Rushmore v. Cohn

F'or 15 years Howard Rushmore, 42, has been a top reporter on the anti-Red beat for Hearst's blaring New York Journal-American. A onetime Communist and Daily Worker movie critic, Rushmore got his start at the Journal-American doing a repentant series on how he was "duped by false pictures of the Soviet Utopia." After that his exposes of party-liners he had known were often spread across Page One. Columnist Westbrook Pegler called him "one of the most effective enemies of treason in American journalism." To Senator Joe McCarthy, who measures his praise carefully, he was "one of our outstanding Americans at this time."

Last week Howard Rushmore, whose Journal-American salary was $154 a week, was fired for "economy." Few around the shop believed that economy was the reason, least of all Rushmore. Said he: "My criticism of Roy Cohn . . . plus my persistent exposures of the crackpots calling themselves McCarthyites played a major role in my discharge."

Ironically, Rushmore was one of Roy Cohn's earliest boosters, when Cohn was an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan. He had praised Cohn in print and introduced him to Hearst's high priest of antiCommunism, Columnist George Sokolsky, who helped Cohn get his job with Senator Joe McCarthy. But the friendship ended when Rushmore also went to Washington for a stint as a special McCarthy committee investigator. Riled by Cohn's arrogance, Rushmore left the committee.

Last June Rushmore teed off in print in the Journal-American against Cohn and Schine, called them "self-seeking and publicity-grabbing." Rushmore's attack got him a warning from his city editor "to keep personal opinions out of the paper."

Last week, at a public debate on McCarthy in Sayville, L.I. with Fred Woltman, the Scripps-Howard Communist expert, Rushmore again criticized Cohn. Furthermore, when hecklers got after Woltman for his series walloping McCarthy (TiME. July 19), Rushmore rushed to Woltman's defense. Warned Woltman on the way home: "You'll get fired for this."

This week Rushmore became editor of a Manhattan monthly magazine, Confidential, which thrives on sin, sex and plugs from Hearst Columnist Walter Winchell.

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