He always saw me as a lawyer. So it was the classic kind of Winesburg, Ohio small town. So in an odd way, those in my business have a million allies out there. December 26, 2006 / 7:23 AM Muskie, in the emotion of the campaign, was trying to explain what had gone on. For example, talk about how it affected Muskie. Maybe it was appropriate that most of America slept through the occasion. The movie made Woodward and Bernstein forever famous and has become a classic. 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. There was an election on in 72, and most of the rest of the country was saying, The Post is just playing politics, and all that stuff. }, First published on December 26, 2006 / 7:23 AM. Some questioned the credibility of the work due to the lack of footnotes and named sources, even though many acknowledged that it would have been impossible to write without the promises . Without them, he likely would have served out his presidential term. For over 30 years, the informants identity was known only to the man himself, and to Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee. Woodward! 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. They wanted to have a whole presidency where they could do what they wanted and no one would examine them or scrutinize them, and they got in trouble, a lot of them, because of this. Well, I was down there. What does it mean? William Mark Felt, the former FBI Deputy Director finally announced to the public his identity as Deep Throat, with Woodward and Bernstein confirming this fact (via History). Advertisement Pakula. Bob Woodward: Quite late. Mr. Bradlee, at what point did you get the inkling that the Oval Office was involved? 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. But she finally said, Well, okay. 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. The movie, which was released in April 1976 and starred Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, was relentlessly media-centric, ignoring the work of prosecutors and the FBI. 39 or 40 people in this White House staff went to jail. You should let it, He put $40,000 on credit cards to make his first film. What made you back the kids, Woodward and Bernstein? How did we get into committing 500,000 troops 10,000 miles away in a way that we could never win? Carl is Jewish, grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. The assertion shocked some because even J. Edgar Hoover had tried and been unable to prove that Bernstein's parents had been party members. There was the whole intelligence-gathering apparatus. After the Times had been estopped by a judge, we decided to publish them. 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. All the President's Men was made into a hit motion picture starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein (1976). So all the while that this was coming out, you were being very careful that there was enough confirmation of these things? You could feel that they took not an adversarial position toward government, but a position of skepticism, a position of there is accountability reporting. Bob Woodward: Well, of course, what Faulkner is trying to do is get to the interior, and in the end, as a journalist, you are trying to get to the interior. Anyway, it took two days, and we got confirmation that there was, and in fact there was a slush fund of $750,000. 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. Each of these presidents had their own way of responding. Hunt had been studying Ted Kennedy and checked books out of the library. You have kids who werent born at that time doing term papers on it at colleges and high schools. You are trying to find out what really happened. On the evening of June 16, 1972, a security guard at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., discovered a piece of tape on the lock of the door that, Jaworski, Leon The guts are supplied by the owners of the newspaper and the editors. That was the key. Max Frankel, chief of the Washington bureau at the NY Times, famously blocked coverage after hearing from the White House that it wasn't a story, even though they had confirmation early on from FBI . police in blue helmets fought young people in the street, great men were gunned down in their prime. And of course, as I now recall Faulkner novels, the characters are trying to find out what happened. The shadowy man was the compass to point the journalist duo in the right direction. You dont think of them as real authorities in the question of what is classified and what isnt, and what is a threat to the United States and what isnt. 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". They were tireless young reporters, fearless and not intimidated by the very powerful people they were investigating. Bob Woodward: No. Theres so much richness in his language, its almost the opposite of journalistic writing. It was also the fact that they were so different, and that they were lowly metro reporters. Thats the standard clich about Watergate: the system worked. Fresh out of the Navy, Bob Woodward washed out in his first attempt to work for The Washington Post, and went to work for a tiny suburban weekly. Mr. Bradlee, its important to remember that Nixon was re-elected during this period. Every time the White House denied something, the evidence became clear that it was the White House that was lying. I think the lead of his story was, Will the wonders of Watergate never cease?. In the end, the real exceptionalism of Richard Nixon was merely that he was dumb enough to get caught. Watergate reporters come together to discuss the 40-year-old scandal which resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Robert Redford played Woodward; Dustin Hoffman played Bernstein. My God, it looked like the end of the world! How did that come about? People had troubles, and people had secrets. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Thats why we all joined this business. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. This is not your average burglary.. 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. 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 . Mr. Woodward, theres a last question wed like to ask. I worked quite hard, did a number of stories that the Post and The New York Times picked up. It was one of the most incredible feelings that Ive had in my life because, you know, it had been a long time since we had started to work on the story, and I didnt exactly know who I was or who he was -- existentially, it was sort of a total mind----. When you began to work as a journalist, what was the reaction of your family? So, yeah, I think they were friends. Nonetheless, the heroic-journalist myth became so entrenched that it could withstand disclaimers by Watergate-era principals at the Post such as Graham. He was assigned to the police beat, from 7:00 in the evening to 3:00 in the morning, but he did not limit his work activities to his assigned hours. 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. Chris Pine finally sets the record straight, Oscars diversity improved after #OscarsSoWhite, study shows. In 2005, the mystery surrounding the identity of Watergate informant Deep Throat was ended. They were 30 and 31.". Ephron delivered Max prematurely after finding out. Bob Woodward: Sure. 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. Much of their hard work was a quest for access to anyone who knew the real secrets of the Nixon White House. Encyclopedia.com. After the clapping died down, Woodward observed, "There was lots of applause, but it wasn't universal.". Im sure it would have been more interesting. Later, along with Vatican expert Marco Politi, he published a papal biography entitled His Holiness. So this was over a period of days, I take it, that it got interesting. 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. The American escalation in Vietnam had just begun. The five Watergate burglars and several other Nixon subordinates, including former U.S. Attorney General Mitchell, were sentenced to prison terms. They were the first to reveal the tapes, and they were always ahead of the curve, but there was a lot of great reporting done by other people, Sy Hersh, the Los Angeles Times, they all did really good work. But she was quite curious, quite well-informed, plugged in. I didnt start reading seriously until probably junior high school. They were not hard to support, these young reporters, because they were right. Woodwards father was a prominent attorney, and hoped that Robert would follow in his footsteps. The reporters were all there, and the editors were there, working on the copy, and there was some guy writing for the next morning. 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. While Bernstein was surprised by how mythical Deep Throat became in American pop culture, he remains as much of a part of the Watergate story as Woodward and Bernstein. This time though, a security guard noticed that multiple latches on the doors were taped so they wouldn't lock and called the police, who caught the men in the act. What the hell were they in there for? [16], In 1992, also for Time, Bernstein wrote a cover story publicizing the alliance between Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan. 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. People who went to Wheaton College had to sign a pledge: no drinking, smoking, dancing, movies, playing of cards. Nixon didnt last too long in that second term. Hes a reporter doll. 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