The Hustler

The day after a story broke in the press alleging that the CIA had planted a spy in the White House, Colonel Fletcher Prouty telephoned CBS Newsman Daniel Schorr with the startling news that former Nixon Aide Alexander Butterfield was the man. Schorr rushed the retired Air Force officer onto the network's Morning News for his disclosure, which generated sensational headlines. But last week, when Butterfield denied Prouty's charges and hinted he might sue him for libel, the colonel, in an interview with his hometown paper in Springfield, Mass., expressed second thoughts. Then Prouty confused matters further with a switch back to his original story. This jack-in-the-box behavior roused questions not only about Prouty's reliability but Schorr's as well.

By week's end, grizzled Veteran Schorr, 58, thought his expose was looking "awful." But he insists he had reason to trust Prouty because the colonel had earlier given him a rock-hard exclusive on his role in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. Still, Schorr concedes that he never took the time to check the Butterfield allegation with the two Air Force officers who Prouty claims gave him the information, or try very hard to reach Butterfield himself. Nevertheless, Schorr says, "I still think my only alternative was to go. We're in a strange business here in TV news. You can't check on the validity of everything . . . I can't be in a position of suppressing Prouty. What if he's right? I can't play God."

The controversy is not the first to embroil Schorr in recent years. Early in the Nixon Administration he angered the President by reporting, accurately, that there was no evidence to support Nixon's claim that he had programs ready to aid parochial schools. His reward: Nixon ordered the FBI to investigate him. During Watergate, Schorr became TV's most visible investigative reporter and shared three Emmys with his colleagues. Last February Schorr moved into new territory by reporting President Ford's fear that the clamor to investigate the CIA might reveal the agency's role in foreign assassination plots. Two months later, former CIA Director Richard Helms denounced Schorr's reporting as "lies" and called him "Killer Schorr, Killer Schorr." Recent disclosures by the Senate Intelligence Operations Committee have largely vindicated Schorr.

Despite his impressive record, Schorr gets into trouble because he is often too eager and cuts corners. He has been known to behave like an anxious rookie out to impress by elbowing others aside and pushing hard. Just before the Watergate cover-up indictments, for example, he went on-camera to predict that the grand jury would name more than 40 people. Seven names came down. At CBS, Washington Correspondent Leslie Stahl cordially detests him because, she tells friends, he hogged her Watergate stories.

Lone Reporter. Schorr's manner seems abrasive. The glasses are thick, the brow is wrinkled, the voice is from a gravel pit. Hustler Schorr concedes: "I guess I'm aggressive, but I don't consider myself abrasive. I'm direct." When he is not on the prowl, he can be amiable and modest. But he has seldom been off the prowl. Schorr started quietly enough as a print reporter in 1934--seven years for minor wire agencies and five years freelancing. Later he worked for CBS abroad, mainly in Central Europe, and did not reach Washington until 1966. He married late (at 50) and skips the Washington social whirl in favor of his two small children, family life and work. His energies are boundless. He was the lone reporter on a winter Sunday evening last March waiting for Nelson Rockefeller's return from a Puerto Rico vacation. Grabbing the opportunity, Schorr got Rockefeller to admit that his CIA commission was looking into assassination plots.

Schorr receives few thanks for what he does. "When he gets something," says a CBS colleague, "people don't come around and say, 'Great job, Dan,' as they might do for others around here. They say, 'Oh Jesus, Schorr's got another scoop. How do you think he did it?' " Which may explain why Schorr still sees himself as a gritty print reporter in an electronic jungle: "I'm just a refugee from newspaper work with a few tricks, wandering around in a TV world where there aren't many people doing that kind of thing."

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