“Nobody believes a rumor here (in Washington) until it’s officially denied”

“Nobody believes a rumor here (in Washington, DC—ed.) until it’s officially denied” was said by labor attorney Edward Cheyfitz (1913-1959) in 1958, recorded in the magazine Look. Rumors that don’t have substance are ignored; if a rumor is officially denied and put on the record, the thought is that the rumor must have had some truth to it. The Cheyfitz quotation appears in several anthologies.
 
 
Google Books
The Municipal Employee
1958
Pg. 42:
Attorney Edward Cheyfitz on Washington gossip: Nobody believes a rumor here until it’s officially denied.
—Irv Kupcinet, quoted in Look
 
25 May 1959, Hagerstown (MD) Daily Mail, pg. 4, col. 4:
WASHINGTON (AP)—Edward T. Cheyfitz, 45, a labor management consultant, died Sunday. He had suffered a massive coronary thrombosis last Monday.
 
30 December 1962, San Antonio (TX) Light, American Weekly, pg. 5, col. 2: 
A cynical but quite accurate comment on Washington gossip is only one of the reasons that the late Edward Cheyfitz, a prominent Washington attorney, will be remembered.
 
“Nobody believes a rumor here,” Cheyfitz said, “until it’s officially denied.”
 
Google Books
Speech Can Change Your Life:
Tips on speech, conversation, and speechmaking
By Dorothy Sarnoff
New York, NY: Doubleday
1970
Pg. 322:
Nobody believes a rumor here until it’s officially denied. — Edward Cheyfitz
 
22 September 1980, Dallas (TX) Morning News, “Who Said That?,” pg. 42:
Nobody believes a rumor here in Washington until it’s officially denied.—Edward Cheyfitz.