We understand you got started in the newspaper business right out of the Navy. "Carl was the big thinker, and Woodward was the one that make sure it got done.". That version of Watergate has long dominated popular understanding of the scandal, which unfolded over 26 months beginning in June 1972. 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. We had such good sources. Both men continued to work for the Post. 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. [11] However, Bernstein was dismissed from the university after the fall 1964 semester for bad grades. Bob Woodward: As defendants, as tax cases, divorce cases, the full catastrophe of litigation. Are you and Bernstein still friends? But they missed decisive elements of Watergate, notably the payment of hush money to the burglars and the existence of Nixons White House tapes. More so than the book, the cinematic adaptation of All the Presidents Men placed Woodward and Bernstein at the decisive center of Watergates unraveling. Even Woodward has disavowed the heroic-journalist interpretation, once telling an interviewer that the mythologizing of our role in Watergate has gone to the point of absurdity, where journalists write that I, single-handedly, brought down Richard Nixon. 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. You dont think of journalists automatically as patriots, one. Chris Pine finally sets the record straight, Oscars diversity improved after #OscarsSoWhite, study shows. 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. Ben Bradlee: Its a good story. You should let it, He put $40,000 on credit cards to make his first film. 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. Yes. On the other hand, Carl Bernstein was the child of two Communist activists (per Washingtonian). Hes a good lawyer, a fair man.. 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. Mr. Woodward, in your bookShadowyou talk about how Nixons presidency affected the presidents whove come since. For example, talk about how it affected Muskie. "Woodward and Bernstein What does it mean? How would you summarize that? In The Choice, he uses his proven research methods for an illuminating examination of the quest for the presidency. Thats a quote from the movie and the book. This was our time, our story. 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. Author Alicia Shepherd said about the pair, "They couldn't be more different. Its that square, straight, intense, decent quality of Woodwards that works. 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. They were after us and The New York Times. Bob Woodward: Not really. Will the luck of the Irish affect the Oscars? He sat down with Woodward, then 32, Bernstein, then 31, their editors, their friends and the two women at the center of the reporters lives. Ben Bradlee: We were being very careful. Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss are "still good friends", a source has insisted, despite rumours the pair might have fallen out. Bernstein wrote in the 1996 book that the Pope's role in supporting Solidarity in his native Poland, and his geopolitical dexterity combined with enormous spiritual influence, was a principal factor in the downfall of communism in Europe.[21]. Would I run like that again?. }, First published on December 26, 2006 / 7:23 AM. Mitchell? 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.". I would have been more effective.. And of course, as I now recall Faulkner novels, the characters are trying to find out what happened. Bob Woodward: Of course. Together, they followed the story and co-wrote the best-seller, "All the President's Men.". So much has happened since then. . It took a long time, and if you examine the sequence, you could identify hundreds of points where the road to full disclosure would have been the thread would have been cut. Bernstein was portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film version of All the President's Men[28] and by Bruce McCulloch in the 1999 comedy film Dick. So you had a certain amount of independence? So why not take Woodward at his word? 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. ", After Watergate, Shepard says, the two went in "completely different directions. I now do my books alone, but I have a full-time assistant who is kind of my collaborator. 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. His father was a judge and Woodward eventually entered the Navy after graduating from Yale. That the difficulties they put up to prevent the truth from coming out had been overcome. Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post during Watergate, told me that Pakula spent so much time with each of us. 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. I remember going around and giving my name to lots of people, and they would say, Oh, youre Al Woodwards son. 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). Bob Woodward was born to a conservative family in the Midwest (via CBS News). My father was a lawyer there, and I worked as a janitor in his law office when I was in high school, and started reading the files and discovered that the projection that people in the town made about their own lives was in fact not who they were, that lots of them had secrets, and many of them were in my fathers law office files. Bob Woodward: Sure. 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. Ben Bradlee: It is an interesting thing. She was the publisher. What are you most proud of, looking back on your career so far? 