The Burglary (32 page)

Post
executives were in untested waters that day. Given the unprecedented circumstance, it is understandable that the decision to publish was difficult for Graham. It was the first of the numerous difficult historic decisions she would make to publish stories that the Nixon administration had demanded she suppress. Some of her well-known decisions were heroic First Amendment defenses in the face of threats by the administration to damage the
Washington Post
economically, something it had the power to do through denial of the company's broadcast licenses. Just three months later,
in June 1971, she made her second such decision when the
New York Times
and then the
Washington Post
decided to publish stories about the
Pentagon Papers, the important secret history of the decisions that shaped the war in Vietnam and that had been given to the newspapers by former Pentagon and State Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg.

The first story about the files stolen from the Media FBI office, published by the
Washington Post
on the front page on March 24, 1971. Many other news organi-zations, including the
Los Angeles Times
and the
Philadelphia Inquirer,
also ran the
Post
story on their front pages that day.

When copies of the same stolen FBI files arrived in the Washington bureaus of the
New York Times
and the
Los Angeles Times
the same day I received them, they were handled differently. At the
Los Angeles Times
bureau, someone intercepted the envelope, opened it, and did not deliver it to the journalist to whom it was addressed—prominent investigative reporter Jack Nelson. It is not clear whether Tom Wicker, the person to whom the files sent to the
New York Times
were addressed, received the envelope. He did not write about the files at that time. According to FBI records of what transpired, when the files arrived in the two Washington news bureaus, people in each office immediately called the FBI and reported that they had received the documents and then promptly delivered the files to the FBI. Someone at the
Los Angeles Times
bureau diverted the documents independently, not only without informing Nelson that they had arrived and without copying the files, but apparently also without informing the top editors at the home office in Los Angeles, where editors decided that day to publish the
Washington Post
story the next day, the same day it appeared in the
Post
.

Nelson was astounded when I told him years later that the FBI record of the MEDBURG investigation revealed files had arrived in his newsroom, addressed to him, and been intercepted and delivered to the FBI. He recalled being eager to get copies of the stolen files and, soon after the burglary, called sources in the antiwar movement in an effort to find someone who would provide access to them.
As Nelson revealed in his memoir,
Scoop: The Evolution of a Southern Reporter
, published posthumously in 2013, during 1970 and 1971, Hoover was so furious about Nelson's coverage of the bureau that he conducted a campaign to get the
Los Angeles Times
to fire Nelson. When the
Times
was the only major news organization not notified when the FBI was about to arrest
Angela Davis on October 13, 1970, Washington bureau chief
David Kraslow asked why.
Tom Bishop, head of the bureau's public relations operation, said Nelson's stories were the problem. Shouting into the phone, he told Kraslow, “When you get rid of that son of a bitch with a vendetta against the FBI, we'll cooperate with you.”
In 2011, the
Times
applied for Nelson's FBI file and found similar attacks on Nelson.

At the
New York Times,
the documents must have been copied before they were delivered to the FBI, for the
Times
published a story about the files, written by Fred Graham, the day after the
Washington Post
's story.
In 2013, Graham said Wicker probably received the files but turned them over to him because Graham regularly covered the FBI. Regarding his rationale for giving the files to the FBI, Graham said that would be “typical—write the story first and then be a good citizen and give the files to the FBI.” Actually, he did it in reverse order.

According to FBI records,
Los Angeles Times
journalists also turned over to the FBI copies of Media files they subsequently received in the paper's Washington and Chicago bureaus. The FBI was appreciative of this gesture. All documents given to the FBI by journalists were subjected to lab tests for fingerprints and for the unique marks made by the copier used to make the copies.

After I learned years later from the FBI's MEDBURG investigative records that the files sent to the
Los Angeles Times
never reached Nelson—and may not have reached Wicker—I realized that the files may have reached me as the result of somewhat unusual circumstances. Given what happened to the files mailed to the other journalists, it seems reasonable to assume that the FBI had arranged after the burglary for mail addressed to at least Nelson to be monitored on the FBI's behalf
at the newspaper's Washington office by someone who was, as the bureau described such people, “friendly” to the FBI. Because
Nelson and Wicker were among the very few journalists who had written articles that raised critical questions about the FBI, bureau officials might have assumed that if the stolen files were distributed, those two journalists would be likely recipients.

