Most of the people accused by Bentley invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer her charges. A few, however, specifically denied them. Most notable of these was Harry Dexter White. He was already suffering from known heart disease; he died of a heart attack a few days after his testimony before HUAC. Others who denied Bentley's charges were Lauchlin Currie, formerly President Roosevelt's economic affairs advisor; William Remington and William Henry Taylor, both midlevel government economists; Duncan Lee, formerly with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS); and Abe Brothman, a private-sector chemist who worked on defense projects. As noted above, in October 1948, William Remington sued Bentley and NBC for libel. In hopes of discrediting her, Remington's attorneys hired private detectives to look into her past. They produced evidence of her alcoholism, periods of severe depression, and a suicide attempt while a student in Florence; they alleged that her master's thesis had been written by someone else, and that, by the standards of the day, she had been sexually promiscuous since her college days. Bentley declined to testify at a Remington loyalty board hearing, and NBC settled the libel case out of court for $10,000.