As big as Watergate? Let’s see the evidence
Bob Woodward tells Peter W. Stevenson that it’s a big deal to fire the head of the FBI but that the facts still need to come out Trump and ‘ the Russia thing’
he Washington Post’s Bob Woodward covered the Watergate scandal as it unfolded more than 40 years ago. But despite widespread comparisons between President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI director James Comey and President Richard Nixon’s decision to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Woodward says the media should be careful about making conclusions about Trump and his motives, saying: “Let’s see what the evidence is.”
The Post sat down with Woodward in his Washington home to get his thoughts on Trump’s decision to fire Comey, comparisons to the Saturday Night Massacre, and how the media should cover the Trump Administration. The conversation has been edited only for length and clarity. It’s clearly a legitimate investigation, and Trump doesn’t like it. We’ll see. Some people think it’s a coverup already. Others think there’s no evidence, and let’s see. And what’s worrisome to a reporter interested in getting facts is, this is so polarised, this is so emotional. This is driven by tweets and assertions from people who don’t really know. It’s too bad we live in this internet culture of impatience and speed, and it does not set us on the road to gathering facts. trying to talk to everyone who might know something. that was in October 1973, and what happened is, the Attorney General then, Elliot Richardson, had been appointed by Nixon. Elliot Richardson, “Mr Clean”, had agreed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he would appoint a special prosecutor in Watergate. At the time of the Saturday Night Massacre, John Dean, Nixon’s lawyer, had already testified — a devastating four days of nationally publicised testimony — and Alexander Butterfield, a Nixon aide, had disclosed the taping system, so by the time you got to the point where Nixon fired the special prosecutor, there were voluminous accusations against Nixon and there was a path to getting the evidence, getting the tapes. It’s so important to understand what John Dean was saying: specifics, dozens of calls, meetings saying the President orchestrated and was the leader of an illegal obstruction of justice. Dean testified to his own motive, which he said was corrupt, and that the President was corrupt. So you had a first- hand witness, and in the Trump case, there’s a lot of suspicion — genuine, well- founded suspicion, but no John Dean testifying with the kind of specifics, “On March 21 we met and I said we need maybe a million dollars to pay the Watergate burglars for their silence,” and Nixon says, “Well, I know where we can get a million dollars.” Nothing like that. Nothing comparable. Maybe there will be at some point. No comparable evidence trail, where there were suggestions of a secret taping system or suggestions of absolutely foolproof evidence. So you get to the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon’s not firing the FBI director, he’s firing the boss, the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. There was such a firestorm, dozens, as I recall, of resolutions introduced in the House of Representatives to introduce an impeachment investigation, so what did Nixon do? He blinked. He said, OK, we’ll have a new special prosecutor — it turned out to be Leon Jaworski, and the second thing — at that moment, there was an order from a federal court of appeals saying he had to turn over a group of tapes, and he said, “OK, I’ll do it.” And so he turned over evidence that turned out in itself to be quite incriminating to him. So you have a very different situation.