Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1974. Fall from grace

In August 1974, the suspense mounted: Would President Richard M. Nixon be impeached? Would he resign? How would the long national nightmare of Watergate be resolved?

Journal Washington bureau chief Douglas C. Wilson, wondering how Nixon, the man, was handling the immense stress, stumbled onto the biggest political scoop in U.S. history.

A few months earlier, Wilson had met Baruch Korff, a rabbi from Rehoboth and Nixon confidant. Korff had been impressed with Wilson for reporting Korff's pro-Nixon views.

On Aug. 6, after calling a dozen hotels in Washington looking for Korff, Wilson finally found the rabbi's room. No answer. He left a message.

The next morning, Wilson received an urgent message to call Korff's office. A secretary said Korff was not talking to reporters, but that Wilson should come right over.

Korff would not let Wilson ask a question. "I don't believe in leaking," he prefaced his remarks.

"The president has come to the conclusion that the national interest may best be served by his resigning, irrespective of the mammoth injustice committed against him that prompted this painful decision on his part."

Wilson pressed the rabbi for details; he provided none.

Was the rabbi sure Nixon would resign?

"I can tell you that the decision is irrevocable."

Korff, who would say later he hoped his leak would trigger a groundswell of protests that would change Nixon's mind, asked only that he remain anonymous and that Wilson mention the president's anguish.

It was 10:45 a.m. -- still time to catch several editions of The Journal's afternoon paper, The Evening Bulletin. He called in from a hotel near Korff's office, dragging the editor in charge that day out of a meeting. Wilson dictated a story to a typist. It made the second edition, taking over the entire top of Page One by the fourth edition.

It would be more than 24 hours before Nixon announced he would resign, but the nation had already learned it from Doug Wilson's scoop.