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Let's hear about that. I think that will be very entertaining.

Oh. Well, the McGraw Hill people came to us and said that they had made a deal with a fellow by the name of Clifford Irving, who'd given them the assurance that he had a deal with Howard Hughes to write his biography, and produced for McGraw's benefit a variety of documents that seemed to have considerable authenticity. We checked around with everybody we knew. We had had a couple of people who were fairly knowledgeable: Sid James had known Hughes, but that was many years before, and one of our other correspondents had once had a meeting with Hughes.

The one who was ultimately involved starts with an “M”--McCullough?

McCullough.

Is that his name?

Yes, McCullough. So all of us were--everybody on LIFE was sort of dubious, but, as the evidence piled up, it seemed more and more--it seemed at least that whatever Irving produced that we knew anything about did indeed match the facts. Turned out there was a good reason for that: he had gotten them out of our files! [laughs] Which we didn't know.

But it wasn't as if he was given access to the files?