-What starts as a tip can turn into a front-page story.
-First Alabama's Roy Moore,
now the Republican candidate for Senate,
"The Washington Post" first reporting.
-Published yesterday in "The Washington Post."
-The new report by "The Washington Post" --
it claims that in the late '70s,
the then-32-year-old attorney may have crossed the line
with a 14-year-old girl.
-I went to Alabama back in early October actually to write
a story not about Roy Moore, per se,
but we were interested in writing
about Roy Moore supporters
and really understanding sort of why it was
that they felt so passionately about this candidate for Senate.
-You're from Alabama? -I am from Alabama.
I grew up in Birmingham.
My grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher.
This story sort of emerged, this talk that, well, you know,
there had been stories for a year
that Roy Moore sort of
had an affinity for younger women, teenager girls.
I was, you know, skeptical, as we always are as reporters.
And eventually it came to light, you know,
certain names of women.
People say that, you know, he used to hang out at the mall.
Well, then we started to try to find people
who worked at the mall in the timeframe
that we were looking at, 1977 to 1982.
It's not good enough for someone to just say,
"He hung out at the mall."
We have to find people who actually, you know, saw him.
It's not enough just to hear that, you know,
someone had an affinity for teenage girls.
We have to find out whether there's any reality there.
It's a long process of talking to one person and another
and they give you three names
and then those three people give you three more names
and then at the end -- -So, at a certain point,
you have this really long list,
and you're just going and crossing them off,
and, "That's a dead lead, but this might go somewhere."
-Exactly.
And so my colleague Beth Reinhard came down,
and that's how it went.
-How do you know that, "Hey, I've really got something here
that I need to look into more"?
-It's just your instincts, your gut tells you,
"Wow, this is a story about Roy Moore,
and these are pretty serious allegations against him.
And, you know, if there's credibility to them,
then that's a pretty shocking story."
But we also needed to be very careful in vetting information
and making sure that the people we were talking
to didn't have any axes to grind.
-When you have that first conversation,
is it all off the record?
Do you tell someone, "Look, if you don't want me
to use your name and use your details, I won't --
I just want to talk to you at first"?
-That's often how it works.
You know, in the case of Leigh,
she of course was not sure at all
that she wanted to go on the record.
I was interested, nonetheless, in hearing her story.
I wanted to know what she had to say,
and so, you know, the way to do that was to just say --
just meet her.
In fact, I didn't take any notes, really,
for the first time I met her.
Of course, later we took plenty of notes,
pages and pages of notes.
But the first meeting really was just a chance to, you know,
hear her story in a way that she felt comfortable
telling it, which was off the record.
I try to treat someone how I would like
to be treated, really, and I'm really interested
in what the other person has to say.
That's why I'm there.
I'm there to listen.
-So, how do you convince someone to go from being off the record
to taking their story on the record
and letting you use their name and their story?
-I think the answer to that is you don't convince people.
The way I really think of it is, I'm here to listen.
We're here to listen.
We are "The Washington Post."
We're gonna handle this story responsibly.
We're not just gonna willy-nilly put it in the paper.
We're gonna handle it with care.
And I just sort of see my role more as offering a chance
for people to go on the record
or to tell their story if they want to.
-You don't pay people to be your sources.
-Absolutely not, no, absolutely not.
-You had to tell some of these women
that they're gonna be under a lot of scrutiny.
-We want to try to make the story as strong
and as airtight as possible.
That is our best defense.
-We have a sense that, if you do decide
to go public with this story,
that there's a good chance this story will be attacked,
that your credibility will be attacked.
-And are there documents that you can look back that verify?
-Of course.
Every time she told the story,
we're always alert for things that are verifiable.
She mentioned a corner where she says Roy Moore picked her up.
Well, we went to that corner.
She talked about a long drive.
We looked up property records.
We know where he was living at the time.
We did that drive.
-If we say the driveway was unpaved,
is someone gonna show up with a picture of the driveway paved?
-So you're actually going to the driveway,
looking at the driveway.
-Literally, yeah.
Every sentence we went through and vetted.
And with a story with so many details,
it was painstaking fact checking.
We were at the local courthouse in Etowah County,
in Gadsden, Alabama,
using their somewhat archaic computer system
and requesting files.
You know, and they would come back and say,
"Oh, that's on microfiche,
and our microfiche machine is broken.
Sorry."
-We did very little phone reporting.
We, you know, both felt like it was much better
to talk to people in person
so they could see who we are,
so they could see that we're human beings
and that we're reporters,
and also so that we could see them.
People especially these days, I think,
are surprised to see a person with a notebook
and a pen showing up at their door
and saying, "No," you know, "I'm a reporter,
and I'm here because I have questions."
-But you're not there to be their friend,
and you're also not there to be their cheerleader,
but you do want to hear what they have to say.
-Exactly.
We're not there to be people's friends.
We're not there for any other reason.
As corny as it sounds, the agenda is to figure out
what the reality is,
what the truth is of a story.
That's it.