Robert Upshur Woodward, born on March 26, 1943, in Geneva, Illinois, attended Yale University on a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship, after which he served for five years as a naval officer. Bob Woodward: Thats not humility, thats realism. In the watergate scandal, Jaworski, Starr, Kenneth Winston Most news outlets dropped the story, and Nixon was re-elected in a historic landslide. Los Angeles, Remember that Harry Styles Spitgate drama? #inline-recirc-item--id-abdd83c2-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d, #right-rail-recirc-item--id-abdd83c2-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d { 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. Where were you in the pecking order of siblings? Mr. Bradlee, when did it become clear to you that the Watergate break-in was something more than a simple burglary? 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). He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Elsa Walsh, a writer for The New Yorker. So this was over a period of days, I take it, that it got interesting. I think most people feel that the old Post would have just sat by. Ben Bradlee: How about the Boston Globe and the Catholic Church? The who-was-Deep-Throat conjecture kept Woodward, Bernstein and the heroic-journalist myth at the center of Watergate conversations. Bob Woodward: Certainly. How does this affect me, Nixon, the president? To a certain extent, I always saw myself as a lawyer. It was inconceivable that Nixon wasnt. They were tireless young reporters, fearless and not intimidated by the very powerful people they were investigating. Most of them didnt realize that the world had changed. We want to thank you for talking with us today. He was ten months further along in his career than Woodward when the scandal broke out. Bob Woodward: I was going to go to law school after five years in the Navy, so I was age 27, and I got a job at a weekly paper in Montgomery County, Maryland for $110 a week. I had a friend who read books like Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Mr. Woodward, at what point did you realize that President Nixon was implicated in this? Bob Woodward was at the very head of that pack, flaunting his access to the Bush White House while failing to ask the only question that really mattered. 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. Legendary Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were guests on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" on CNN. Special Prosecutor Cox and Jaworski investigated this, put lots of people in jail. 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. Five long years of unruly marches and campus takeovers hadn't toppled the Establishment. Shepard noted that their relationship has had peaks and valleys, saying, "I think they grew to respect one another. "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. I would have been more effective.. With astonishing regularity, Woodward has continued to produce bestselling books on previously hidden aspects of American life. You are trying to find out what really happened. The movie All the Presidents Men placed Woodward and Bernstein at the decisive center of Watergates unraveling. Encyclopedia of World Biography. The real crimes of the last 40 years didn't fit into the box that Woodward and Bernstein and the Watergate scandal helped to create. [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. It took some of us from the Watergate generation a long time to see it. [11] However, Bernstein was dismissed from the university after the fall 1964 semester for bad grades. One morning in June of 71 I think, they led the newspaper with it, with eight-column banners. 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. And whats sad about the Nixon presidency is not just the criminality and abuse of power, but the simple truth, to the best of my knowledge at this point, on those tapes no one ever says what would be good, what would be right for the country, what would be best for the country, which of course is what a president is supposed to do. Ben Bradlee: It is an interesting thing. head of the CRP. I mean, I shudder to think the way we put it. During his marriage to Ephron, Bernstein met Margaret Jay, daughter of British Prime Minister James Callaghan and wife of Peter Jay, then UK ambassador to the United States. He attended Yale University on a Naval ROTC scholarship, and majored in history and English literature. Muskie, in the emotion of the campaign, was trying to explain what had gone on. 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. I think journalism is a practice, like law, that you keep learning. Woodward moved logically. Sometimes, Felt would speak on the phone, but on other occasions, he would meet Woodward in a parking garage in Virginia. In 2005, the mystery surrounding the identity of Watergate informant Deep Throat was ended. 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. Where were you born? Without them, he likely would have served out his presidential term. Divorce is painful because it is unknown to a child. In The Last of the Presidents Men, Woodward told the story of Alexander Butterfield, the White House aide who disclosed the existence of President Nixons secret recording system, the revelation that ultimately led to Nixons downfall. One doesnt think of humility as a common quality of journalists for some reason. 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. So it was the classic kind of Winesburg, Ohio small town. What did you mean by that? 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. So you had the White House. And it in many ways is, I think, the principle under which she and her son, Don Graham, tried to run The Washington Post. 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. They had this it looked like a local burglary at the Democratic Headquarters, a police story. ", Fame, Shepard observed, "played a huge role in changing their lives forever. 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. The tapes were crucial to determining that Nixon had obstructed justice. Bob Woodward: Or The Sound and the Fury, which is his great book. Bob Woodward: Oh, yes. 