I have gone on the air and announced my telephone number at the Washington Post. I go into the night, talking to people, looking for things. The great dreaded thing every reporter lives with is what you don't know. The source you didn't go to. The phone call you didn't return.

Any suggestion that I'm writing about political operatives because I'm interested in political operatives misses the entire point.

If information is true, if it can be verified, and if it's really important, the newspaper needs to be willing to take the risk associated with using unidentified sources.

Nixon's attempts to order subversion of various departments was bound to come out in some form.

He (former President Gerald Ford) made it very clear that he did not agree with the reasons President Bush laid out for the war, namely the belief that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or that there was some obligation that the United States or the president had to expand democracy.

Good work is always done in defiance of management.

Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story.