Police Say Book May Be Libelous, Bookstores in Square Stop Sale

Cambridge and Boston booksellers stripped their shelves of copies of "U.S.A. Confidential" and hid them away yesterday afternoon, after state police stated that sale of the book may lead to criminal and civil court action.

The book, by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, two New York Daily Mirror reporters, purports to be an expose on how "greedy groups and misguided ninnies" are making a nightmare of "man's great dream"--America. In one chapter it states that "Harvard is so gay you can hear the swish across the River Charles," and follows this closely with: "Girl queers breed at Wellesley and at many of the fine finishing schools."

Daniel I. Murphy, Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Safety, said that complaints from "some Harvard graduates and Wellesley students" that the book is foul and libelous brought about the action. Despite the fact that police merely "advised" that sale or lending of the book might bring about libel suits, most book-stores in the Square immediately took it off display.

Authors Will Fight

Lee Mortimer, in a telephone conversation with the CRIMSON last night said he and Lait would fight the ban in court if necessary. "We'll stand behind every thing we say," he said, "and we could have written a whole book about Harvard if we had wanted to."

He claimed that political pressure in the state probably brought about the edict, and said "this thing is in violation of the First Amendment and all principles of freedom of the press Every thing we wrote is true."

The book, in a chapter entitled "Boston Baked Beans and B-Girls," also discusses Jerome L. Rappaport '45 and the New Boston Committee. It states that the N.B.C. is "loaded with pinks, lefties, union overlords, and those who serve the underword, including a prominent dope peddler," and calls Rappaport a "carpet-bagger from New York," who, while at Harvard, founded the Harvard Law School Forum, "a nauseous and noisy organization of professional do-gooders."

Boston "Crooked"

The authors also note that "Boston is one of the most corrupt municipalities in the country," and that "Massachusetts is where publishers pay to get books banned, but little else is ever bothered."

Though Yale College was not reported on the book said: "New Haven is a wide-open town, with numbers, policy, reefers, and hookers."

The survey of vice, corruption, and left-wing infiltration in the United States was not scheduled to be released here until March 13, but most book-sellers jumped the gun.

Mortimer and Lait have also collaborated on earlier works in the same vein, including "New York Confidential," "Washington Confidential," and "Chicago Confidential."