What about the
Washington Post
? Whose mail there might have been monitored as part of an effort to secure the stolen files and prevent them from being reported? Clawson, the
Post
reporter who covered the FBI, was regarded by the bureau as a “friend,” so his mail would not have been monitored. At that time, only one person at the
Post,
Alan Barth, a respected veteran editorial writer, had written commentary critical of the FBI. If anyone's mail there would have been watched with an eye to intercepting the files and preventing them from being reported, it might have been Barth's. It was unlikely my mail would have been watched because, unlike Nelson, Wicker, or Barth, I had no track record as a published critic of the FBI. That, plus my generally lower profile, probably made it possible for the envelope containing the stolen files to slip into my mailbox unnoticed. After I found the burglars years later, I learned that they did indeed choose Nelson and Wicker as recipients because of their reputation for raising questions about FBI practices. I was chosen as a recipient because they respected my earlier reporting in Philadelphia and had followed my coverage of the Catholic peace movement after I moved to the
Washington Post
. Based on our past reporting, they thought the three of us and the heads of our news organizations would recognize that the files were newsworthy and push for publication.

A few weeks later, I too qualified for having my mail watched. One Saturday afternoon I went to the newsroom to see if the burglars had sent more documents. Envelopes containing more files arrived at random times, so I went to the newsroom every day in order to read and report on them as soon as they arrived. I found a new set in my mailbox that Saturday. As I started to read them, a tall white-haired man I had never seen before appeared at my desk. He said he worked in the mailroom, and as he glanced at the evidence on my desk, he said he had noticed that I had been receiving stolen FBI files recently. He also hastened to say he had “noticed you're from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.” I thought that was strange and asked him how he knew that. “I see all those letters your mother sends you.” My mother had never written to me at the
Washington Post,
and she probably never knew the address of the newspaper. My visitor from the mailroom that Saturday seemed to be making a ham-handed attempt to “enhance” my paranoia in the manner prescribed in the first Media file I had reported on. It was too late.

THE FACT THAT
I did not know the names of my sources added an unusual twist to the ethics of my relationship with them. Not only is the identity of a journalist's confidential source usually known to the journalist, but that source usually asks the journalist to enter into an agreement to refuse to reveal his or her identity, even if the journalist is pressured to do so. My unknown sources had asked nothing of me except what they asked of other recipients in the cover letter that accompanied the files: that I consider making public the information they had sent me.

Like most journalists, I always have preferred to fully identify sources so their veracity can be judged, not only by me but also by readers on the basis of what is known about them. To casually grant confidentiality diminishes confidence in journalism. When a reporter uses confidential sources, she is saying “trust me,” an arrogant request to the reader that should be made only when the information is of such great importance that it should be transmitted to the public even if the source must remain anonymous. My sources'
credibility was not at stake; the authenticity of the files had been confirmed at the highest level of the government. The issue was whether I had an obligation to protect them. I possessed documents I assumed my sources had touched and that therefore might contain fingerprints that could be used by the FBI in its efforts to arrest them. That meant that though I did not know who my sources were and therefore could not reveal their names, I was nevertheless in a position to betray them if I gave law enforcement agents copies of the files they sent me. In recent years, numerous reporters had refused to obey government subpoenas that demanded that they name confidential sources before grand juries. Reporters refused to comply with such subpoenas primarily on two grounds—in order not to be questioned inside a closed grand jury chamber, where no one could know whether they revealed confidential information, and in order not to become, or be seen as becoming, an arm of law enforcement, except in very rare instances, such as when withholding information could lead to loss of life. The then recent case of
New York Times
reporter
Earl Caldwell was a notable example. Caldwell had refused to name his confidential sources when federal prosecutors in the Bay Area subpoenaed him in connection with an investigation of the Black Panthers. In some such cases, the government persisted and journalists went to jail rather than name their sources.

The atmosphere in journalism by 1971 was such that many journalists, including me, had thought about what we would do if confronted with a government demand to reveal confidential sources. In fact, there were so many confrontations over journalists' legal and ethical responsibilities to protect confidential sources that a year earlier a group of respected editors, reporters, and lawyers, including Nelson, established the
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, to help journalists who faced such challenges get legal assistance. To some degree, being willing to pay the price of going to jail rather than divulge confidential sources had become simply another skill a reporter needed to develop if the journalist was going to report on controversial government issues.

While Graham and the editors discussed whether the
Post
would publish a story about the revelations in the documents, I, assuming they would publish, thought about what I would do if asked by the FBI to turn over what I had received from the burglars. I concluded that my unknown burglar sources deserved my protection as much as they would if they were sources known to me who had asked me to promise to protect their identity. They had passed an important confidential source test: They had provided me with information important to public discourse that was not otherwise
available. I assumed that they, at great risk, had performed what eventually would be seen as a valuable public service, though I had no idea at the time how significant that service ultimately would be.

Years later, as I read the FBI's massive record of the investigation of the burglary, I discovered that when the bureau learned the
Post
had copies of the stolen files, FBI officials recommended to Hoover that
Post
editors be asked to hand over the copies I received. Of the five sets of files mailed by the burglars the previous Friday, four had been delivered to the FBI immediately. Hoover, reacting to the recommendation, ordered agents not to ask the
Post
for the files, at least not at that time. He said he was certain we would not turn them over. He was right.

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