BOSOM BUDDIES Evans, Novak (Photo: Getty Images)
Was Rowland Evans, Robert Novak's conservative lifelong reporting partner, secretly gay? Richard Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, thought so, and according to internal memos obtained by Radar through the Freedom of Information Act, they tasked the FBI with proving it.

Evans, a patrician right-winger who coauthored a nationally syndicated political column with Novak for 30 years before his death in 2001, was a feared and relentless reporter and an ever-present personality on the Washington cocktail-party circuit in his day.

In a November 25, 1970, memo to his aides, then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover recounted a telephone conversation with Haldeman in which the chief of staff requested a "run down on the homosexuals known and suspected in the Washington press corps." Haldeman gave Hoover a couple names to kick off the homo hunt: "Mr. Haldeman mentioned [redacted], [redacted], Evans, [redacted] and some of the others generally rumored to be and also whether we had any other stuff; that he, the President, has an interest in what, if anything else, we know."

Two days later, Hoover sent Haldeman a two-page response captioned "HOMOSEXUALS IN WASHINGTON, D.C., PRESS CORPS" that yielded approximately jack squat. "Our files reveal no data pertinent to your inquiry concerning [redacted], Rowland Evans, and [redacted]," Hoover wrote.

While the details of Nixon's gay witch-hunt have been previously reported, the partially unredacted memos obtained by Radar reveal for the first time that Evans, who was married and had two children, was a target.

[Document scans after the jump!]

Novak, through an assistant, declined to comment. His recently released memoir, The Prince of Darkness, makes no mention of the memos or any gossip about Evans's sexuality, but it's likely that Novak knew of Nixon's suspicions about the scribe. In the book, he describes William C. Sullivan, then chief of the FBI's intelligence operations, as "the best source I ever had inside the FBI." Sullivan was a recipient of all the memos about the gay-baiting operation.

Other contemporaries of Evans's—whose friends called him "Rowly" (gay)—reacted with laughter and derision when told of the historic blip on Nixon's gaydar.

"That would be just like that stupid fucking Haldeman," said Jack Germond, a former columnist for the Baltimore Sun, who competed with Evans and Novak. "I think it's safe to say that the journalistic fraternity at that time had no suspicions—there was no gossip like that about Rowly whatsoever."

Evans's widow, Katherine Winton Evans, dismissed the memos. "I think they were just as screwy on that as they were on everything else," she said of the Nixon crowd. "We were married for 52 years, so I would know."

Winton Evans wouldn't be the first wife to be the last to know that her husband was gay. But several people who knew Evans well confirmed that not only did they not think Evans was gay, but there were never any rumors or speculation about him. "It's nonsense," says Al Hunt, the Washington bureau chief of Bloomberg News and former co-panelist of CNN's Evans, Novak, Hunt, and Shields. "I never heard, even in the most gossipy circles, anything like that."

The grand irony of Nixon's gay quest, of course, is the fact that he was asking Hoover, an alleged cross-dressing bachelor well known for his life-long, intimate relationship with his male aide, Clyde Tolson, for help. "I wonder of Hoover was wearing his pumps when he took Haldeman's call," said Hunt.