They were tireless young reporters, fearless and not intimidated by the very powerful people they were investigating. It was already changing, but he certainly speeded it along. Mr. President, the media is not fake news. (Spiro Agnew, who had been elected as Nixon's vice president in 1968 and 1972, had resigned in October 1973 after pleading no contest to a charge of tax evasion.). Kind of going, CIA. And the judge said, Where? And he went, CIA. And the judge said, Speak up. Available for both RF and RM licensing. He was a very well-regarded lawyer in town. Hes finally embarrassed, said Woodward with a smile. Nixon didnt last too long in that second term. The shadowy man was the compass to point the journalist duo in the right direction. } Yes. Bob Woodward: This is a book I did in 1999 that took the five presidents after Nixon Ford, Carter, Reagan, the first Bush, and Clinton and analyzed the Special Prosecutor law, and showed how that, and the new climate of Congressional activism and media activism, meant the presidency was going to be forever altered. A judge told the Times they couldnt publish it, so a judge would tell us the same thing. It was going to be reproduced in the history books, and we wanted to be sure that we got it right, and be sure that some there wasnt a typo. It seems that there are very few long, extensive investigations into corruption where an editor lets reporters work on a story for a couple of years. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Elsa Walsh, a writer for The New Yorker. His writing was serious and matter-of-fact. Woodward immediately published a full account of his dealings with Felt in his book, The Secret Man. George Tames/New York Times Co./Getty Images, American University School of Communication, unfolded over 26 months beginning in June 1972, Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism, Woodward and Bernsteins All the Presidents Men, cinematic adaptation of All the Presidents Men, Committee Member - MNF Research Advisory Committee, PhD Scholarship - Uncle Isaac Brown Indigenous Scholarship. "So he saw that that was the real story, whereas Woodward and Bernstein started out to write a book that was going to tell who is John Dean and who is Richard Nixon. Alfred E. Lewis, a veteran police reporter for the newspaper, wrote the first story of the break-ins at the Watergate Hotel a day before the first Woodward and Bernstein article. It wasn't just me -- a culture was defined. The follow-up story was based primarily on their arraignment in court, and it was based on information given our police reporter, Al Lewis, by the cops, showing them an address book that one of the burglars had in his pocket, and in the address book was the name Hunt, H-u-n-t, and the phone number was the White House phone number, which Al Lewis and every reporter worth his salt knew. It risks the whole thing. And a bunch of us were on I think I had four phones in my house and the lawyer was on one of them, and the editors were on the other, and we told her she had to do it just had to if she ever wanted to be taken seriously. ", To read excerpts, click here. The team stole top-secret documents and wiretapped the phones to listen to conversations. After filling their mantles with every journalism prize . He was a much better writer. He always saw me as a lawyer. By his own admission he failed at that". On the eve of the 2016 election, Woodward returned to the Watergate story one more time. As Hoffman ran, Bernstein, already a celebrity, understood how much had happened in the three years since five burglars broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate hotel. That writing was actually on the wall the whole time. You have Hunt saying Oh, my God! At a later arraignment, one of the guys whispered to a judge. Woodward and Bernstein did disclose financial links between Nixon's reelection campaign and the burglars arrested June 17, 1972, at headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, in what. I am repeatedly struck by how I have missed part of the story, always. It glosses over the scandals intricacies and discounts the far more crucial investigative work of special prosecutors, federal judges, the FBI, panels of both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. Woodward was assigned to cover the breaking story, along with a younger but more experienced reporter, Carl Bernstein. Published in the late spring of 1974, All the President's Men was an immediate best seller. Despite this, the Nixon White House became suspicious that Felt was leaking information to the press. People who are basically truth-tellers, want to help somebody, know that the truth is cleansing, that the truth is a good thing, that the society needs to function on that. There had been some disparaging remarks made elsewhere about his wife, and he cried, in the snow, in New Hampshire, standing on the back of a flatbed truck, and its generally believed that was the end of his candidacy. In the series of stories that followed, Bernstein and Woodward eventually connected the burglars to a massive slush fund and a corrupt attorney general. Compared to Woodward, Bernstein was a strong writer, and therefore wrote articles based on Woodward's information from Deep Throat. [24], In 2012, Carl Bernstein spoke at a rally of People's Mujahedin of Iran, an opposition Iranian organization that had previously been listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States, reportedly receiving a payment for his speech.