Woodward and Bernstein were no closer to revealing who approved the break-in than they had been in June, and even further away from exposing the obstruction of justice that followed the. And when Redford wanted to film the movie in the Post, we told him he couldnt. Lets be sure for the record to say that it wasnt just the Post. A drone. A judge told the Times they couldnt publish it, so a judge would tell us the same thing. I may have been an extreme case, but not a unique one. Its not clear, its obscure. Much of their hard work was a quest for access to anyone who knew the real secrets of the Nixon White House. It was a Saturday morning, I think the summer. With the full support of their editor, Ben Bradlee, Woodward and Bernstein continued to pursue the story, and little by little uncovered a larger story of the abuse of power and the obstruction of justice. 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. 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. It took some of us from the Watergate generation a long time to see it. 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. Editors at the WaPo said that Lewis' early reporting and evidence findings are what convinced them that the story was greater than a simple break-in. What was that about? So you had a certain amount of independence? In general, Shepard said, "They had a hard time. 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. In 2005, the mystery surrounding the identity of Watergate informant Deep Throat was ended. And we were so scared that we were going to by this time, we knew that the front page was going to be a historical document. He has also done reporting for television and opinion commentary. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Hoffman was running down an empty street, chasing after Redfords gray Volvo as it pulled out of the Post parking lot. Where the hell? I suspect that most people from the generations that came after mine don't really know that much about Watergate other than that a president resigned in disgrace, the only time that's ever happened. When will all the truth come out? Quite optimistically. The Post played a critical role in the beginning, and Woodward and Bernstein came in at critical moments. Where were you in the pecking order of siblings? Carl Milton Bernstein (/ b r n s t i n / BURN-steen; born February 14, 1944) is an American investigative journalist and author.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.These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual . So I did not have two years experience. For the team that took down President Nixon, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein followed this format to a tee. You had a lot of Cuban or Spanish-speaking guys in masks and rubber gloves, with walkie-talkies, arrested in the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at 2:00 in the morning. Special Prosecutor Cox and Jaworski investigated this, put lots of people in jail. How did it happen? But she was quite curious, quite well-informed, plugged in. He had gone to Vietnam as a soldier, so he had fought in Vietnam, but he got convinced that it was a quagmire and that it was a great mistake and that by releasing this study, he could shine light into the darkest corners and change the course of the world. President Nixon attempted to use the office of the presidency to cover up the crimes and his involvement with any break-ins. What an incredible jump in your fortunes as a journalist, from one year on a little suburban paper to The Washington Post. "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. Other than Woodward and Bernstein, no personalities prominent in Watergate were the subjects of a bestselling memoir, the inspiration for a star-studded motion picture, and the protectors of a mythical source who eluded conclusive identification for decades. We talk all the time. It is, however, a simplistic trope that not even Watergate-era principals at the Post embraced. I am repeatedly struck by how I have missed part of the story, always. So we did, and there was no threat to the national security, and information, truth, is not a threat to security, and we believed that. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. Mr. Woodward, in your bookShadowyou talk about how Nixons presidency affected the presidents whove come since. 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. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. Ben Bradlee: A book had been taken out of the library. Bob Woodward: Is the CIA connected to this? But the real input comes from people who believe in a free press, believe in the First Amendment, believe in open discourse as much as possible, hate secrets, hate secret government, hate secret concentrations of power. At 2 a.m. yesterday, the Watergate scandal turned 40. Bob Woodward: June 17, 1972. Shepard discussed it with co-anchor Harry Smith on The Early Show Tuesday. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. "They couldn't be more different. Its our job to figure them out.. Id have drinks with him early all of late July and early August. 