5 Feet of Fury

Family of Gore Vidal allege he was a pedophile, cite secret file kept by William F. Buckley

A gay man screwing underage boys! Dat’s cwazy tawk!

Also, his family conveniently has fictional-sounding names…

The claims have been made by his half-sister, author Nina Straight, and his nephew, Hollywood actor and director Burr Steers, who are in the process of contesting the essayist’s will.

Vidal died last year, aged 86, from pneumonia and left his entire estate, estimated at $37 million, to Harvard University. (…)

Mr Steers – who directed the Zac Efron film Charlie St Cloud – said that conservative columnist William F. Buckley – who had a long-running public feud with Vidal, which also played out in court – had evidence linking Vidal to the alleged crimes.

Vidal was said to be ‘terrified’ about the information Buckley had against him.

‘I know Buckley had a file on him that Gore feared,’ Mr Steers said in the New York Times article.

‘It would make sense if that material was about him having underage sex.

‘Gore spent alot of time in Bangkok, after all.’

In 2012, Buckley’s son Christopher worte in an essay for New Republic that he had disposed of a file his father kept on Vidal.

‘When WFB [William F. Buckley] died, in 2008, I found in his study, more cluttered than King Tut’s tomb, a file cabinet bursting to the seams, labeled ‘Vidal Legal’,’ Christopher wrote.

‘Into the dumpster it went, and I still remember the sigh of relief upon heaving it in.’

The New York Times article also says that the ever-opinionated Vidal had a strange and controversial take on the abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests.

‘He would say that the young guys involved were hustlers who were sending signals,’ Mr Steers said.

In 2009, Vidal hit headlines for referring to the 13-year-old victim in the Roman Polanski rape case as a ‘young hooker’.