There was even a movie made about the scandal and their role in it, "All The President's Men.". Thats a quote from the movie and the book. We wanted to be sure that it wasnt sabotaged in some way by, you know, printers slipping in the F word or something like that that was going to screw it up. [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. Give him a story, any story, and he runs with it. He also felt compelled, as a reporter, to point out that Bernstein's remarks were . I think the lead of his story was, Will the wonders of Watergate never cease?. I covered the night police beat. A judge told the Times they couldnt publish it, so a judge would tell us the same thing. These actions would lead to his resignation in August 1974. It was so important. "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. 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. She had what I call Mind on, hands off. She was intellectually engaged in the news, but her hands were not directing, not saying, Investigate this, dont investigate that, give the emphasis here. That was Bradlee and the editors job. Available for both RF and RM licensing. Not one of the 17 stories he filed was printed. I didnt start reading seriously until probably junior high school. Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of Communication. Not, "What did the president know and when did he know it? The book drew upon the notes and research accumulated while writing articles about the scandal for the Post and "remained on best-seller lists for six months". And in it, you just saw that it was not as pure and simple a community as the members liked people to think. 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. These guys lied because they didnt know the truth, and they couldnt believe that they were being lied to. 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. But there's a lot that's not generally known about Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. 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. And he was the one who said that. When they found such a player in their legendary source "Deep Throat" -- later revealed as deputy FBI director Mark Felt -- they seemed blind to the reality that Felt wasn't motivated by an altruistic loyalty to the nation or the truth but by blind career ambition and petty revenge. He resigned. The duo of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have become synonymous with reporting the comings and goings of the Watergate scandal. NEW YORK . Bob Woodward: We read pretty much the range of classics, and nothing really jumped out or are books that I had distinct memories of. 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. By his own admission he failed at that". The Iran-Contra Affair involved a secret foreign policy operation directed by White House officials in the national security counc, Truman, Harry S. The Watergate scandal began in May 1972, when members of PresidentRichard M. Nixon's campaign team (known as Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President or CREEP) broke into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in the Watergate Hotel (per History). We were reporting on the Presidents men, and the White House people, the Attorney General, John Mitchell, people in the Nixon campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President, and the focus was not Nixon. I recall in that incident, I did one, he did one, and I looked at his, and I realized his was better, as was almost always the case. 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. 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. However, the date of retrieval is often important. (Spiro Agnew, who had been elected as Nixon's vice president in 1968 and 1972, had resigned in October 1973 after pleading no contest to a charge of tax evasion.). Whats secret? What the hell were they in there for? Bob Woodward: Well, we looked at it differently. What about you? That happened a long time ago. 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 . Still, Felt resigned from the FBI in June 1973 after he was suspected of leaking information to The New York Times. If you need to flag this entry as abusive. Bob Woodward: We accused some people of things they didnt do that were based on some reports, written reports. Do you think being the oldest had an influence on your life? Thank God. 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. One morning in June of 71 I think, they led the newspaper with it, with eight-column banners. So I dont make those kinds of assessments. ON 9 August 1974, Richard Nixon arose in the White House and, after meeting briefly with the household staff a, Iran-Contra Affair I remember going around and giving my name to lots of people, and they would say, Oh, youre Al Woodwards son. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in and, of. 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're much better friends than we were at the time. Leon Jaworski, like richard m. nixon, came from a poor, deeply religious background. William Faulkners books, certainly. Ben Bradlee: Its a good story. What does the American Dream mean to you? 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. He quickly tired of the routine assignments his position offered, and began to hunt for news on his own. 