Obama’s Secrets

The paper’s managing editor, J. Loy Maloney, would call it the “best front page ever published by the Tribune.” Tucked under the main headline was another story that was so hot that when its reporter, Stanley Johnston, called the Tribune from San Francisco to say he had a “great story” and was told to “send it in,” as Wendt tells the tale, Johnston refused to talk about it. He insisted he had to go through Navy censorship. “I can’t tell you where I’ve been, nor what ship, nor how I got back.”

His editor deduced immediately that he’d come from the Coral Sea. News of a big sea battle there had been coming in for weeks. Fearing that Johnston would stop off to see his wife at San Francisco, Maloney raced a writer to intercept him on the coast and told him to wire a copy of the story to Washington in line with the protocol for civilian censorship. Johnston wouldn’t do it. “This is Navy censorship,” Wendt quotes him as saying. “I can’t put it on an open wire.”