Additionally, he is a regular political commentator on CNN. Encyclopedia of World Biography. 39 or 40 people in this White House staff went to jail. 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. 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. Give him a story, any story, and he runs with it. People who went to Wheaton College had to sign a pledge: no drinking, smoking, dancing, movies, playing of cards. Were much better friends than we were at the time. In the end, the Watergate scandal brought down a president and made Bob Woodward the most famous investigative reporter in America. Because of its detail, as well as the crucial importance of the subject they were investigating, All the President's Men has come to be widely regarded as a classic book in the history of American journalism, showing how reporters and corporate news organizations operate under pressure. Are there particular novels of his that you remember liking? Nixon was a full-blown hater, and if you listen to the tapes, its chilling and frightening. Anyway, it took two days, and we got confirmation that there was, and in fact there was a slush fund of $750,000. Ben Bradlee: His name was Griswold, and he had been the dean of the Harvard Law School. I was asleep in my bedroom in a suburb of New York, a 13-year-old boy, still trying to make sense of this strange world I'd been born into, where police in blue helmets fought young people in the street, and great men were gunned down in their prime. Bob Woodward is an associate editor of The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1971. Sunburned from swimming laps in the forced labor of summer recreation camp, I raced home so I could catch John Dean's afternoon testimony before the Senate Watergate committee, and the next summer I read the paperback version of the committee's report by flashlight at a campground along the Delaware River, while raccoons scurried under my tent. That writing was actually on the wall the whole time. 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. Carl was the big thinker, and Woodward was the one that make sure it got done" (via CBS News). 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. In those days, you worried terribly about typos. Encyclopedia of World Biography. [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. Mr. Woodward, there were mistakes made during Watergate, you have said in the book. One morning in June of 71 I think, they led the newspaper with it, with eight-column banners. So this was over a period of days, I take it, that it got interesting. And in that same space of time, Woodward's written five books. On the eve of the 2016 election, Woodward returned to the Watergate story one more time. In the end, the real exceptionalism of Richard Nixon was merely that he was dumb enough to get caught. Ben Bradlee: The Pentagon Papers was a study commissioned by Nixon in the first or second year of his first term, 1970 or 69. 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. Get our L.A. The guts are supplied by the owners of the newspaper and the editors. Bob Woodward said that Lewis "laid the foundation for what the paper was able to do in reporting the story." Were there particular teachers or relatives? Later Career. He wanted to understand Woodward and Bernstein deeply so he could capture their true characters and motivations for the movie. J. Anthony Lukas, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years (1976) is an exciting narrative and analysis by a New York Times reporter that puts Watergate into the context of what the author refers to as "Richard Nixon's abuse of his presidential powers." And she decided to do it. Bob Woodward: Thats not humility, thats realism. 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. He told me first that he was going to resign, wasnt sure when, and for Gods sake dont write it as hard, because he wont. Would I run like that again?. Events are filtered through minds and memories and prejudices, and you feel intimate with his characters. Bob Woodward: Yes, and each week it got more and more interesting. Some people haven't seen it yet. How long had you been at the previous paper? George W. Bush's Iraq War, in particular, was enabled by a docile press corps and by a feckless generation of lawmakers and judges -- largely the generation that came of age when I did, during those languid Watergate summers. It also made Woodward and Bernstein the most famous journalists of all time. Can he get the hurt and vulnerability?, Throughout filming in 1975, if there was a question on how Woodward or Bernstein might react, Redford or Hoffman or Pakula called either man. Mr. Bradlee, by the time of the Watergate affair, the Post had already come into conflict with the Nixon administration over the Pentagon Papers. [17] A second book, The Final Days, was published by Bernstein and Woodward in 1976 as a follow-up chronicling Nixon's last days in office. For the team that took down President Nixon, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein followed this format to a tee. I cant remember, but there were so many. 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.". Encyclopedia.com. 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 . Bob Woodward: Its the nature of the business. So he didnt think it was a good idea. Alicia Shepard fills in the gaps in her very candid book, "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of. What does it mean? We had Watergate. The judge said, What do you do? and Woodward overheard the words CIA. So if your interest isnt whetted by this time, youre not a journalist. This is not your average burglary.. We were told that before we could write it, but yes, we knew it. Dont tell me never. Get to the bottom of it. That your resources, the resources of the newspaper, should be directed at completing this story, getting the full tale, if you would. Woodward is the fifth branch of government! The processes that caused [Nixons] resignation were constitutional., Grahams words, however accurate and incisive, scarcely altered the dominant popular interpretation of Watergate. What made you decide that this had to be done? This was our time, our story. 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. And it in many ways is, I think, the principle under which she and her son, Don Graham, tried to run The Washington Post. You mentioned Faulkner. For over 30 years, the informants identity was known only to the man himself, and to Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee. So in an odd way, those in my business have a million allies out there. Ben Bradlee: Its a good story. Yet I knew that he was right.. (The Academy of Achievement interviewed both Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee, the Executive Editor of The Washington Post, on May 1 during the 2003 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. Their interviews are combined here.). Whos going to get what lead and put it together? Not, "What did the president know and when did he know it? Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. We had to be sure. Then in March 1973 one of the Watergate burglars, James McCord, a former CIA official, wrote a letter to Judge John Sirica, who was trying his case, that essentially confirmed the Bernstein and Woodward stories. 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. Still, facts and events from the book were questioned by Nixon's friends and family, and some obvious sources denied ever speaking with Bernstein and Woodward. We had such good sources. There were other burglaries. Woodward has written best-selling books on the last ten presidentsNixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Theres so much richness in his language, its almost the opposite of journalistic writing. It was a Saturday morning, I think the summer. Within a year, his byline was appearing on the front page. Woodward lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Elsa Walsh, a writer for The New Yorker and the author of Divided Lives. But there's a lot that's not generally known about Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Mitchell? Mr. Bradlee, its important to remember that Nixon was re-elected during this period. [12][13], In 1965, Bernstein left the Star to become a full-time reporter for the Elizabeth Daily Journal in New Jersey. Where do you work? (February 22, 2023). 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