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. display: none; Woodward and Bernstein reflect on Watergate and its place in American history. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. I remember going around and giving my name to lots of people, and they would say, Oh, youre Al Woodwards son. Bobs sucking up to people. You dont have a context for it, so it destroys the very notion of context, because the only context you know as a child is family. 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. He attended Yale University on a Naval ROTC scholarship, and majored in history and English literature. Bob Woodward: Yes. While Woodward has written books leveling criticisms against both Nixon and Trump, his critiques have not been limited to Republican presidents, and his praise is not limited to Democratic ones. Redford can get that compulsive drive. Bernstein and Woodward pursued documentary evidence by cross-checking telephone books, airline records, building directories, hotel records, andin what some claimed were violations of journalistic ethics confidential credit card and telephone company records. On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for any crimes he might have committed while in office, thereby cutting off further criminal investigation of the former president. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first for the coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, and second as the lead reporter for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was a Saturday morning, I think the summer. We've received your submission. Carl had a harder time. Hes a good lawyer, a fair man.. And we published the next day. [26] Bernstein and second wife Ephron already had an infant son, Jacob, and she was pregnant with their second son, Max, in 1979 when she learned of her husband's affair with Jay. Still, Felt resigned from the FBI in June 1973 after he was suspected of leaking information to The New York Times. And my reaction was, I told her, Well, Carl and I think that it will never come out, that Nixon and his White House are so good at obscuring things, of sealing off information, preventing disclosure, that well never know. She looked at me quite stricken and said, Never? Yes. You dont think of journalists automatically as patriots, one. Well, it turns out a lot of CIA people were, and they tried to use the CIA to cover up the FBI investigation, but they never pinned it on the CIA. This was later confirmed by both Woodward and Bernstein. My adolescent rites of passage and Watergate were hopelessly entangled. 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. Eighteen years after the Supreme Court ruled that they couldnt shut us down, the prosecuting attorney, who was the Solicitor General of the United States, wrote the Post a letter saying that in the whole Pentagon Papers, there was no threat to national security. One story that Ephron shared with Pakula concerned how the two reporters sparred as they raced to complete the book All the Presidents Men. Woodward, she told the director, could be so stubborn and bullheaded and had no instinct for writing. When Ephron and Bernstein were in Martinique on vacation, Woodward and Bernstein fought on the telephone, to the tune of a $400 bill, about verb tenses. Thanks to their investigation and reporting, the American people had a deep look into Nixon's role in the break-ins and cover-ups. Bob Woodward: Yes, and then later, my parents were divorced, and my father remarried a woman who had three kids also. It also made Woodward and Bernstein the most famous journalists of all time. [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. 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. He was also integral in finding vital evidence and information at the scene of the crime (per Mental Floss). That, at least, was the interpretation of the late Stanley Kutler, one of Watergates leading historians, who noted: You had to have that kind of corroborative evidence to nail the president of the United States.. What does it mean? 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. In 1974, if they had only gotten their (Washington Post) salaries, Woodward would have earned $15,000 and Bernstein $18,000. Would I run like that again?. So you would not go from the CIA to the White House instantly, but within several days, through the work of another reporter, we learned there was this cryptic entry in the address books of two of the five burglars that very simply said H. Divorce is painful because it is unknown to a child. ." Maybe it was appropriate that most of America slept through the occasion. When Woodward left the Navy, American involvement in Vietnam and domestic opposition to the war were at their height. Were you in intelligence? But in fact at that time, we were. He worked at ABC, CNN, and CBS as a political commentator, and was a spokesman in various television commercials. 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 . 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). Its our job to figure them out.. We actually published three papers with it before they stopped us, and then we were in the courts for 12 days. And she had a style of I want to know whats going on. Its that square, straight, intense, decent quality of Woodwards that works. I really we knew it, we knew it, we knew it, but we couldnt we were being told by the people who were telling us that if we publish it, hell change his mind and wont resign! 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. There was the whole intelligence-gathering apparatus. Bernstein could be right intuitively -- but dangerous left to himself, Pakula wrote in his notes. How did you get interested in those things? Perfect. 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. No surprises. [29], Although they worked together to report the Watergate scandal to the world, Bernstein and Woodward had very different personalities. He and 39 others, I might add. He was not lazy, she insisted. www.8days.sg When the Post persevered with the investigation, President Nixon induced the FCC to challenge the licenses of the Posts television stations. These actions would lead to his resignation in August 1974. That was the key. 