Trial & Error

The Page One banner in the New York Daily News screamed: HUNT RED GOON IN UAW BOMBING. Inside, in a four-column, copyrighted exclusive, Reporter Jack Tur-cott put the finger on a mysterious assassin who was the "nation's No. i suspect" in the attempted dynamiting of Walter Reuther's union headquarters in Detroit (TIME, Jan. 2). Police in 48 states, wrote Turcott, were hunting one Paul F. Kassay, described by the News as a "Moscow-trained saboteur" and a "Communist fanatic . . . and avowed party hatchet man" who has been "at large" since another sabotage attempt in 1931.

Three days later, after getting the facts, the News reversed its hasty judgment. In a page 2 retraction, under a two-column headline, the newspaper reported that Kassay had proved to the News's satisfaction that he had been "many hundreds of miles away" when the bombing attempt (and two previous assaults on Walter and Victor Reuther) took place. Furthermore, said the News, Kassay had never been in hiding, had lived in the same house for ten years, had passed a security check for World War II defense work, denied that he ever had been a Communist, and was "highly regarded in [his] community."

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