Upcoming Book Takes Sharp Look at Woodward and Bernstein

By: Joe Strupp After more than 30 years of digging up inside information about everyone from Pope John Paul II to George W. Bush, Watergate legends Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are having the tables turned on them in an upcoming book that seeks to analyze their careers from the early days of Watergate to last year's revelations about famed source Deep Throat.

For "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow Of Watergate" (John Wiley & Sons, to be published this November), author Alicia C. Shepard was the first to extensively use the 75 boxes of their recently donated Watergate-era papers at the University of Texas in a chronology of both their personal lives and careers.

While Shepard, an American University journalism professor and longtime media writer, hails their accomplishments on the Watergate scandal, she also offers sharp critiques of each in the years since. Negatives range from criticism of Woodward for allegedly putting his books ahead of Washington Post scoops to what she calls Bernstein's "sporadic" career. The book comes with a blurb from Newsweek's Michael Isikoff calling it "the definitive account of the lives of two men who changed journalism forever."

Woodward told E&P this week that he did not speak with Shepard for the book. When asked what he thought of it, he said only, "First Amendment prevails."

Bernstein, who is continuing to work on a Hillary Clinton biography, said, "We didn't cooperate with her. I agree with my friend Bob that the constitution, thank God, allows her to write whatever she wants. Our real lives, and our work -- together, separately, for books, newspapers, magazines, television, commentary -- are out there for anybody to judge on the merits."

The book grew out of Shepard's lengthy oral history for Washingtonian magazine in 2003, for which she did interview the pair. It acknowledges the duo's historic moment in the sun, but also inspects their lives with an eye toward the mistakes and human errors, following the pair through the Watergate reporting, the co-authored books, and the resulting hefty incomes during the 1970s.

Shepard used the Texas treasure trove, as well as more than 200 interviews and the archives of David Halberstam and film director Alan Pakula. Along the way she provides tidbits on everything from the original manuscript of "All the President's Men" to quotes from actor Robert Redford's private notes on his first meeting with Woodward, and ends with the outing of Deep Throat last year.

Bernstein takes the brunt of the criticism in the uncorrected galleys for the 288-page book. Shepard calls one chapter, "Bernstein Unchaperoned," and quotes from the divorce records of his breakup with Nora Ephron, as well as a 14-page letter he wrote to her about the depiction of the husband in her semi-autobiographical "Heartburn" movie. But she also explores Woodward's three marriages, his failures in the infamous Janet Cooke episode at the Post, and the problematic nature of his reliance on anonymous sources.

In her acknowledgments, Shepard thanks, among others, Washington Post veterans Ben Bradlee, Leonard Downie, Jr., Geneva Overholser, Harry Rosenfeld, David Von Drehle, Richard Cohen, and Sally Quinn (not to mention Redford and Dustin Hoffman).

Shepard wrote a column about the two reporters for E&P Online in April.