http://nypdconfidential.com
A KOCH TALE. My most instructive Ed Koch story was one I never wrote. It was a story as much about journalism as it was about Koch.
Shortly after Koch left office, the late newspaper columnist Jack Newfield called me. He said he was writing a book about New York’s political corruption under Koch and that his last chapter concerned Koch and his supposed homosexual lover, a mid-level city employee.A KOCH TALE. My most instructive Ed Koch story was one I never wrote. It was a story as much about journalism as it was about Koch.
Newfield said he did not want to be the first publish this homosexual allegation. To do so, he said, might hurt his image as a crusading liberal. Instead he asked me to write the story for New York Newsday, where I was then employed. He said he would then include it in his book’s last chapter.
He gave me the city employee’s name and I called both him and Koch. Both gave equivocal answers about their relationship, which, I felt, justified writing the story.
Still, feeling uneasy, I approached Sydney Schanberg, the former NY Times columnist and Vietnam correspondent who had recently come to Newsday.
Schanberg and Koch had been feuding. As mayor, Koch had denounced him before the City Hall press corps. If anyone had a personal beef with Koch, it was Schanberg.
Yet Schanberg advised me not to write the story. So what if Koch’s answers had been equivocal? he said. This was not a matter involving corruption. It was about a personal relationship. Who of us, he said, always tells the truth about personal relationships?
I never wrote the story. I didn’t think much of Newfield after that. I thought a lot of Schanberg.
Note from Suzannah B. Troy ---- Ed Koch and who a nyc gov guy allegedly had sex in a city swimming pool?
I give up...who?
There is something really off about Levitt....does he do some good work yes but is there something off about him? In my opinion yes.
I guess Levitt pro people lying about relationships unless it is NYPD?
