Journalist, senator were an item

Barbara Walters reveals longtime affair with Edward Brooke

He was a prominent Republican senator from Massachusetts, married but a fixture on the Washington party circuit. She was a rising star in television news, twice divorced and the co-host of the "Today" show.

They often gallivanted about town, but Edward W. Brooke and Barbara Walters were never romantically linked - until this week when Walters went on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to hawk her new book that reveals that she carried on a years-long affair with the senator, who is now 88.

"I was certainly involved," Walters, 78, said, according to an advanced transcript of the show reported by The Associated Press. "He was exciting. He was brilliant. It was exciting times in Washington."

Brooke could not be reached for comment, but the revelation came as less than a shock to some who knew him in the 1970s, when the affair apparently took place.

"I heard stories of it," Timothy D. Naegele, who was Brooke's chief of staff from 1971 to 1973, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

"I don't have firsthand recollection of it, but it is my understanding it's true."

Naegele, now a tax attorney in Washington, said: "He, for lack of a better expression, liked women - what can I say?"

Still, others were stunned.

"I'll be darned," said John W. Sears, a longtime Republican activist who was chairman of the state party from 1975 to 1976. "I never remember any particular entanglements with journalists."

The Howard-educated son of a Veterans Administration lawyer, Brooke made history in 1962 when he became the first African-American state attorney general in the country. Four years later, he made history again when he became the first black politician popularly elected to the US Senate, an achievement all the more remarkable because he was an Episcopalian and moderate Republican chosen by a largely Catholic and Democratic electorate.

"He was the Barack Obama of that day," Sears said. "He was extraordinary."

He had also been married since 1947 to Remigia Ferrari-Scacco, whom he met in Italy while in the Army. The marriage became an unhappy one, however, and by the mid 1960s the two were no longer living together.

In 1973, he met Walters in a New York restaurant, according to her book, "Audition." Months later in Washington, he took her to lunch in the Senate dining room, where he "flirted excessively," she wrote.

"Ed Brooke was simply the most attractive, sexiest, funniest, charming, and impossible man," Walters wrote. "I was excited, fascinated, intrigued, and infatuated."

The two began an affair, and spent a summer at Brooke's house in Oak Bluffs. "We never ran out of things to talk about, and of course there was the fascination of our having to be so secretive," Walters, a Boston native, wrote. "But I was beginning to resent the sneaking around, and I slowly began asking myself if we could ever be married. Would such a marriage destroy his career? Would it ruin mine?"

When Washington Post gossip columnist Maxine Cheshire began printing items about the two, Walter writes that she told Brooke their relationship had to end. But he surprised her and asked his wife for a divorce. Caught in a churning Washington rumor mill, she writes that she and Brooke decided to end their affair to save their careers. "That was that," she wrote. "We stopped."

In 1976, Brooke filed for divorce. Two years later, Brooke, who was considered a potential presidential candidate, lost his seat to Paul Tsongas when details about his divorce became public, including allegations that he had lied in court about his finances. "A part of me always felt it was my fault," Walters wrote. "I still feel that way."

In 1979, Brooke married his current wife, Anne Fleming, whom he met in Saint Martin, where he also had a home. At the time, he called it "the happiest day of my life."

Walters, who co-hosts ABC's "The View," seemed to relish her appearance on "Oprah," which thrives on couch-side confessions. Taping the show Tuesday, Walters recalled speaking by phone to a friend who urged her to stop seeing Brooke. Winfrey asked Walters if she was in love. "I was certainly -- I don't know -- I was certainly infatuated," she said.

Brooke and his wife live in Miami, and he does not often make public appearances. In 2003, he was diagnosed with breast cancer and worked to raise awareness that the disease also affects men. The following year, President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In the book, which goes on sale this week, Walters says that she has not spoken to Brooke in decades but wanted to write about their romance because "it was a very important one in my life."

Brooke, for his part, always hated speaking of his private life.

In June 1978, at the height of the furor over his alleged financial misstatements during his divorce, he declared at a press conference: "I cannot equate the right of the public to know with the right of the media to revel. I cannot believe that every bureau drawer, every clothes closet, should be a subject of heartless headlines."

Sears, the former state party chairman, said he suspects Brooke would feel the same way today about Walters bringing their relationship into the national spotlight. "I'm quite sure that Ed would be sad to have the matter trumpeted about," he said.