Stakeouts And Shouted Questions

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McGee took a cab to Hart's town house and stationed himself across the street. He saw Hart emerge from the front door at 9:30 p.m. with a blond woman whom he had noticed aboard the flight from Miami. His suspicions aroused, McGee kept watch and saw the pair return at 11:17. Three other Herald staffers (Fiedler, Investigative Editor James Savage and a photographer) joined the watch late Saturday morning. They did not see Hart and the woman emerge again until shortly after dark Saturday evening. At that point Hart apparently noticed the surveillance team, and he and his companion re-entered the town house. Thirty minutes later, according to the Herald, Hart came out alone, drove his car a short distance away, then "walked aimlessly up and down" a few blocks. Just outside his home, he agreed to an interview. Hart denied any impropriety but, the reporters said, acted nervous and evasive and refused to let them talk to the woman. After 20 minutes, Hart ended the interview, and the reporters went to a motel to write their story, which was rushed into a late edition of Sunday's paper.

The stakeout was not airtight; no one was on the scene between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., and the town house back door was not watched between midnight and 5 a.m., leaving the possibility that someone could have left the house unnoticed. The newspaper's initial story on Sunday failed to mention these lapses, but they were laid out in full in a follow-up story Monday.

The paper printed the story with what some felt was undue haste. While writing the piece late Saturday night, the reporters got a call from Hart's friend William Broadhurst, who claimed that Hart's companion and her girlfriend were guests of his. Broadhurst promised the newsmen a lengthier interview and an opportunity to talk to the women if the reporters would delay their story. They refused, fearing that the extra time would give the Hart camp a chance to construct a cover story and possibly hold a press conference to try to discredit the Herald's article in advance.

In his speech before the newspaper publishers, Hart charged that the Herald reporters had "refused to interview the very people who could have given them the facts before filing their story." Executive Editor Heath Meriwether sharply disputed the charge, pointing out that the Sunday story contained responses from both Broadhurst and Hart. Says Savage: "If Hart had even hinted that he wanted to talk to us again later, we would have done that. But he never told us he would give us any further information."

Many journalists faulted the Herald for not being more cautious with such an explosive story. "They rushed the story into print," says George Cotliar, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. "I think I would have waited for a day to see what Donna Rice had to say." The Sunday story, in fact, was printed before the Herald even learned Rice's name. But Howard Simons, former managing editor of the Washington Post and now head of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, defends the Herald's actions: "If they'd waited a day, they wouldn't have known anything more, except for a polished version after the people had got their stories together."