Musings At 9200 RPMs: William Mooney and the "snot nosed kid"

     My LVAD has allowed me some time to reflect about things that  randomly leap out at me from years ago. Before I was a lawyer, I was a  reporter for The Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. One of my friends worked for the sister newspaper of the Sun-Times, the Chicago Daily News.  William Francis Mooney, whose father and son were both named William Francis Mooney, was a genuine old school reporter out of The Front Page.   

     The Front Page was a play by Ben Hecht. Ben Hecht lived the stories behind the play as a Chicago journalist. Essentially, it is the story of rough and tumble Chicago  journalism in the 20s.  Mooney would have fit in well.  He was a fast talking, hard drinking, chain smoking, fast walking, fast working, dedicated newsman.  His politics were clear:  He was 51 per cent against all politicians before they opened their mouths.

     I first met Bill Mooney in the middle sixties, when we would cross paths on assignment. I was a newly minted reporter in 1967 and fellows like Mooney were legendary.  He was in his middle 40s and I was a "snot nosed kid" of 22.  He liked the term snot nosed kid and he used it a lot.  To him it was a descriptive term and not one of pure derision, although to the uninitiated, it seemed to be a put down.  In truth, when you begin as a reporter you have no experience and are "a snot nosed kid," like it or not. He was simply telling it like it was.

     I got to know him well when he was covering the income tax fraud trial of former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner.  At the time, Kerner was an active judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a seat Kerner's father held before him. The IRS agents proved to a federal jury's satisfaction that then Gov. Kerner and his state revenue director, Theodore Isaacs, took bribes from the horse racing industry in Illinois in exchange for favorable racing dates.  In the end, the testimony and eventual verdict showed the crassness of Kerner and Isaacs.  

     Kerner went through a withering cross examination by the lead prosecutor, U.S. Attorney James R. Thompson. By the end of the second day of cross, Kerner was sullied and bowed. In fact, he said at one point something to the effect of Mr. Thompson, I'll bet you were going to ask me...

     Thompson said, "No governor I wasn't going to ask you that but go ahead and answer the question." Mooney knew the jig was up for Kerner.

     The next morning before the trial resumed, Mooney typed out a mock news story lead and posted it on the press room bulletin board.  It said: Former Governor Otto Kerner threatened to pay back the bribe money during the third day of cross examination in his tax fraud trial.

     Mooney was a wisecracking, no nonsense personality. He started at City News Bureau in the mid-30s.  Typical of his zeal for  a cause, he couldn't wait for the United States to get into the war, so he joined the Canadian infantry in 1940 and when the U.S. entered the war, he transferred to the U.S. Army Air Corps. 

     In all he spent about four and a half years in Europe, almost two years of that time as a German prisoner of war in the infamous Stalag 17.  He joined the war effort and eventually the bomber he crewed in was shot down over German held territory and he and surviving crew members were imprisoned as POWs. 

     After the war he joined the Daily News and stayed at the paper until the paper stopped publishing in 1978. During those 30 years, Bill was an intrepid investigator. He led the Daily News to a Pulitzer Prize in the investigation of Illinois State Auditor Orville Hodge in the '50s.  Hodge was indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for financial fraud.

     By the time of the Kerner trial, Mooney had been a reporter for more than 35 years.  His war years were not usually a subject of discussion. His prison camp was Stalag 17.  As he lived it for those war years, Stalag 17 was not a pleasant memory for Mooney.  And he did not know that it would become the title of a Hollywood production, and could have cared less.

      But Stalag 17 became the title of a 1953 feature length movie written and directed by Billy Wilder starring William Holden among others.

     Mooney told the story about a young Mike Royko, a "snot nosed kid" who'd just gone to work for the Daily News when the movie was released. Mike Royko, is the same Royko, who was a thorn in the side of the first Mayor Daley, won his own Pulitizer for commentary in 1972, and rose to be a well respected daily columnist for the Daily News.  But at the time Royko had just seen the movie and to say he was enamored of it was an understatement, Mooney told me.  Mooney and Royko got on well in later years and Bill told the story out of fondness.

     At any rate, as the story goes, Bill was working the middle watch slot at the paper, preparing copy for the next day's first edition as an assistant city editor.  The middle watch is a time when the afternoon papers had put their final edition to bed. The middle watch was mostly dead because there was no staff, no writers, one editor, no printers, no copy boys, and no paper to publish anything in.  Bill was editing stories for the morning edition and was concentrating on his work, when Royko rushed into the city room to tell Mooney about the movie he had just seen.

     Bill continued to mark and edit copy while Royko tried to interrupt him and engage Mooney in conversation. Royko didn't know about Mooney's connection to Stalag 17 and said, "Mr. Mooney, I just saw the best World War II movie,  Stalag 17."

     Mooney never looked up and replied, "Kid, I was there," in a conversational low tone. It was a factual statement but Royko wouldn't quit.

     Undeterred by Mooney's comment, Royko, who could not contain his excitement, said, "No, Mr. Mooney, you don't understand this movie is about a German prison camp for American and British flyers in WW II."

     "Yeah, kid,"  Mooney said,  "I was there." 

     "No. Mr. Mooney, I mean William Holden is the main character in this one.  He does a good job." 

     "Kid," Mooney said, "I was there.  Holden wasn't.  I don't need to see the movie.  I lived it for 22 months."

     Royko slunk away.  Royko usually sauntered.  I never saw him slink. Mooney made him slink.

    In the 70s just after the trial of former Gov. Kerner, Bill was part of a team of reporters who uncovered a bribery scheme in the Metropolitan Sanitary District, that led to the indictment and conviction of Sanitary District officials and officers of Ingram Barge Co. of Nashville.  Bill covered that trial for the Daily News and I covered it for the Sun-Times. 

     In 1978, when Mooney was 60, the Daily News stopped publishing.  Many reporters were absorbed by the Sun-Times and many others, including Mooney, were terminated.  They got retirement packages but were out of a job.  

    Knowing Mooney's situation, I talked to him and to some friends at the Illinois Bureau of Investigation about him.  In short, Bill was hired as a special investigator for the IBI and worked their until he died in 1984. He learned of my good words about him and thanked me.  I occasionally ran into him in the hallways of the Chicago U.S. Attorney's office where I was an AUSA. The IBI sometimes brought cases to the federal prosecutors. He was only 66 but he had a serious heart condition and only one lung at the end.  I think he  liked snot nosed kids.