WASHINGTON

In 1986, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal made an unprecedented secret deal with Justice William J. Brennan Jr., who had by then served on the Supreme Court for 30 years and was its leading liberal voice.

“I basically would sneak up to his chambers at 7 o’clock in the morning and interview him and go through papers,” the reporter, Stephen Wermiel, said last week. Over the next four years, Mr. Wermiel conducted 60 hours of interviews.

“I had access to everything,” he said. “I don’t think an outsider has probably ever been allowed to sit by himself with nobody watching him in a justice’s chambers and have access to anything that was there.”

Mr. Wermiel told no one but his family and The Journal’s Washington bureau chief. Under the terms of the deal, though, the paper had to forgo what could have been spectacular scoops.