his position in New York politics. His next move was a peculiar one: he went to Washington to work for the CIA. There, Pope worked in a department specializing in psychological warfare. He quit after about eighteen months. “I got fed up with the bureaucracyand the red tape,” he once said. “You’d spend weeks trying to get something done, and then they wouldn’t let you do it.” Some who knew Pope, however, believe he never completely severed his ties with the agency.
Gene Pope cast about a bit, trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life. In 1952, while hanging out at a Greenwich Village nightclub, he heard that the
New York Enquirer
was going on the block. The newspaper had a peculiar history. William Griffin, a newspaper advertising man, founded the tabloid as a New York Sunday afternoon paper in 1926 on a loan from his mentor, William Randolph Hearst. In return, Hearst used the paper as a testing ground for new ideas. Hearst used the good ideas for his own papers; the
Enquirer
was free to keep the bad ones. It was New York’s only Sunday afternoon newspaper—and thus had a brief moment of glory when it scooped the other publications in town with New York’s first published account of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The paper’s credibility was badly undermined, however, by Griffin’s tirades against U.S. involvement in World War II. These attacks were so vitriolic that Griffin was accused of being a Nazi and was indicted on charges that he used the
New York Enquirer
to undermine the morale of U.S. troops.
By 1952, the
New York Enquirer
was a mishmash, carrying sports scores, theater profiles and news, and racing statistics. Its circulation had dwindled to a mere 17,000, and it had only one full-time employee. Griffin by then had died and his son was hoping to sell the tabloid for $75,000. Most people thought the asking price was exorbitant. Pope was nearly broke, but he was so eager to get back into the publishing business that he borrowed $10,000 from Frank Costello and another $10,000 from Roy Cohn. After taking a taxi to close the deal, he realized he didn’t have the cash to pay the cab fare, so he paid it with a lucky silver dollar he had carried around for years.
Before long, Pope turned the
New York Enquirer
into a scandal magazine. He hired an aggressive seventeen-year-old police reporter named John J. Miller * and used a network of stringers,often ones who worked at other papers and wrote for the
New York Enquirer
under pseudonyms. Using his government and mob contacts, Pope began exploiting the seamy underworld of New York. Three topics, however, were taboo: staffers were forbidden to write anything negative about the mob or the CIA. And they were not allowed to write anything remotely negative about actress Sophia Loren, with whom Pope was infatuated.
Pope got the circulation up to 250,000, but still had trouble making ends meet. “I couldn’t pay the rent,” he later recalled. “I spent ninety percent of my time in the first six years borrowing from one guy to pay off the other guy. I was thrown out of banks because all the checks used to bounce.” He turned to his Uncle Frank for help. Each week, Costello would lend Pope $10,000 to meet operating expenses, and Pope would repay the loan the next week as money from newsstand sales came in. “Although Mr. Pope spent most of the day at the paper, he rarely left his office,” according to former writer Reginald Potterton. “He was accessible only to key executives, to his barber who called once a week, and to an intermittent procession of pinkie-ringed male visitors who arrived in twos and threes wearing white-on-white and expensive shot-silk suits.”
By 1957, government officials were cracking down on scandal magazines, and Pope was considering taking the
New York Enquirer
in a new direction. One day, while passing the scene of a grisly car crash, Pope watched a crowd gather. Although the onlookers recoiled in dismay and disgust,
Gene Pope cast about a bit, trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life. In 1952, while hanging out at a Greenwich Village nightclub, he heard that the
New York Enquirer
was going on the block. The newspaper had a peculiar history. William Griffin, a newspaper advertising man, founded the tabloid as a New York Sunday afternoon paper in 1926 on a loan from his mentor, William Randolph Hearst. In return, Hearst used the paper as a testing ground for new ideas. Hearst used the good ideas for his own papers; the
Enquirer
was free to keep the bad ones. It was New York’s only Sunday afternoon newspaper—and thus had a brief moment of glory when it scooped the other publications in town with New York’s first published account of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The paper’s credibility was badly undermined, however, by Griffin’s tirades against U.S. involvement in World War II. These attacks were so vitriolic that Griffin was accused of being a Nazi and was indicted on charges that he used the
New York Enquirer
to undermine the morale of U.S. troops.
By 1952, the
New York Enquirer
was a mishmash, carrying sports scores, theater profiles and news, and racing statistics. Its circulation had dwindled to a mere 17,000, and it had only one full-time employee. Griffin by then had died and his son was hoping to sell the tabloid for $75,000. Most people thought the asking price was exorbitant. Pope was nearly broke, but he was so eager to get back into the publishing business that he borrowed $10,000 from Frank Costello and another $10,000 from Roy Cohn. After taking a taxi to close the deal, he realized he didn’t have the cash to pay the cab fare, so he paid it with a lucky silver dollar he had carried around for years.
Before long, Pope turned the
New York Enquirer
into a scandal magazine. He hired an aggressive seventeen-year-old police reporter named John J. Miller * and used a network of stringers,often ones who worked at other papers and wrote for the
New York Enquirer
under pseudonyms. Using his government and mob contacts, Pope began exploiting the seamy underworld of New York. Three topics, however, were taboo: staffers were forbidden to write anything negative about the mob or the CIA. And they were not allowed to write anything remotely negative about actress Sophia Loren, with whom Pope was infatuated.
Pope got the circulation up to 250,000, but still had trouble making ends meet. “I couldn’t pay the rent,” he later recalled. “I spent ninety percent of my time in the first six years borrowing from one guy to pay off the other guy. I was thrown out of banks because all the checks used to bounce.” He turned to his Uncle Frank for help. Each week, Costello would lend Pope $10,000 to meet operating expenses, and Pope would repay the loan the next week as money from newsstand sales came in. “Although Mr. Pope spent most of the day at the paper, he rarely left his office,” according to former writer Reginald Potterton. “He was accessible only to key executives, to his barber who called once a week, and to an intermittent procession of pinkie-ringed male visitors who arrived in twos and threes wearing white-on-white and expensive shot-silk suits.”
By 1957, government officials were cracking down on scandal magazines, and Pope was considering taking the
New York Enquirer
in a new direction. One day, while passing the scene of a grisly car crash, Pope watched a crowd gather. Although the onlookers recoiled in dismay and disgust,
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