Bob Woodward: Oh, yes. Bob Woodward: I dont know whether I feel pride. Like most media myths, the heroic-journalist interpretation of Watergate rests on a foundation of simplicity. Ben Bradlee: Well, right away, with Hunts name and the White House telephone number in there. Alfred E. Lewis, a veteran police reporter for the newspaper, wrote the first story of the break-ins at the Watergate Hotel a day before the first Woodward and Bernstein article. He is the author or co-author of seven books: All the President's Men, The Final Days, and The Secret Man, with Bob Woodward; His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time, with Marco Politi; Loyalties; A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton;[3] and Chasing History, a memoir of his early years in journalism. It was strange. Alicia Shepard fills in the gaps in her very candid book, "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate.". 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. Were you in intelligence? A day prior, another Washington Post journalist got the first swing at what would become the story of the decade. Still, Felt resigned from the FBI in June 1973 after he was suspected of leaking information to The New York Times. And it was the origins of the tradition of every scandal after having the suffix, "gate" added onto it at the end of its title to stress how important it is. You want to make sense out of it. The first report featuring the now legendary journalists came on June 19, 1972, two days after the break-ins and arrest of the conspirators (via Constitution Center). There was competition. They were the first to reveal the tapes, and they were always ahead of the curve, but there was a lot of great reporting done by other people, Sy Hersh, the Los Angeles Times, they all did really good work. Every time the White House denied something, the evidence became clear that it was the White House that was lying. 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. They have always backed what I do. There were 7,000 papers finally, and The New York Times got a copy of it. But then, of course, if you think about it, Nixon is the one who did himself in. 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. You are trying to understand somebodys reasoning and their emotions and the demons they may or may not have. The truth that few wanted to confront was Nixon wasn't really unique at all -- just a peculiarly rotten and inept defender of a system, the national security state, that actually didn't work at all, that was corrupt to its very core. He attended Yale University on a Naval ROTC scholarship, and majored in history and English literature. As of 1997 Woodward is an assistant managing editor of the CIA in Veil (1987), the Pentagon and the Gulf War in The Commanders (1991), and the Clinton White House in The Agenda (1994). He resigned. And my father said probably the severest thing he has ever said to me. 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. ", But, "Is what the president doing moral?". Haldeman? It was going to be scrutinized and examined. One doesnt think of humility as a common quality of journalists for some reason. We had to be sure. In the end, the real exceptionalism of Richard Nixon was merely that he was dumb enough to get caught. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). We didnt allow any television people in. Well, I was down there. Robert H. Ferrell So we were terribly worried, and we didnt its a big newspaper and a lot of people in it, and you cant control all of them even if you wanted to. Where were you in the pecking order of siblings? STARR, KENNETH WINSTON Special Prosecutor Cox and Jaworski investigated this, put lots of people in jail. Mr. Woodward, tell us what it felt like to you personally when Nixon stepped down. They had it for three months, and they started to publish it. It was a White House operation. "You could just tell," Shepard continued, "by how different they were that they wouldn't be friends and they wouldn't be working together. [23], Bernstein is a frequent guest and analyst on television news programs, and in 2011 wrote articles for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, comparing Rupert Murdoch's News of the World phone-hacking scandal to Watergate. How did we get into committing 500,000 troops 10,000 miles away in a way that we could never win? A man named Mark Molsey on the last book and the next book; Ive done 11 books. Maybe it was 16, but he had fully a decade-plus of experience under his belt. Soon other newspapers began to investigate the Watergate story more energetically, and legislative and judicial agencies began to uncover a larger and larger pattern of lawbreaking. So that gave hope to the Republicans, and of course, all of the Republican spokesmen had a field day beating us upside the face over that, but it didnt last very long. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. I mean, he was no rank amateur himself. Bob Woodward: Oh, yes. Carl Bernstein has some strong words for what his former colleague's revelations mean for the Trump presidency and democracy itself.On Wednesday The Washington Post published a preview of Bob Woodward's forthcoming book, Rage, in which Trump told Woodward in March that he knew COVID-19 was serious but "wanted to always play it down." Six months later, 190,000 people have died in the U.S. from . Thats an astonishing thing for a journalist to say. He'd started at age two, I think. In her interview with Pakula, Ephron tried to rehabilitate her boyfriends reputation. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/woodward-and-bernstein, "Woodward and Bernstein And yet it was Bernsteins daring that was necessary.. You have Hunt saying Oh, my God! At a later arraignment, one of the guys whispered to a judge. . Ben Bradlee: That we had really done a really good job. But glaring gaps remain. 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. The duo of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have become synonymous with reporting the comings and goings of the Watergate scandal. Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of Communication. Following the 1972 arrests, journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post investigated the scandal relentlessly. George Tames/New York Times Co./Getty Images, American University School of Communication, unfolded over 26 months beginning in June 1972, Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism, Woodward and Bernsteins All the Presidents Men, cinematic adaptation of All the Presidents Men, Committee Member - MNF Research Advisory Committee, PhD Scholarship - Uncle Isaac Brown Indigenous Scholarship. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. The Post editors concluded that he was not ready for a major metropolitan daily newspaper, and arranged for him to take job as one of four reporters at a small suburban weekly, The Montgomery County Sentinel. 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. What I try to do is piece together how people make decisions. Finally, the night before we published came the critical moment, and we were in my house. His daughter, Tali, attends the University of California at Berkeley. Ben Bradlee: Probably the first or second day, really. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward, left, and Carl Bernstein on March 1, 1974, Washington, D.C. As the Watergate scandal unfolded in the pages of the Washington Post in the early 1970s, the two reporters who first broke the story became just as famous as the people they were writing about. Bernstein was born to a secular Jewish family in Washington, D.C.,[4][5][6] the son of Sylvia (ne Walker) and Alfred Bernstein. Retrieved February 22, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/woodward-and-bernstein. That the difficulties they put up to prevent the truth from coming out had been overcome. Nixon was a full-blown hater, and if you listen to the tapes, its chilling and frightening. They were tireless young reporters, fearless and not intimidated by the very powerful people they were investigating. 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. 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. Were there siblings? We were told that before we could write it, but yes, we knew it. The team stole top-secret documents and wiretapped the phones to listen to conversations. 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. Pakula wrote that Redford would have to scrap his charm. [31] Due to their different styles, other journalists described them as a perfect team. 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. [18], Bernstein left the Post in 1977 and expanded into other areas due to his reputation from the Watergate reporting. And he would be going over to the White House to give Nixon the news that he didnt have any his support in the Senate was eroding. ON 9 August 1974, Richard Nixon arose in the White House and, after meeting briefly with the household staff a, Iran-Contra Affair "Woodward and Bernstein 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. By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. 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. Woodward was assigned to cover the breaking story, along with a younger but more experienced reporter, Carl Bernstein. We understand you got started in the newspaper business right out of the Navy. And I think that they knew that each of them had strengths that the other didn't, and they relied on one another. The five Watergate burglars and several other Nixon subordinates, including former U.S. Attorney General Mitchell, were sentenced to prison terms. To his reputation from the are woodward and bernstein still friends in June 1973 after he was rank. The FBI in June 1973 after he was suspected of leaking information the... 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