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. Ben Bradlee: We were being very careful. First, the spokesmen at the White House, Ziegler and some of those guys, and next the Attorney General, and Chuck Colson, all of those people, the White House aides, were lying. Bull---- artist. Bob Woodward: Yes, and then later, my parents were divorced, and my father remarried a woman who had three kids also. ." That really is what were all about. . While single, in the 1980s, Bernstein became known for dating Bianca Jagger, Martha Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor,[16] among others. I mean, I lived in that place for those periods. Will the luck of the Irish affect the Oscars? Hes finally embarrassed, said Woodward with a smile. Woodward stayed at The Washington Post. I think most people feel that the old Post would have just sat by. Youve said journalism should be called a practice, like law. 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. Woodward was assigned to cover the breaking story, along with a younger but more experienced reporter, Carl Bernstein. 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. TIME magazine has calledAll the Presidents Men perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history. A second book by Woodward and Bernstein on the collapse of the Nixon administration, The Final Days, was also a huge success. I would have summer jobs, while my parents and other siblings would go on vacation, for instance. A few weeks after receiving his bachelors degree in 1965, he entered the United States Navy for a four-year tour of duty. 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". By June 17, 1972, what Hunter S. Thompson had famously called "the crest of a high and beautiful wave." of the 1960s had crashed and dissapiated. Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift still good friends - 8 Days - 8Days.sg. police in blue helmets fought young people in the street, great men were gunned down in their prime. Carl is Jewish, grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. 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. But together they did something that neither one of them could do individually. Other than Woodward and Bernstein, no personalities prominent in Watergate were the subjects of a bestselling memoir, the inspiration for a star-studded motion picture, and the protectors of a mythical source who eluded conclusive identification for decades. Mr. Woodward, there were mistakes made during Watergate, you have said in the book. December 26, 2006 / 7:23 AM They wrote that history has shown that Watergate was even worse than we thought it was at the time: In the course of his five-and-a-half-year presidency, beginning in 1969, Nixon launched and managed five successive and overlapping wars -- against the anti-Vietnam War movement, the news media, the Democrats, the justice system and, finally, against history itself. [10], At the University of Maryland, College Park, he was a reporter for the school's independent daily, The Diamondback. Theres an example of incredibly good reporting over a long, protracted time period, laced with denials by the highest people in Boston society the Cardinals and the priests. 39 or 40 people in this White House staff went to jail. Haldeman? Are you and Bernstein still friends? The movie made Woodward and Bernstein forever famous and has become a classic. Since the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan closed the lid on the post-Watergate era, we've seen a president who WASN'T impeached for evading Congress to cut secret arms deals in Iran and fund a secret war in Nicaragua, a president who WAS impeached for lying about his sex life, and a president who WASN'T impeached for lying the nation into a war that killed thousands of American soldiers and innocent civilians, while carrying out torture and other violations of human rights more "perverse" than anything during Nixon's presidency. Woodward and Bernstein did disclose financial links between Nixons reelection campaign and the burglars arrested June 17, 1972, at headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, in what was the signal crime of Watergate. W. Joseph Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. On the other hand, Bernstein was born to a Communist Jewish family. Some people think I was in intelligence. When will all the truth come out? Quite optimistically. 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. 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. The best duos complement the other's strengths. Mr. Woodward, at what point did you realize that President Nixon was implicated in this? What is this secret government we have? 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 I want to offer some ideas. Advertisement Pakula. 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. Ben Bradlee: Nixon himself? We had heard that they had this big blockbuster coming up, and suddenly, they just dropped this on us. There were 7,000 papers finally, and The New York Times got a copy of it. How would you summarize that? JAWORSKI, LEON This is not your average burglary.. It came out in the Ervin Committee hearings in the Senate. It was only later, when Dean testified, and the tapes came out, that it was quite clear that not only was Nixon involved, he was in charge of the cover-up. But glaring gaps remain. We had Watergate. We talk all the time. head of the CRP. I can't tell you how many times back then that Americans -- looking for a silver lining in the cloud of Watergate -- uttered this phrase: "The system worked." The processes that caused [Nixons] resignation were constitutional., Grahams words, however accurate and incisive, scarcely altered the dominant popular interpretation of Watergate. The American escalation in Vietnam had just begun. But even they seemed to take the wrong lessons from what they'd done. And redford was the one who shaped 'All the President's Men.' Few in the room. 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