Dr. W. Joseph Campbell is a communication professor at American University in Washington, DC, a historian and scholar, he has authored seven books.
Q: Even though Bob Woodward explicitly stated that the press and his work with Carl Bernstein didn’t end Nixon’s presidency, why do you believe this narrative still dominates the collective memory today?
A: I think there are a number of reasons. One of them, perhaps the most important, is that it is a simplistic explanation for a very complex scandal. There were a lot of elements that were related to the crimes of Watergate. It began with the break-in in mid-June in 1972 at the Watergate Hotel complex in Washington, DC. Everything spun out from there. From paying off the burglars to Nixon’s audio tape recordings, it included all kinds of efforts to cover up the crimes. There was really a chase for those tapes, and they really turned the scandal because they held the truth in the president’s own words.
Many elements of the Watergate scandal are very difficult to grasp. You have to be a student of the scandal to really get into all the many details. Now, I’m not saying this is lazy, but the easier approach is to simplify the scandal to understand its essence. And that essence is that Richard Nixon ultimately resigned his presidency because of his misdeeds in the Watergate scandal. To say that the prime movers behind Richard Nixon’s resignation were two young, dogged investigative reporters for the Washington Post isn’t quite true. It’s more than fifty years now since the Watergate break-in and this narrative is still strong, or perhaps stronger than ever. It’s driven by three components: book, movie and guessing game.
The book was the All the President’s Men memoir by Woodward and Bernstein. This came out in June of 1972, just as the Watergate scandal was reaching its culmination as Richard Nixon’s criminality became clear to the American public. The timing of the book was exquisite. It offered a journalist’s brief about this scandal, and it offered it an extraordinary great timing for them because Americans were just really figuring out what was going on. Even more than the book, the movie All the President’s Men, which came out in April of 1976, emphasized and focused on Woodward and Bernstein. They were showcased as heroic journalists and disparaged other aspects of investigation. The FBI, the Justice Department, the Senate investigators, the House and Judiciary committee—all of those aspects were either downplayed or ignored completely.
The movie was well done. It featured two, star actors at the peaks of their respective careers. Dustin Hoffman played Bernstein and Robert Redford played Woodward. Hoffman and Redford portrayed these reporters in very glamorous ways, and the movie was a big hit and it was critically acclaimed. It was certainly one of the best movies of 1976 and it’s been widely watched over the years. It’s even shown in high school and college classrooms as a how-to primer on investigative journalism and reporting.
The third component, and perhaps the one that was the longest lasting, was the guessing game. A thirty-year-long guessing game as to who the identity of Woodward’s secret source was. The source’s code name was Deep Throat. In Washington, it’s the coin of the realm to pierce and reveal secrets. This secret lived on for thirty years and in that time, news organizations, pundits and even some college classes tried to figure out the identity of Deep Throat. Sometimes people would say, “it’s probably Mark Felt,” but he denied it vigorously over the years. He would say, “no, if I were Deep Throat, I would have done it better.” Finally, I think it was 2005, the identity was discovered. Felt’s family revealed that he was indeed Deep Throat.
This thirty-year guessing game had the effect of placing Woodward, Bernstein and the Washington Post at the center of discussion about Watergate far longer than would have been the case otherwise. So, those are the three factors that really helped to cement this narrative into the public popular consciousness. The book, the movie, and the guessing.
Q: Why do you think it took thirty years for Mark Felt to confess that he was Deep Throat?
A: That’s a great question. It’s in part because he was weary about his reputation within the FBI. He didn’t want to be seen as somebody who was leaking information to journalists. Even though it was widely suspected that Felt was leaking information. Nixon and his top aid suspected Felt was the guy who was talking to the Washington Post and other journalists. Felt knew what he was doing. What he was trying to do was undercut the acting FBI director who was appointed by Richard Nixon.
This all began in May of 1972, six weeks before the Watergate break-in. When the FBI lost its long serving director, J. Edgar Hoover, his death set off a struggle for succession at the top ranks of the FBI. Mark Felt at the time was the number three official with the FBI, and he thought he had a good chance of being appointed the permanent replacement to J. Edgar Hoover. That was his hope, his ambition. Instead, Nixon appointed some outsider, L. Patrick Gray, as the acting or interim director.
According to one persuasive theory, it’s argued that Felt realized that if he could undercut L. Patrick Gray through a series of leaks, it would make Gray’s candidacy to become permanent director of the FBI untenable. Nixon wouldn’t nominate somebody to the permanent position of FBI director who was leaking information. So, Felt was really conniving and cunning, and he tried to figure out a way to undercut his rival. In the end, it didn’t work for him, but that is probably the best explanation for his motivation in leaking information. This theory was presented in a very detailed book entitled Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat. It was released maybe twelve years ago, and it presents this theory in a very compelling fashion. I’m inclined to embrace it as an explanation for why Mark Felt was the leaker as we know as Deep Throat.