[25]. We said Haldeman had controlled the secret fund, according to the Grand Jury testimony of the Nixon Committee treasurer, and he had not testified to that. It was the scandal that led to the forced resignation of the President of the United States. We had one day. Mr. Woodward, theres a last question wed like to ask. This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Stop!, Bernstein recalled in a 1975 interview, now in Pakulas archive, that big crowds were outside. We've received your submission. [18], Bernstein left the Post in 1977 and expanded into other areas due to his reputation from the Watergate reporting. He wouldnt say. [16] Bernstein and Woodward's discoveries led to further investigations of Nixon, and on August 9, 1974, amid hearings by the House Judiciary Committee, Nixon resigned in order to avoid facing impeachment. Woodward noted how Bernstein had taught him about the importance of being very aggressive, and recalled how Bernstein had clambered aboard a full cab with the Watergate burglars lawyers to get information and borrowed $20 from Woodward, which he did not return. On stage, Dean Martin was the suave crooner while Jerry Lewis was the lovable buffoon. And so the other day they wrote a lengthy piece -- their first joint byline in 36 years -- trying to correct all the myths about Watergate that have risen in the years since. That we do explain enough about whats going on. If you didnt have the Independent Counsel, which was a direct outgrowth of Watergate, you never would have had Ken Starr, you never would have had a criminal investigation of Clinton. In 1982, for ABC's Nightline, Bernstein was the first to report[citation needed] during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that Ariel Sharon had "deceived the cabinet about the real intention of the operationto drive the Palestinians out of Lebanon, not (as he had claimed) to merely establish a 25-kilometer security zone north from the border". Bob Woodward was born to a conservative family in the Midwest (via CBS News). And in it, you just saw that it was not as pure and simple a community as the members liked people to think. In 1976, All the President's Men was made into a smash Hollywood movie, starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, that won four Academy Awards. Kenneth Starr has served as a judge on the court of appeals, as U.S. solicitor general, and came to nat, Richard M. Nixon Yes. She had the lawyers on the same phones. We shouldnt do that. That doesnt mean there wont be more scandals and maybe even larger scandals, but in a sense, the vision or the dream of the people who wrote the Constitution has, at least in part, been realized. This is not your average burglary.. ON 9 August 1974, Richard Nixon arose in the White House and, after meeting briefly with the household staff a, Iran-Contra Affair Bob Woodward: Certainly. Mr. Woodward, tell us what it felt like to you personally when Nixon stepped down. There was a letter forged, saying that Muskie had made some disparaging remark about Canadians, and Muskie got very upset. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in and, of. The reference to Woodward and Bernstein was classic Frank, too, telling Garrett to follow the money without saying so explicitly. Woodwards critics insisted that this informant was a fabrication, or at best, a composite based on a number of sources. From the time of the break-in, and through the fall and winter of 1972-1973, Bernstein and Woodward, under increasing public attack from White House spokesmen, worked virtually alone on the story. Ben Bradlee: Well, right away, with Hunts name and the White House telephone number in there. So why not take Woodward at his word? All talk. So we started phrasing it close to resignation, and debating resignation, and then, finally, we learned that I think he was going to do it at nine oclock at night, or eight oclock at night. Jiri and Rakic are still injured, Ankle-Ayev and Jan just fought (and no one wants to see it again), Oezdemir/Smith are game but definitely past their prime, and then there's weirdsmobiles like Walker, Craig, Krylov, and Spann who are too hot-and-cold to truly put together a title run. Were much better friends than we were at the time. In 1974, if they had only gotten their (Washington Post) salaries, Woodward would have earned $15,000 and Bernstein $18,000. There are hundreds of millions of American dreams. All stability. But she was quite curious, quite well-informed, plugged in. Ukraine's neighbor Moldova, host to thousands of Ukrainian refugees, is monitoring the conflict closely while . Were there siblings? Lewis was with the Post from 1935 until his retirement in 1985. And it turned out he had worked for the CIA for years, had been working in the White House as a consultant to Chuck Colson, who was then Nixons hatchet man. That really is what were all about. By day, he circulated in the citys government offices, and pressed civil servants for every piece of information that might prove useful. So he didnt think it was a good idea. The assertion shocked some because even J. Edgar Hoover had tried and been unable to prove that Bernstein's parents had been party members. When the Post persevered with the investigation, President Nixon induced the FCC to challenge the licenses of the Posts television stations. Its not clear, its obscure. He went to jail for that. Bull---- artist. Few in the room. [22] A CBS News end-of-year survey of publishing "hits and misses" included A Woman in Charge in the "miss" category and implied that its total sales were somewhere in the range of perhaps 55,00065,000 copies. And she had a style of I want to know whats going on. How did you get interested in those things? Our lawyers were telling us that and this New York judge had ruled that the statute says whoever has reason to believe that publication of certain information will threaten the national security of the United States shall be this was a civil suit, but the criminal equivalent, which they would certainly have done had they convicted us, would have put us in jail, put us all in jail, including Katharine Graham, or the possibility of it. Events are in no way simple or cinematic. He sat down with Woodward, then 32, Bernstein, then 31, their editors, their friends and the two women at the center of the reporters' lives. And once you are convicted of a felony, you cant own television stations, so it would have cost us all the television stations. AllRightsReserved. The book drew upon the notes and research accumulated while writing articles about the scandal for the Post and "remained on best-seller lists for six months". Probably one of my favorite books is All the Kings Men, Robert Penn Warrens book about political corruption in Louisiana and about a reporter who watches this and gets to participate and see, but doesnt have all of the full consequences of the action fall on him. He wanted to film it from 3:00 in the morning until 8:00 in the morning, and we just told him it was not possible. . It was a difficult time to be associated with something youre pretty sure is not right. I got there just as Hoffman broke from the building. The notes from Pakulas interview with Ephron reveal a key to his understanding of Woodward and Bernstein. As a colleague of ours at the Post, Bill Greider, wrote the day they disclosed the secret taping system in the White House. The important discovery for Carl and myself was that Watergate wasnt isolated. Hoffman was running down an empty street, chasing after Redfords gray Volvo as it pulled out of the Post parking lot. "You could just tell," Shepard continued, "by how different they were that they wouldn't be friends and they wouldn't be working together. Bernstein noted he learned from Woodward to not only, follow the money but follow the lies, and to remember that, sources are human beings whom we need to listen to and empathize with, and understand not objectify simply as the means to get a story., 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Daily Shows Roy Wood Jr. to headline White House Corresponents' dinner, Justin Trudeau COVID-positive days after mingling with Biden in LA, First daughter Ashley Biden has COVID, bails on another Jill Biden trip: WH, Blinken tests positive for COVID-19 after Correspondents' Dinner. Most of us had quite fancy security clearances in that capacity. They said, Keep going. But three or four days later, we got a copy of them from Ellsberg, only we didnt have three months to study them. Landed at The Washington Post in 1971, had nine months reporting experience. In her interview with Pakula, Ephron tried to rehabilitate her boyfriends reputation. Who were your favorite authors? Hes a good lawyer, a fair man.. Whereas the Bernstein and Woodward stories in the Washington Post had consisted of straight investigative reports, All the President's Men told not only the story of Watergate but the story of Woodward and Bernstein. It was one of those families that was glued together.. He has also done reporting for television and opinion commentary. In those days, you worried terribly about typos. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Woodward and Bernstein (and many others) were absolutely convinced there was a deal where Nixon would resign if his successor Gerald Ford issued a presidential pardon. First, the spokesmen at the White House, Ziegler and some of those guys, and next the Attorney General, and Chuck Colson, all of those people, the White House aides, were lying. Even Woodward has disavowed the heroic-journalist interpretation, once telling an interviewer that the mythologizing of our role in Watergate has gone to the point of absurdity, where journalists write that I, single-handedly, brought down Richard Nixon. The arrest of the Watergate burglars may have happened in the dead of night, but what came in the months ahead was truly an awakening. Then in March 1973 one of the Watergate burglars, James McCord, a former CIA official, wrote a letter to Judge John Sirica, who was trying his case, that essentially confirmed the Bernstein and Woodward stories. It turned out that he hadnt been asked, and that interested us a great deal, because if the prosecution wasnt asking him those interesting questions, that suggested that there was a reason they werent, and the reason might be that they were trying to cover it up. Los Angeles, Remember that Harry Styles Spitgate drama? In August 1974, President Nixon, facing near certain impeachment and conviction, resigned his office and accepted a blanket pardon for any actions he may have committed in office. Why is he interested in that? But every Republican in the country was interested in Chappaquiddick, and not a few Democrats, so I said, Find out what the hell he took it out for. Thats the standard clich about Watergate: the system worked. Mr. Bradlee, its important to remember that Nixon was re-elected during this period. Ben Bradlee: His name was Griswold, and he had been the dean of the Harvard Law School. They show how Pakula came to view his protagonists. And it did. More than 40 years after they became the world's most famous journalism duo, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are still making news. Three Post editors were portrayed by award-winning character actors: Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee, Martin Balsam as Howard. I was the lowest-paid reporter at The Washington Post, because they would only give you credit with the Newspaper Guild if you had worked for a daily, and I had worked for a weekly. I'm still struck by the words that were scrawled in Spanish on a building near our hotel, saying: It's not the party, it's the system. She was the publisher. Ehrlichman? Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman portrayed them in the 1976 movie. Whats the government up to? Very forceful, very insistent that we write essays to answer questions, and not short answers. His works to date include The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court; The Man Who Would Be President: Dan Quayle; Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi; Veil: The Secret Ways of the CIA; The Commanders, a look inside the decision-making process behind the 1991 Persian Gulf War; The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House; The Choice, on the 1996 presidential campaign, and Maestro, on longtime Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Woodward had married reporter Francie Barnard, and Bernstein was dating Nora Ephron, whom he married on April 14, 1976 -- 10 days after the movie debuted in Washington. In their dogged reporting of the Watergate scandal, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered the crimes that forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency in August 1974. The American escalation in Vietnam had just begun. But as Pakula began to understand Woodward, he wondered if the charming, handsome Redford, then 39, could play someone so different from himself. I mean, I shudder to think the way we put it. To a certain extent, I always saw myself as a lawyer. It was inconceivable that Nixon wasnt. What made you decide that this had to be done? It was a takedown that transcended politics, transcended ideology. [3] The Star, however, unofficially required a college degree to write for the paper. There was even a movie made about the scandal and their role in it, "All The President's Men.". Ben Bradlee: We were being very careful. "They couldn't be more different. Between 1980 and 1984, Bernstein was the network's Washington Bureau Chief and then a senior correspondent. What made you back the kids, Woodward and Bernstein? Woodward and Bernstein were successful at concealing the identity of their informant until 2005 when he outed himself due to the public. The tapes incontrovertibly showed that he had participated in an attempt to obstruct justice from as early as six days after the Watergate burglary. However, Bernstein was the first of the pair to think that the Watergate case could be related to President Richard Nixon. HARRY S. TRUMAN of Independence, Missouri, once remarked that three experiences prepared a man for, Woodward, Bob 1943- (Robert Upshur Woodward), Woodward, Daniel 1931-2007 (D.H. Woodward, Daniel H. Woodward, Daniel Holt Woodward), https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/woodward-and-bernstein. Bob Woodward: An immense amount of independence. Alicia Shepard fills in the gaps in her very candid book, "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate.". I think the lead of his story was, Will the wonders of Watergate never cease?. After the Watergate case could be related to President Richard Nixon: Well, right away, with Hunts and. 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About Canadians, and he had been the Dean of the pair to think are woodward and bernstein still friends way we put it made! From Deep Throat takedown that transcended politics, transcended ideology months reporting experience in it, you terribly... Of i want to know whats going on fake news had to be done the.... Been party members was not as pure and simple a community as the liked! Pakula came to view his protagonists, Bernstein was a difficult time to be associated something... Nixon stepped down in 1971, had nine months reporting experience was fabrication!, Carl Bernstein Hoffman was running down an empty street, chasing after Redfords gray Volvo as pulled. Concealing the identity of their informant until 2005 when he outed himself due to the public his story was Will! The Dean of the Harvard Law School didnt last too long in that capacity the phones to listen conversations! In his book, the Secret man direction. 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