Bob Woodward Interview (page: 4 / 9) Investigative Reporter	Print Interview

Mr. Bradlee, it's important to remember that Nixon was reelected during this period.

Ben Bradlee: By an overwhelming margin, as we were reminded so often.

But you decided to "back the kids."

Ben Bradlee: I backed the kids.

That's a quote from the movie and the book. What made you "back the kids," Woodward and Bernstein?

Ben Bradlee: Because the kids were right. They were not hard to support, these young reporters, because they were right. Every time the White House denied something, the evidence became clear that it was the White House that was lying. 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. Robert Dole, and Dole's successor as the chairman of the Republican Party, George Bush the first. These guys lied because they didn't know the truth, and they couldn't believe that they were being lied to.

Nixon didn't last too long in that second term. Where were you when he resigned, and what were your feelings?

Ben Bradlee: I was at The Washington Post, and I couldn't believe it. I mean, I believed it, because it was -- I knew it was coming. I really -- we knew it, we knew it, we knew it, but we couldn't -- we were being told by the people who were telling us that if we publish it, he'll change his mind and won't resign! So we started phrasing it "close to resignation," and "debating resignation," and then, finally, we learned that -- I think he was going to do it at nine o'clock at night, or eight o'clock at night. He resigned. Well, I was down there. Where the hell? I mean, I lived in that place for those periods. And we were so scared that we were going to -- By this time, we knew that the front page was going to be a historical document. It was going to be reproduced in the history books, and we wanted to be sure that we got it right, and be sure that some -- there wasn't a typo. In those days, you worried terribly about typos. We wanted to be sure that it wasn't sabotaged in some way by, you know, printers slipping in the "F" word or something like that that was going to screw it up. And we had to be sure the headline was right. We had to be sure. Just -- it was terribly, critically important that we do it right and that we not brag, not seem to be bragging, and that we didn't allow any television in there for days.
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I was worried about the Post's image of all of this, and that there would be a segment of society who said, you know, "They were out to get him, those bastards, and they got him." And it was going to be -- we were just very careful. We had such good sources. One of the sources I can now reveal -- I mean, I have talked about -- was Senator Goldwater, who was a great friend of my wife's family, and I used to talk to him all the time. I'd have drinks with him early -- all of late July and early August. And he would be going over to the White House to give Nixon the news that he didn't have any -- his support in the Senate was eroding. And he was the one who said that. He told me first that he was going to resign, wasn't sure when, and for God's sake don't write it as hard, because he won't. So we were terribly worried, and we didn't -- it's a big newspaper and a lot of people in it, and you can't control all of them even if you wanted to. So we tried to just keep people out of the building. We didn't allow any television people in. We didn't allow television in for six months, I don't think. And when Redford wanted to film the movie in the Post, we told him he couldn't. He wanted to film it from 3:00 in the morning until 8:00 in the morning, and we just told him it was not possible.
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Mr. Bradlee, what were your emotions when Nixon resigned?

Ben Bradlee: That we had really done a really good job. That the difficulties they put up to prevent the truth from coming out had been overcome. That really is what we're all about. Let's be sure for the record to say that it wasn't just the Post. The Post played a critical role in the beginning, and Woodward and Bernstein came in at critical moments. 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 Hirsch, the Los Angeles Times, they all did really good work.

Mr. Woodward, tell us what it felt like to you personally when Nixon stepped down.

Bob Woodward: We had done some of the early stories, that it led to the Senate Watergate Committee, led to the House Judiciary Committee and impeachment investigation. Special Prosecutor Cox and Jaworski investigated this, put lots of people in jail. The Supreme Court ordered the President to turn over his tapes, which really sunk him -- the "smoking gun" tapes -- at the end. So I had just a sense that -- we had done some of the first work on this -- that any suggestion that we had caused it, or brought down a President, was a stretch, to say the least, and not factual. That we had done stories, but it is a process of the judiciary, the Congress, the Supreme Court, that led to Nixon's demise. But then, of course, if you think about it, Nixon is the one who did himself in. The piston driving the Nixon Administration was hate. Nixon was a full-blown hater, and if you listen to the tapes, it's chilling and frightening.
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Paranoid too. Right?

Bob Woodward: Well, paranoid, and...

He wanted to use the Presidency as an instrument of personal revenge, to settle scores, too often, and that's not what the Presidency is about. And what's sad about the Nixon Presidency is not just the criminality and abuse of power, but the simple truth, to the best of my knowledge at this point, on those tapes no one ever says what would be good, what would be right for the country, what would be best for the country, which of course is what a President is supposed to do. It seemed to always be about Nixon. "How does this affect me, Nixon, the President? How do I pay someone back, either good or bad, for what they have done to me?"
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