Leak, Scoop and Rescoop

The Manhattan office of U.S. Attorney Whitney North Seymour Jr. hummed last week with the noises that prosecutors and crime reporters love to hear: Seymour announced three indictments in his continuing investigation of corruption in the enforcement--or non-enforcement--of narcotics laws. Then why was Seymour so unhappy? Because the suspects accused so far are minor figures (a junior detective, a bail bondsman's investigator, a lawyer). Far more important fish had slipped away, he charged, because of holes ripped in his net by the New York Times and Daily News. Seymour insisted that their premature stories had "substantially terminated" his undercover investigation.

The accusation is serious, and both papers have denied it. They question whether the investigation has really been damaged, and contend that Seymour himself was really at fault for the early disclosures last month. Actually, the strange story of leak, scoop and re-scoop allows enough blame for both sides to share.

Seymour started the inquiry 14 months ago as a result of work by the Knapp Commission, a special body investigating New York City police corruption that came into being almost entirely because of articles by veteran Investigative Reporter David Burnham in the Times. Going beyond the Knapp group, Seymour used City Detective Robert Leuci as an undercover man, gathering evidence of payoffs and other malfeasance. Eventually the prosecutor assembled a force of 40 local and federal agents who made liberal use of underworld informants. He anticipated a huge haul, but Leuci got restive. He was in danger much of the time, his family under constant guard, and Seymour felt he needed encouragement.

Seymour and his aides hit on a novel way of providing that boost: they would arrange for the story of Leuci's exploits to be told--when the time was right--by LIFE. Last March one of Seymour's men got in touch with the magazine and offered to arrange for interviews with Leuci, provided the story be withheld until the investigation was completed. LIFE in turn agreed to allow Seymour to check the article for legal implications, such as information that might violate defendants' rights. Otherwise, he was given no editorial say. "It was an unusual thing to do," Seymour admits, "but then everything about this investigation was unusual."

Meanwhile, Burnham and his Daily News competitor, William Federici, were sniffing out the story independently. At one point Seymour offered to fill in Burnham on an off-the-record basis, but the reporter declined and went on to gather the details on his own. In a later conversation, Seymour made what he now calls a "serious mistake": he informed Burnham of the arrangement with LIFE. "We really treated him like a brother," Seymour told TIME Correspondent James Willwerth. "We considered him one of the good guys out to help reform this problem." Trying to protect Leuci, Seymour pleaded with Burnham: "You'll have him killed." But two weeks after that conversation, with Leuci in protective custody, Seymour got a call one afternoon from Burnham indicating that the Times had no intention of complying with any restrictions on the story. Still later that day, Seymour talked twice with Times Managing Editor A.M. Rosenthal and was told finally that the story was then going to press.

Though it mentioned Leuci's role, the Times article otherwise was couched in fairly general terms. But the News and Federici came back with a fuller disclosure, including a series of vignettes under the heading CASE HISTORIES IN THE LIFE OF ONE COOL COP. No other names were mentioned aside from Leuci's, but Seymour claims that insiders could easily identify informants from the story. "That," said Seymour later, "really pulled the plug. Guys disappeared in all directions. You couldn't find anybody. It was a year's work flushed down the drain."

Important Flaw. Seymour was doubtless naive in thinking the Times would sit still once it knew that LIFE was getting exclusive information, or that the News would hold back after the Times broke the story. Rosenthal argued that "the public interest is generally best served by making information available rather than withholding it. The fact of an investigation that reaches into high places should be known." He pointed out that officials often request secrecy in their own interests rather than the public's, and added: "You can't be in a position of conspiring to keep something secret when it's getting all over town."

But Rosenthal's argument contains an important flaw. The Times story last month did not uncover corruption; it disclosed an investigation of corruption that was being diligently pursued. When pressed last week for his opinion about whether the inquiry had been damaged, Burnham replied: "I don't know. It's a matter of judgment, and Seymour has all the information." Seymour now expects perhaps ten indictments instead of the dozens he had originally anticipated. "If Leuci can produce ten cases," he lamented, "think how many cases ten others might have produced."

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