NYT reporter contacted Caitlyn Jenner about her cross-dressing habits in the 1980s but story never ran (and publicist who covered it up engineered the Sawyer interview)

         

A New York Times reporter contacted Caitlyn Jenner about her cross-dressing habits in the mid-1980s - but the story never ran.

And it has now been revealed that the publicist who helped shut that article down more than a decade ago was behind Jenner's groundbreaking 20/20 interview special with Diane Sawyer in April.

Jenner first reached out to Alan Nierob, an executive at Hollywood agency Rogers & Cowan, when a New York Times reporter began asking her questions about cross-dressing, Variety first reported.

The Olympian confided in Nierob and told him about her gender dysphoria. It was a secret the publicist would keep for thirty years, a fact Caitlyn would remember when she was ready to share it with the world. 

But Nierob's strategy in the 1980s was to deny. With the help of Jenner's attorney and manager at the time, he was able to put enough stress of the publication to squash the story completely. 

Meanwhile, Caitlyn still felt like she was living a lie. 

'I'd literally go up into the hotel room, change [into women's] clothes, and walk around,' Jenner would tell Diane Sawyer almost 30 years later about that period in her life.

Jenner began hormone therapy in the 1980s after her marriage ended with second wife Linda Thompson.

She began taking estrogen and underwent electrolysis to have her beard and chest hair removed. 

Her boobs grew to a size 36B and she considered traveling to Denmark for gender-confirmation surgery and coming back as her childrens' 'Aunt Heather', details she revealed to Sawyer as the camera rolled for their tell-all interview. It was Nierob who reached out to Sawyer last fall about interviewing Jenner, a two-hour television special that would eventually be watched by 17 million people.

It was Nierob (pictured) who reached out to Sawyer last fall about interviewing Jenner

The New York Times story did not come up, but Jenner did tell Sawyer about the moment her third wife, Kris Kardashian, walked in while she was wearing a dress.

During the interview Jenner also told Sawyer there was a night where she contemplated committing suicide with a gun she kept in the house, before realizing she had to see 'how this story ends'. 

Jenner has since revealed in her Vanity Fair interview that she considered ending her life after a different publication refused to hold back on a story - unlike the New York Times had done so many years before. 

In 2013 the gossip site TMZ called Jenner to ask questions about her alleged tracheal shave operation, which reduces the appearance of an Adam's apple. 

Jenner told Vanity Fair she begged the site not to publish anything because it would 'destroy lives', according excerpts from the interview obtained by Jezebel. 

TMZ refused to back down and a day after the story ran, Jenner considered ending it all with a gun she kept in the house. 

Fast-forward two years later and now Caitlyn is taking control of her media presence, appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair, racking up more than 2 million Twitter followers in a matter of days and starring in her own reality show I Am Cait. 

And at the helm of Caitlyn's campaign remains Nierob, who she officially hired last fall after he helped her out as a friend all those years ago.