“Would he sue me?” I asked.
The editor laughed and fixed it for the next edition. “He’s got bigger fish to fry than you. But next time don’t take your eye off the ball,” she responded, walking off jauntily.
And then, perhaps my most horrifying mistake came when I was the wingwoman to Donnie Radcliffe, an old-fashioned social reporter who had covered the White House for many years. Donnie was the sweetest, most gentle person I met in that newsroom. And she was also one of the hardest workers. Careful, nervous, meticulous, she was a wonderful mentor and guide through official Washington. She was the go-to person for the Style section whenever the White House hosted a state dinner.
Covering state dinners sounds glamorous, and in a way it was, but it was mostly just nerve-racking. At one point, while Donnie was downstairs filing an early version of the story, she stationed me at the entrance where the guests arrived to note anyone of significance. A White House staffer was on hand to help the reporters identify people as they came in. When I saw a woman who looked to be in her sixties come down the line accompanied by a young man in military garb, I asked the White House press woman for the names of the couple.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll check.”
I wrote down the names, but they didn’t mean anything to me. Donnie came up and relieved me of my post, asking me to go file any quotes and updates I’d gotten. We had to file several versions of this story for the paper’s many editions throughout the evening.
When we got back to the office later that night to file the final version of the story, Donnie read the first edition, which had been out for hours. When she got to the sentence about the woman, she let out a squawk. The woman was the widow of a former congressman and a well-known socialite and expert on manners, Donnie explained in a panic.
“He wasn’t her date!” Donnie cried in distress. “He’s half her age, if that!”
She ran over to the copy desk and had the copy chief correct it for the next edition. When she returned, Donnie told me that the White House provides a military escort for all unaccompanied female guests at state dinners. That’s who the young man was.
Horrified, I couldn’t sleep, certain that the next morning I would be summoned to the eighth floor where Mrs. Graham would excoriate me for my carelessness and then fire me for embarrassing her, the newspaper, and her friend.
The reality was much less dramatic. I dragged myself in and learned that the woman had already called the Style section and told them she hadn’t laughed so hard in years. She loved imagining herself as the topic of scandalous conversation over cornflakes from Georgetown to Capitol Hill.
Journalism lesson number three: Never assume.
And then there are the mistakes not of fact but of judgment. I was sent out one night to cover the Washington premiere of one of the Indiana Jones movies, which was doubling as a benefit for Save the Children. Harrison Ford was to be there, and my marching orders were to return with a quote from the great man himself. I definitely knew who he was and was particularly pleased with the prospect of meeting him, but when I got to the event, I was herded into the press pool and we were cordoned off behind ropes as though the movie star were the president of the United States. (He later played one in Air Force One.)
“Can’t we talk to Mr. Ford, just for a minute?” one of the other reporters asked.
“I’m afraid not,” replied one of the young Hollywood types assigned to body-block us, the unruly, unwashed press.
“But that’s why we’re here,” another protested. “To get a quote from him. We wouldn’t have come if you’d told us we wouldn’t have access.”
The Hollywood type shrugged and tossed her highlighted hair over her shoulder. “Sorry,” she said, sounding not very.
This led to a heated discussion between the reporters and the handlers. I could tell there was no winning this so I slunk away to review my options. My editor had been pretty clear about not coming back empty-handed. I finally decided to go for it, raised the rope, and did a limbo maneuver. The next thing I knew I was right beside Harrison, who was sipping his drink and talking to a Save the Children executive. I waited patiently and then opened my mouth. But nothing came out. It wasn’t laryngitis this time. It was stage fright. He was just as good-looking in person as he was on the big screen, handsome in that weathered, rugged, attractively aging male way.
He was also short on patience for young, wet-behind-the-ears, starstruck reporters. Finally I mumbled something he obviously considered lame—I can’t remember what—and he answered me in a tone that made me want to dig a hole in the floor. The only thing I can remember he actually said was: “I think your first question precludes your second one.” Right then, one of his handlers spotted me and rushed over, grabbed me by the upper arm, and hauled me away, yelling at me about breaking protocol. Then another one appeared and soon it felt like a whole posse reprimanding me. Embarrassed, I escaped back to the newsroom.
One of Ben Bradlee’s favorite quotes was “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” That is true, but it’s also true that it’s not a good idea to use that ink to settle personal scores (journalism lesson number four). In the story I wrote I referred to Ford’s handlers as “pit bulls in evening gowns.” The editors loved it and thought it was a hilarious characterization. After all, don’t journalists love every opportunity they have to put down a flack?
The paper never got any pushback from anyone about it, but this was before the days of Twitter. Before social media made it easy to widely disseminate your opinion, it took a lot for someone to write a letter to the editor or make an angry call to Mrs. Graham. But looking back, I regret that line. It just doesn’t sit right with me. My redemption is that I use it as a teaching tool to remind my students that it’s better to be fair than to be clever.
Lesson number five—First do no harm—applies to journalism as well as medicine.
