Jack White (reporter) - Nixon Scandal

Nixon Scandal

White's Pulitzer-winning scoop almost didn't happen. Working off a tip and tax documents, White learned that Nixon failed to pay a large portion of his income taxes in 1970 and 1971. The night he was prepared to write the story, in September 1973, the union representing reporters at the newspaper voted to go on strike. White would later recall rolling the story out of his typewriter, folding it up and putting it in his wallet. He said he never thought about giving the story to management, even though he risked missing the story. "I was dreading the information I had was going to get out there. Every day I was checking out-of-town newspapers," he later told The Providence Journal. Twelve days later, the strike ended, and the story ran on October 3, 1973. At an Associated Press Managing Editors convention the following month, one of White's colleagues asked Nixon about the story, and Nixon replied, "People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook." Nixon agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. The final total was $432,787.13 plus interest.