I’ve always rolled my eyes at the notion that journalists are eyewitnesses to history. Yes, I was there for Barack Obama’s 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention. So were 20,000 other people. But with the recent publication of Elizabeth Warren’s new book, A Fighting Chance, I’ve realized that, for the first time in my career, I actually had enjoyed a front-row seat to something historical: The moment that turned Warren from someone who loved the press to someone who loathed it.

It was October 12, 2011, to be exact, and I was in Quincy, Massachusetts, along with Sam Jacobs of The Daily Beast. The two of us were writing magazine profiles of Warren, who’d just launched her bid for the U.S. Senate, and we were there to watch her stump for votes at a local diner. We both trailed the candidate as she went table-to-table, trying to stand far enough away so as not to make her artificial conversations even more artificial but close enough so that we could eavesdrop on them. The highlight undoubtedly came when Warren fed some pancakes to a baby and made her pitch to his grandparents. After she’d made her rounds, Warren’s press secretary, Kyle Sullivan, told Jacobs that he could sit down with her at the diner for his one-on-one interview. Sullivan informed me that my one-on-one time with Warren would come at the end of the day at a bar back in Boston.

Both interviews would wind up causing Warren some headaches. In her conversation with me, Warren—whose unmatched eloquence as a law professor explaining the financial collapse accounted for her then-nascent political career and once famously prompted Jon Stewart to proclaim that he wanted to “make out” with her—struggled to formulate a cogent argument against her opponent, Scott Brown. In my story, I wrote:

When I recently asked her to make the case against Brown, the sure-footedness she’s displayed on so many occasions suddenly deserted her. “This race is about America’s future, it’s about a choice,” she began confidently, before settling into a long, uncomfortable pause. She eventually continued, “Uh, uh, gosh, I know candidates are always supposed to have the great ten-second clip on how this works. Kyle”—she said, referring to her spokesman, Kyle Sullivan, who was sitting in on the interview—“is probably gnashing his teeth right at this moment. But”—she paused again—“it’s about whose side you stand on. Scott Brown is one of Wall Street’s favorite senators. Um, that’s not what I—I want to go to Washington—let me say it differently. Scott Brown’s one of Wall Street’s favorite senators. I want to go to the United States—I want to go to Washington to be the middle class’s favorite senator. Or the favorite senator of the middle class. Maybe that’s easier without the possessive.”

Slate’s Dave Weigel subsequently noted: “Had Zengerle put it all on camera, it might have had the same corrosive, viral impact on Warren that Herman Cain's bumbling chat with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had on him.”

The fallout from Warren’s interview with Jacobs, however, was far worse. In a Daily Beast article headlined “Warren Takes Credit for Occupy Wall Street,” Jacobs wrote: