Woodward & Bernstein Return: What Do We Know and When Will We Know it?

By: Greg Mitchell It could have been just another Watergate reunion, with the same questions about Deep Throat and Donald Segretti, but somehow Larry King's hour with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on Monday night (marking the 30th anniversary of Nixon's resignation) proved compelling, at least for the journalists in the audience. We've always found the reporting and editing side of the story more interesting than the White House psychodrama anyway.

Bernstein brought it all together for us, however, when he told King that Nixon "could have been a good journalist," judging by some of the profiles he wrote, but as a president, "he was not suited." He also produced the biggest chuckle when he revealed, via satellite, that he was speaking from a parking garage in Milan, Italy, "and I'm going to move the flower pots soon," a reference to the secret Deep Throat signal.

As a public service for those who, quite understandably, chose to pass on this encounter, here are a few highlights, drawn from the transcript.

On the movie, "All the President's Men"

BERNSTEIN: When you see that movie, the great thing about it is, it's not really about Bob and me and our individual characters. It's really about the process of reporting, and there's nothing exotic about it. A very basic kind of methodical reporting, and with a couple of young guys who did their work, and also had a great institution that let them do the work, and went out on a limb for them.

On the Nixon tapes:

WOODWARD: We joke at "The Washington Post," we call those tapes -- because there is a new batch that comes out each season -- "the gift that keeps on giving." And it keeps telling you about Nixon.

On the current U.S. president:

WOODWARD: When I did the book on the Iraq war decision-making, "Plan of Attack," at the end I asked him, how do you -- what's history's judgment going to be about the Iraq war? And he took his hands out of his pocket and said, "History," as if it's far off, "we won't know. We'll all be dead."

BERNSTEIN: I must say, I find that answer -- I find that answer from President Bush almost as unfathomable as anything Richard Nixon ever said.

On political reporting today:

WOODWARD: Some of it is better. And some of it is not as good. It's very difficult, and this is one of the points that Carl has made over the years, which I really agree with, that the people in the government, particularly in the White House, have become masterful at learning how the media operates, how to feed the media. And they, in a sense, know our business better than we know it. So it's much more difficult to get information.

How the media would cover Watergate if it happened today:

BERNSTEIN: I think it would have been covered with a lot of talking heads screaming at each other on 24-hour news channels, about what it means and what happened, and, in fact, they wouldn't have many facts.

I think one of the terrible things that has happened in the years since Watergate is that the agenda of too much of the press has changed, that it's taken on a role of manufactured controversy, of gossip, sensationalism. And that there are not many news institutions left that are willing to expend the effort and money on the kind of hard, slogging reporting that we need.

I think Bob first used this phrase -- that real reporting is the "best obtainable version of the truth." And when I grew up in the newspaper business, that was really the bottom line I think at most newspapers. I'm not sure that's the case anymore. I think that we've got too much of a different agenda.

Do you agree with John Dean that the deceptions surrounding the Iraq war are worse than Watergate?

WOODWARD: I don't agree with John Dean. He was there. He was a participant in the crimes of Watergate. I think you can certainly have strenuous objection to the war in Iraq, and on moral grounds you can have a very serious objection to it, and oppose it. I don't think there is anything on that scale, and in the work I've done, I have not seen that there were crimes committed. Now, some people will look at a war and say, that is a crime in itself, particularly if it's an unnecessary war. My view as a reporter is that the jury is still out on that. We do not know whether this was a good war or a bad war, a necessary one or an unnecessary one.

BERNSTEIN: This is one of these rare occasions where Bob and I disagree. Watergate and this war are apples and oranges, but at the same time I think we went into this war with some serious misrepresentations by the president of the United States. The president of the United States, through the way he has conducted this war, has raised serious questions about his suitability for the presidency. But not on psychological grounds perhaps, so much in terms of really competence, and his ability to understand the world in a way that we expect the president to. I think the jury is in on a lot about this war, and that it has disastrous consequences for this country.

Is the press today going light on the White House?

WOODWARD: You know, some have argued that. I think certainly in the last year that is not the case. That, in fact, anything the White House does gets questioned and scrutinized, and it should.

But you know, we are by nature, particularly with the advent of CNN and cable television -- everyone's impatient. Tell us everything. Explain it. When Carl and I worked on Watergate we could draft a story and hand it in. The editors would look at it, and ask questions and send us off on reporting errands. And we could wait two or three weeks before we got that story nailed down. Now, even at The Washington Post, as good and patient as the editors are, if you get what looks like a good story, they'll be in your office and say, can we get it on the Web site by noon?

BERNSTEIN: I think that the press has put the evidence out there. Too often the press is being blamed for the failure of perhaps Republicans in Congress, not to question their president more closely about what he's doing. Also the electorate, perhaps, ought to be held more accountable.