All the President's Men
Stein, Benjamin
"All the President's Men" AT ONE POINT in the story of how two reporters for the Washington Post covered the Watergate story and broke much new ground in it, the following lines occur: "They had not broken the law . . . that...
...In fact, no responsible authority has even hinted that the instigation of the activities of the "plumbers" was the same as that of the Watergate bugging...
...And in those words, and in one additional word, is the secret of their phenomenal success—chutzpah is the additional word...
...It is somehow a perfect encapsulation of the views of people like Bradlee to imagine a revolution over a rather stocky woman in a limousine going to jail...
...We can't afford to gloat.' " If that does not seem to be an image of an impartial editor, another image of Bradlee at the helm raises questions about his recognition of the world around him...
...They can become the center of attention—searched for both inside and outside their organizations...
...Bernstein and Woodward had it in spades...
...In this they were clearly wrong, at least in large part, and Haldeman himself denies the involvement to this day...
...Repeatedly throughout the boot Woodward refers to a source so secret Idid not even reveal it to Bernstein...
...Then the judge can have that on his conscience...
...They had chosen expediency over principle and, caught in their act, their role had been covered up...
...it was the most stringent antitrust settle ment in history, and even Archibald Co praised it...
...It was Bernstein and Woodward who first made public the Mexican connection through which money from the Committee to Re-elect the President had reached the Watergate burglars...
...There was no massive nationwide wiretapping operation, no wholesale campaign disruption, no emerging police state...
...In fact, o course, only a relative handful of the to officials of the government, of the Whit' House, or even of the CRP have even bee] accused of wrongdoing...
...But Bernstein and Woodward repeatedly seek to leave the impression that had it not been for their intervention, Nixon would have been inaugurated in 1976 to the singing of the Horst Wessel Song...
...The value of the book therefore lies not so much in what it says about Watergate, as in what it tells us about reportorial techniques and about the well-to-do liberal image of the world...
...Benjamin Stein...
...They did not find this out by their own investigations, but by getting Federal and local investigators to spill their guts.by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster, $8.95 Bernstein and Woodward also first broke the story about Donald Segretti and his dirty tricksters...
...Chutzpah is defined as that quality which allows a person who has just killed his parents to throw himself on the mercy of the court and ask for leniency as an orphan...
...Bernstein and Woodward are referring to themselves...
...As such, it is fluent and interesting reading...
...They got the leads on this too from their sources within the government...
...Benjamin Bradlee, millionaire editor of the Washington Post, and Katharine Graham, multimillionaire owner of the Post, are pictured as having an almost psychopathic hatred for the Nixon Administration, and an image of the world as the oyster of the wealthy liberal...
...The lesson is that in modern life, people who work in large organizations accumulate a lot of grievances...
...Can't you see the pictures of her limousine pulling up to the Women's Detention Center, and out gets our gal, going to jail to uphold the First Amendment...
...Instea...
...But if Bernstein and Woodward are trying to indict the whole Administrationon the basis of scattered facts and many half-truths, they make it clear where they got their inspiration...
...Then he put one cheek on the desk, eyes closed and repeatedly banged the desk with his right fist...
...It was the golden boys who also got the first stories out about Haldeman's involvement with a secret fund used to pay the Watergate burglars...
...They had dodged, evaded, misrepresented, suggested, and intimidated, even if they had not lied outright...
...But the impression Bern stein and Woodward leave is ver different...
...The Bernstein and Woodward accoun of how they put their talents to work of the Watergate story is glowingly spelle( out in All the President's Men...
...They combined almost limitless energy with limitless chutzpah, strained the result through an almost incomprehensible writing style, and brought out some of the most interesting facts about the Watergate case...
...The book ends before the most sensational disclosures, which of course were made by Richard Nixon himself...
...At one point, "Deep Throat" says that -the Administration was bugging throughout its tenure, and that the bugging of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate was "only natural...
...The source was nicknamed "Deep Throat...
...Those sentences do not refer to Richard Nixon or Ron Ziegler...
...The people were rare and hard to find, but Bernstein and Woodward found that if they pushed against enough doors, eventually one would open...
...Bernstein and Woodward found such people in the White House, in the Justice Department, in the FBI, in the CRP, and even in competing news-gathering organizations...
...1 implied a certain tenuous connection The ITT pledge of money was to th San Diego Convention Bureau, not t, the Republicans, and the antitrust settle ment was not favorable to ITT...
...Just to cite a glai ing example, Dita Beard is described a the ". . . author of the famous mem which showed that there was a con nection between ITT's promise of severe hundred thousand dollars to help th Republican convention and a favor able antitrust settlement...
...They can dispel some of the feelings of their own unimportance by telling secrets to the press...
...Nevertheless in their work, and in reading their book, there is a lesson for all students of government, reporting, communications, and human nature, which far transcends the reportage on Watergate...
...There were just a few dirty tricks and the Watergate break-in and coverup...
...emphasi added) In fact, Dita Beard swore under oat] that she did not write the memo attrib uted to her and that it was a forgery The memo did not "show" anything...
...Observe Bradlee, for example, when he learns of the resignations of Ehrlichman, Dean, and Haldeman: "For a split second Ben Bradlee's mouth dropped open with an expression of sheer delight...
...AT ONE POINT in the story of how two reporters for the Washington Post covered the Watergate story and broke much new ground in it, the following lines occur: "They had not broken the law . . . that much seemed certain...
...Finally, Special Prosecuto Jaworski found no wrongdoing in th transaction...
...Bradlee couldn't restrain himself...
...The arrests in the Watergate sent everybody off the edge because the break-in could uncover the whole program...
...But they had sailed around it and exposed others to danger...
...He strode into the Post's vast fifth floor newsroom and shouted across rows of desks to Woodward . . . 'Not bad, Bob...
...And of course, the book does not mention that the case was really broken, according to the Justice Department, by the President's ordering his staff to testify without taking any claims of privilege before the Grand Jury...
...But again, Bernstein and Woodward got what they wrote from sources, not from original research...
...Far more important, at least so far, no responsible person has suggested that there was an iceberg under that tip...
...But the Bernstein and Woodward boo is chock full of more specific misleadin or untrue implications...
...At many other times the authors say that such and such a source said Watergate and Segretti were just "the tip of the iceberg...
...Bu the authors' title is as misleading as many o their newspaper stories, and indeed as mis leading as large parts of the book...
...Not half bad!' [Another editor] interjected a note of caution...
...They can "get back" at their bosses—the ones who do have known faces and personalities...
...There might be a revolution...
...By one of those ironic twists of fate, when the Watergate story first broke on June 17, 1972, the Washington Post's editors gave it to two of the most nervy reporters that have ever lived—Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward...
...Bradlee says, "And my God, the lady saysshe'll go...
...The masses will rise up to save the limousine for Katharine Graham...
...At one point he is considering the possibility that Mrs...
...Another example is even more typic...
...The title i supposed to imply that all of the President' men were involved in Watergate...
...One of those grievances is that they are anonymous, faceless cogs in a machine...
...They can beat the system, in a word, by leaking...
...The result is a book which exaggerates enormously the importance of the Bernstein-Woodward connection...
...of the kind of false image the book trip to give to all the activities of the Whit House...
...Graham may be subpoenaed for notes, and that of course she would refuse the subpoena and then go to jail...
Vol. 8 • November 1974 • No. 2
