; Drew Pearson unpublished diary, January 2, 1969, Abell Papers; “Report of Edgar H.A. Chapman,” October 25, 1934, box G-238, MacArthur folder 1, Pearson Papers; Joseph C. Goulden, Korea: The Untold Story (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983), xxii.

51 Pilat, Drew Pearson, 142.

52 Aram Bakshian, Jr., “The Scorpion on the Potomac,” National Interest, August 29, 2021.

53 Pilat, Drew Pearson, 142.

54 The kissing was tame compared to the teenage Cooper’s vaudeville rendition of the song “Has Anyone Seen My Kitty?”: “I sit all night and sigh, / ‘Cause it’s lonely in my flat, / Come Pussy, Pussy, Pussy. / Nice Pussy, Pussy, Pussy; / Anybody seen my cat?” As sailors hooted and hollered, Cooper cooed: “Won’t you please help me find my lonesome cat, / I know she’s doggone lonesome.” According to a relative of Cooper, she was just sixteen years old at the time and sang in a “smooth and throaty style.” She reportedly earned such “spectacular money” that she “would revel in this wealth by gaily tossing the bills into a shower all over [her] bed and bedroom.” Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, 76–9, 62; Tom Carter, “The Generals’ Dimples: Part I,” Business (The American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines: July 1988), 36.

55 Cooper’s precise age when she met MacArthur is in doubt because her birth year is not known; she gave different dates at various times throughout her life. She told Pearson she was eighteen when she joined MacArthur in the US, which meant she would have been seventeen when they began their affair. Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, 181, 183, 37; letter, Drew Pearson to George Carlin & Monte Bourjaily, November 21, 1934, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

56 Letters, Douglas MacArthur to Isabel Cooper, MacArthur-Cooper Container 262.4, Morris Ernst papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas—hereafter referred to as Ernst Papers; Perret, Old Soldiers, 147–8, 167; Tom Carter, “The General’s Dimples: Conclusion,” Business (The American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines: September 1988), 34. MacArthur allegedly ended the relationship after discovering Cooper was involved with a younger law student at Georgetown University, whom she later married. Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, 22, 94–6; letter, Drew Pearson to George Carlin & Monte Bourjaily, November 21, 1934, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

57 Cooper told Pearson that her evidence had also included a diary that she kept “of things that MacArthur told her” but that a “landlady” in one of her rooming houses stole it; it never resurfaced. Letter, Drew Pearson to George Carlin & Monte Bourjaily, November 21, 1934, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

58 Pilat, Drew Pearson, 142; Alden Whitman, “Morris Ernst, ‘Ulysses’ Case Lawyer, Dies,” New York Times, May 23, 1976, 40.

59 Letter, Drew Pearson to George Carlin & Monte Bourjaily, November 21, 1934, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

60 Pearson to George Carlin & Monte Bourjaily, November 21, 1934.

61 Pearson to George Carlin & Monte Bourjaily, November 21, 1934.

62 Letter, Isabel R. Cooper to Morris Ernst, December 6, 1934, 262.4, Ernst Papers. Soon after the lawsuit was settled, Pearson sent Ernst a check for $100, perhaps as a nominal fee so that their conversations about MacArthur would be protected under attorney-client privilege. Letter, Drew Pearson to Morris Ernst, January 2, 1935, 262.4, Ernst Papers.

63 Pearson was careful to point out that “I have been very careful about this [blackmail], and nothing I have said could be so construed. In fact, my whole conversation with her was entirely on the basis of helping her to get a job and get re-established.” Letter, Drew Pearson to George Carlin & Monte Bourjaily, November 21, 1934, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

64 Pearson to George Carlin & Monte Bourjaily, November 21, 1934. Unfortunately, this transcript has not turned up in the archives of Pearson, Ernst, Robert S. Allen, or anywhere else, and appears to be lost to history. Letter, Drew Pearson to George Carlin, November 24, 1932, box G-238, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

65 MacArthur’s letters to Cooper were filled with paternalistic advice that betrayed more than a hint of jealous insecurity; he simultaneously put her on a pedestal and treated her like a wayward child. His handwritten letters to Cooper are in Container 262.4 of the Ernst Papers; typed versions of them are in the Robert S. Allen papers at the University of Wisconsin. Excerpts quoted here have previously been published in Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, 19; Tom Carter, “The Generals Dimples: Part II,” Business (The American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, August 1988), 32, 39; Schwartz, “Sensational”; and various MacArthur biographies.

66 Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, 22.

