Tammany used anonymous newspaper leaks to quietly kill Moses’ appointment

Evidence

It was a small article, five paragraphs in the Brooklyn Eagle, and no other paper bothered to pick it up. But it must have served as a warning to the Mitchel administration of the line of attack that would be used if Moses was appointed—and of Moses’ peculiar vulnerability, because of the thesis “of which he acknowledges the authorship,” to such an attack. There was no more talk of the appointment. … Actually, Tammany had simply done a little research and tipped off a reporter to the existence of the thesis and had told him what he would find if he went up to the public library and looked at it. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 312

The article marked the first appearance of Moses’ name in a New York newspaper. It was his first direct acquaintance with a newspaper “leak.” To the average reader, it would seem that a reporter had discovered the thesis himself, or had been motivated to look for it because of the “mild sensation” he had noticed in civil service circles. But there had been no “sensation,” mild or otherwise, over Moses’ rumored appointment; hardly anyone in city government even knew who he was. Actually, Tammany had simply done a little research and tipped off a reporter to the existence of the thesis and had told him what he would find if he went up to the public library and looked at it. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 313

Categorization

• XREF: Prefigures the Machine-vs-reformer dynamics that later shaped Moses’s Albany and city battles; connects to the general Caro theme of how political machines weaponize information. — connects to: Tammany reserved escalating methods for threats that could not be disposed of cheaply — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 314
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 312; Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 313