Word: mollenhoff
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...roller-coaster politics are the writers and publishers of campaign books. Warehouses are crammed with tons of tomes outdated by events. Writers, editors and printers are scrambling to keep pace with the mercurial exits, abrupt entrances and coy waitings-in-wings of the 1968 candidates. Reporter Clark Mollenhoff of Cowles newspapers saw his George Romney: Mormon in Politics rolling off the presses just as the Michigander's presidential hopes were being buried in New Hampshire. Said Mollenhoff: "Now I know how it felt to build an Edsel...
...there is one thing Clark Mollenhoff, 45, cannot stand it is a secret. His automatic response to the merest hint of secrecy has made him one of Washington's most feared as well as respected investigative reporters. Because he cannot resist lid-lifting, Mollenhoff has at one time or another outraged, embarrassed or exasperated Dwight Eisenhower, Sherman Adams, Ezra Taft Benson, John Kennedy, Everett Dirksen, Jimmy Hoffa, George Meany, Lyndon Johnson, Bobby Baker and Robert McNamara, to name just...
Second-Story Man. A massive (6 ft. 4 in., 245 Ibs.), mellow Midwesterner, Mollenhoff displays none of the mulish tenacity in private that characterizes him in public, where he never takes "uh" for an answer. Last March his sniping finally got to McNamara. Angrily, the Defense Secretary asked Mollenhoff to leave a press conference, noting that he had already asked three questions. "You dodged three times," replied the uncowed Mollenhoff. "You seem to dodge everything, Mr. Secretary." Exploded McNamara: "I unfortunately haven't been able to dodge all the rocks you have thrown at me for five years." Three...
...Mollenhoff sees it, of course, it is just the other way round. Though many of his colleagues as well as his targets share Johnson's view, Mollenhoff figures that the s.o.b.s are the ones he is after. To him, there are no holds barred when he is digging. He once hounded a locked-door session of a board of supervisors in his home state of Iowa by climbing onto the second-story ledge of the courthouse and later wriggling through a cornfield to eavesdrop on his prey in a farmhouse; they felt so harassed that they finally abandoned closed...
When the Sherman Adams scandal broke, Mollenhoff adopted the relatively simple strategy of bracing Mrs. Adams at home. After a bit of chitchat, he calmly asked, "Could I see the rug?," a reference to the Oriental rug that Adams was rumored to have improperly accepted. "No, I hadn't better show it to you," replied the innocent Mrs. Adams, thereby confirming its existence. Mollenhoff said a polite goodbye and soon splashed the whole story of the gifts across his papers...