"Don't Quote Me, But . . ."

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

When Senator Brock Adams of Washington quit his bid for re-election last week, hours after the Seattle Times charged him with sexual misconduct toward eight unnamed female employees or political associates, the liberal Democrat said he had been destroyed by "hypothetical comments by hypothetical people." For most Americans, who read only excerpts or summaries in their local dailies, the implication was strong that Adams had been victimized by flimsy reporting of unsubstantiated -- even fabricated -- claims from political enemies. The enduring image was of a haggard Adams, flanked by his supportive wife and daughter, denouncing his accusers as too cowardly to be named and the allegations against him as too vague to refute.

In decrying the use of anonymous sources, Adams appealed to fair play and to a growing opinion, even among journalists, that reporters place far too much faith in people unwilling to back up what they say. Often, unnamed sources seek to advance some personal agenda. Sometimes they tell lies and lend extra credence to falsehood by peddling it as top-secret truth. While Adams' abrupt withdrawal, at the end of a weekend during which he had raised $130,000 for his campaign, seemed like a tacit admission of guilt, he insisted that in his case the allegations -- which range from uninvited fondling of women to drugging their drinks, undressing them and purportedly raping one -- had been "created out of whole cloth." His reaction on reading the stories: "That's not me." He said he quit the race because he could not fight back without confronting his accusers.

For anyone who actually read them, however, the Seattle Times stories stood out as textbook examples of meticulous, convincing journalism -- and of sourcing that is not really anonymous. The paper found not just one or two accusers but many more. While none were ready to be named, eight among them pledged willingness to back up their claims in court if Adams sued the paper. Moreover, despite his insistence that he could not recognize the women, their published vignettes abound in evocative detail.

Nearly all the accusers are active Democrats; none had an obvious political motive to hurt Adams. Nor does the Times, which has abandoned its former Republican identity, and endorsed Michael Dukakis for President in 1988. Most compelling, the accusers had to be sought and coaxed. In one case, when a reporter reached a reluctant victim, her first words were, "For three years, I've told myself that when this phone call came, I would hang up." (She didn't.) Far from being used by Adams' enemies, the paper itself initiated the probe. Says executive editor Michael Fancher: "Obviously, we would have preferred to run a story naming names. But the choice we faced was either silence or this story. And we decided that it was too important, and we were too sure of the truth, to be silent."

The genesis of the crusade was, ironically, a misconduct investigation that had exonerated Adams. In 1987 a House committee aide named Kari Tupper, a daughter of longtime friends of Adams', told police he had drugged and molested her at his Washington, D.C., home. A year and a half later, after the U.S. Attorney's office found insufficient supporting evidence and declined to prosecute, she went public. The Times then received anonymous calls from two women asserting that Adams had done similar things to them.

In many newsrooms, the matter would have ended there. But a few Times staff members, notably city editor David Boardman, were haunted by the idea that a U.S. Senator renowned for his liberal posture on women's issues might be abusive in his personal life. Several times, the editors revived the story, only to set it aside because no accuser was willing to be named.

In November of last year, a chance conversation between Fancher and reporters about the moral leadership role of a newspaper prompted him to authorize one last try. Three veteran reporters -- Pulitzer prizewinner Eric Nalder, 46, and Susan Gilmore and Eric Pryne, both 41 -- were told to reexamine their leads. To break the logjam, editors decided that signed statements from the accusers would serve as a compromise between the identification the paper wanted and the anonymity the accusers sought. A week before the story went to press, Fancher says, "we looked at what we had and said, 'We've got it.' "

While Adams could not face his accusers, he was repeatedly offered the chance to answer their accusations. Three requests for interviews were deflected. "I'm not going to grant any interviews on that," Adams said. Meanwhile, despite his assertion that he did not know who his accusers were, some of Adams' staff members apparently had a good idea. In the final days before publication, they contacted several of the women who were sources, belatedly urging their silence.

On the evening before the story appeared, the reporting team and their spouses met for a wrap-up dinner. It suddenly struck them that each couple included the parent of a daughter. Says reporter Pryne: "That was a factor for every one of us." It was another reason that, to them, the victims of alleged sexual harassment were not "hypothetical" at all.

With reporting by David S. Jackson/Seattle