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Still,
Night Beat
was merely a local show. When ABC head Leonard Goldenson came to Wallace and his producers and asked him to take
Night Beat
national, he was eager for the opportunity—and the exposure. It meant going from five days a week to once a week and a salary cut from around $150,000 to $100,000. “Leonard Goldenson was beginning to change the whole business,” Wallace recalled. “ABC was third. He needed attention for his network. He made us an offer we couldn’t refuse … it was the biggest mistake we could have made.” Wallace’s provocative questions worked well in New York, but Wallace wasn’t sure if they would play with a national audience. Moreover, he was concerned that the often controversial content of the show would upset network officials. “Unless this building shakes every couple of weeks,” Goldenson said, “you’re not doing your job.”

The Mike Wallace Interview
went on the air in April 1957. It was broadcast Sundays at 9:30. Wallace took a cue from the legendary Edward R. Murrow and scheduled Joe McCarthy as his first guest. At the last minute, however, the ailing McCarthy—
who would die about a month later—canceled and the bookers scrambled to get Gloria Swanson. The actress was too savvy to be tricked into saying something indiscreet, and the show’s debut was a disappointment. For his second national segment, Wallace was determined to create a stir. One of hottest subjects of the day was organized crime, and Wallace invited Mickey Cohen, the former mobster and confessed murderer, to appear on the show. Cohen, who had left the underworld and owned a flower shop and an ice cream parlor, did not disappoint. Once the cameras were rolling, he erupted into a tirade on live television, calling Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker a “sadistic degenerate,” an alcoholic, and a “reformed thief.”

Parker was watching the show. “I hope Mike Wallace has a lot of money,” he said. Parker and the LAPD sued Wallace and every ABC station that carried the show for a total of $33 million. “Has Wallace’s prying gone too far?” asked one reviewer. “There are those who believe that if Wallace continues sinking his scalpel too deep, it eventually will plant itself between his own shoulder blades.” The network rushed onto air with a profuse apology and retraction, ABC made an out-of-court settlement with Parker, and Wallace was told to tone down the show. Things went downhill from there.

“Is he a sadist, as some contend?”
Newsweek
asked in September 1957. “Does he really think he is performing a public service by allowing ex-hoodlum Mickey Cohen and scandal sheet private eye Fred Otash to give their questionable views a public airing? What are his rebuttals to the charge that he is an untrained reporter and a sensation hound, and that his show, ‘Mike Wallace Interviews,’ is no better than the TV equivalent of
Confidential
magazine?”

Shortly after the Cohen fiasco, Wallace invited Drew Pearson to be a guest on his show. Pearson was at the time one of the most respected newspapermen in the country, an investigative reporter with a syndicated column who had dared take on the powerful Kennedy dynasty. In the late 1950s, Pearson had written a number of columns attacking the Kennedys, pointing out Joseph Kennedy’s ties to organized crime and the disgraced anti-Communist Joe McCarthy. Pearson also wrote a column questioning the political
ascendency of the young Senator John F. Kennedy. Wallace thought that the controversial but highly credible Pearson would make an ideal guest on his show.

“You wrote that Senator Kennedy’s—and I quote—‘millionaire McCarthyite father, crusty old Joseph P. Kennedy, is spending a fortune on a publicity machine to make Jack’s name well-known.’ ” Wallace said to Pearson on air. “What significance do you see in this, aside from the fact that Joe Kennedy would like to see Jack Kennedy president of the United States?”

“I don’t know what significance other than the fact that I don’t think we should have a synthetic public relations buildup for any job of that kind,” Pearson replied. “Jack Kennedy’s a fine young man,” the reporter continued, “but he isn’t as good as that public relations campaign makes him out to be.” Then Pearson let loose a bombshell: “[John F. Kennedy] is the only man in history that I know who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book that was ghostwritten for him.”

Wallace’s eyes grew wide with astonishment. “You know for a fact, Drew,” he asked, “that the book
Profiles in Courage
was written for Senator Kennedy … by someone else?”

“I do,” Pearson said, who maintained that Kennedy speech-writer Ted Sorensen actually wrote the book.

“And Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for it?” Wallace asked. “And he has never acknowledged the fact?”

“No, he has not,” Pearson said. “You know, there’s a little wisecrack around the Senate about Jack…. Some of his colleagues say, ‘Jack, I wish you had a little less profile and more courage.’

ABC executives didn’t congratulate Wallace for his scoop. To the contrary. Joe Kennedy called his lawyer, Clark Clifford, yelling, “Sue the bastards for fifty million dollars!” And in no time, Clifford and Robert Kennedy had showed up at ABC and told executives there the Kennedys would sue unless the network issued a full retraction and apology. Mike Wallace and Drew Pearson insisted that the story was true and refused to back off. Nevertheless, ABC issued a full retraction and apology. Wallace was furious. It was one thing to apologize for the rantings of a
former mobster like Mickey Cohen, but Pearson was a serious investigative journalist whose allegations about Kennedy’s authorship of
Profiles in Courage
would later prove to be true. Nevertheless, Oliver Treyz, then head of the network, appeared on Wallace’s show and offered a full retraction and apology. It was a terrible blow to Wallace and the credibility of his show. He became such a pariah around the network that John Daly, the vice president at ABC as well as the host of
What’s My Line,
refused to moderate the show when Wallace was booked as the mystery guest. Wallace’s appearance was canceled and Sammy Davis Jr. appeared instead.

“Along Madison Avenue it is no secret that veteran news commentator John Daly did not like the switch of headline-grabbing Mike Wallace to ABC. Daly is said to have stated that he did not believe there was any place for a show on TV that dealt with such controversial issues,” noted one magazine.

