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. Who would be dumb enough to work on this story on a Saturday morning? And they thought of me immediately. 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. Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex. The who-was-Deep-Throat conjecture kept Woodward, Bernstein and the heroic-journalist myth at the center of Watergate conversations. It seems that there are very few long, extensive investigations into corruption where an editor lets reporters work on a story for a couple of years. Bob Woodward: Is the CIA connected to this? 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.. ALICIA C. SHEPARD, who teaches journalism at American University, is the author of "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate. I got there just as Hoffman broke from the building. Samuel Dash, the Democratic counsel to the Senate Select Committee chaired by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, argued in his later book on the Senate investigation, Chief Counsel, that the admirable, early investigative reporting of Bernstein and Woodward had now degenerated into what he called "hit and run" journalism based on leaks from the committee and jeopardized the ability of the legal system to track down and punish the guilty. It marked the low point in a country's trust and respect for the highest office of the land and left the nation to question its very foundation. The real crimes of the last 40 years -- the political power of an American kleptocracy that has crushed the nation's middle class, the state of permanent wars abroad and the loss of the public square to a militarized police force at home -- didn't fit into the box that Woodward and Bernstein and the Watergate scandal helped to create. He had worked in the Pentagon, and then he had worked for the Rand Corporation. On a Saturday in June 1972, Bernstein was assigned, along with Bob Woodward, to cover a break-in at the Watergate office complex that had occurred earlier the same morning. Without them, he likely would have served out his presidential term. 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. 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. The American Academy of Achievements interview with Bob Woodward is combined with an interview with his longtime editor and mentor, Ben Bradlee (1921-2014). He joined the Washington Post's metropolitan staff in 1966, specializing in police, court, and city hall assignments, with occasional self-assigned feature stories. He wouldnt say. 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. Were there particular teachers or relatives? The Supreme Court ordered the president to turn over his tapes, which really sunk him the smoking gun tapes at the end. Bob Woodward: Who knows whether its that? I think they were really out to get to the bottom of the story. 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 (February 22, 2023). How did that come about? It seemed to always be about Nixon. Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post during Watergate, told me that Pakula spent so much time with each of us. ", To read excerpts, click here. She pointed out that, "Woodward grew up in the Midwest, Republican household, went to Yale, was in the Navy. We didnt allow television in for six months, I dont think. (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.). We worked her over very hard, but so did the lawyers. In the end, the real exceptionalism of Richard Nixon was merely that he was dumb enough to get caught. But she finally said, Well, okay. And I think that they knew that each of them had strengths that the other didn't, and they relied on one another. Why did they think of you? Light in August; Absalom, Absalom; The Bear, that little novella. Fresh out of the Navy, Bob Woodward washed out in his first attempt to work for The Washington Post, and went to work for a tiny suburban weekly. Youre not used to seeing your actions. Its that square, straight, intense, decent quality of Woodwards that works. [18], Bernstein left the Post in 1977 and expanded into other areas due to his reputation from the Watergate reporting. Before this, the three men went to great lengths to hide Felt's identity. It looked like I was going to become a lawyer, and my father to a certain extent was my model. "Woodward and Bernstein I now do my books alone, but I have a full-time assistant who is kind of my collaborator. Pakula gradually realized that neither Woodward nor Bernstein could have pulled off Watergate alone. One midnight in June 1975, Bernstein watched as Pakula directed a scene. Listen to the music that blared in static-y mono glory from 77, WABC, on the beach those Watergate summers, from Lynyrd Skynyrd ("Now Watergate does not bother me") to David Bowie ("Do you remember your President Nixon?"). Ehrlichman? And redford was the one who shaped 'All the President's Men.' Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. Would I run like that again?. In the series of stories that followed, Bernstein and Woodward eventually connected the burglars to a massive slush fund and a corrupt attorney general. This was the lesson of Watergate: Nixon Exceptionalism, that the 37th president was so "uniquely and pervasively" corrupt that the fair and decent American "system worked" and removed him on the basis of the objective, indisputable fact of his evil. Ben Bradlee: Four hundred stories about Watergate in The Washington Post Four hundred in two years and two months. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. All the Presidents Men was published in June 1974 and quickly reached the top of The New York Times bestseller list, remaining there 15 weeks, through Nixons resignation and beyond. Hed started at age two, I think. A community high school history teacher named Elizabeth Duncan who taught American history and was a great teacher. Mr. Woodward, there is an interesting scene in the book and in the film All the Presidents Men where you tap out a story and Carl Bernstein immediately starts rewriting it, and youre miffed. It glosses over the scandals intricacies and discounts the far more crucial investigative work of special prosecutors, federal judges, the FBI, panels of both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Elsa Walsh, a writer for The New Yorker. The young protesters were arguably unlearning the false lessons of Watergate, that meaningful social change had to come from pounding the pavement, not just from pounding a keyboard. Five burglars had been caught red-handed in the complex, where the Democratic National Committee had its headquarters; four of them turned out to be ex-CIA agents who did security work for the Republicans. Ukraine's neighbor Moldova, host to thousands of Ukrainian refugees, is monitoring the conflict closely while . Lewis was with the Post from 1935 until his retirement in 1985. JAWORSKI, LEON It wasn't just me -- a culture was defined. Muskie, in the emotion of the campaign, was trying to explain what had gone on. Find the perfect classics house stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. [29], Although they worked together to report the Watergate scandal to the world, Bernstein and Woodward had very different personalities. And he was the one who said that. When we found out who had taken it out, it was Hunt, and everybody said, What the hell is Hunt doing taking a book on Teddy Kennedy. 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! Starting with the Watergate burglars, the two young reporters traced the money used to finance the break-in, following it by October 1972 to John Mitchell, formerly Nixon's attorney general and at the time of the break-in the 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. Bob Woodward: If somebody came from Mars to America and went around for months or years, and then you asked them who has the best jobs, they would say the journalists, because the journalists get to make momentary entries into peoples lives when they are interesting, and get out when they cease to be interesting. Im out there doing it, and if theres pressure or debate or controversy, theyre absorbing that pressure. Alicia Shepard fills in the gaps in her very candid book, "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate.". He has also done reporting for television and opinion commentary. Ben Bradlee: He sure did. .component--type-recirculation .item:nth-child(5) { Do you remember? What attracted you to the newspaper business? The next year, when I entered college determined to be a reporter just like the guys that Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman had portrayed on the screen, there was a surge in enrollment in journalism schools. That version of Watergate has long dominated popular understanding of the scandal, which unfolded over 26 months beginning in June 1972. Bush . Woodward would only reveal his informant was an individual working in the Executive Branch. 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. It was a Saturday morning, I think the summer. AllRightsReserved. "Carl was the big thinker, and Woodward was the one that make sure it got done.". Woodward's strength was in investigation, so he focused on investigating the Watergate scandal. 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. But they missed decisive elements of Watergate, notably the payment of hush money to the burglars and the existence of Nixons White House tapes. 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. One was Woodward and Bernsteins All the Presidents Men, the well-timed memoir about their reporting. David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (1979) places the Bernstein and Woodward story into a history of recent American journalism. What did you mean by that? Carl is Jewish, grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. Woodward stayed at The Washington Post. My adolescent rites of passage and Watergate were hopelessly entangled. display: none; There were other burglaries. From the age of 13 to 15, I embraced the scandal with all the geek force that puberty could muster. Woodward relied on one source whom he refused to identify even to his editors except by the code-name "Deep Throat.". This. Mr. Bradlee, what were your emotions when Nixon resigned? He worked at ABC, CNN, and CBS as a political commentator, and was a spokesman in various television commercials. Mr. Bradlee, do you think there could be another Watergate today? Thats a quote from the movie and the book. We're much better friends than we were at the time. I have forgotten which one it was. The role of Congress and the courts -- where even Republicans refused to turn a blind eye to a Republican president's wrongdoing -- was critical to this belief, but it was the journalist at the very top of this moral pyramid. But in fact at that time, we were. I think in the atmosphere we are in now, somebody who would get up and propose some of the things that were done in Vietnam, like conducting the war when we didnt believe in it, or burglarizing, or wiretapping, or doing the abusive things of Watergate, I think its so ingrained that there are enough people who would stand up and say, We cant do that. And once you are convicted of a felony, you cant own television stations, so it would have cost us all the television stations. On the other hand, Carl Bernstein was the child of two Communist activists (per Washingtonian). shaka wear graphic tees is candy digital publicly traded ellen lawson wife of ted lawson what was the advice to woodward and bernstein. If you need to flag this entry as abusive. Bob Woodward: As defendants, as tax cases, divorce cases, the full catastrophe of litigation. 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