Media Coverage and a Federal Grand Jury

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York Times (26 April 1973), 34; and Lawrence Meyer, “Anderson to Give Jury Transcripts to Sirica,” Washington Post (26 April 1973), A-25. 51 Interview by Daryl Gibson with Jack Anderson, Bethesda, MD (29 January 1994). Anderson was not the only reporter who got Watergate scoops out of wastebaskets. Washington Post reporter John Hanrahan later obtained sensitive prosecution memos the same way, according to an aide to special prosecutor Archibald Cox: “Chagrined, Archie Cox telephoned editor Ben Bradlee of the Post to ask for help. ‘If you ever tell anyone I told you this, I’ll deny it,’ Bradlee said. ‘But Archie, you’ve got a trash problem.’” Doyle, 69. 52 Anderson and his reporters “schmoozed and schmoozed” the source to convince him that he had a moral duty to leak the documents, Whitten remembered, “and this guy was so excited about the way [our] office operated and believed the idealism about it that he finally began to cooperate for no money….He started out looking for money and we got him around to feeling what was really important and we never paid that guy a damn dime!” Interview by Daryl Gibson with Les Whitten, Silver Spring, MD (30 Sept. 1994). 53 Anderson and Gibson, 257. 54 Author’s interview, former Anderson reporter Jack Cloherty, Washington, DC (28 September 2005). See also author’s interview with Jack Anderson, Bethesda, MD (April 7, 2000); interview by Daryl Gibson with Les Whitten, Silver Spring, MD (30 September 1994); and interview by Daryl Gibson with Jack Anderson, Bethesda, MD (29 January 1994). 55 Author’s interview with Seymour Glanzer, Washington, D.C. (2 January, 2001). 56 Interview by Daryl Gibson with Jack Anderson, Bethesda, MD (29 January 1994). Anderson said later that his chief worry was not jail but bankruptcy. “Too many people in my office knew” who the source was, the columnist recalled, “and I was greatly concerned that [the judges] could put maybe half the staff” behind bars, making it impossible to put out the daily column. This financial vulnerability led Anderson to issue a rule to his reporters that “any confidential source that they had to protect, they should keep to themselves. I didn’t want my whole staff being jailed.” One of Anderson’s reporters who helped copy the grand jury transcripts later admitted that he deliberately pressed his fingerprints on the transcripts because he was “insanely jealous” that Anderson was “under investigation all the time and getting all kinds of publicity….I wanted to go to jail bad. I was damned determined that I was going to get caught,” too. Transcript of interview by Daryl Gibson with Joseph Spear, Washington, D.C. (ND), Jack Anderson papers, Gelman Library, George Washington Univ., Washington, D.C. 57 Interview by Daryl Gibson with Les Whitten, Silver Spring, MD (30 Sept. 1994). As it turned out, the reporters probably would not have gone to jail for long. According Whitten, at a late night meeting in Anderson’s home, the columnist told the source that if “we all go to jail, the column will be finished. Well, this guy [the source] loved the column by that time. He thought the column was the greatest thing that had ever come down to life. 28 • American Journalism —
And to my total astonishment, the guy stood up in Jack’s house and saluted him, and said ‘at the jailhouse door, I will come forth.’ Now, this is a guy who…believe me, he would have not only gone into jail but he would have been professionally destroyed for his whole life….Tears actually came to my eyes at the bravery of this guy who’d started out basically as somebody trying to hustle stolen information for money who had finally gotten to where he believed in the First Amendment” so much that he was willing to go to jail. Whitten said the source became so enamored of the reporters that he liked to hang around their office, despite his own job as a “professional.” In the midst of Anderson’s legal confrontation, Anderson said, “TV and radio crews were camped in my reception room one afternoon, waiting for the latest developments, when the source himself unexpectedly walked in the door. Oblivious to the reason for all the excitement, he threaded his way through the throng to Les’s office for a casual chat. ‘What’s everybody here for?’ he asked Les. Les bolted from his desk, grabbed the man by the arm, and steered him out the back way. ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls,’ Les whispered. ‘It tolls for thee.’” Ibid.; and Anderson and Gibson, 260-1. 58 Kutler, Abuse of Power, 328. 59 Author’s interview with Seymour Glanzer, Washington, D.C. (2 January 2001). Glanzer’s gentle approach stemmed in part from his belief that Washington’s liberal federal appeals court likely would have reversed any move by prosecutors to cite Anderson for contempt anyway, “in fifteen minutes,” as Glanzer put it. Glanzer’s attitude toward Anderson was undoubtedly softened by the columnist’s public statement that he did not get the grand jury transcripts from the U.S. attorney’s office, thereby clearing Glanzer and his colleagues of suspicion. After the Watergate scandal was over, the two men became friends and socialized. Ibid. 60 Hume, 292. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 408 U.S. 665 (1972). 65 Hume, 293-5. Hume was not present in the meeting but based his account on contemporaneous descriptions from the columnist and his attorneys, who also corroborated it to the author. Author’s interview with Jack Anderson, Bethesda, MD (7 April 2000); author’s interview with Betty Southard Murphy, Washington, D.C. (4 May 2000). See also Brit Hume, “The Anderson Transcripts,” MORE (July 1974), 6-7, 21. 66 Hume, 293-5. Emphasis in original. The day before, Anderson invited reporters to come to his office and examine his copy of the grand jury transcripts; but he did not allow reporters to make their own copy. Glanzer later said he had no memory of Anderson’s criticism during the meeting but Anderson was quoted making similar comments to the press immediately afterwards, and he and his attorneys have consistently repeated the same description of the exchange ever since. John Hanrahan, “Jury Told of ‘Bug’ Shield for Mitchell, Washington Post (25 April 1973), A1+; Timothy Mark Chambless, “Muckraker at Work,” 316; interview by Timothy Mark Chamb- — Spring 2007 • 29
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Page 3 and 4: Historical and Legal Background At
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Page 7 and 8: grand jury testimony “compared th
Page 9 and 10: Jack Anderson has them—ugh—verb
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Media Coverage and a Federal Grand Jury

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