A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

The TIME Washington correspondents who reported this week's cover stories did what almost every American near an electrical outlet tried to do last week: they watched Oliver North testify on Capitol Hill. But the correspondents attended the sessions in person and then called sources for reaction. "More legwork is required in reporting major scandals than in any other type of reporting," says Congressional Correspondent Hays Gorey, who recalls wearing out a few pairs of shoes covering Watergate. "Sources are so few and reporters so many that dozens of calls are never returned. You have to track sources to restaurants, to their homes, even board planes to get interviews."

At the White House, the situation proved even more frustrating for Correspondent Barrett Seaman. "Just about everybody with any connection to Iran-contra matters is no longer working at the White House," he says. "Revisiting events from even six months ago is a bit like playing Where Are They Now?"

David Beckwith, who reported the profile on former National Security Adviser Admiral John Poindexter, knew where his subject was but found him reluctant to talk. "Until a few months ago," says Correspondent Beckwith, "Admiral Poindexter and his wife Linda were readily accessible. As Poindexter began talking to the Senate committee and special counsel investigators, however, his lawyer ordered both of them to stop talking to reporters." When Beckwith sat next to his former source at a dinner this spring, Poindexter chatted happily about his computer hobbies and his family but said hardly anything about a certain arms deal with a certain country in the Middle East.

After months of chasing down elusive documents, Congressional Correspondent Michael Duffy arrived in the Senate Caucus Room last week to find aides distributing 500 pages of material to each reporter. As the week wore on, Duffy filled three loose-leaf binders with more than 1,150 pages of declassified documents, computer messages and memos -- all toted around by him in an aging gym bag. From his seat only a dozen feet from North, Duffy watched for four days as the Marine went head to head with lawmakers. "It was a classic confrontation," he says, "and North seemed to relish it."