TO OUR READERS

By WALTER ISAACSON MANAGING EDITOR

Every now and then we become, inadvertently, a tiny part of a story we're covering. That happened to us as the Dick Morris scandal unfolded.

It began two weeks ago when we were closing our cover story on Morris' secretive relationship with Clinton, which White House correspondent Eric Pooley had been working on for two months. Morris became worried that he would appear on the cover along with Clinton, something that neither he nor the White House wanted. He called me late one night to say, in no uncertain language, that this would upset him, and the President as well. I told him I understood the concern but that it was up to us to choose our cover image.

That conversation took on more significance when Morris' end of it was reported in the Star. Although the account was not entirely accurate--we did not change the cover to suit Morris--the story did provide evidence that the call girl who was the paper's source was there at the time.

Our cover was one element of a public emergence that served to heighten Morris' visibility and, subsequently, make his fall more newsworthy. In addition, he told colleagues he was upset with TIME's characterization of him as, among other things, "a rogue."

Thus I was surprised last Thursday, the day he resigned, when he tracked me down as I was waiting to go on the Charlie Rose TV show. It was an odd moment: sitting with another controversial consultant, Ed Rollins, and former New York Governor Mario Cuomo (who were also waiting to go on the show), watching President Clinton give his acceptance speech on TV while listening to Morris on the phone complaining about our cover and then offering us another interview.

In his interview the next day, Morris adamantly declined to talk about the Star piece, and his motive was clearly to try to salvage his reputation as a political architect. Still, his perception of the role he played seemed revealing, and you can judge for yourself on page 32. His wife Eileen McGann, a noted lawyer, was much more willing to talk about the personal aspects of the brutal week. Both interviews, along with the story our political team put together on this odd saga and the analysis by Robert Wright of the values debate, offer, I hope, telling glimpses into the most amazing intersection of politics and personality we have seen this year.