could wreck his campaign'. The story began: "Sources have come forward to charge that the 'other woman' previously worked on Edwards' campaign... A source close to the woman, whose name is being withheld by the National Enquirer, says that she confessed to having an affair in phone calls and emails, saying that her work with Edwards soon exploded into romance."

Edwards promptly issued a denial. Though she wasn't named in the Enquirer's story, so did Rielle Hunter (right), on a website.

Though supermarket customers couldn't miss the story, not a breath of an alleged adultery by a presidential contender ruffled the pages of the nation's mainstream papers, despite the fact that the Enquirer has many proven scoops under its belt, including sometime presidential candidate Gary Hart's disastrous fling with Donna Rice, Rush Limbaugh's love affair with oxycontin and Jesse Jackson's lovechild. Though down in numbers from its glory days, the Enquirer still has a circulation of 2.7m.

On December 31, 2007, with the early Democratic primaries looming, the Enquirer struck

again. It reported that Rielle Hunter was in an advanced stage of pregnancy with Edwards's child and ­ following the Enquirer's October report - that she had been whisked out of New York City and lodged in a condo in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Accommodation and a BMW car were being provided, the Enquirer said, by Andrew Young, a long-term political associate of Edwards, who had a home in the same gated community. A front-page photo featured Hunter, seemingly in an advanced stage of pregnancy.

Fighting off the Enquirer's hounds, Young finally spluttered that the child was his. The Enquirer, plainly well primed by intimates of Rielle ready to pass on email traffic and useful info, noted that Young and his wife had recently enjoyed dinner with Rielle.

Edwards, flanked by Liz, issued further passionate denials. The New York Times, nine weeks away from running a long, highly speculative story about John McCain's possible relationship with the much younger Vicki Iseman, kept its mouth shut as did the rest of the mainstream press. Edwards was able to fight his way through the first