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And no one goes back or slows down or digs enough, particularly me. Five long years of unruly marches and campus takeovers hadn't toppled the Establishment. } It looked like I was going to become a lawyer, and my father to a certain extent was my model. The reporters were all there, and the editors were there, working on the copy, and there was some guy writing for the next morning. Most news outlets dropped the story, and Nixon was re-elected in a historic landslide. Make no mistake (as Nixon himself was fond of saying), what Woodward and Bernstein accomplished from 1972 to 1974 was incredible and deserving of all the accolades they received at the time. Perfect. This was the lesson of Watergate: Nixon Exceptionalism, that the 37th president was so "uniquely and pervasively" corrupt that the fair and decent American "system worked" and removed him on the basis of the objective, indisputable fact of his evil. Five burglars had been caught red-handed in the complex, where the Democratic National Committee had its headquarters; four of them turned out to be ex-CIA agents who did security work for the Republicans. [14] While there, he won first prize in New Jersey's press association for investigative reporting, feature writing, and news on a deadline. / CBS. They were tireless young reporters, fearless and not intimidated by the very powerful people they were investigating. Advertisement Pakula. Are there particular novels of his that you remember liking? Bernstein has been married three times, first to a fellow reporter at The Washington Post, Carol Honsa; then to writer and director Nora Ephron from 1976 to 1980; and since 2003 to the former model Christine Kuehbeck. I didnt start reading seriously until probably junior high school. Carl Bernstein (born 1944) and Robert Woodward (born 1943), investigative reporters for the Washington Post, wrote a series of articles about the Watergate scandals that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. (February 22, 2023). Irresponsible., * Carl saw Bob as a machine. And in that same space of time, Woodward's written five books. After a brief period of national self-examination and a few watered-down post-Watergate reforms, the sins that Woodward and Bernstein attribute uniquely to Nixon, including the squelching of dissent and the discrediting of journalism, resumed with an intensity just as great as the early 1970s. Bob Woodward: Yes. A man named Mark Molsey on the last book and the next book; Ive done 11 books. Where did you work? And he went, CIA, Central Intelligence Agency. And I know my reaction was one of Oh! Bob Woodward: I dont know whether I feel pride. Bob Woodward: Quite late. As a teen, he was a "pool shark," a leader of the Jewish service organization B'nai Brith, and a copyboy at The Washington Star. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. I mean, I believed it, because it was I knew it was coming. Bernstein and Woodward's All the President's Men (1974) and The Final Days (1976) capture the excitement of the chase, the enormity of the constitutional crisis, and the agony of the downfall. Not bad, as they say, and what legs! Why did they think of you? Redford can get that compulsive drive. Like an assistant secretary of defense who had been a year or two before head of a big Republican contributor and head of an automobile company and, you know, sold cars in Omaha or somewhere. 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. The Supreme Court ordered the president to turn over his tapes, which really sunk him the smoking gun tapes at the end. That the difficulties they put up to prevent the truth from coming out had been overcome. But in the end, its only a glancing blow. It was one of those families that was glued together.. Maybe it was appropriate that most of America slept through the occasion. What other American journalist could do that? 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. 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. This is not your average burglary.. The tapes incontrovertibly showed that he had participated in an attempt to obstruct justice from as early as six days after the Watergate burglary. When you were a child, who most inspired you? He said, Youre crazy. So he didnt think it was a good idea.. Starting with the Watergate burglars, the two young reporters traced the money used to finance the break-in, following it by October 1972 to John Mitchell, formerly Nixon's attorney general and at the time of the break-in the "Woodward and Bernstein He was not lazy, she insisted. These were the values, after all, that purged America of the evil Richard Nixon -- not the dirty (bleep)ing hippies. [19] He began investigating the secret cooperation between the CIA and American media during the Cold War. We're lucky to have Woodward and Bernstein -- so young in 1972 -- still with us. So we were terribly worried, and we didnt its a big newspaper and a lot of people in it, and you cant control all of them even if you wanted to. Mr. Bradlee, by the time of the Watergate affair, the Post had already come into conflict with the Nixon administration over the Pentagon Papers. Some people think I was in intelligence. 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. Most of us had quite fancy security clearances in that capacity. Mr. Bradlee, when did it become clear to you that the Watergate break-in was something more than a simple burglary? 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. Woodward, with Scott Armstrong, wrote a study of the Supreme Court, The Brethren (1979); and Woodward wrote a study of the death by drug overdose of comedian John Belushi, Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (1984). But even they seemed to take the wrong lessons from what they'd done. Divorce is painful because it is unknown to a child. His father was a judge and Woodward eventually entered the Navy after graduating from Yale. [16], In 1992, also for Time, Bernstein wrote a cover story publicizing the alliance between Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan. And a college dropout. 