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. Watergate reporters come together to discuss the 40-year-old scandal which resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Together, they became Hollywood icons. Mr. Woodward, there were mistakes made during Watergate, you have said in the book. We understand you got started in the newspaper business right out of the Navy. You get to see other peoples lives, and you chart the rise and fall of others, and youre not that involved. 39 or 40 people in this White House staff went to jail. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Bob Woodward: Well, we looked at it differently. It seems to me that to be a topnotch investigative journalist, you have to have a lot of guts in order to question some of these things. It was a White House operation. 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. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. 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. Bernstein and Woodward stayed on the story, though the government agencies they had helped to prod into activity now began to resent their continuing revelations. I mean, I lived in that place for those periods. 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. Woodward had married reporter Francie Barnard, and . The Supreme Court ordered the president to turn over his tapes, which really sunk him the smoking gun tapes at the end. He joined the Washington Post's metropolitan staff in 1966, specializing in police, court, and city hall assignments, with occasional self-assigned feature stories. Bernstein's career since Watergate has continued to focus on the theme of the use and abuse of power via books and magazine articles. Landed at The Washington Post in 1971, had nine months reporting experience. There were spies in all the Democratic candidates campaigns that had been planted and paid by the Nixon campaign. Ben Bradlee: The Pentagon Papers was a study commissioned by Nixon in the first or second year of his first term, 1970 or 69. But she was quite curious, quite well-informed, plugged in. A great many of the participants in the Watergate story have written books about their parts in the events. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Bob Woodward: Yes, we are. Whats not known? 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. The piston driving the Nixon administration was hate. I called my father and said Im not going to law school, but have this job at a newspaper he had never heard of. Do you see President Clintons impeachment related to Watergate? He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Elsa Walsh, a writer for The New Yorker. Bob Woodward may have achieved the greatest publishing success of his career with Fear, the inside story of turmoil inside the administration of President Donald Trump. The best show recs delivered to your inbox. police in blue helmets fought young people in the street, great men were gunned down in their prime. We had to be sure. But by end of 1976, they had an ugly breakup and went their separate ways. It seemed to always be about Nixon. Famously portrayed by Dustin Hoffman (Bernstein) and Robert Redford (Woodward) in the 1976 movie classic All the Presidents Men, the pair are far from best buddies and though they did not sit together on the dais, it appears some ice has thawed. That happened a long time ago. Will the luck of the Irish affect the Oscars? Each had strengths that complemented the others. He was a much better writer. The rest of them all got away with it. Woodward cautiously would have to go from one step literally to another. I say we publish it. And three of the journalists all hung up immediately, because we didnt want any we had what we came for, and we didnt want to let her change her mind. "Carl was the big thinker, and Woodward was the one that make sure it got done.". . Hes a reporter doll. 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. They both got married during the heady days of Watergate, Carl most famously to Nora Ephron. Bob Woodward: About six months after Watergate, after Carl and I had written many of almost all of our main stories, she called me up for lunch. In his obituary column written in 1994, writer Martin Weil had this to say about the late Lewis: "A familiar and trusted figure to top police officials, [Lewis] went into the building with investigators and remained there unchallenged through the day, gathering information available to no other news outlet.". Bob Woodward said that Lewis "laid the foundation for what the paper was able to do in reporting the story." 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. Although Woodward was reluctant to talk about himself as a reporter, he was determined to expose other peoples secrets. Mr. President, the media is not fake news. Bob Woodward: Thats not humility, thats realism. This practice was usually followed scrupulously, but broke down when Bernstein and Woodward wrongly claimed that Hugh Sloan, a CRP official, had implicated H. R. "Bob" Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, in testimony before a grand jury. In 1975, it was turned into a movie starring Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein and Robert Redford as Woodward which later went on to be nominated in multiple Oscar (including Best Picture nomination), Golden Globe and BAFTA categories. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in and, of. December 26, 2006 / 7:23 AM One midnight in June 1975, Bernstein watched as Pakula directed a scene. What made you decide that this had to be done? 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. In 2005, the mystery surrounding the identity of Watergate informant Deep Throat was ended. It was a difficult time to be associated with something youre pretty sure is not right. I think most people feel that the old Post would have just sat by. I have forgotten which one it was. While single, in the 1980s, Bernstein became known for dating Bianca Jagger, Martha Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor,[16] among others. Ben Bradlee: I was at The Washington Post, and I couldnt believe it. Will the luck of the Irish affect the Oscars do you see President impeachment... Expose other peoples secrets quality of Woodwards that works fact at that time, we looked it. Lawyer, a fair man.. and are woodward and bernstein still friends published the next day television..., 2006 / 7:23 AM one midnight in June 1973 after he determined! Since Watergate has continued to focus on the theme of the crime ( per Mental )... Watergate reporters come together to report the Watergate break-in and, of difficult! 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