Two
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Those who tell the stories rule society.
—Plato
Washington is a city steeped in a history that has been recorded, documented, chronicled, and celebrated. But this city also has its share of invisible history—stories that remain untold and are forgotten and neglected. They haven’t been captured in books or movies or newspapers because their retelling doesn’t stand to profit anyone, or at least not the right people. The history of slaves who built the Capitol, for instance, or immigrants who drive our cabs and care for our children—this is not the sexy stuff typically memorialized by monuments or movies.
On the other hand, the Watergate scandal was sexy. It was about a president and power and his abuse of that power, and the main players were all white men: Richard Nixon, H. R. Haldeman, John Mitchell, and others. It was also a story about what happened to journalism in the early 1970s and key figures like Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, and others. They redrew the map of modern journalism, moving the Washington Post from the margins to the center, sharing prime media real estate only with the New York Times.
I don’t think I fully appreciated my close proximity to this eminence when I was twenty-three, just a year into my Washington adventure. Like many of my peer group, I knew the rough outline of the Watergate story, that two young, male reporters stumbled onto the aftermath of a break-in at the Watergate office complex and that their reporting led them all the way to the president of the United States. And I knew that this story had resulted in a book, a Pulitzer Prize for the Post, and a Hollywood movie. It also inspired a generation to forgo law school and instead attend journalism school because being a reporter was suddenly elevated to a noble calling rather than a low-paying job for borderline alcoholics.
My intersection with Watergate’s legacy came thirteen months into my stint in Style, in the fall of 1983. Though I was amassing bylines, I was getting antsy. We were told repeatedly that copy aides rarely moved up to reporter jobs. So, reluctantly, I began to look beyond the Post. I appl
ied for a job to write photo captions for National Geographic, and just as I got through the first tier of a rigorous vetting process, I heard that Bob Woodward was looking for someone to help him and his investigative reporting staff of about ten reporters.
This research position on Woodward’s investigative unit was highly coveted; anything to do with half of the Watergate duo was. But working in this elite section of the paper without the specter of daily deadlines carried a particular newsroom cachet. Reporters had months, even years, to report out highly complex stories. I can’t say that I fully understood what a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity it was to work for Woodward. I’m not sure I even knew the investigative unit existed until I heard about the job opening.
Luckily the newsroom den mother who oversaw all the copy aides, an ebullient woman named Nancy Brucker, took me aside and explained the significance of working for Woodward, and so I raised my hand, putting my name on the list of internal applicants. When I got the call confirming my interview date, I became nervous. My brother had recently traveled to Paris and brought back a movie poster for Les Hommes du Président, featuring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, causing me to daydream about the dashing movie star looking over my résumé and hiring me on the spot.
The application process wasn’t as glamorous as that, nor did it go as smoothly. First, it was more competitive than I’d imagined, and my credentials came up short. Second, I had been out of college for just a little more than a year, my degree was in creative writing, and what I’d learned so far about journalism was soft news. Geographically and temperamentally, the Style section and the investigative unit were at opposite ends of the newsroom. The closest I had gotten to investigative reporting was helping the classical music critic look into some alleged financial wrongdoing involving the Kennedy Center.
I just wasn’t an obvious candidate for this job. I didn’t like bothering strangers, which seems to be a prerequisite for becoming an investigative journalist, and I didn’t have a driving interest in government, politics, or the economy. And I had no familiarity with Bob Woodward’s Washington, the one that is fueled by power and secrets. Nonetheless, after submitting my résumé, I got a call saying Woodward wanted to meet me and that I should come over to his office the next day for an interview.
Woodward was much more approachable than his character in the movie. Though he didn’t look like Redford, he dressed more neatly than most reporters, in a suit and tie, and he had an open and friendly smile that immediately put me at ease. I had been raised in the Chicago suburbs so his midwestern accent was familiar, and I had anticipated the questions he asked, mostly about my work in the Style section and why I wanted the job. I watched him take a few notes on the résumé. He smiled and said he would be in touch. I got up from my chair feeling more hopeful than when I had sat down.
On my way out of Woodward’s office, I recognized many of the other applicants waiting to have their interviews. Most of them were more senior. By now I realized how much I wanted the job, but I also knew enough to figure I wasn’t going to get it.
This emboldened me to return to Woodward’s office several times in the days after the interview. I concocted newsroom errands that would bring me into his orbit. If his door was open, I poked my head in and reminded him that I really wanted the job. I hammed it up and smiled. It was risky because I didn’t know him enough to know how he’d receive this. He glanced up from his computer each time, smiled, and nodded his head in a cordial, if distracted, sort of way.
I was at the copy aide station when I got a message that Woodward wanted me to stop by when I had a moment. On my break I hurried through the newsroom and approached his office. He saw me through the window and motioned for me to enter. He smiled. Was it a “sorry you didn’t get the job” smile?
I stood there nervously. “The job is yours if you’d like it,” he said finally, grinning.
