Late in the afternoon of June 20, 1972, the phone rang on my desk at Scripps Howard and a voice I recognized instantly established a pattern that was to be repeated over and over during the next two years.
The source on the telephone cryptically informed me that it wasn't the first time the burglars caught in the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters on June 17 had been there. They were, he said, either repairing or replacing bugs installed some time earlier.I convinced my editors that the information was gold-plated and couldn't be improved on. The next day our Washington newspaper, the Daily News, bannered the story attributed only to "sources."
Thus, for me, the leaks began a mere three days after the "third-rate burglary" that was to shake the foundations of our government. They would continue for a small cadre of reporters until Richard Nixon resigned just over two years later.
While Watergate has been hailed as the birth of the Investigative Reporter, the coverage actually had very little to do with classic investigative reporting - the painstaking accumulation of information by combing through records and on-the-record interviews.
Watergate was, pure and simple, a leak story from beginning to end. Information uncovered by official agencies, including the FBI, the CIA and the Senate, was fed to reporters and not always for the noblest of reasons.
You were only as good as your sources when it came to covering Watergate. And those of us who had been around awhile and had developed sources for other reasons had the upper hand.
In the fierce competition of the day, reporters scrambled for the tiniest sliver of new information and often built mountains out of molehills. Ethically it probably was all questionable, but fortunately what got printed was far more right than wrong.
There were lots of heroes in Watergate, but few of them were from the press. The Washington Post's clear dislike for Richard Nixon and its determination to get to the bottom of this bizarre case was a major factor early on. Many of our editors for months remained utterly unconvinced that a president would become involved in such a sleazy affair. Nixon, while not likable, was far too bright for such a stupid business, they reasoned.
But the Post persevered, and its commitment earned it leaks that produced major scoops in the burgeoning scandal.
The earliest heroes, if they can be called that, were the anonymous sources - the FBI agents and CIA officials - who bristled at Nixon administration efforts to thwart the FBI investigation and to blame the scandal on the CIA. The leaks prevented that.
Later, as the official inquiry unfolded in the courts and in the Senate and House, there were heroes like Judge John Sirica and Sens. Sam Ervin and Howard Baker and counsels Sam Dash and Fred Thompson and their staffs and Rep. Peter Rodino of the House Judiciary Committee and a host of others.
The leaks during this period had more to do with journalistic competition than any concerted effort by the press to keep the pressure on Nixon. And by the end the anonymous source had become a way of life for most of us.
What is often lost in discussions about Watergate is the fact that the system worked. The press, certainly a part of the system, worked; the Congress worked; the Justice Department ultimately worked; the courts worked, and certainly the political system worked.
I remember being forced once to do some old time investigative journalism because I couldn't find anyone to leak me the information contained in sensitive memos submitted by John Dean to the Senate Watergate Committee. Two colleagues and I began a series of interviews that ultimately yielded enough information for us to re-create the memos.
But guess what? We were accused of having the memos handed to us in a leak.