Q: Do you think if Woodward and Bernstein hadn’t released All the President’s Men during the climax of the Watergate scandal, would they still be viewed as heroes today?
A: The book was extraordinarily well timed; it was well reviewed, too. Even after many years later, it remains a compelling read, I must say. In places they’re very candid about some of their missteps and some of their ethical misjudgments. So, there are good reasons why this book lives on. If it had not been released when it was, it’s possible that they may not have become the heroes of Watergate that they are today for many people. But I think that even more profoundly than the book was the cinematic version of All the President’s Men.
The wounds of Watergate are just beginning to heal over by that time, and it’s the runup to a presidential election year. Those are just a few factors that brought an awful lot of attention to that movie. The way the cinematography was done was very interesting. The scenes of Washington, DC are really shown in dark shades and darkness. Whereas in the newsroom of the Washington Post, it was in brilliant light. The contrast that suggested between good and evil was not missed by many critics. This was a movie with some substance. It really did focus on Woodward and Bernstein, and I think it really left a message that these guys were the prime movers. They were the reasons why the Watergate scandal ended as it did with Richard Nixon’s resignation.
I do think the book was a contributor, but the movie is probably a greater factor. And then it was all continued for three decades with the guessing game about Deep Throat. There were a lot of names that were put forward as to who Deep Throat might be. The guessing game had lots of dimensions to it.
Q: You mention that Woodward and Bernstein received a tip about Nixon’s taping system, and yet they were told to not pursue this lead because it was a “B+ story.” Why do you think Ben Bradlee advised Woodard and Bernstein to not pursue this lead?
A: At that time, Bradlee was the executive editor at the Washington Post. Woodward and Bernstein describe this anecdote in All the President’s Men, and it’s one of the passages that has some candor to it. I think that Bradlee may not have fully understood what the implications were of the tapes. I don’t think he was trying to dismiss it completely, but he figured there were maybe A+ stories out there. I think he acknowledged afterwards that he misfired on that one, and wished he had a little sharper interpretation about.
Q: If the release of Nixon’s tapes was the turning point, why do you think Alexander Butterfield was not acknowledged as the hero in this story?
A: Another great question. Why don’t we recognize, or maybe venerate a little bit, Alexander Butterfield? This was the guy who disclosed the existence of the tapes. Under oath and before the Senate Select Committee, Butterfield took this scandal to a completely different dimension. It’s interesting because he disclosed the existence of the tapes reluctantly. There are YouTube videos of Butterfield under oath and he’s not outwardly saying “let me tell you what I know!” He knows the senators are going to ask him about the tapes. When the question comes to him, he takes a long pause as if he’s thinking “how am I really going to answer this?” He realizes that he’s under oath, he cannot tell a lie nor commit perjury and risk going to jail for that.
So, he pauses, and in kind of a clipped tone he says “yes, I was aware of the existence of this taping system.” He’s giving answers, but he’s not elaborating nor is he enthusiastic about this. He seems almost reluctant to come out with the truth, but while under oath he had no choice but to. He was not out in the public eye very often after this. To my knowledge, he wasn’t on Sunday talk shows or writing a tell-all memoir about how he blew the cover on Watergate. He wasn’t doing it, and the impulse to do that wasn’t quite as pronounced as it might be today.
I think those are some of the reasons why we don’t recognize, or respect if you will, the name Alexander Butterfield as perhaps the true hero of Watergate. He’s not a name people recognize immediately, whereas Woodward and Bernstein are names people immediately recognize.
Q: In your essay, you discuss the erroneous reporting both Woodward and Bernstein were responsible for. Do you know if the two were ever held accountable? How did the Washington Post publicly correct this information?
A: Woodward and Bernstein only committed a few erroneous missteps in their reporting. One of their greatest mistakes occurred when they misattributed a source. H.R. Haldeman was one of the top Nixon aids who controlled a secret fund used to finance the burglary and other activities by the Republican Committee to reelect Nixon. That was in late October of 1972, and Woodward and Bernstein almost had to resign because of this mistake. They retraced their steps and figured out that the source they attributed this to and found out that he was not asked by the grand jury about H. R. Haldeman but was prepared to do so. So, their story was accurate, it was just misattributed. They never corrected their mistakes, nor did they publicly admit their mistakes. The newspaper never ran a correction either.
Woodward and Bernstein also misidentified three Nixon reelection committee aids as having received logs from the wiretaps that were placed inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex. Those three aids did not receive those logs. Woodward and Bernstein only realized this mistake months later, and they discuss it in their book. In the end, there was never an explanation printed in the Washington Post that explained why or how this error was made.
