affairs, echoing his past relationships with his two wives. Rushmore did spare his mentor from Missouri, Jack Conroy, from the pages of Confidential. In January 1955, Rushmore flew to Los Angeles to confer with old Harrison informants like De Scaffa and Quillan. He also recruited new ones like Mike Connolly of The Hollywood Reporter and Agnes Underwood of the Los Angeles Herald Express. One of Rushmore's most prolific discoveries was United Press columnist Aline Mosby. Despite his high salary, Rushmore was repelled by the informants and Harrison. Rushmore considered his employer a "pornographer," even though he himself was a collector of erotica. Contrary to the popular legend that Confidential double-checked its facts before publishing its articles, as well as being vetted by the magazine's lawyers as "suit-proof", proposed stories were either immediately printed without vetting or, more typically, Marjorie Meade Harrison's 26-year-old niece and the head of Confidentials intelligence-gathering front, Hollywood Research Inc. would either personally visit a subject or dispatch an agent to present a copy of a future issue as a "buy-back" proposal, agreeing to hold the story back for in exchange for information on other celebrities. In this capacity, Meade played a key role in the Harrison enterprise's evolution into a "quasi-blackmail operation." However, in 1955 actors Lizabeth Scott and Robert Mitchum decided to sue the magazine rather than give in their demands. Their attorney was Jerry Geisler. On July 8, 1955, during an appearance on The Tom Duggan Show in Chicago, Rushmore claimed on air that he was on a secret mission to uncover the communist assassins of former Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, and appealed to viewers to help him locate the leader of the "Chicago Communist Party," whose name was given as "Lazarovich." Rushmore later disappeared from his hotel room, leading to a nationwide manhunt by the FBI. As the nation speculated that Rushmore was either kidnapped or murdered by communists, he was discovered hiding under the name "H. Roberts" at the Hotel Finlen in Butte, Montana. Meanwhile, news reporters found "Lazarovich" living in Manhattan under his real name of William Lazar. Lazar said, "It's a simple fact that I live quite normally in Manhattan and that any green cub reporter would not have the slightest difficulty in locating me if he honestly wanted to." Associate Director of the FBI, Clyde Tolson, wrote in the margin of a report on the disappearance: "Rushmore must