“Yes,” I managed to utter. “That’s great. Thank you so much.” I told him I had to get back to work and he said he needed to let the other applicants know so I shouldn’t share the news with anyone just yet. It seemed inconceivable to me that the wind had blown away all the other applicants, leaving me still standing: Woodward chose me, the kid from Style, the one who knew nothing about national security, the intelligence community, foreign policy, and so much else.
I went into the ladies’ room, the same one I had cried in on previous occasions, and I locked myself in a stall. Was fist-pumping a thing in 1983? I can’t remember. I do remember I indulged in some version of a silent happy dance, then composed myself, and returned to my station at the Style phone bay.
A few weeks later I moved over to the investigative unit. Woodward said he chose me because I was the most persistent candidate, and he hoped I would pursue potential sources with the same sort of doggedness. But first, I had to learn the basics.
My job was to answer Woodward’s phone and do research both for him and for the team of investigative reporters who reported to him. It was also my job to answer the main line for the investigative team. Anyone calling the general Post number with a tip even vaguely investigative got transferred to Investigative. Anything that sounded “interesting” I was supposed to let Woodward know about.
The problem was I didn’t know what “interesting” in this context meant. The calls we got in Style were mostly drunk people in bars who wanted us to settle a bet: “Did Cher have a last name?” “Which sold more: Chia Pets or Pet Rocks?” We were supposed to be Siri before Siri existed. If it was a slow news day, sometimes one of us would go to the newsroom library and research the answer, if only to amuse ourselves.
But playing the trivia game didn’t prepare me for answering Woodward’s phone. I quickly learned that any tipster claiming that he had a story “bigger than Watergate” was most likely—as in 99.9999 percent—not in possession of a story bigger than Watergate, equal to Watergate, or even actually newsworthy in any sense of the word. Not only were most of the tips we got in Investigative not viable, they were not plausible. They were often, in fact, crazy.
It took me a few days to catch on to this. Maybe my fourth or fifth day on the job a voice on the other end of the phone confided that she found herself in a very bad situation. She was well-spoken. She said that she had extremely valuable information, so much so that the government was interested. It had to do with national security. She said that the government—she believed it was the FBI specifically—was following her, monitoring her every move. I started furiously taking notes. Then she said that the FBI had approached her gynecologist and persuaded him to implant her with recording and tracking devices.
My pen froze, midsentence. Her story sounded crazy but she didn’t. And remember, a lot of true stories sound crazy. Watergate, in fact, sounds a little crazy (five guys in business suits wearing latex gloves are caught in the middle of the night breaking into the DNC headquarters and one has links to the CIA and another to the White House?). In any event, I took down her number and said I would get back to her. Before you judge me too harshly, remember I was only twenty-three, a year and a half out of college.
I hung up and looked over my shoulder into Woodward’s office. He was on the phone. I looked over the top of my cubicle wall at one of the male reporters who was transcribing an interview, headphones on and eyes trained on his word processor. Two other reporters, both male, were talking about their Rotisserie League baseball picks. The guys on the investigative unit were much more serious than the folks in Style; sports was just about the only chitchat they engaged in. Mostly they were focused on whatever story they were chasing, and these veteran reporters had a certain swagger that marked them as members of the Big Swinging Dick culture, a term originally ascribed to Wall Street types but that now applied to this mostly male newsroom culture as well. While everyone had been friendly and welcoming, I couldn’t imagine asking any of these guys about this caller’s claims about her gynecologist. But I didn’t feel I had the authority yet, after
just a few days on the job, to reject her out of hand.
The one woman on the team, Athelia Knight, had told me on my first day to come to her if I needed help with anything. Tentatively, I stood up and approached her. She looked up from her screen and smiled. I grabbed a chair and pulled it up beside her desk and told her about the phone call.
She looked around, leaned over, and said something to the effect of, “A lot of people will call here because of Bob and Watergate. Some of them may have useful information. But some of them, most of them, like this woman, just need someone to talk to. They don’t have a story, but they are human beings so be polite and thank them. But don’t encourage them.” She looked at me and paused. “And don’t mention the call to anyone else,” she added. Her expression—a mix of kindness and sympathy—told me everything. She saved me from being a laughingstock.
I tried my best to get up to speed quickly, determined to prove to myself and to Woodward that he had made a good choice. Soon enough I saw an opportunity. At my first investigative unit staff dinner, in the Capital Hilton Trader Vic’s Tiki Room, during a brainstorming session for story ideas, Woodward politely turned to me and asked if I had anything to contribute.
No one expected anything from me. After all, I had just started, and what could this rookie, this girl who was just over five feet tall, with a wild mop of curly hair, who knew nothing about investigations into the intelligence community, possibly offer up as a worthy lead for the Post’s venerable A1 section?
The Tiki Room fell silent. Eight or nine hard-bitten males and a sole female reporter looked on, waiting as I played with the little pink paper umbrella in my cocktail. Finally, I opened my mouth, and words came out, forming improbable and unorganized sentences.
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