For sources who were too sensitive to call by phone—or those they had no existing relationship with—the reporters often tried home visits. They would leave after the newspaper’s early edition deadline at 7:45 p.m.—Bernstein by bicycle and Woodward in his small 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia coupe—and knock on doors across Washington and its suburbs. At the time, it was a novel reporting technique. “Reporters didn’t do that then,” CBS newsman Bob Schieffer recalled. “Washington was a place where everybody played by the rules. You dealt with people in the office.… Watergate was when the stakeouts
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