TIME is not in the business of trying to "scoop" anybody. That's for newspapers, with their daily and hourly deadlines. But TIME does keep on top of the news. In the last few weeks TIME had two solid newsbeats on the most important news story in Washington: the hammering out of a new U.S. policy toward Asia. The New York Herald Tribune's Bert Andrews, one of Washington's best newsmen, called TIME'S stories "a magnificent job of enterprising reporting."

The first beat was in our January 2 issue when TIME'S editors reported that 1) the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making a 180DEG turn in their thinking, had decided to dispatch a military mission to Formosa, and 2) that President Truman had ordered his Cabinet officers to produce a clear-cut affirmative Asia policy for a meeting of the National Security Council the following week, at which he would preside.

Then, in our January 9 issue, the editors again scored a beat when they told what had happened at this meeting, including Harry Truman's thumbs down on the J.C.S. proposal for Formosa, and Secretary of State Dean Acheson's new program for Asia, point by point.

TIME'S scoops were due to nothing less than oldfashioned, door-bell-ring-ing reporting. On the Friday before Christmas, Washington Bureau Chief James Shepley was asked by the editors to investigate a report that the Joint Chiefs of Staff might have reversed their stand on Formosa.

Shepley called in Robert Sherrod, onetime war correspondent (Tarawa; On to Westward) who now covers the Pentagon Building. Sherrod found out that the J.C.S. had met all day the day before and that there was considerable excitement about the meeting. He also saw General Omar Bradley, head of the J.C.S. leaving the Pentagon in civilian clothes, and learned that Bradley was off to attend a meeting with Defense Secretary Louis Johnson in Acheson's office at the State Department.

Shepley promptly dispatched John Anspacher, who had recently come to TIME from the United Press, to State. Anspacher found Secretary Johnson's car and chauffeur outside a basement entrance that leads to one of several private elevators to Acheson's office. He waited there, talking to the chauffeur, until Johnson emerged. The Secretary would confirm nothing more than that an important meeting had taken place. General Bradley left the building by another exit.

Meanwhile, Sherrod, pounding his beat, picked up enough information to satisfy himself that the J.C.S. had done an about-face on Formosa. From his own news sources, Shepley found out the details of President Truman's meeting with the Cabinet and the plans for the forthcoming Security Council session.

These three stories dovetailed neatly, and National Affairs Writer Louis Banks, who had covered the State Department himself as a member of TIME'S Washington staff, put them together for the early Christmas closing. TIME would be on the newsstands the following Thursday, and the editors fully expected to see their story appear in the newspapers in the interval. But it didn't; only one paper had a hint of it, and that not until Thursday.

Prodded by Washington correspondents, the White House confirmed the fact that President Truman would preside that day at the Security Council meeting. After the meeting, however, nobody was able to report what had happened there--except Shepley, Sherrod and the Washington staff, who rounded the story up in time for the January 9 issue. The day that issue hit the newsstands, the President and the Secretary of State confirmed our story.

Cordially yours,

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