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. ", Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Review: Michael B. Jordan is the one to fly now with Creed III, Hunger Games star Jena Malone says someone I had worked with sexually assaulted her, Review: The gorgeous new movie Pacifiction will hypnotize you. For example, the newspapers publisher during Watergate, Katharine Graham, pointedly rejected that interpretation during a program 25 years ago at the now-defunct Newseum in suburban Virginia. But there's a lot that's not generally known about Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Ben Bradlee: That we had really done a really good job. Ben Bradlee: John Mitchell, Attorney General Mitchell. We didnt allow any television people in. But the new Woodward and Bernstein piece was remarkably good, in a sense, of placing the crimes of the Nixon White House in a broader campaign of a war against lawful dissent to the Vietnam War that expanded to the media and the opposition Democrats. In The Choice, he uses his proven research methods for an illuminating examination of the quest for the presidency. Deep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information in 1972 to Bob Woodward, who shared it with Carl Bernstein.Woodward and Bernstein were reporters for The Washington Post, and Deep Throat provided key details about the involvement of U.S. president Richard Nixon's administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal. Yes. Mr. Woodward, once you heard one of the burglars say he worked for the CIA, where did you take it from there? Encyclopedia of World Biography. It taught me the benefits of collaboration, and that collaboration is a wonderful thing. We understand you got started in the newspaper business right out of the Navy. Didnt you have a chat with the Posts publisher, Katharine Graham, in the midst of all of this? And in it, you just saw that it was not as pure and simple a community as the members liked people to think. Somebody who through force of personality made history interesting and important. The rest of them all got away with it. He also felt compelled, as a reporter, to point out that Bernstein's remarks were . 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. I now do my books alone, but I have a full-time assistant who is kind of my collaborator. And I was going on an unknown path, and that concerned him, but when I got into it and then went to work for the Post, he was quite supportive. I have forgotten which one it was. Encyclopedia.com. Ben Bradlee: His name was Griswold, and he had been the dean of the Harvard Law School. On the other hand, Bernstein was born to a Communist Jewish family. Woodward gained valuable information through an unnamed informant, nicknamed Deep Throat, by Post managing editor Howard Simon. He was ten months further along in his career than Woodward when the scandal broke out. Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of Communication. It was only later, when Dean testified, and the tapes came out, that it was quite clear that not only was Nixon involved, he was in charge of the cover-up. ", Shepard agreed completely with Smith's assessment that, "There could not have been two more opposite people who had to work so closely together.". Bob Woodward: Yes. 39 or 40 people in this White House staff went to jail. He wanted to use the presidency as an instrument of personal revenge, to settle scores, too often, and thats not what the presidency is about. Bob Woodward: Its the nature of the business. Nonetheless, the heroic-journalist myth became so entrenched that it could withstand disclaimers by Watergate-era principals at the Post such as Graham. 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. You want to deal a careful glancing blow. What the hell were they in there for? Since the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan closed the lid on the post-Watergate era, we've seen a president who WASN'T impeached for evading Congress to cut secret arms deals in Iran and fund a secret war in Nicaragua, a president who WAS impeached for lying about his sex life, and a president who WASN'T impeached for lying the nation into a war that killed thousands of American soldiers and innocent civilians, while carrying out torture and other violations of human rights more "perverse" than anything during Nixon's presidency. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. What were some of the mistakes? There was competition. He had the mannerisms. Were there other people that inspired you? But three or four days later, we got a copy of them from Ellsberg, only we didnt have three months to study them. 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. 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. We were more expert than a lot of the government witnesses who testified against us. Maybe we have a story and maybe we dont.. While Woodward interviewed their informant, known as "Deep Throat," Bernstein discovered cash payments from Nixon's reelection campaign in one of the burglar's bank accounts (via The Washington Post). 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. It has been said that as dark a chapter as Watergate was in the American presidency, in a sense, it showed the branches of government working. 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. 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. A long time to see it to think rest of them all away... 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