NEW YORK — The reporter rushed to his editor, thunderstruck by what the FBI’s acting director had just let him know: The former attorney general — maybe even the president — was complicit in the Watergate break-in two months before.
But The New York Times let the hot tip fall through the cracks, the reporter and editor say after decades of silence about the August 1972 conversation. They say it’s unclear whether the Times pursued information that might have let it beat The Washington Post to the blockbuster story of political espionage, which was described in "All the President’s Men” and helped unravel the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.
"We missed out,” the now-retired editor, Robert H. Phelps, said in an interview Monday, after the Times published a story about the miscue.
Phelps revealed it in "God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at The New York Times,” a memoir published last month. The former reporter, Robert M. Smith, now a lawyer in San Francisco, confirmed Phelps’ account.
Smith was headed to law school and in his last day at the Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau when he went to lunch with acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray on Aug. 16, 1972.
Smith had cultivated a professional relationship with the FBI chief through writing several stories about him that year.
As they discussed the intrigue surrounding the June 17 attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex, Gray volunteered that former Attorney General John Mitchell was involved.
Smith said he asked Gray, "‘Does it go up higher?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’”
Smith said, "I choked and said, ‘The president?’ And he looked me in the eye,” not denying it.
Smith, having moved on to Yale Law School, noticed that no story appeared in the newspaper and figured the information had proved off-base.
Phelps said he can’t recall what effort, if any, was made to flesh out the tip or confirm it with other officials. He went on a monthlong vacation a week after Smith’s departure.
by the associated press
But The New York Times let the hot tip fall through the cracks, the reporter and editor say after decades of silence about the August 1972 conversation. They say it’s unclear whether the Times pursued information that might have let it beat The Washington Post to the blockbuster story of political espionage, which was described in "All the President’s Men” and helped unravel the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.
"We missed out,” the now-retired editor, Robert H. Phelps, said in an interview Monday, after the Times published a story about the miscue.
Phelps revealed it in "God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at The New York Times,” a memoir published last month. The former reporter, Robert M. Smith, now a lawyer in San Francisco, confirmed Phelps’ account.
Smith was headed to law school and in his last day at the Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau when he went to lunch with acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray on Aug. 16, 1972.
Smith had cultivated a professional relationship with the FBI chief through writing several stories about him that year.
As they discussed the intrigue surrounding the June 17 attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex, Gray volunteered that former Attorney General John Mitchell was involved.
Smith said he asked Gray, "‘Does it go up higher?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’”
Smith said, "I choked and said, ‘The president?’ And he looked me in the eye,” not denying it.
Smith, having moved on to Yale Law School, noticed that no story appeared in the newspaper and figured the information had proved off-base.
Phelps said he can’t recall what effort, if any, was made to flesh out the tip or confirm it with other officials. He went on a monthlong vacation a week after Smith’s departure.
by the associated press
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