What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise.

The journalist's job is to get the story by breaking into their offices, by bribing, by seducing people, by lying, by anything else to break through the palace guard.

We talk about a free press. These people hide, they make a lot of money off the media. They hide behind the slogans of free press, and then they can come out with crap like that. It's just garbage. It's insulting to the readers.

The paper nominated me 12 or 13 times for the Pulitzer Prize.

And new people come in, and it doesn't go along with their politics, and they fire me, end the column, silence a voice in Los Angeles. They can't silence it nationally, but they are able to do it there.

It had run as a column - I had worked at the paper since 1976, but the column had been running for 13 years, and I think it was a strong column, criticizing the war when the paper was supporting it.

It takes no courage to make war, particularly if you're not going to go and your children are not going to go.