SPIKE - Department of Journalism - University of Illinois

Documentary sources

Setting up the project

Students assemble database to compare what's known about individuals with what's known about Deep Throat

       The student investigators put all the known information about Watergate and the Post coverage into a computer database. They used a simple Excel database that was standard in computer labs at the school and personal home computers. Students gathered information and placed it on a floppy disk that they then transferred to a main database. Then it was combined, sorted, searched and studied.

       The project was a classroom exercise started in the middle of the fall 1999 semester and continued for six semesters. Several of the original student investigators helped the new members. There was no budget. Students used library resources, requested official documents under the Freedom of Information Act, and made telephone interviews.

      Sources of database information:

Washington Post, Washington Star, New York Times and Montgomery County (Md.) Sentinel newspaper stories.
16,277 pages of FBI investigative reports on Watergate and Wallace.
Watergate Congressional hearings and House impeachment proceedings.
Autobiographies and other published accounts of participants.
Nixon tapes and Haldeman memos.
Nixon staff papers in the National Archives.
Colson papers at Wheaton College.
Gerald Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Interviews with participants and law enforcement officials.