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. 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. At that period, what did you like to read? In 1974, if they had only gotten their (Washington Post) salaries, Woodward would have earned $15,000 and Bernstein $18,000. It was a Saturday morning, I think the summer. The End of a Presidency (1974) by the staff of the New York Times provides a useful combination of analysis and chronology with a sampling of the major documents. He was rebellious, which led to him failing out of college. Kenneth Starr has served as a judge on the court of appeals, as U.S. solicitor general, and came to nat, Richard M. Nixon [12][13], In 1965, Bernstein left the Star to become a full-time reporter for the Elizabeth Daily Journal in New Jersey. How long had you been at the previous paper? 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. I worked quite hard, did a number of stories that the Post and The New York Times picked up. There were no bars in town. Editors looked around and thought, Who could we call in? Bob Woodward: No. [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. If anything, the intervening 25 years have solidified the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate, which I address and dismantle in my book Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism.. Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post during Watergate, told me that Pakula spent so much time with each of us. He is now Assistant Managing Editor of the Post, and has written nearly a dozen bestselling books. We had heard that they had this big blockbuster coming up, and suddenly, they just dropped this on us. Woodward immediately published a full account of his dealings with Felt in his book, The Secret Man. Nixon resigned from the presidency on August 9, 1974, after tape recordings that he had ordered made, and then tried to conceal from and deny to investigators, were made public. But then, of course, if you think about it, Nixon is the one who did himself in. Ben Bradlee: Four hundred stories about Watergate in The Washington Post Four hundred in two years and two months. 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. When expanded it provides a list of search options that will switch the search inputs to match the current selection. Bob can formulate and Carl can draw conclusions.. 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! How did you do that? They show how Pakula came to view his protagonists. After filling their mantles with every journalism prize . Was he the more experienced journalist at the time? Few in the room could recall a joint public appearance by the famous Washington Post reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal that brought down a president. Kind of going, CIA. And the judge said, Where? And he went, CIA. And the judge said, Speak up. Together, they followed the story and co-wrote the best-seller, "All the President's Men.". I know a lot about that story because my son was the editor at the Boston Globe who ran that investigation, and I think thats a perfect example of how newspapers can persist in the face of denials and correct wrongs. 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. Pakula didnt want facts alone. Ehrlichman? Do you see President Clintons impeachment related to Watergate? Mr. Bradlee, by the time of the Watergate affair, the Post had already come into conflict with the Nixon administration over the Pentagon Papers. We had Watergate. ", To read excerpts, click here. There was a letter forged, saying that Muskie had made some disparaging remark about Canadians, and Muskie got very upset. [14] While there, he won first prize in New Jersey's press association for investigative reporting, feature writing, and news on a deadline. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/woodward-and-bernstein, "Woodward and Bernstein That version of Watergate has long dominated popular understanding of the scandal, which unfolded over 26 months beginning in June 1972. 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). Three Post editors were portrayed by award-winning character actors: Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee, Martin Balsam as Howard. Ben Bradlee: I was at The Washington Post, and I couldnt believe it. Woodward was able to soldier on and write 14 books. More so than the book, the cinematic adaptation of All the Presidents Men placed Woodward and Bernstein at the decisive center of Watergates unraveling. 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. Carl had a harder time. And when, the next day, Woodward this is probably Sunday or maybe Monday, because the burglary was Saturday morning early called the number and asked to speak to Mr. Hunt, and the operator said, Well, hes not here now; hes over at such-and-such a place, gave him another number, and Woodward called him up, and Hunt answered the phone, and Woodward said, We want to know why your name was in the address book of the Watergate burglars. And there is this long, deathly hush, and Hunt said, Oh, my God! and hung up. When will all the truth come out? Quite optimistically. Neither of those marriages could withstand all that pressure and that fame and money. " Whos going to get what lead and put it together? Lets be sure for the record to say that it wasnt just the Post. Sometimes I was thought to be the more cautious one, but Carl (Bernstein) could be cautious, and I could be aggressive or overly aggressive. Who would be dumb enough to work on this story on a Saturday morning? And they thought of me immediately. These actions would lead to his resignation in August 1974. She said Bernstein was driven to uncover the Watergate story because he wanted to prove everyone at the Post wrong. He resigned. He continued the story of presidential leadership and foreign policy in Obamas Wars (2010). [30], They were also different in work styles. Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps. 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. A community high school history teacher named Elizabeth Duncan who taught American history and was a great teacher. 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. 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