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Their work had just begun. Sources hinted that if Dwight Chapin was tied to Segretti, higher White House aides for whom Chapin worked were likely involved: perhaps Presidential Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman. In following that lead, the reporters suffered their first crippling setback. They had been imbued from the first with the need for caution—"When in doubt, leave it out," their editors ordered—and had decided early to forgo generalizations in favor of only the specific and solid. They checked every fresh fact against at least two different sources. But the pressure of keeping one scoop ahead of the competition—notably TIME's Sandy Smith—inevitably led to slips in the pair's failsafe procedure. A hasty conversation with Hugh Sloan resulted in a misunderstanding and a Woodward-Bernstein story containing the erroneous assertion that Sloan had told the grand jury that Haldeman was involved in funding the political espionage scheme. It was a serious mistake, giving critics of the reporters an opportunity to challenge the credibility of their previous stories. Sloan's lawyer brusquely denied the story, and the White House denounced it as "shabby journalism." Confused and angered by their mistake, the reporters rashly exposed one of their prime sources, an FBI agent, to his superior. They were so shaken by their error in the story that they considered offering their resignations to the Post.
Their story apparently also had dramatic repercussions in the White House. Woodward learned from Deep Throat that the President, infuriated over news leaks, had told aides that some $5 million in leftover campaign funds might as well be used "to take the Washington Post down a notch. Nixon was wild, shouting and hollering that 'we can't have it and we're going to stop it [the leaks]. I don't care how much it costs.' " Not long afterward rival Florida broadcasting companies filed a challenge through the Federal Communications Commission to the Post's ownership of two Florida television stations. The Post is still fighting to retain its licenses.