Monkey Business?

A lengthy stakeout at the posh Stanhope Hotel in New York yielded more comments from hotel security personnel than from search committee members. One hotel employee, whose nametag identified him as "Jose," accused Crimson reporters of being private detectives attempting to catch a man emerging from the hotel with a woman other than his wife.

After one of the reporters assured the security guard that their intentions were entirely respectable, he adopted a friendlier attitude and suggested a few hiding places.

Not in Kansas Anymore

Amid the Crimson newsroom's frenzied, Thursday night, pre-scoop atmosphere, a reporter telephoned the Wayland home of Barbara Ebert, a particularly enigmatic employee of the governing boards who is known to frequent its super-secret 1000 Mass. Ave. satellite office. A man who identified himself as Ebert's husband said she would be home soon but that the couple would be going out to dinner to celebrate her birthday. When the reporter called back later that night asking for Ebert, the story had changed.

"She's taken a flight to Wichita," the man said.

"Is this some kind of birthday trip?" the reporter asked.

"Yes it is," said the man after a long pause.

Yeah, Wichita. Right.

"You guys have been, I know, very industrious and hardworking and inventive in trying to follow what's a very big story around Harvard... I recognize the obligation you have as journalists... I'm sure [my silence] is irritating to you and your colleagues."

--Search committee chair and spokesperson Charles P. Slichter '45, reached at the Omni Netherland Plaza in Cincinnati, Ohio the night before The Crimson identified Rudenstine as the committee's nominee. Slichter was attending an American Physical Society convention.

The Real Scoop

An inebriated WHRB staffer wandered into The Crimson late on the night before the story ran that pegged Rudenstine as the search committee's nominee. "We scooped you!" he boasted, referring not to the impending presidential pick, but to the radio station's early report of the announcement that Vice President and General Counsel Daniel Steiner would step down sometime next year.

Paging Mr. Feldstein

The next morning, a Crimson reporter telephoned San Juan International Airport and was put through to the gate where Feldstein was about to board a flight to St. Thomas. The reporter could hear Feldstein being paged on the public address system, but there was no response. A few minutes later, a gate agent took the caller's name and phone number and then checked with a man who sounded like Feldstein. She then came back on the line to say that the gate was very busy and that she would make sure that the First Class flight attendant would get a message to the presidential also-ran. Feldstein did not respond.