Smart Scot

As the headlines broke out on Marshall and Byrnes (see,NATIONAL AFFAIRS), gossip columnists rushed forward and took hasty bows. Some of the gossips (who predict a hatful of things, on the chance that a few will come to pass) had predicted long ago that Jimmy Byrnes would quit. In their self-adulation they missed a more exciting item: how a smart reporter had smoked out the season's biggest diplomatic story three days before it was due.

The White House had prepared a timetable giving the sequence of four big pieces of news: General Marshall's recall, his China report, Jimmy Byrnes's resignation, and Marshall's appointment. The timetable was a secret, and none of the press was in on it. But as soon as James Barrett ("Scotty") Reston, 37, national reporter of the New York Times, heard the first piece of news--that General Marshall was coming home--he began fishing around.

From one high-echelon friend, who was himself stepping down from a Government job, Scotty Reston got a big tip. In an artful story in Tuesday's Times, Reston passed it along without confirmation: "... some observers . . . believe [that] General Marshall may be asked to replace Mr. [Dean] Acheson with a view to succeeding Secretary Byrnes if, as has been reported, the latter also plans to retire."

Yes or No? Then he set out to confirm the tip. Nobody at the State Department would. Late in the afternoon, Reston got to Jimmy Byrnes himself by telephone, asked him point-blank if he was going to quit. Said Byrnes, sidestepping: "How many times do I have to deny this thing?" Reston kept after him: Did he deny the resignation or not? Byrnes didn't exactly deny it, but managed to sound as if he did.

When he hung up, Reston turned dejectedly to Arthur Krock, head of the Times's Washington bureau. "You'd better kill your column," he said. "And I'd better kill my story." Both had been writing on the assumption that Reston was right, that Byrnes was out, and Marshall was in.

But Reston had put up a better bluff than he knew. When Pundit Krock called Byrnes to try his own luck, the Secretary would not speak to him. ("I just didn't want to lie to him," Byrnes said later.) At that point Jimmy Byrnes called the White House, told the President that, since the Times evidently had the story (and a few others were getting warm, too), it might as well be released. Less than an hour later the story was out.

On the Times, where some newsmen are inclined to sit back on their big, fat prestige (knowing that their paper is the best place for important people to plant important news), Reston remains an unusual reporter. A cocky, calculating Clydebank boy who came to the U.S. at ten, he went to the University of Illinois, was a pressagent for the Cincinnati Reds, joined A.P. as a sportswriter in 1934. The Times hired him in London seven years ago. His persistent legwork and savvy worked as well with the State Department as with the Foreign Office: two years ago they won him a Pulitzer Prize. Last weekend, on a plane to Cleveland, Reporter Reston chided fellow-passenger Jimmy Byrnes. "You talked me out of that story," he said. "Well," retorted Byrnes, grinning, "you talked me into releasing it."

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