Media Coverage and a Federal Grand Jury

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less with Jack Anderson, Bethesda, MD (15 March 1986); and author’s interview with Seymour Glanzer (Washington, DC: 2 January 2001). 67 Hume, 293-5. In later years, the columnist added one key detail that did not appear in Hume’s account: Anderson’s purported threat to prosecutors. According to the columnist’s autobiography published more than twentyfive years later, Anderson told the prosecutors: “You can inform the judges that I will not identify my source and that jailing me would serve no purpose except to punish me. But if you punish me, then I will punish you. Every day I’m in jail I will write a story about this. You may win on your battlefield, but the press is my battlefield and I’ll win there. Which is the more powerful? We’ll find out. We’ll see who can last longer.” Did Hume omit the threat on behalf of his former boss? Or did Anderson embellish his toughness in later years? In 1986, Anderson called Hume’s reconstruction “the most accurate account of what was actually said at the meeting” although he “didn’t get it in its entirety and had missed a couple of important things.” In 1994, Anderson acknowledged that “I do remember, I’m sure, a more heroic version of our conversation than actually occurred, but one that I could take a lie detector test on.” Anderson attorney Betty Southard Murphy remembered a different kind of threat in which Anderson told prosecutors, “go ahead and arrest me and I’ll expose the jail system.” According to prosecutor Glanzer, Anderson “never said he would retaliate or mistreat us. He was always very warm to us [in the meeting]. He never felt we were threatening him, we never felt he was threatening us.” Glanzer said the strongest language Anderson used was to point out that “[y]ou will make me a hero if you throw me in jail for contempt. I’ll welcome it.” Jack Anderson interview with author (Bethesda, MD: 7 April 2000); Betty Murphy interview with author (Washington, DC: 4 May 2000); author’s interview with Seymour Glanzer (Washington, DC: 2 January 2001); Jack Anderson interview with Daryl Gibson (29 January 1994); Timothy Mark Chambless, “Muckraker at Work,” 317, 329; and Anderson and Gibson, 262. 68 Interview by Daryl Gibson with Jack Anderson, Bethesda, MD (29 January 1994). Had he not already milked the transcripts dry, Anderson later said with a chuckle, “I would have prolonged the negotiations” with prosecutors. The columnist said he buried an extra copy of the transcripts under the lawn in his backyard just in case he found “a compelling reason” to publish from them in the future. “Nobody knows that I did that,” Anderson added. Ibid. 69 John M. Crewdson, “Anderson Won’t Print More Jury Testimony,” New York Times (26 April 1973), 34. Anderson reserved the “unlikely” possibility that he might return to publishing the transcripts if he felt it was warranted: “I can’t ever say in advance what I will do.” Sniffed prosecutor Earl Silbert: “He hasn’t obligated himself to do anything. It isn’t like a contract.” Ibid. 70 Lawrence Meyer, “Anderson to Give Jury Transcripts to Sirica,” Washington Post (26 April 1973), A-25. 71 United Feature Syndicate release, “Statement by Jack Anderson,” (25 April 1973), Anderson papers, Gelman Library, George Washington Univ., 30 • American Journalism —
Washington, D.C. In his memoirs, Anderson credited Judge John Sirica with putting together the “diplomatic” compromise the day after Anderson met with prosecutors. However, it was just minutes after meeting with prosecutors that Anderson announced he would turn over the transcripts to Sirica, suggesting the deal had been worked out in that meeting. Hume described an “informal agreement” worked out then in which Anderson would return the transcripts “to the court. In exchange, the prosecutors agreed that they would call Jack before the grand jury [to identify his source] only as a last resort.” Hume took credit for suggesting this very compromise to Anderson’s lawyers several days earlier. Anderson and Gibson, 262; Hume, 291. 72 Hume, 259-61. According to the Sacramento Bee, Anderson “has done this nation a valuable service…. It is good for this country to have gadflies like Anderson in Washington. In the long run, his unstinting devotion to the people’s right to know may serve to keep government officials more honest than they might be otherwise.” Years later, prosecutor Seymour Glanzer called Anderson’s decision to stop publishing the transcripts “heroic.” A dissenting opinion was offered by the Los Angeles Times, which denounced the columnist’s “unnecessary and self-serving exploit. It called attention to Anderson, but it is hard to see how it did anything to advance efforts at untangling this far-reaching scandal. More than anything else, it was a case of Anderson bragging in public about his ability to get hold of a supposedly secret transcript.” Sacramento Bee (27 April 1973), editorial, cited in Edward W. Knappman, Watergate and the White House, 172; author’s interview with Seymour Glanzer (Washington, DC: 2 January 2001); and Los Angeles Times (25 April 1973), editorial page. 73 Anderson and Gibson, 259. 74 Kutler, Abuse of Power, 326-63. In just two weeks during late April, Nixon held more than a dozen conversations in which he questioned Attorney General Kleindienst and his deputy Henry Petersen about the Watergate grand jury investigation. The President alternately flattered his prosecutors, pumped them for information, falsely asserted his innocence, and suggested prosecutorial strategy, exploiting his underlings to find out what the grand jury had learned about his own criminal behavior—even as he complained about “these damn grand jury leaks” from Jack Anderson. Ibid. 75 Kutler, Wars of Watergate, 262. 76 Ibid., 290-1, 320. 77 The columnist himself implicitly acknowledged this at the time he announced that he would stop publishing any more transcripts; although six months earlier the grand jury investigation had been “less than full,” Anderson declared, “I’ve read the transcripts, and I don’t see that now.” Jack Anderson interview with Daryl Gibson (29 January 1994). 78 Nixon “had counted on the secrecy of the grand jury to allow him to choose what to make public and what to keep hidden,” Anderson observed. “He was holding the Senate at bay, meanwhile, by warning senators not to interfere with the grand jury probe.” Later, after getting to know the Watergate prosecutors, Anderson concluded that they “would probably not have — Spring 2007 • 31
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