So, a favorite Bible verse of mine in those days came from the words of Jesus Christ himself

who said to his followers, you must be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

And I took that quite literally and I would say to our team members, when you're working

in the environment that we are in. Sometimes we not only have to be wise as serpents,

we have to be downright snaky. And it was a laugh line, but the truth was being said in jest.

We had to be very clever about what we were doing.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Wabaro. This is Idali.

For the past few months, my colleagues, Jody Cantor and Joe Becker have investigated a secretive

years-long effort by an anti-abortion activist to influence the justices of the United States Supreme

Court. Today, Jody tells the story of the man who led that effort and who claims that long before

the leak of the ruling ending Roe vs Wade, another historic ruling was disclosed early to him.

It's Tuesday, November 29.

Jody, tell us about Rob Shannick. So Rob Shannick is a 64-year-old Evangelical minister.

Would you like us to call you Reverend Shannick for the purposes of this conversation?

Well, that would seem to be an easy question to answer, but the reason it's not is because my identity

during all those years was Reverend Shannick. Now...

Picture somebody whose demeanor is kind of grandfatherly, but our story with him starts in the 1990s

when he was a pretty extreme anti-abortion activist.

I thought any attempt to interrupt that natural span of life was the equivalent of murder.

And that drove my involvement in the pro-life movement. I saw it as the equivalent to the Civil Rights

Movement or to abolitionism in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries. So I felt I was doing the right

and moral thing and something that frankly was required of me by God.

...