Show inside info exaggerated there has been remarkable inter est recently in charges that wash ington officials used inside ifor illation mation obtained because of their connection with the government to play the markets the other day one highly placed gentleman came to me in quite a stew have you heard the rumor that I 1 was being charged with playing the market on information I 1 got from the white housea he asked no I 1 replied who is doing the charging that s what I 1 want to find out he sputtered well I 1 answered surprised at his wrath you certainly don t feel insulted by it do you anybody can be charged with anything in an elec tion year I 1 certainly am insulted I 1 he came back not because my honor is being impugned but it Is an insult to my intelligence to imply that anyone who has been around washington as longas I 1 have would be such an asaf ass I 1 when I 1 first came to washington as a reporter I 1 remember there was a minor scandal on leaks that had been used for profit the chief offender however was a pub lacity man not an official and from the standpoint of business it proved a fine thing for him As soon as the charges that he had obtained con information and had passed it on to his client were made public he had a dozen offers from other big firms to get on their pay rolls he did but it wasn gasn I 1 long be fore he left washington he didn dian I 1 get any more confidences A lesser factor in the affair was a newspaper reporter it was dis covered that he was on the payroll of a brokerage firm to whom he phoned anything he thought might be of interest after he had written his story for his paper whose last edition had an early afternoon dead line it was shown that the brokers paid h in all of 25 a month in the investigation it also was shown that while he knew what was news for a newspaper the reporter had only the foggiest idea of what would in terest a broker as he probably never owned a share of stock in his I 1 fe he was duly fired from the paper and suspended from the press club but nobody was too sore they knew as my friend in dilated it was stupidity rather than lack of virtue which was his chief sin ch my own first lesson on the subject of 0 mW washington ashington journalistic eth cs es q was administered very tenderly by an old timer my boss my assign ment was helping to cover the brit ish embassy early in world war I 1 before america had become em broiled one night my basss boss who knew everybody in washington wahington took me along to introduce me to the british commercial I 1 m not sure that was what he was called in those days but it describes his job ob he talked with us quite a while much more freely than h he e would have conversed with me alone for I 1 was a stranger to him in the course of the conversation he mentioned that tomorrow or next day great britain would an bounce what amounted to an em bargo on american wool britain wanted to switch her buying 9 to aus aug the explained the background of the move in detail when we were out on the street my boss pulled out bis lug watch and remarked to me now if we were crooked we would still have time before the markets close to make a lot of mone money 7 selling short wouldn t we he didn dian t have to explain further AFTER the british had made their announcement I 1 was able to write a good follow interpreting the move that s all any newsman gets out of confidential information and all that 89 99 44 per cent of us ever expect the same thing applies to govern ment employees those who act otherwise soon depart |