The Scoop

 

In his memoir, “Like a Rolling Stone,” Jann Wenner has a chapter called “The Scoop of the Seventies” devoted to the articles Howard Kohn and I co-authored in 1975 about Patty Hearst and the SLA.

Part One of that series was called “The Inside Story.”

For most of the many months that story was in process, it was a secret known only to a very small group of us. We were uncertain when we would publish it, partly because Patty Hearst and her kidnappers-turned-colleagues were still underground, and we didn’t want to inadvertently be responsible for something awful happening to them.

(Remember that all the rest of the group died in a fiery shootout with the LAPD.)

As fate would have it, the FBI located and arrested Hearst and the others on a Thursday in September and publication of our article was set for the following Monday. All hell would be breaking loose upon publication because Jann had arranged for NBC’s Today show to cover the release exclusively, with the rest of the media invited to the office for what would prove to be a raucous press conference Monday morning.

Security around the release was tight; Jann hired Pinkerton’s to guard all the issues of the magazine except a handful.

The entire staff of the magazine was secluded at a resort near Big Sur for the long weekend while Howard and I stayed in San Francisco to tape our interview with NBC before we headed south to join the rest.

Finally, late Saturday afternoon, in Jann’s words, “Howard and David made it down…brandishing a copy of the new issue that no one had seen yet.”

A photo of that copy of the magazine we brandished that night is at the top of this post, with the words handwritten by Jann up top “Do Not Leave This Lay Around — David.”

So that is the inside story. It turns 50 come September.

HEADLINES:

• Supreme Court allows Trump to revoke legal status for 500,000 migrants (BBC)

• Trump’s Attacks Threaten Much More Than Harvard (Atlantic)

• New, untested and dangerous (Economist)

• PBS sues Trump over executive order targeting federal funding, following NPR (WP)

• Trump says Musk ‘really not leaving’ as he marks end of formal tenure in government (WP)

• Musk Leaves Washington Behind but With Powerful Friends in Place (NYT)

• Elon Musk Didn’t Blow Up Washington, But He Left Plenty of Damage Behind (New Yorker)

• ‘My stomach just dropped’: foreign students in panicked limbo as Trump cancels visa interviews (Guardian)

• Trump Officials Intensify Attacks on Judges as Court Losses Mount (NYT)

• Trump’s use of emergency law to enact tariffs imperils trade war strategy (WP)

• Macron to China: Keep North Korea out of Ukraine war or risk NATO coming to Asia (Politico)

• A US plan for Gaza seen by Reuters proposes a 60-day ceasefireand the release of 28 Israeli hostages alive and dead in the first week, in exchange for the release of 1,236 Palestinian prisoners and the remains of 180 dead Palestinians. (Reuters)

• Hamas reviews Gaza ceasefire proposal as U.S. expresses optimism (WP)

• Nearly half of Israelis support army killing all Palestinians in Gaza, poll finds (Middle East Eye)

• Saudi foreign minister to make rare visit to West Bank, Palestinians say, as anger over Gaza grows (CNN)

• King Charles’s visit brings frustration for First Nations amid ‘backslide in reconciliation’ (Guardian)

• Study Finds High Levels of Roundup-Type Weedkiller in Tampons in the UK (Mother Jones)

• It’s Official: Dolphins and Orcas Have Passed the “Point of No Return” in Their Evolution to Live on Land Again (Daily Galaxy)

• Ready or not, AI is starting to replace people (Axios)

• Odyssey’s new AI model streams 3D interactive worlds (TechCrunch)

• For Some Recent Graduates, the A.I. Job Apocalypse May Already Be Here (NYT)

• OpenAI Can Stop Pretending (Atlantic)

• DHS: South Sudan Deportations A Lot More Humane When You Learn What Stephen Miller Wanted To Do (The Onion)