In May 2002, Steve Mielke, an archivist at the University of Texas, got a curious phone call from his boss, Thomas F. Staley. Staley ran the university’s Harry Ransom Center, and he wanted to see Mielke right away but wouldn’t say why.
He probably wanted to talk about a new literary collection, thought Mielke. Mielke had catalogued the papers of playwright Tennessee Williams. Maybe it was another prized literary collection. Since
1988, Staley has been the head of the venerable Ransom Center, an American cultural archive in size and scope second only to the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library. The Ransom Center houses the world’s first photograph (circa 1826) and one of the five surviving U.S. copies of the Gutenberg Bible. And thanks to Staley, the final proofs for James Joyce’s “Ulysses” rest here. Staley’s enthusiasm for what he does is palpable. When Mielke met him that day it was no different.
Mielke listened intently. Glenn Horowitz, a rare book dealer from New York City, had contacted Staley about buying a historical collection. These papers would be an unusual purchase for the Ransom Center, but a valuable addition and an enormous publicity boon. The owners wanted $5 million. Staley asked his archivist to go to New York City and Washington to evaluate the papers.
Mielke, intrigued, quickly agreed, but there was a caveat: he could tell no one. Secrecy was in order because of the nature of the papers. They would be called by a code name: Wormwood. Staley was just beginning negotiations and did not want his staff or any outsiders to know the famous papers were even for sale. They had never been offered for purchase before. If the Ransom Center got the
papers, they would have to be locked up for security reasons while Mielke organized them. Inside the files were names of government officials whose connection to a historically important time had never been revealed. Only Mielke and Staley would have a key. The owners insisted. The owners! That was something else unusual about this deal. They were still alive. Mielke had only worked on collections belonging to dead authors. It could be helpful to be able to call them with questions or if something were missing. Another attractive aspect was that this collection, unlike many others, had an indisputable beginning. It started on June 17, 1972, with a Washington Post reporter’s notebook.
The first thing Mielke did was start reading “All the President’s Men.” Plane reservations were made, and he flew to New York to meet with Carl Bernstein and then a few weeks later to Washington to see Bob Woodward. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward — two of the most celebrated journalists in the world. Their names could be “Jeopardy” clues. In fact, the two men are American folk heroes for the role they played in uncovering what is often called the worst political scandal in U.S. history. Now they wanted to sell their Watergate papers, including everything they wrote and kept from June 1972 through the end of 1976. Altogether there were seventy-five boxes filled with 250 reporter pads, interviews, book galleys, typed notes, letters, and memorabilia, covering nearly 40 feet of shelf space. Neither man had thrown away anything.
Selling the papers had been Bernstein’s idea. “I think that Carl needed the dough,” said Benjamin Bradlee…Selling the papers had been Bernstein’s idea. “I think that Carl needed the dough,” said Benjamin Bradlee, executive editor of the Post during Watergate. Though Woodward and Bernstein together achieved something extraordinary in covering Watergate, it was Woodward who was able to parlay it into a lifelong career writing stories and books that have earned him fame, respect, and millions. Bernstein, on the other hand, has had a sporadic career that pales next to his prolific former partner’s. Still, he has managed to turn his Watergate experiences into a steady income stream by giving speeches, writing two books and dozens of magazine pieces, and working in television. And yet, money has always been a problem. “By anybody else’s standard, this would be a hell of a career,” said respected journalist Haynes Johnson, who has known Bernstein since he was a teenage copyboy at The Washington Star. “But he’s always compared to Woodward. It shouldn’t be that way.”
But it is. Now, if Woodward would agree, the pair could sell their papers for a huge profit. Bernstein’s papers were worth little alone. Horowitz and Bernstein went to Washington to see if they could convince Woodward. “Bob was reluctant — reluctant was a good word,” said Horowitz. After Woodward was assured that he and Bernstein could protect their still living confidential sources until they died, he was game. He, however, did not need the money. Once again, as has happened several times throughout their lives, Woodward, who colleagues say is always generous with his time and money, was willing to help out his old partner.