Goldenson had assured Wallace that he wanted him to “shake the building,” but the moment he did, the network executives were not willing to stand behind him.
The Mike Wallace Interview
went off the air in the summer of 1958. The networks were not yet ready for scandal.

At twilight on a warm day in early May 1957, just as the
Confidential
trial was getting underway in Los Angeles, a young publisher lumbered into the East Fifty-fifth Street restaurant L’Aiglon in New York City, took a seat at his usual table, and settled back to enjoy a taste of a world that was about to disappear. Generoso Pope Jr. had been having a rough time lately. Five years earlier, shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday, Pope had bought a floundering weekly tabloid called the
New York Enquirer.
In the first issue, Pope published his credo on the front page:

Decency, dignity, freedom, and peace didn’t sell so well, so within a few months, Pope had turned the
New York Enquirer
into a scandal magazine. Recently, city and state officials had begun to take issue with the unseemly content of Pope’s paper. Gene Pope
didn’t mind a battle; he was aggressive and cocky and came from a wealthy, influential family. He assumed he would always win. Besides, he had a powerful ally: the man he was meeting for dinner that night, his benefactor and godfather, gangster Frank Costello, who at that moment was perhaps the most powerful mobster in America.

Costello entered L’Aiglon shortly after Pope arrived. The two men embraced and ordered Scotches. The solicitous waiters arranged the carnations on their table and fussed over the men as they brought the food: risotto Milanese and piccata a la romana, served on plates so hot that you couldn’t touch them—just the way Costello liked. Frank Costello was treated like a celebrity in New York. His incredible influence over city politics had been exposed several years earlier during the televised Kefauver hearings; Costello controlled Tammany Hall, appointed judges, and, the inquest concluded, controlled a “government within a government.” Costello served some time for income tax evasion, but even from jail, his power was immense. The
New York Times
called him the Prime Minister of the Underworld, but to Gene Pope, he was still “Uncle Frank”—an old family friend who helped him out when he got into financial binds and political scrapes.

Several friends and business associates joined them that evening, but as usual during Pope’s frequent dinners with Costello, Uncle Frank did most of the talking. The topic that night was Joe McCarthy. The news was yet to be released, but Costello had just learned that the controversial, communist-bashing Senator had died. “All that booze finally got to him,” Costello said. McCarthy was such a heavy drinker that he sometimes ate a stick of butter before a night on the town just to coat his stomach against the alcohol. It wasn’t simply his appetite for liquor that destroyed McCarthy, however; the senator did everything to extremes, and that, in Costello’s opinion, is what created McCarthy’s problems. “He was going after the Commies, and that was a good thing, right?” Costello said. “But then he started doing wrong things and accusin’ everyone of being a Commie. Like I always say, you got to do things in moderation.”

Gene Pope smiled and drank some champagne. He knew Joe
McCarthy. They were part of the same crowd, and they never did anything in moderation. Gene Pope was a big man, six foot four and bulky, with wavy, slicked-back hair, heavy eyebrows, a thick jaw, and cherubic lips. He spoke in a laconic baritone—a cross between Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Stewart; his deliberate manner masked his stunning intellect. Pope had attended Horace Mann, the exclusive New York City boys school where he became best friends with Roy Cohn. He went on to attend MIT, graduating at nineteen with a degree in engineering, and briefly attended Columbia Law School. Gene’s friend Cohn went on to become McCarthy’s chief counsel and was brought down in disgrace when his tactics and nepotism were exposed by Democratic counsel Robert Kennedy during a televised Senate hearing.

Don’t destroy yourself like McCarthy and Cohn did, Costello was telling Pope. “Like I always say,” Costello said, “you got to do things in moderation. Too much of anything is no good.” The mob boss may have been directing the comments toward himself as well, for that evening Costello had also learned that he was probably going back to jail—though he said nothing of the bad news to his friends. Costello picked up the $75 dinner tab, and the crowd went to Monsignore, further east on Fifty-fifth Street, for drinks. They ordered Scotches, except for Costello, who had coffee and two glasses of anisette. Pope wanted to go to the Copa to catch a show; Costello begged off. It was 11
P.M
. and he needed to be clear-headed for an early morning meeting with his lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams. Costello bid his friends good night and took a taxi to his apartment building on Central Park West. There, a beefy thug walked up to Costello, put a gun up to his face, and said “This is for you, Frank” and shot the Prime Minister of the Underworld point blank.

The Costello hit was big news throughout the summer of 1957—occasionally knocking the
Confidential
trial off the front pages of the tabloids. Physically, Costello recovered, but he would never regain his old power.

Few were as shaken by the Costello shooting as Gene Pope. He was questioned by a grand jury about the shooting for fifty minutes, but repeatedly said he knew nothing. The interrogation
wasn’t what bothered Pope. The failed hit marked the end of an era—the young publisher’s strongest remaining link to the world of political and financial power and corruption in which he had been raised. Pope had been jockeying for a solid position in that world, and had been counting on Frank Costello and the
New York Enquirer
to secure it for him. Now, after the shooting, he had only the
Enquirer.

With the
New York Enquirer,
Pope was trying to achieve the same sort of political clout that his father had built up with his media empire. It was a tough act to follow. Generoso Pope Sr. had left his family in Pasquarielli, Italy, in 1906 to come to America when he was twelve years old and had $4 in his pocket. He quickly got a job hauling water at a sand and gravel outfit called Colonial; within five years he became a foreman. By 1918 he was half owner and a few years later, he took over the entire business. Colonial Sand and Gravel became one of the country’s largest construction companies, helping to build some of New York City’s most important landmarks, including Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall.