"I called my father and said I'm not going to law school, but have this job at a newspaper he had never heard of. And my father said probably the severest thing he has ever said to me. He said, 'You're crazy.' So he didn't think it was a good idea."

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. A year later, he was back at the Post and at age 29 found himself in the middle of one of the biggest stories of the century.

With the full support of their editor, Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward and his Post colleague Carl Bernstein continued to pursue the Watergate story, after other news outlets had dropped the story. In the end, the Watergate scandal brought down a President and made Bob Woodward the most famous investigative reporter in America. He is now Assistant Managing Editor of the Post, and has written nearly a dozen best-selling books.

As Vice President and Executive Editor of The Washington Post, Benjamin Bradlee guided the leading newspaper of the nation's capital for nearly 20 years, through some of the most dramatic episodes in the history of American journalism.

After serving as a communications officer in the Navy during the Second World War, Bradlee founded the New Hampshire Sunday News and served for a time as Press Attaché to the American Embassy in Paris. After serving as a European correspondent for Newsweek magazine and covering the presidency of his friend John Kennedy for The Washington Post, he became the Post's Executive Editor in 1968.

At Bradlee's insistence, the Post risked criminal prosecution by publishing the controversial Pentagon Papers, a devastating exposé of government deception in the Vietnam War. When the trail of the Watergate conspirators turned cold, Bradlee urged his young reporters to continue the investigation. The Post's coverage earned the paper one of its numerous Pulitzer Prizes. His autobiography A Good Life, was published in 1995. His remarks on Watergate are interspersed throughout our interview with Bob Woodward.