The journalists as part of the story
Mielke liked what he saw, and soon Horowitz had successfully brokered a deal that was offered only to the University of Texas. The pair would get $5 million and give the university $500,000 to care for the papers and hold symposiums. The $5 million price tag, which private donors covered, made it one of the largest purchases of its kind in U.S. history, especially for the works of living writers. At a dinner before the sale was announced in April 2003, Harry Middleton, former director of the Lyndon Johnson presidential library based on the Texas campus, turned to Bernstein, now gray, and Woodward, graying at the temples, both noticeably thicker than when they helped topple a president three decades ago. Neither man was yet sixty, but they were damn close. “He looked at Bob and Carl and said that they must now understand, as they enter their seventh decade, that they are as much a part of the story of Watergate and historical record as any of the people they reported on,” said Horowitz. “In many ways, that was a humbling moment for them. They had entered a different sphere of the public consciousness.”
Bob Woodward, now sixty-three, and Carl Bernstein, sixty-two, are often introduced as the two men who profoundly and permanently changed journalism. Not only did Woodward and Bernstein play a pivotal role in President Richard M. Nixon’s August 9, 1974, resignation, but their Watergate reporting and what immediately followed shaped the next thirty years of journalism. In today’s media-saturated society, with the confusion of a million different ways of getting information, it’s instructive to recall the narrow media universe of the early 1970s. Then, Americans relied largely on newspapers and the three major TV networks for their news. During Watergate, people rushed to the curbs to pick up papers for the latest development. During the Watergate hearings in 1973, Americans were glued to their TVs. But in the early days, the public turned to The Washington Post and a few other newspapers. Gradually they got to know the names Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
The beauty of Woodward and Bernstein’s story is that [it] also tells the larger narrative of what has transpired in journalism since Watergate. Watergate marked the birth of a different kind of reporting — more aggressive, less respectful of the establishment.Today the men are cultural icons. What other journalists could sell the thirty-year-old contents of their newsroom desks for $5 million? They are in the same pantheon with Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Walter Lippmann, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and H. L. Mencken.
As important as Watergate was in political history, it was equally so in journalistic history. The beauty of Woodward and Bernstein’s story is that [it] also tells the larger narrative of what has transpired in journalism since Watergate. Watergate marked the birth of a different kind of reporting — more aggressive, less respectful of the establishment.
Godfathers of the anonymous source
In telling the narrative of their lives, this book looks at how these two men influenced the modern history of journalism by exploring the advent of celebrity journalism, the controversial use of anonymous sources, the media’s relationship with the public and the executive branch, the importance of the reporter-editor bond, and the role of investigative reporting. A year after Nixon resigned, journalists founded the nonprofit Investigative Reporters and Editors organization that today has about five thousand members. It was Woodward and Bernstein, the first Average Joe reporters to become full-blown celebrities, who became the story itself, and who became in some cases more famous than the people they were writing about. They popularized and made the use of anonymous sources an acceptable journalistic practice, although even today it is still the profession’s trouble spot. And their reporting also produced one of the greatest and longest-lasting modern mysteries: Who is Deep Throat?
“As far as I’m concerned Woodward and Bernstein inspired a generation of journalists,” said Alex Jones, head of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. Today many of those journalists are working at the nation’s best newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio outlets, or running journalism schools. Over and over in reporting this book, I heard men and women say they had gone into journalism solely because of what Woodward and Bernstein had accomplished. There’s nary a journalism class that does not tell the tale of what many call journalism’s finest hour or show the movie “All the President’s Men.”
The names Woodward and Bernstein are so ingrained that sometimes people don’t know which one is which. I recently taught two classes on Watergate and the press to mostly undergraduates. All but a handful had already seen the movie, even though it came out when their parents were in their twenties. They had all heard of Deep Throat, and many were dismayed to see him on CNN in April 2006 as Larry King grilled a confused ninety-two-year-old man who barely remembered what Nixon did. He looked nothing like the image the movie had drilled into their consciousness, just as people are sometimes confused to find that Woodward looks nothing like Robert Redford. The names Woodward and Bernstein are so ingrained that sometimes people don’t know which one is which. Bernstein will be walking down a New York City street and someone will see him and say, “Bob!” A newspaper recently ran a correction when it included Bernstein in a celebrity birthday round-up for February 14, but used Woodward’s picture.