67 Letter, Drew Pearson to Morris Ernst, December 13, 1934, MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

68 Letter, Morris Ernst to Douglas MacArthur, December 6, 1934, MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

69 Letter, L.S. Tillotson to Morris Ernst, December 7, 1934, MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

70 Telegram, Morris Ernst to L.S. Tillotson, December 10, 1934, MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

71 Telegram, L.S. Tillotson to Morris Ernst, December 10, 1934, MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

72 Note, PG to Morris Ernst, December 13, 1934, MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

73 Phone message, “Mr. Ernst,” December 15, 1934, MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

74 Letter, L.S. Tillotson to Morris Ernst, “Saturday p.m.,” n.d., but likely December 15, 1934, MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

75 Eisenhower’s exact role in the affair remains a mystery; his only known surviving reference to it was veiled, in a diary entry after clashing with MacArthur: “it is almost incomprehensible that after … keeping his secrets … he should suddenly turn on me … .I cannot believe he’d deliberately make enemies of anyone that he’d fear might in the future reveal the true story of his black and tan affair.” Black and tan was a phrase used at the time to refer to racial mixing. David D. Hold, ed., Eisenhower: The Prewar Diaries and Selected Papers, 1905–1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 411–12; Jennifer Bates, “From the Rural South to the Urban North: The Influence of Interracial Relations in Black and Tans on the 1919 Chicago Race Riot,” Footnotes: A Journal of History 2019 (2019): 7.

76 Pilat, Drew Pearson, 144–5. Years later, after losing contact with Cooper, Pearson suspected “foul play” and told his friend Harold Ickes: “MacArthur is cold and utterly ruthless and it would not be beyond him to get out of the way anybody who stood therein.” Ickes, unpublished diary, May 24, 1942, Library of Congress.

77 Press telegrams, Drew Pearson to Morris Ernst, n.d., MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

78 Pilat, Drew Pearson, 145. After Pearson’s close friend George Abell took up with Cooper, his pregnant wife Luvie Abell found out about the affair and left her husband for Pearson, whom she married in 1936. Not surprisingly, this ended Pearson’s friendship with Abell, who angrily threatened to shoot the columnist. Abell retaliated against his ex-wife by spiriting their five-year-old son out of the country, but Pearson reached out to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and the kidnapping was foiled by Scotland Yard. The scandal filled the society pages of Washington newspapers. Pilat, Drew Pearson, 147–50; Ritchie, Keyhole, 33, 29; Amanda Smith, Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson (New York: Knopf, 2011), 336–7, 428–30, 434–8.

79 Press telegram, Drew Pearson to Morris Ernst n.d., MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

80 Letter, Drew Pearson to Morris Ernst n.d., MacArthur-Cooper 262.4, Ernst Papers.

81 Drew Pearson to E.H. Gauvreau, December 5, 1934, box G-238, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

82 Letter, Drew Pearson to George Carlin & Monte Bourjaily, December 17, 1934, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

83 As legal negotiations wrapped up, Pearson learned to his “amazement” and “resentment” that attorneys for his syndicate and Hearst newspapers, which published his column, had secretly offered to pay MacArthur $3,000 to settle the case—despite learning of the General’s incriminating love letters. According to Pearson, this settlement offer occurred even though he had already “emphatically vetoed” the “foolish” plan, saying he “would pay not more than six cents, if that much, to MacArthur.” Letter, Drew Pearson to George Carlin & Monte Bourjaily, December 17, 1934 & letter, Abell Papers; letter, Drew Pearson to Paul Patterson, December 20, 1934, box G-238, MacArthur folder 1, Pearson Papers.

84 “Seven Shuttles,” Time, December 31, 1934, 32.

85 Whatever pledges of confidentiality Cooper and Pearson gave MacArthur appear to have been verbal; no paperwork about it survives and nondisclosure statements were unknown at that time. Michelle Dean, “Contracts of Silence,” Columbia Journalism Review (Winter 2018).

86 Letter, Drew Pearson to Ferdinand Pecora, December 27, 1934, box G-210 MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

87 Letter, Drew Pearson to S.S. Hahn, January 21, 1935, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

88 Decades later, a friend blamed the settlement on MacArthur’s domineering mother. “He could have won the suit,” the salty Admiral William Leahy maintained. “He was a bachelor at the time. All he had to do was look everybody in the face and say: ‘So what? Cunt can make you look awfully silly at times!’ You know why he didn’t do it? … He didn’t want his mother to learn about the Eurasian girl!” Leahy referred to Filipinos like Cooper as “the natives,” and stated that whites would not accept “social equality” with “an alien race.” Pilat, Drew Pearson, 146; Henry H. Adams, Witness to Power: The Life of Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985), 22.

