When President Richard M. Nixon, in a televised news conference in November 1973, uttered the most famous line of his presidency, he was responding to a Providence Journal story suggesting he cheated on his taxes.
"People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook," Nixon said. "Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."
But the Journal story that prompted one of the most memorable political quotes in history almost did not get written.
Journal reporter Jack White got a tip that something was fishy with Nixon's income taxes for 1970 and 1971.
White started asking around. He got his hands on some tax documents, though he never saw Nixon's actual income tax returns. He had solid numbers: Nixon and his wife paid $793 in income taxes in 1970 and $878 in 1971 -- about as much as someone earning $7,000 a year. Both years combined, the Nixons collected $131,504 in refunds.
By Sept. 13, White was back in Providence and had started banging out the story. The union representing reporters at The Journal had a strike vote scheduled that night. White rolled the story out of his typewriter. "I folded it up, and I put it in my wallet."
The union voted to go on strike and immediately began picketing The Journal. White said he never thought about giving the story to management during the strike.
But that does not mean he was not sweating losing the biggest story of his career to a competitor. "The information was around. It wasn't something that just one person would know about or have access to. I was dreading that the information I had was going to get out there," White said. "Every day, I was checking out-of-town newspapers."
But, when the strike ended 12 days later, White's scoop was still safe. The story ran Oct. 3. The following May 6, White was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Nixon agreed to pay $476,000 in back taxes.
In 1980, White left The Journal for WBZ-TV in Boston. In 1985, he joined Channel 12 in Providence.
