THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Tapping a Source Requires a Careful Dance of Skill and Need

The O.J. Simpson trial has provided a fascinating look at the intricate dance between journalists and their sources.

It came Wednesday and Thursday during the testimony of Ron Shipp, the ex-police officer who said Simpson had told him he dreamed of killing his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson.

The dream testimony was hot. But what interested me was that Shipp first told his story to a writer, rather than the district attorney or his former Los Angeles Police Department colleagues.

Shipp talked to Sheila Weller, who included his account in her contribution to the instant book boon spawned by the Simpson case: “Raging Heart--The Intimate Story of the Tragic Marriage of O.J. and Nicole Simpson.”

“Ever since I heard that conversation (about the dreams), it was just eating me up,” Shipp testified Wednesday. “I just had to get it out, and that’s why I told her.”

Of course, I wasn’t there when Shipp, during six meetings in the summer and fall, related his story to Weller, who previously has written “Marrying the Hangman; a True Story of Privilege, Marriage and Murder” and “Amy Fisher: My Story.” So I don’t know exactly how Weller persuaded him to talk, except that Shipp said he wasn’t paid.

But as someone who’s spent years trying to get sources to talk, I can tell you that it’s a complicated process, requiring tact, preparation, intelligence, curiosity--and, at times, the persuasiveness of a confidence man or woman.

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One of the most savage critiques of the process was written by Janet Malcolm in her two-part 1989 New Yorker series called “The Journalist and the Murderer.” It was an account of the relationship between writer Joe McGinniss and convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald. MacDonald sued the writer and received a $325,000 settlement in 1988. He charged that McGinniss had betrayed him by becoming his friend and then writing “Fatal Vision,” which portrayed MacDonald as a coldblooded killer.

“Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible,” Malcolm wrote. “He is kind of a confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

“Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and ‘the public’s right to know’; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.”

Treachery is not what I do for a living. Besides, as Malcolm conceded, the people we interview usually want to talk. The trick is finding the magic words that unlock their memories and mouths.

Reporters are supposed to set ground rules for interviews. Back-stabbing is not approved. “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t tell your parents about,” I tell my journalism students at USC. “Be honest with your sources. Don’t lie.”

Still, the reporter is always looking for an edge, always probing the mind and character of the person being interviewed.

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Watching Ron Shipp, I wondered what prompted him to talk to writer Sheila Weller. He had a friendly, pleasant face and an intelligent, earnest manner. Unlike some cops trapped in a hostile, defensive “us against them” mentality, former Police Officer Shipp seemed eager to please.

Shipp has his weaknesses. When he was a cop, he broke department rules by checking out license numbers for Simpson and Nicole. He drank too much. He was suspended 15 days for showing up to work with alcohol on his breath when he was a cop, and the LAPD refused his request to rejoin the force a year after he retired for stress.

When he drank, Shipp testified, he did crazy things, like driving or showing up uninvited at a friend’s house late at night for a heart-to-heart talk. Most important, there’s an angry man under the pleasant Shipp exterior.

That was clear Thursday when Carl Douglas, one of Simpson’s attorneys, was questioning him about a night at the Simpson house when Shipp and a woman the ex-cop described as a family friend were in the Jacuzzi. “You came by unannounced and asked to use his Jacuzzi?” Douglas asked.

“I didn’t come by--can I answer these questions? I didn’t come by unannounced. I was there. He’s forgetting I was there. We got there at 7 o’clock and played tennis,” Shipp said.

The angry side of Shipp also came out when he said Simpson treated him as a “servant,” the way he treated everyone else.

Carrying all that emotional baggage, Ron Shipp sat down to six interviews with Sheila Weller and she got his story.