Not only did Woodstein inspire a generation, they created a new vocabulary. “The terminology made popular by Woodward and Bernstein is now part of the journalistic vernacular,” wrote Will Manley for the American Library Association in October 2002. “A reliable source, investigative reporting, deep background, off the record, stonewall, can you confirm or deny, and Deep Throat are all expressions that are peppered in the give and take between reporters and government officials. To truly alter the way our everyday world works, a book must first come along at the right place and time, but timing is only one-half the equation. The book must appeal to something deep within the human heart.”
Too much credit for dumping Nixon
Woodward and Bernstein’s saga captured the imagination of scores of Americans, judging by two feet of fan mail now in their Watergate archives. But the two reporters did not single-handedly bring down the president, though the media and public have solidly bought that myth and continue to perpetuate it. “They were not responsible for Nixon leaving office, but they had a hand in it,” said Jones. “That’s not to minimize what they did. But they get too much credit.” They would agree, and have said so many times. The courts, the Congress, the grand jury, and the FBI all played key roles. In reality, had former Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield not told Senate investigators on Friday, July 13, 1973, that Nixon kept a secret taping system, Nixon might never have resigned.
Woodward and Bernstein get a disproportionate amount of credit — much to the frustration of several historians, and the authors themselves — simply by virtue of having published a wildly popular book that was transformed into a well-made, blockbuster movie that has endured. Many have misread their fascinating story as being the only story. Further fueling their fame was that they unwittingly turned a single secret source into a legend with the naughty nickname Deep Throat. Had they not written “All the President’s Men,” had it not become a major motion picture, had their mysterious source been named My Friend, as Woodward first called him, and had Deep Throat’s identity not remained unknown for three decades, it is possible I would not be writing this book. But all that did happen, and Woodward and Bernstein did indisputably play a role in Nixon�s downfall, particularly by keeping the story alive in the early days of Watergate.
Three decades after Watergate, their names, especially Woodward’s, are still synonymous with the gold standard in investigative, in-depth reporting. They still play a major role in journalistic and U.S. history. No matter what the scandal du jour, columnists and commentators continue to invoke their names when talking about some transgression or plead for another pair of Woodward and Bernsteins.
Woodward: a chronicler not a muckracker
Today, Woodward, the lightning rod of the pair, enjoys extraordinary entr�e to the George W. Bush White House, and critics accuse him of writing to protect the very access that he eschewed so long ago. He is not a muckraker, as he was called back then; he is a chronicler. In writing this book, it became clear that Woodward has become far more controversial than he ever was during Watergate. There are two main camps of Woodward opinions out there. One camp, highly critical and much more vocal, has accused him of all sorts of journalistic crimes, including calling him a mouth piece for the Bush administration. The author Joan Didion, for one, referred to his work as “political pornography.” The other is a much larger camp, if sales are any indication, who respect his reporting and feel, despite flaws, that Woodward provides readers an exceptional contemporary insight — the best they’ll ever get — into the dealings of high-ranking officials and their peers.
Whether it’s the present or the past, Woodward and Bernstein remain fixed in the public’s mind. But there’s so much more to their story beyond the tale they shared in “All the President’s Men.” So much more happened to them after Nixon resigned and they skyrocketed to fame and glory. Few people know much about their relationship after Watergate, their loyalty to each other, how fame affected them, and the different trajectories their lives followed. Theirs is a fascinating, historically significant story of two men who could not be more different. Today, for example, Bernstein publicly demands a Watergate-like investigation of the Bush administration, and Woodward keeps his opinions private.
“We were not inclined to like each other before… Now, it’s a great friendship.”
— Carl Bernstein“There are special things only the two of us understand, from the work we did together to the way each of us looks at journalism,” Bernstein told me in 2003. “There are things we say to each other that wed never say to anyone else. It was true during the reporting of Watergate, and it’s true now. No, we would not have been friends otherwise. We were not inclined to like each other before, and within weeks we came to develop this incredible respect for each other. Now, it’s a great friendship.”
They are separate people, driven by separate demons. There will always be comparisons, but they are not, despite public pressures, in some kind of race. They do different things. They have different lives. But once they were in a race together to get to the bottom of a White House mystery that would change their lives forever.
