The Big Story

The Chicago Sun-Times's Ray Brennan, 44, is a fast-thinking, fast-moving reporter who modestly puts down his long list of beats to "good luck." Once, while working in Chicago for the Associated Press, he made a routine long-distance checking call to Crown Point, Ind., got the county prosecutor on the wire just in time to get a big exclusive: Gangster John Dillinger had crashed out of the Crown Point jail. Last week another and bigger beat landed Reporter Brennan in trouble. In Washington, a grand jury indicted him for impersonating a government employee. (Maximum penalty: three years in prison and a $1,000 fine.)

During the 1950 election campaign, Brennan discovered that the Kefauver Crime Committee had asked Chicago Police Captain Daniel ("Tubbo") Gilbert to testify. Gilbert, a lavish spender, known in Chicago as "the world's richest cop," was Democratic candidate for Cook County sheriff. Because of his wretched record as a cop, the usually pro-Democratic Sun-Times supported his Republican opponent, John E. Babb. Under pressure from the Sun-Times, Democrat Estes Kefauver admitted that Tubbo Gilbert had appeared at a closed session, but he would give out none of the testimony.

Brennan knew how to get around that. He hustled off to Washington, came back with the full transcript of Gilbert's secret testimony, but kept mum on how he got it. Next day the Sun-Times splashed the testimony all over the paper. Gilbert had told the committee that he had made his money while a cop because he "bet on elections . . . bet on football games . . . bet on prizefights . . . [and in fact] I have been a gambler at heart." The Kefauver Committee complained bitterly about the printing of the testimony, but the Sun-Times replied that it had published it in the public interest.

Said the rival Chicago Daily News: "The committee suppression of Gilbert's testimony cannot be defended ... A man whose account with professional gamblers runs into thousands of dollars a year ... is not going to be a tough enforcer of the law . . ." As a result of Brennan's story, Tubbo Gilbert, reckoned an easy winner, was snowed under. The Cook County Democratic crash also defeated Senator Scott Lucas, the Democratic floor leader, and elected Republican Everett Dirksen (TIME, Nov. 13, 1950).

The Kefauver Committee, flabbergasted at what its investigation had done, went to the FBI with an angry complaint: Reporter Brennan had got the secret testimony from the stenographic service that was typing the record by posing as the new "office manager" of the Kefauver Crime Committee. After Ray Brennan's indictment last week, Milburn P. Akers, executive editor of the Sun-Times, which is supporting Eisenhower, brushed off the charges as politics. Asked Akers: "Why . . . the long delay? Could [it] be the consequence of the fact that the Sun-Times ceased its support of the present administration in the interval?" Added a taunting headline in the paper's editorial column: TO ADLAI: WE STILL LIKE IKE.<<

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