Woodward and Bernstein: The Dynamic Duo to End All Dynamic Duos

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward changed both American history and the history of investigative reporting with their landmark work in investigating and exposing Watergate. They are remembered for their persistence and dedication to their story, which paid off.

Their work was important because it was the first time that the American public saw investigative reporters take down such a huge public figure — by exposing his cheating and injustice. In my personal opinion, it was the first time that the American public saw a story that they had previously doubted be right.

Woodstein — as they will be called in the remainder of this blog post — unknowingly embraced the Paul Williams Way of reporting. For example, they considered the feasibility of the story with Ben Bradlee, their editor, quite a bit. They followed the paper trail and the people trail.

Speaking of their editor, I made a note from the movie: editors need to be convinced sometimes, and they’re going to hold you accountable if you’re right and especially if you’re wrong, but once they are convinced, they genuinely support and defend the story. Bradlee was willing to take a risk, and it paid off.

As far as secondary sources go, they used books and libraries. They took advantage of their location, using the vast resources of D.C. to help them locate certain people and verify events. They reviewed the personal documents of one of their sources in Miami. For primary sources, the iconic Deep Throat provided them with a lot of help. But they chased down all the people they could find — Sloan, Segretti and others. And they made them talk.

The obstacles they faced included tight-lipped sources and extreme doubt from editors and the public. A big one was the amount of information they had to sort through, often through roundabout means, before they had any real facts for their story.

They chased their sources and met with them under bridges at night. They flirted with them if they needed to. They traveled, literally, to people’s houses to knock on their doors and ask if they knew anything. Maybe we would do that today, but most likely not. They also smoked with their sources a lot. We probably wouldn’t do that today.

When Woodstein searched through the library check-out cards to find out if Hunt had taken out any material, that was searching through records. Other records they used included Mr. Barker’s phone records and bank records. Barker’s records helped them find Kenneth H. Dahlberg, which pushed the investigation forward.

Without Deep Throat (the whistleblower of the millennium, in my opinion), the story would have probably been a dud, lost at a standstill. Deep Throat, with other whistleblowers, provided Woodstein the kindling to sustain the fire of their investigation. They verified details and provided more. He was a sincere source.

One dilemma I found in Woodstein’s reporting was when Bernstein asked one source to not hang up after he counted to 10 if Haldeman was the fifth person and to hang up before he reached 10 if he wasn’t. I feel like that was a move out of desperation, which can understand to a point, but it was a bit sloppy and confusing.

But despite the imperfections, there are some things I would like to ask the duo: How did you keep all your notes straight? How did you organize? How did you keep going with the story when it felt like everything was against you and the amount of things you had to sort through felt impossible?

And there are also a lot of things that I learned. Keep talking to people, even if they try to duck and dodge you. Be annoying. Go around sources.

Know how to speak Spanish or another language to communicate with potential sources. This was proved true when they tried to call the men from Miami. As Deep Throat told Woodward, “follow the money”. Be patient. Don’t get frustrated with your sources.

Woodstein shared sources, bylines, cigarettes and developments in this story. As soon as one had an update or a new detail, they called the other, who promptly wrote it down or called another source to verify it.

But that wasn’t the only story they collaborated on. In the Washington Post article “Woodward and Bernstein: 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought”, Woodstein, as they are nicknamed, use a variety of sources. Former senators. Nixon tapes. Post stories from the time. A novel published by a director at a university who wrote a fictional retelling of Watergate. Their sources added depth and real-world recounts into their story.

I feel like I saw mostly Woodward do the writing and Bernstein do the interviewing and traveling, but I think duties were split pretty evenly among them. Bradlee held them accountable, caring about the story in his backwards way, by demanding more details, more sources and more verification. Their coworkers in the newsroom helped by providing details about sources. One, Kay Eddy, was willing to see her ex-fiancé again in order to get that list of people on the Committee to Re-Elect. (She was iconic.)

In terms of other characters that I thought played an important role (both in and out of the newsroom), one of them was Kenneth Dahlberg, because his admission was one of the key dominoes that needed to fall in order to start the story. Without him, no one would have known that his check was given to Maurice Stans.

Another one was Kay Eddy, (I just have to mention her again) because of the lengths she went to verify details. Lastly, Ben Bradlee was also important because without his editorial judgment and commitment to the story, it would have not gotten published.

I think that Woodstein knew that the Executive Branch was going to be a hard one to investigate. They often went around and worked their way in to top officials. Like the book suggests, they paid attention to what was happening and worked their way up, from the outside in. Their knowledge of the activities at the Executive Branch helped them understand what was going on, why it was wrong and what they had to do about it. Nobody in Nixon’s close circle liked them, but they still kept going.

On my honor, I have watched “All the President’s Men” in its entirety.