News legend was behind the story that took down Nixon
BOB WOODWARD, a US Navy veteran, was 29 years old and just months into a reporting job at the ‘Washington Post’ when he got the tip that would change his life, and America, forever.
The tip was to do with a burglary at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington. He teamed up with Carl Bernstein, a fellow ‘Post’ reporter, and so began a long trail which ultimately led them all the way to corruption at the top of Richard Nixon’s White House. Woodward and Bernstein – or ‘Woodstein’ – became the most heralded US investigative journalists ever, and the ‘Washington Post’ won a 1973 Pulitzer Prize.
The reporters gave full details of how they got there in their book ‘All the President’s Men’, including Woodward’s clandestine meetings with his source ‘Deep Throat’, and the source’s exhortations to “follow the money”.
The book was later made into a Hollywood film, starring Robert Redford as Woodward.
Since the 1970s, Woodward has hardly rested, writing another 17 books, including ones on Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama, all of which had co-operation from the White House.
The relentless and methodical reporting that has underpinned his work since Watergate has only got more intense with age. He has harvested a level of detail on the workings of various White House administrations that no other writer can match.
For ‘Fear’ – his 448-page magnum opus on Donald Trump – Woodward, now 75, spent nearly two years talking to key figures in the administration. “It’s going to be killer. Everyone talked with Woodward,” one former Trump official said before publication.
Mr Trump himself expressed frustration that he himself was not interviewed, and complained to Mr Woodward about it in a phone call in August.
“I broke my spear on it trying to get to you,” Mr Woodward told the president. He also informed Mr Trump that the book would be a “tough look at your administration – and you”. Mr Trump replied: “Sounds like this is going to be a bad one.”