5 Writers Who Showed Crazy Courage Chasing A Story

With their dive bar now open for business, Zekman and Smith spent months juggling the responsibilities of running a bar, trying not to blow their cover, and dealing with the hordes of officials who wanted their palms greased. From a hidden loft overlooking the bar, two photographers from The Sun-Times snapped pictures of every dirty deal that took place, while Zekman and Smith quickly amassed a mountain of notes documenting every payoff.

Zekman and Smith kept the bar open for four months, after which time -- figuring that they'd built a solid case against the city -- they sold it and spent several more months turning their notes into reporting. On January 8, 1978, the first of their 25-part series was published, and the effect on the city was instantaneous. Within a couple of months, over a dozen officials were fired or suspended, while a special task force was created in order to hunt down any corrupt employees who remained on the books. And Chicago never had a problem with corruption again [citation needed].

On the day of the interview, Haley pulled up outside the mansion that served as Rockwell's "International Headquarters," and noticed a guard standing at the door wearing khakis and a very bemused expression. Explaining who he was, Haley was directed inside and waited to wait in "the shrine room," which was exactly what it sounds like.

[It was] a small, black walled chamber dimly lit by flickering red candles and adorned with American and Nazi flags, adjoining portraits of Adolf Hitler and George Washington, and a slightly larger, rather idealized painting of Rockwell himself. On the table beside my chair sat a crudely bound and printed copy of Rockwell's self-published autobiography. I was leafing through it when a pair of uniformed 'stormtroopers' loomed suddenly in the doorway, gave the Nazi salute and informed me coolly that Commander Rockwell had ordered them to take me to his new personal headquarters.

Would you have gotten into the car? We wouldn't, but then again, we aren't Haley.

The car turned into a narrow, tree-lined road, slowed down as it passed a NO TRESPASSING sign (stamped with a skull and crossbones) and a leashed Doberman watchdog, and finally pulled up in front of a white, 16-room farmhouse emblazoned at floor -- and second-story levels with four-foot-high red swastikas. About a dozen Nazis stared icily as the guards walked me past them and up the stairs to Rockwell's door.

Haley was escorted into Rockwell's office, where Rockwell was standing -- as if he needed to telegraph how much of an D-bag he was -- smoking a pipe underneath a portrait of Hitler. Despite being on the receiving end of every white supremacist talking point imaginable, Haley kept his cool throughout the interview, and even managed to land a couple of zingers himself:

ROCKWELL: I see you're a black interviewer. It's nothing personal, but I want you to understand that I don't mix with your kind, and we call your race "n****rs."

HALEY: I've been called "n****r" many times, Commander, but this is the first time I'm being paid for it.

After the interview was published, Haley went on to write his Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel Roots, based on his own family's history. It was later famously adapted into a TV miniseries, which later got a sequel miniseries which fictionalized his journey into the Nazi compound, featuring James Earl Jones as Haley and Marlon Brando as Rockwell.

Warner Bros. TelevisionMarking the single time in his career when Marlon Brando had to turn up his natural level of jackass to fit a role.

As for Rockwell, he was gunned down in the street by a guy annoyed at being kicked out of his big fascist LARP. Upon hearing the news, his father replied, "I'm not surprised at all. I've expected it for some time." He then had to cremate the body, as no cemetery wanted it.

This annoyed Gellhorn for a number of reasons. She'd spent most of the last few years reporting on the war, while Hemingway had only touched down in Europe that year. Furthermore, Hemingway wasn't even a writer for Collier's. She was, but her name wasn't judged to be weighty enough to carry the story.

She rightfully felt this assignment should've been hers and hatched a plan to get it. On the day that the troops left for France, she smuggled herself aboard a hospital ship. Later, as the troops began landing, she disguised herself as a stretcher carrier and headed ashore, with no one any the wiser. When the coast was clear, Gellhorn contacted her editor and began reporting on her experiences and the aftermath that she was standing in the thick of.

The juiciest part of the story, though? While Hemingway also crossed the English Channel with the troops, the military decided that he was too high-profile to go ashore. Which meant the old man had to stay in the sea the entire time Gellhorn was ashore, beating him to the punch.

So it certainly must have come as a shock to the Air Force when the magazine Aviation Week published a bird's-eye view of the B-2 that showed off all of those sexy, surreptitious features. Did they get scooped by a team of paparazzi UFOs? Soviets spies? Superman? (He is a reporter, after all.) Nope, this was the work of two plain old human journalists in a Cessna.

When Aviation Week editor Mike Dornheim heard about the restrictions that the USAF had imposed, he was a little annoyed that they were keeping all of the good stuff out of sight. That is, until he realized that they probably weren't expecting a media blitz from above. On the day of the launch, with a cameraman in tow, he took to the skies in a rented Cessna and flew both literal and metaphorical circles around the USAF.

Aviation WeekWe kind of feel like "Air Force powerless against rented Cessnas" might have been the real story.

The next week, Aviation Week published the story above which contained their exclusive photo, as well as a full technical analysis of the plane's stealth features by the magazine's editorial team. Meanwhile, the Air Force learned to actually look up in air sometimes.

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