Another big mistake they made was then they burned an FBI source who they thought misled them about H.R. Haldeman’s secret funds story. They went to the FBI agent’s boss and complained about the agent’s conduct. In All the President’s Men, they mention that this was the wrong thing to do as soon as they had done it. Nonetheless, they burned the source. Woodward later described it as the worst of journalism. Woodward and Bernstein’s mistakes get overlooked because it runs counter to the narrative of the heroic journalist. The heroic journalist narrative does not focus on the missteps, flaws, errors, and misreporting that they did. It’s almost kind of like why bother with this stuff? The overall storyline is that Nixon had to resign, and the reporters contributed to that outcome. Maybe that’s the explanation. I think these missteps should be more prominent in the narrative about Watergate, but they’re not.
Woodward and Bernstein also approached federal grand jurors and asked them to discuss the testimony they heard in the Watergate case. It’s not illegal for them to ask, but I think they risked being jailed for contempt of course to approach grand jurors and to ask them to violate their oath of secrecy. If it’s not illegal, it’s certainly unethical. Woodward and Bernstein mention in their book that they almost went to jail because of that misstep. They informed their supervisors about their plan and the supervisors reluctantly approved their idea. It suggests how desperate they were at a certain time in the scandal to find new information. After the election in 1972, everything kind of dried up for them. They didn’t have any major stories for weeks about Watergate.
Q: In your essay, you mention other literary works that explore this idea that Woodward and Bernstein are not the sole heroes in the Watergate scandal. What are some key points that highlight this idea that further support your argument?
A: There’s an inclination among some people to say “well, maybe Woodward and Bernstein really didn’t bring down Richard Nixon’s presidency, but they kind of set the agenda. They lit the kindling.” This notion was put forward recently in a new memoir by [Margaret Sullivan] the former Washington Post media critic. In her book, entitled Newsroom Confidential, it doesn’t dwell on this but has a passing reference to how Woodward and Bernstein lit the kindling that led to the investigations that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency. That’s a somewhat new interpretation about the Watergate scandal that addresses that these two reporters didn’t end Nixon’s presidency, but they were vital factors and forces in lighting the kindling.
I don’t find that very persuasive because Woodward and Bernstein were not alone in reporting the Watergate scandal as it unfolded in the summer and fall of 1972. Other news organizations, including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, did some really good reporting about the early portions of the scandal that the Washington Post had to pick up on after the fact. Woodward and Bernstein had an agenda setting role. This notion is also undercut by the fact that there were other entities out there calling attention in the early days of the scandal to the White House and its likely involvement in Watergate. That included George McGovern, the hapless Democratic candidate for president in 1972. He lost by a huge landslide, but he was likening Watergate to the kinds of things they were seeing in Germany under Hitler. McGovern’s extreme comments helped keep attention on Watergate.
The point is that Woodward and Bernstein were not alone. They had plenty of company, both in the media and outside the media. There were other people who were publicizing elements and dimensions of the Watergate scandal. There’s a book that came out sometime early this year called Watergate: A New History by Garret Graff. Graff imaginatively tries to assess the agenda setting effects of Woodward and Bernstein by looking at the contents of the articles of impeachment that were drawn up against Richard Nixon but were never voted on by the full House. This was because Nixon quit the presidency before these articles of impeachment could be approved by the whole House. Graff noted that the articles of impeachment really did not reflect Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting. Traces of their exclusives in the summer and fall of 1972 cannot be found in the articles of impeachment. So, I think that’s another way of measuring the agenda setting component.
Graff also states that Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting was less subtle and revelatory in the moment than it had seemed in hindsight. The substitute for the media myth about Woodward and Bernstein that they were crucial agenda-setting forces is also a bit of myth and slightly exaggerated. It’s a way of trying to find an explanation for their reporting while sidestepping the big media myth that they brought down Richard Nixon. It’s intriguing that this claim of agenda setting is a way to sort of call attention to their contributions, but not that they are the guys who broke the story and brought down Richard Nixon. Overall, I think their agenda-setting effect was very marginal and not decisive to the outcome of Watergate.
Q: If there was another cinematic adaptation about the Watergate scandal that highlighted the truth from a different perspective, do you think it could alter people’s minds? Would America still view Woodward and Bernstein as the heroes in this story?
A: One might want to think so, but realistically, I’m not so sure. I think the narrative has been hardwired into the popular consciousness; It’s been fifty plus years since Watergate took place. I don’t know what the incentive would be for people to say, “hmm, let me give this another thought.” Maybe for media scholars or people who are really into the Watergate scandal, but it’s hard to see how effective that would be for the general public at large.
It would be an interesting documentary that’s waiting to be made about that. The other side of Watergate or the other side of All the President’s Men. In terms of changing the attitudes or altering the narrative, it would face a steep uphill struggle. There have been movies made about other aspects of the Watergate scandal but none of them has really been as well don as All the President’s Men movie. At this time, after so many years, it’s hard to see how things could be shifted.