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. What attracted you to the newspaper business? The dichotomy intrigued Pakula. The idealized journalist of the Watergate era and beyond was wedded to the highest ethical standards and driven only by truth, not by ideology. Thats why we all joined this business. That happened a long time ago. Was he the more experienced journalist at the time? All talk. Knopf had a first printing of 275,000 copies. Watergate was the biggest political scandal of the century. Ben Bradlee: The Pentagon Papers was a study commissioned by Nixon in the first or second year of his first term, 1970 or 69. 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. At 2 a.m. yesterday, the Watergate scandal turned 40. I mean, I believed it, because it was I knew it was coming. 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. 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. 1996 - 2023 American AcademyofAchievement. We're lucky to have Woodward and Bernstein -- so young in 1972 -- still with us. Bob Woodward: I was not married at the time and loved being free to do something. They were tireless young reporters, fearless and not intimidated by the very powerful people they were investigating. We had heard that they had this big blockbuster coming up, and suddenly, they just dropped this on us. He was a much better writer. [19] He began investigating the secret cooperation between the CIA and American media during the Cold War. Whereas the Bernstein and Woodward stories in the Washington Post had consisted of straight investigative reports, All the President's Men told not only the story of Watergate but the story of Woodward and Bernstein. When will all the truth come out? Quite optimistically. There are still, somewhere, embarrassing, Instagram-quality pictures of me wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a reel-to-reel tape-recorder that said, "Property of the Watergate Bugging Team.". He knew all about my mother, brother -- everything. (Jason Robards, who played Bradlee, is on screen only 10 minutes.). His works to date include The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court; The Man Who Would Be President: Dan Quayle; Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi; Veil: The Secret Ways of the CIA; The Commanders, a look inside the decision-making process behind the 1991 Persian Gulf War; The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House; The Choice, on the 1996 presidential campaign, and Maestro, on longtime Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. 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. Yet I knew that he was right.. These guys lied because they didnt know the truth, and they couldnt believe that they were being lied to. Staggering snowfall in California mountains leaves residents trapped for days, SpaceX launches new crew to space station, Prosecution wraps case at Alex Murdaugh murder trial, White House cybersecurity strategy pivots to regulation, Explosive found in checked luggage at Pennsylvania airport, feds say, FDA authorizes first at-home test for both COVID and flu, Couple accuses fertility clinic of implanting embryo with cancer genes, Air Force relieves six officers after failing safety inspection, Several hospitalized after Lufthansa flight diverted to Dulles due to turbulence. The five Watergate burglars and several other Nixon subordinates, including former U.S. Attorney General Mitchell, were sentenced to prison terms. Give him a story, any story, and he runs with it. On stage, Dean Martin was the suave crooner while Jerry Lewis was the lovable buffoon. Like most media myths, the heroic-journalist interpretation of Watergate rests on a foundation of simplicity. Bob Woodward: Who knows whether its that? The best duos complement the other's strengths. And I think that they knew that each of them had strengths that the other didn't, and they relied on one another. Finally, the night before we published came the critical moment, and we were in my house. But even they seemed to take the wrong lessons from what they'd done. That they would sabotage campaigns. 39 or 40 people in this White House staff went to jail. Watergate reporters come together to discuss the 40-year-old scandal which resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon. You have to remember that the Attorney General, who prosecuted us was the first and only Attorney General in the history of the United States to go to jail. But glaring gaps remain. Woodward would only reveal his informant was an individual working in the Executive Branch. Since 2003, he has written four books on President George W. Bushs conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: Bush at War, Plan of Attack, State of Denial and The War Within. Not one of the 17 stories he filed was printed. Haldeman? Now an associate editor at The Washington Post, for several years Bob Woodward oversaw the papers special investigative projects. Do you remember? He was also integral in finding vital evidence and information at the scene of the crime (per Mental Floss). This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in and, of. See also Myron J. Smith, Watergate: An Annotated Bibliography (1983).Updated information gathered from simonsays.com, an online service. Maybe it was 16, but he had fully a decade-plus of experience under his belt. Hes finally embarrassed, said Woodward with a smile. Events are in no way simple or cinematic. What was that about? Without them, he likely would have served out his presidential term. But of course, that all became academic when the tapes came out. 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