89 The tabloid’s answer: the columnists “dug up so much evidence” that a trial would have put MacArthur—not the newsmen—“on the defense, so they decided to back down.” The paper reported that “damning testimony” would have revealed that MacArthur called the Secretary of War “a sleepy old owl who couldn’t get along without me,” and that he referred to FDR as “that cripple in the White House.” No hint was made of MacArthur’s mistress or Pearson’s sexual extortion, but the other details were so specific—and so closely held—that they were likely leaked by Pearson or someone close to him. “Promised Libel Suit Peters Out on Q.T.,” Inside Stuff, February 1, 1935, 1, 4.

90 “MacArthur Drops Libel Action Here,” Washington Post, December 21, 1934, 2; “MacArthur Drops $250,000 Libel Suit,” December 21, 1934; “MacArthur Withdraws Suit,” Christian Science Monitor, December 21, 1934, 5.

91 “Announcement to Clients,” United Feature Syndicate, December 20, 1934, box G-238, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

92 Ritchie, Keyhole, passim; “Querulous Quaker,” Time, December 13, 1948, 75. For good measure, McCarthy also beat up Pearson at a Washington dinner party; the fight was broken up by then-Senator Richard Nixon. Mark Feldstein, “Fighting Quakers: The 1950s Battle Between Richard Nixon and Columnist Drew Pearson,” Journalism History (Summer 2004): 76–90.

93 Douglas A. Anderson, A “Washington Merry-Go-Round” of Libel Actions (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1980), 44. Pearson’s sole legal defeat occurred in 1953, when he paid $40,000 after a jury found that he had libeled Norman Littell, a Washington lawyer and onetime assistant attorney general, whom Pearson had accused of not registering as a foreign lobbyist. Anderson, A “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” 143–8.

94 Pearson’s aggressive newsgathering tactics reportedly included putting eavesdropping waiters and chauffeurs on his payroll, bribing a military clerk to leak classified data, and instructing an assistant to break into the office of a prominent attorney to search for incriminating records. Pilat, Drew Pearson, 33, 166.

95 Ritchie, Keyhole, 56–7, 131; Anderson, Libel, 50–53.

96 Perret, Old Soldiers, passim.

97 Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, 99, chapters 17, 19; letter, Isabel Cooper to Drew Pearson, April 26, 1948, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers; Petillo, MacArthur, 166.

98 Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, 108; “Hula Dancer Says Ex-Mate Bruised Legs,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1946; “Film Actress Divorced from L.A. Atty,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, n.d., Pearson Papers. According to a relative of Cooper’s, she divorced her first husband, Frank Kennamer, because he tried to use MacArthur’s love letters to extort him for money. Tom Carter, Then and Now: The Mechanics of Integration (Manila: Historical Conservation Society, 1983), 160.

99 “Film Actress Divorced,” op. cit. Cooper continued to seek Pearson’s help for years. She sent him photos of herself, sought his aid when her stepbrother was arrested, and complained that the columnist’s Hollywood contacts were not doing enough to advance her career. Pearson patiently gave Cooper praise and paternal advice, consoled her after she was sexually harassed by her casting director, dispensed encouraging words about her lackluster job prospects, and even counseled her about her pet dog. See letters, Isabel Cooper to Drew Pearson, November 26, 1942, February 18, 1943, April 30, 1943, May 24, 1943, March 2, 1944 & Drew Pearson to Isabel Cooper, October 5, 1942, January 6, 1943, February 23, 1943, April 21, 1943, May 20, 1943, May 27, 1943, box G-210, MacArthur folder 2, Pearson Papers.

100 Carter, Then and Now, 160.

101 Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress, 147, 152, 165.

102 Mark Feldstein, Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 46–7, 57–9, 315, 317–8, 315, 352.

103 Lawhorne, Defamation, 111–12, 118–19, 128, 143–4.

104 Despite the dearth of national investigative reporting, especially in Washington, during the mid-twentieth century, local newspapers produced many worthy exposés during this time. Feldstein, “Muckraking,” op. cit; Gerry Lanosga, “New Views of Investigative Reporting in the Twentieth Century,” American Journalism 31, no. 4 (December 2014): 490–506.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Mark Feldstein

Mark Feldstein is the Richard Eaton Chair of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which in 2011 won the book of the year award from the American Journalism Historians Association and the Frank Luther Mott award from Kappa Tau Alpha for the best book research in journalism and mass communication. He wishes to thank Andrew Otis for his research assistance on this article, and the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation, which awarded the author a Moody Research Grant for archival research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas.