Where the hell? So I had just a sense that we had done some of the first work on this that any suggestion that we had caused it, or brought down a president, was a stretch, to say the least, and not factual. Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps. / CBS. He was not lazy, she insisted. Woodward was able to soldier on and write 14 books. Ben Bradlee: We were being very careful. Raised in a traditional Republican household, Woodward was very well-educated and has been described as gentle. Woodward moved logically. Advertisement Pakula. Encyclopedia.com. Why did they think of you? How does this affect me, Nixon, the president? But then two by-the-book (sort of) dudes with wide ties and spiral notebooks -- Woodward and Bernstein -- came along in stoppage time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. ", Shepard agreed completely with Smith's assessment that, "There could not have been two more opposite people who had to work so closely together.". Writers or journalists who inspired you? Maybe it was 16, but he had fully a decade-plus of experience under his belt. They were tireless young reporters, fearless and not intimidated by the very powerful people they were investigating. In 1992, Bernstein wrote a cover story for The New Republic magazine indicting modern journalism for its sensationalism and celebration of gossip over real news. They had a much-publicized extramarital relationship in 1979. In addition, they tracked down and interviewed a large number of people who gradually revealed various pieces of the puzzle. Thats a quote from the movie and the book. What about you? Where were you when he resigned, and what were your feelings? Pakula wrote that Redford would have to scrap his charm. Between June 1972 to November 1973, Felt spoke with Bob Woodward 17 times, originally confirming leads the pair found, but eventually, began to offer new information to the team. display: block; Were much better friends than we were at the time. And he would be going over to the White House to give Nixon the news that he didnt have any his support in the Senate was eroding. You want it to be fair. Mr. Bradlee, what were your emotions when Nixon resigned? You are an observer and you have to work pretty hard to preserve your outsider status, but that is what you get to do as a reporter. Ben Bradlee: He sure did. Bernstein's biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton, A Woman In Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, was published by Alfred A. Knopf on June 5, 2007. After graduating from Yale University, he joined The Washington Post; nine months later, he was assigned the Watergate break-in story. Would I run like that again?. The Post editors concluded that he was not ready for a major metropolitan daily newspaper, and arranged for him to take job as one of four reporters at a small suburban weekly, The Montgomery County Sentinel. Ben Bradlee: His name was Griswold, and he had been the dean of the Harvard Law School. One of the sources I can now reveal I mean, I have talked about was Senator Goldwater, who was a great friend of my wifes family, and I used to talk to him all the time. Margaret later became a government minister in her own right. I didnt like the Navy, I didnt like Vietnam, I didnt like the war, and was disappointed in myself that I didnt figure out how to adjust to being a part of this that I didnt like, and so I didnt quite have the guts to run away or stand on principle. I think pride is hubris. "They couldn't be more different. He was rebellious, which led to him failing out of college. Bob Woodward: I dont know whether I feel pride. I called my father and said Im not going to law school, but have this job at a newspaper he had never heard of. We're lucky to have Woodward and Bernstein -- so young in 1972 -- still with us. To a certain extent, I always saw myself as a lawyer. In February the U.S. Senate voted seventy to zero to establish a committee of four Democrats and three Republicans to investigate the Watergate affair. Early one Saturday morning, June 17, 1972, the Posts city editor called Woodward to tell him that five men with cameras and electronic surveillance equipment had been arrested breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex. Bernstein was the first to suspect that President Nixon was involved, and he found a laundered check that linked Nixon to the burglary. Whats the government up to? Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. I think in the atmosphere we are in now, somebody who would get up and propose some of the things that were done in Vietnam, like conducting the war when we didnt believe in it, or burglarizing, or wiretapping, or doing the abusive things of Watergate, I think its so ingrained that there are enough people who would stand up and say, We cant do that. And that this wasnt just a cover-up of a burglary. Did they support you, or did they think it was a little strange? Tell us a little bit about what actually happened. He met his Deep Throat source secretly to get as much information as possible. By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. It was the first film I ever made like this, Hoffman told me. It was, after all, the courts unanimous ruling in July 1974, ordering Nixon to surrender tapes subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor, that sealed the presidents fate. And most jobs, if you are a lawyer or a doctor, you have to deal with clients, patients who have boring problems or diseases that are routine, and of course, the definition of news is non-routine. Whats going on in the town in culture, in the nation, in the world is news, and you get to work on that. [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]. Alicia Shepard fills in the gaps in her very candid book, "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate.". It's the system. We talk all the time. ", Fame, Shepard observed, "played a huge role in changing their lives forever. He wanted to understand Woodward and Bernstein deeply so he could capture their true characters and motivations for the movie. AllRightsReserved. Encyclopedia of World Biography. The best duos complement the other's strengths. He always saw me as a lawyer. Im sure it would have been more interesting. This is not your average burglary.. Bob can formulate and Carl can draw conclusions.. What did you mean by that? It came out in the Ervin Committee hearings in the Senate. It is, however, a simplistic trope that not even Watergate-era principals at the Post embraced. It also made Woodward and Bernstein the most famous journalists of all time. That writing was actually on the wall the whole time. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). During Watergate, no matter how well Bernstein reported the story, he was pegged by Post editors as the bad boy of the duo -- always late, unreliable and quick to hype his leads. Such speculation sometimes pointed to W. Mark Felt, a former senior FBI official. Not bad, as they say, and what legs! JAWORSKI, LEON } Both men continued to work for the Post. A year later, he was back at the Post, and at age 29 found himself in the middle of one of the biggest stories of the century. What the hell were they in there for? And once you are convicted of a felony, you cant own television stations, so it would have cost us all the television stations. Ben Bradlee: Well, we were tired. So you are dealing a glancing blow to whats out there. Yes. Who were your favorite authors? The rest of them all got away with it. Bob Woodward: No, not that I can think of. Where did you work? And he went, CIA, Central Intelligence Agency. And I know my reaction was one of Oh! His father was a judge and Woodward eventually entered the Navy after graduating from Yale. In some ways, Carl lives in the shadow of Bob Woodward. Are there particular books that you remember? The distinct memories I have of books are from college. Listen to the music that blared in static-y mono glory from 77, WABC, on the beach those Watergate summers, from Lynyrd Skynyrd ("Now Watergate does not bother me") to David Bowie ("Do you remember your President Nixon?"). Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. It was embarrassing that they had this great story and we didnt. So much has happened since then. Woodward, 60, whose parents divorced when he was 12, is the son of a Midwestern Republican judge, graduated from Yale in 1965, and joined the Navy. Ephron delivered Max prematurely after finding out. The recordings captured Nixon, six days after the burglary, agreeing to a plan to deter the FBI from pursuing its Watergate investigation. When they found such a player in their legendary source "Deep Throat" -- later revealed as deputy FBI director Mark Felt -- they seemed blind to the reality that Felt wasn't motivated by an altruistic loyalty to the nation or the truth but by blind career ambition and petty revenge. When will all the truth come out? Quite optimistically. There are hundreds of millions of American dreams. Goes Out newsletter, with the week's best events, to help you explore and experience our city. Robert Dole, and Doles successor as the chairman of the Republican Party, George Bush the first. On the other hand, Bernstein was born to a Communist Jewish family. Harry S. Truman Light in August; Absalom, Absalom; The Bear, that little novella. In her interview with Pakula, Ephron tried to rehabilitate her boyfriends reputation. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Ben Bradlee: Because the kids were right. [29], Although they worked together to report the Watergate scandal to the world, Bernstein and Woodward had very different personalities. Soon after the Nixon resignation, Bernstein and Woodward began work with a team of researchers on The Final Days, an account of the last months of Nixon's presidency, based on interviews with 394 people. Thank God. How did you do that? They were after us and The New York Times. Mr. Certainly during Watergate, it didnt get transmitted to Carl Bernstein or myself through them. We want to thank you for talking with us today. So its not inevitable that the system works. In a very different summer -- 2011 -- I had the good fortune to visit Spain with my family shortly before sending my daughter off to college. The duo of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have become synonymous with reporting the comings and goings of the Watergate scandal. Dont tell me never. And I remember thinking and feeling quite motivated that she was saying the standard here is the bar is quite high. Are you and Bernstein still friends? Nixon Exceptionalism and the triumph of objectivity kept a focus on "what did the president know and when did he know it," the provable fact-based lie, liberated from anything that might be corrupted by debatable policy or ideas. It was very complicated, then and now. In the watergate scandal, Jaworski, Starr, Kenneth Winston Ben Bradlee: Four hundred stories about Watergate in The Washington Post Four hundred in two years and two months. See also Myron J. Smith, Watergate: An Annotated Bibliography (1983).Updated information gathered from simonsays.com, an online service. I didnt start reading seriously until probably junior high school. Trending News Felt brazenly denied having been Woodwards source. They show how Pakula came to view his protagonists. The Iran-Contra Affair involved a secret foreign policy operation directed by White House officials in the national security counc, Truman, Harry S. Still, facts and events from the book were questioned by Nixon's friends and family, and some obvious sources denied ever speaking with Bernstein and Woodward. [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. Carl Bernstein has some strong words for what his former colleague's revelations mean for the Trump presidency and democracy itself.On Wednesday The Washington Post published a preview of Bob Woodward's forthcoming book, Rage, in which Trump told Woodward in March that he knew COVID-19 was serious but "wanted to always play it down." Six months later, 190,000 people have died in the U.S. from . And it was the origins of the tradition of every scandal after having the suffix, "gate" added onto it at the end of its title to stress how important it is. Leon Jaworski, like richard m. nixon, came from a poor, deeply religious background. The burglary was revealed as part of an extensive program of political espionage and sabotage run by Nixon subordinates at the White House and its political campaign organization, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP, or, as referred to in most later press coverage, CREEP). She said Bernstein was driven to uncover the Watergate story because he wanted to prove everyone at the Post wrong. Woodward relied on one source whom he refused to identify even to his editors except by the code-name "Deep Throat.". In January 1975, five months after President Nixon had resigned, Pakula flew to Washington to begin in-depth interviews with a dozen of the principals involved in unraveling the Watergate tale. Bob Woodward: Yes, and each week it got more and more interesting. The shadowy man was the compass to point the journalist duo in the right direction. But they grew to like one another" and are very good friends now. Do you think being the oldest had an influence on your life? It still runs on television, is played widely in journalism schools and often is used as shorthand in high schools to teach about one of the most corrupt times in U.S. politics. Were there other writers in your father or mothers family? The truth that few wanted to confront was Nixon wasn't really unique at all -- just a peculiarly rotten and inept defender of a system, the national security state, that actually didn't work at all, that was corrupt to its very core. Beyond that, the deeper problem of Nixon Exceptionalism is that it established new standards for what constituted presidential misconduct -- standards that weren't based on the discredited ideas of the 1960s, but the "objective" standards of the Watergate era. How long had you been at the previous paper? He said, Youre crazy. And at the same time, it was my decision. And she said, When will we know the full story of Watergate? [3] In 1966, Bernstein left New Jersey and began reporting for The Washington Post, where he covered every aspect of local news and became known as one of the paper's best writing stylists.[15]. The Supreme Court ordered the president to turn over his tapes, which really sunk him the smoking gun tapes at the end. 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". So why not take Woodward at his word? We were reporting on the Presidents men, and the White House people, the Attorney General, John Mitchell, people in the Nixon campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President, and the focus was not Nixon. Ben Bradlee: I was at The Washington Post, and I couldnt believe it. Bernstein and Woodward did not, all by themselves, bring about the destruction of the Nixon presidency, but some historians of the period do credit their early investigations with both informing and stimulating the official investigations by a special prosecutor, the courts, the Senate Watergate Committee, and the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives that eventually forced Nixon to resign when it was revealed that he had participated in the cover-up almost from the beginning. W. Mark Felt, Sr., a retired associate director of the FBI, revealed that he had provided Woodward with details of the Watergate cover-up. At the end of his military service, Woodward applied to Harvard Law School, and was accepted for the fall 1970 term, but he chose to pursue a career in journalism instead. With the full support of their editor, Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward and his Post colleague Carl Bernstein continued to pursue the Watergate story, after other news outlets had dropped the story. Bob Woodward: Well, we looked at it differently. Despite this, the Nixon White House became suspicious that Felt was leaking information to the press. The Watergate scandal may officially date to June 17, 1972, but August 8, 1974 was truly the night they drove ol' Dixie down, as it were; I watched with a sense of awe and disbelief on a 13-inch black-and-white set as our President Nixon resigned, refusing to go to bed, watching his "political obituary" until they finally signed off and played the Star Spangled Banner at 2 a.m. By the time the movie of "All the President's Men" -- the tale of how Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward broke some of the big stories of Watergate -- hit the theaters, I was 17 and seeing it with my first girlfriend. Were there other people that inspired you? 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. I cant remember, but there were so many. More so than the book, the cinematic adaptation of All the Presidents Men placed Woodward and Bernstein at the decisive center of Watergates unraveling. 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. The New York Times played the lead role but we played a role too. Encyclopedia.com. My God, it looked like the end of the world! But three or four days later, we got a copy of them from Ellsberg, only we didnt have three months to study them. There was even a movie made about the scandal and their role in it, "All The President's Men.". Together, they became Hollywood icons. Very forceful, very insistent that we write essays to answer questions, and not short answers. While a young reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Bernstein was teamed up with Bob Woodward, and the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. Bob Woodward: Is the CIA connected to this? [citation needed], Two years after leaving ABC News, Bernstein released the book Loyalties: A Son's Memoir, in which he revealed that his parents had been members of the Communist Party of America. What made you back the kids, Woodward and Bernstein? Some people think I was in intelligence. Was he the more experienced journalist at the time? The notes from Pakulas interview with Ephron reveal a key to his understanding of Woodward and Bernstein. When Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published their groundbreaking Watergate reporting that led to the resignation of former President Richard Nixon in 1974, the duo thought he would be the. 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. 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. We had one day. 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. Robert Redford played Woodward; Dustin Hoffman played Bernstein. Bob Woodward: Yes, and then later, my parents were divorced, and my father remarried a woman who had three kids also. [14] While there, he won first prize in New Jersey's press association for investigative reporting, feature writing, and news on a deadline. It was never conclusively established that this had been done by the Nixon campaign, but one of the people in the White House acknowledged to one of our reporters that he had written it. Bob needed Carl because Carl was pushy. Not one of the 17 stories he filed was printed. Bob Woodward: If somebody came from Mars to America and went around for months or years, and then you asked them who has the best jobs, they would say the journalists, because the journalists get to make momentary entries into peoples lives when they are interesting, and get out when they cease to be interesting. Carl had a harder time. We were told that before we could write it, but yes, we knew it. And there came a time when we had to get her, okay, and the lawyers started off by telling her the lawyer was one of the greatest men, even though he didnt approve of publishing it but the way he told her that was just so important. So we tried to just keep people out of the building. Its our job to figure them out.. I would have been more effective.. We wanted to be sure that it wasnt sabotaged in some way by, you know, printers slipping in the F word or something like that that was going to screw it up. Richard Matthew Pious Hunt W. House. So I called the White House and asked for Mr. Hunt, and he came on, and I said, Why is your name in the address books of these two burglars who were caught in the Democratic Headquarters? And he screamed out, Good God! and hung up the phone. Mr. Woodward, theres a last question wed like to ask. All talk. To many, the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, where the burglars were bugging phones that belonged to the Democratic National Committee, and the ensuing cover-up still don't make sense. Mr. Bradlee, by the time of the Watergate affair, the Post had already come into conflict with the Nixon administration over the Pentagon Papers. The first report featuring the now legendary journalists came on June 19, 1972, two days after the break-ins and arrest of the conspirators (via Constitution Center). So I dont make those kinds of assessments. I had fallen in love with some books at a younger age like Swiss Family Robinson, adventure stories, but I tried to read Crime and Punishment, and read some other books, and then in high school I took a course reading books, and that really kind of focused me on the value of a book. In those days, you worried terribly about typos. And my last year, I served in the Navy here in Washington and lived over on P Street and decided I would get a subscription to a paper called The Washington Post that had a young, very feisty editor named Ben Bradlee, and started reading the Post, and during that year, 1969-1970, you could just feel the energy in the newspaper. And that in a little way, and often in a significant way, thats realized. 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. (February 22, 2023). However, the wiretapped failed to work properly and on June 17, five of the men broke back into the DNC's office in the Watergate Hotel. He'd started at age two, I think. By day, he circulated in the citys government offices, and pressed civil servants for every piece of information that might prove useful. Bernstein could be right intuitively -- but dangerous left to himself, Pakula wrote in his notes. Bob Woodward said that Lewis "laid the foundation for what the paper was able to do in reporting the story." Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Bob Woodward: Yes, we are. Were you the only child? Bob Woodward: In the family I was raised in: a brother, a sister, two stepsisters, a half-sister. How would you summarize that? Woodwards critics insisted that this informant was a fabrication, or at best, a composite based on a number of sources. His parents were members of the Communist Party. Carl tried his hand in television, at ABC News (and was a consultant at CBS News for awhile). So, yeah, I think they were friends. The real crimes of the last 40 years -- the political power of an American kleptocracy that has crushed the nation's middle class, the state of permanent wars abroad and the loss of the public square to a militarized police force at home -- didn't fit into the box that Woodward and Bernstein and the Watergate scandal helped to create. Mr. Woodward, there is an interesting scene in the book and in the film All the Presidents Men where you tap out a story and Carl Bernstein immediately starts rewriting it, and youre miffed. What it turned out was that the question hinged on whether or not he had told that to the grand jury, and since he hadnt, he was able to say No. He wasnt asked was there a slush fund, which, of course, there was. That we do explain enough about whats going on. Just it was terribly, critically important that we do it right and that we not brag, not seem to be bragging, and that we didnt allow any television in there for days. Woodward and Bernstein reflect on Watergate and its place in American history. Bob Woodward: Not really. Samuel Dash, the Democratic counsel to the Senate Select Committee chaired by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, argued in his later book on the Senate investigation, Chief Counsel, that the admirable, early investigative reporting of Bernstein and Woodward had now degenerated into what he called "hit and run" journalism based on leaks from the committee and jeopardized the ability of the legal system to track down and punish the guilty. After the clapping died down, Woodward observed, "There was lots of applause, but it wasn't universal.". Alicia Shepard fills in the gaps in her very candid book, "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of. 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. The next year, when I entered college determined to be a reporter just like the guys that Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman had portrayed on the screen, there was a surge in enrollment in journalism schools. He started working for the Washington Post in 1971, nine months before the Watergate break-in. Although Woodward was reluctant to talk about himself as a reporter, he was determined to expose other peoples secrets. For example, talk about how it affected Muskie. They both got married during the heady days of Watergate, Carl most famously to Nora Ephron. His detailed notes, first made public in December 2005, were donated by his wife to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences after his death in 1998 in an automobile accident. Woodward also got a dig in about Bernsteins famed love of the ladies, recalling Bernstein got a list of people who worked on the Richard Nixon re-election campaign from an ex-girlfriend.
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