Washington Post reporters’ approach to Watergate grand jurors

The Washington Post reporters’ approach to Watergate grand jurors was an attempt to reach beyond the public record and into the investigation’s most closely guarded proceedings. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein obtained names from a courthouse roster and approached about half a dozen jurors, but learned nothing about the case. Instead, their inquiries brought them before Judge John Sirica, who warned that such contact could constitute contempt while concluding that the grand jury’s secrecy had survived intact.

A possible route to the hidden record

One late-November Saturday, an editor told Woodward that a neighbor believed his aunt was serving on a Watergate grand jury and might be willing to talk. The editor soon passed along her name and address. Bernstein and Woodward took the idea to Harry Rosenfeld, who liked the possibility but deferred a decision until Ben Bradlee consulted the newspaper’s lawyers.

The reporters checked the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure in the newspaper’s library. Grand jurors swore to keep their deliberations and the testimony before them secret, but the reporters and lawyers found no law forbidding someone from asking a juror questions. The lawyers advised extreme caution: they should simply ask whether she wanted to talk. Bradlee added a strict limit. There was to be no pressure or cajoling, and the reporters were to call him as soon as the visit ended, whatever happened.

The conversation quickly showed how uncertain the lead was. The woman said she knew about Watergate only from newspapers, and it took about ten minutes for the reporters to determine that she was indeed a grand juror—but not one serving on the Watergate case. They thanked her and left. The misdirected visit yielded no information, but sharpened their interest: they knew what details they needed and believed a cooperative Watergate juror might supply them.

Finding names without taking them away

Bernstein next asked chief prosecutor Earl Silbert for the names of the 23 Watergate grand jurors. Silbert refused, disputing Bernstein’s claim that the membership was public information. Woodward separately asked a friend in the clerk’s office whether a roster could be obtained and was told that the records were secret.

The following morning, Woodward went to the courthouse. Among roughly 90 clerk’s-office employees, he worked his way through the file rooms until someone directed him to a remote corner where jury lists were kept. He identified himself as a Post reporter and asked to inspect the files. The clerk allowed him to look but forbade copying, taking names, or making notes, and said he would watch.

Woodward found the master list of the 1972 grand juries. Remembering that the Watergate foreman had an Eastern European name and worked for the government as an economist or in a similar role, he located the likely match on Grand Jury Number One, sworn in on June 5. Each juror’s small orange card listed a name, age, occupation, address, and home and work telephone numbers. With the clerk watching from about 15 feet away, Woodward studied four cards in the bottom of a file drawer and memorized their details. He then asked where the men’s room was. The roster had provided a narrow path to potential sources, but the information it contained could not simply be carried out in notes.

Approaches, silence, and exposure

Woodward and Bernstein worked separately over the first weekend of December, attempting to speak with about half a dozen grand jurors. They were to identify themselves, mention an anonymous mutual acquaintance, and ask whether the juror was willing to discuss Watergate. They were not to raise the grand jury unless the juror did so first, and were to leave if the person volunteered nothing. Bradlee’s final instruction was unambiguous: “No strong-arm tactics, fellas. Right?”

The encounters produced no information. The reporters came away with the impression that prosecutors had warned jurors to watch for reporters bearing press cards. Only one person acknowledged serving on the grand jury. He told Woodward that he had taken two oaths of secrecy in his life, one as an Elk and one as a grand juror, and regarded both as sacred trusts. The others said they knew about Watergate only from the media. One Bernstein approached mistook the subject for the Watergate apartment complex and spoke of the break-in as something he had heard about on television.

On Monday, Bradlee summoned the reporters to his office, closed the door, and told them, “The balloon is up.” At least one juror had complained to prosecutors about a Washington Post reporter’s visit. A prosecutor contacted Edward Bennett Williams, the newspaper’s principal attorney; the prosecutors then went to Sirica with the juror’s complaint. Williams advised Bradlee to have the reporters sit tight. Bradlee warned that the judge, not the newspaper, would determine what followed.

The judge’s warning and the limits of the attempt

When Sirica addressed the matter in court, he said that jurors had been approached during the first weekend of December in an effort to obtain information. A transcript of the prosecutors’ later discussion with the grand jury showed, however, that no information had been disclosed and the investigation had not been compromised. Sirica commended the jurors for keeping silent and stressed the oath binding their deliberations as “sacred and secret.”

He then addressed the unidentified person who had approached the jurors, calling the matter extremely serious. The alleged interference, he observed, had come not from a defendant or a lawyer but from “a news media representative.” Sirica explained that trying to obtain information from a grand juror was, “at least potentially,” a contemptuous offense. He excused the grand jury and left the courtroom without naming the reporters or ordering them to appear before him. It took Woodward and Bernstein several moments to understand that the hearing was over and they had gone free.

The episode ended without a source, a scoop, or a formal punishment. Its consequence was instead a sharp demonstration of the boundary between investigating a secret proceeding and compromising it: the reporters had crossed close enough to attract the court’s attention, but the jurors’ silence had preserved the investigation. Their approach also exposed the practical difficulty of the search. A lead could point to the wrong jury, prosecutors would not provide the roster, clerks guarded the records, and even a juror who admitted membership would not necessarily speak. The attempt revealed the pressure surrounding the investigation, not what the grand jury knew.