Personal History (94 page)

Although Ben’s and my relationship had been strengthened by Watergate, others were not so lucky. The relationship between Howard and Ben, which had been so generous and fruitful, was never the same again. Meg described it best later when she said: “We had had a lot of fun together. There was trust and affection among us.… That came apart in many complicated ways.… People got on each other’s nerves. Everybody would claim a different reason for it. Each of us would claim we were without sin.”

A
S A STORY
, Watergate was in many ways a journalist’s dream—although it didn’t seem that way in those first months when we were so alone. But the story had all the ingredients for major drama: suspense, embattled people on both sides, right and wrong, law and order, good and bad.

Watergate—that is, all of the many illegal and improper acts that were included under that rubric—was a political scandal unlike any other. Its sheer magnitude and reach put it on a scale altogether different from past
political scandals, in part because of the unparalleled involvement of so many men so close to the president and because of the large amounts of money raised, stashed, and spent in covert and illegal ways. This was indeed a new kind of corruption in government.

Even today, some people think the whole thing was a minor peccadillo, the sort of thing engaged in by lots of politicians. I believe Watergate was an unprecedented effort to subvert the political process. It was a pervasive, indiscriminate use of power and authority from an administration with a passion for secrecy and deception and an astounding lack of regard for the normal constraints of democratic politics. To my mind, the whole thing was a very real perversion of the democratic system—from firing people who were good Republicans but who might have disagreed with Nixon in the slightest, to the wiretappings, to the breaking and entering of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, to the myriad dirty tricks, to the attempts to discredit and curb the media. As I said in a speech at the time, “It was a conspiracy not of greed but of arrogance and fear by men who came to equate their own political well-being with the nation’s very survival and security.”

The role of the
Post
in all of this was simply to report the news. We set out to pursue a story that unfolded before our eyes in ways that made us as incredulous as the rest of the public. The
Post
was never out to “get” Nixon, or, as was often alleged, to “bring down the president.” It always seemed to me outrageous to accuse the
Post
of pursuing the Watergate story because of the Democratic bias of the paper. A highly unusual burglary at the headquarters of a national political party is an important story, and we would have given it the same treatment regardless of which party was in power or who was running for election. I was often asked why we didn’t cover Ted Kennedy’s debacle at Chappaquiddick as fully as we were covering Watergate. The point is, we did, and the further point is that the Kennedys were probably as angry at us then as the Nixon administration was. Throughout Watergate, I was amazed at the regular allegations that somehow we had created the agony of Watergate by recklessly pursuing certain stories and thereby causing the turmoil that the president was in. How could anyone make this argument in light of the fact that the stories we reported turned out to be true?

In the end, Nixon was his own worst enemy. The
Post
had no enemies list; the president did. Nixon seemed to regard the
Post
as incurably liberal and ceaselessly antiadministration. In fact, the
Post
supported a great many of his policies and programs, but his paranoia, his hatred of the press, his scheming, all contributed to bringing him down—helped along by the appropriate constitutional processes, including the grand juries, courts, and Congress. Woodward and Bernstein were critical figures in seeing that the truth was eventually told, but others were at least as important:
Judge Sirica; Senator Sam Ervin and the Senate Watergate Committee; Special Prosecutors Cox and Jaworski; the House Impeachment Committee under Representative Peter Rodino. The
Post
was an important part—but only a part—of the Watergate story.

M
Y OWN ROLE
throughout Watergate is both easy and hard to define. Watergate no doubt was the most important occurrence in my working life, but my involvement was basically peripheral, rarely direct. For the most part I was behind-the-scenes. I was a kind of devil’s advocate, asking questions all along the way—questions about whether we were being fair, factual, and accurate. I had a constant conversation with Ben and Howard, as I did with the top two editorial writers, Phil and Meg, so I was informed in general. As was my habit before Watergate, I often attended the daily morning editorial meetings, where the issues were regularly discussed and where editorial policy was formed.

What I did primarily was stand behind the editors and reporters, in whom I believed. As time went on, I did this more publicly, defending us in speeches and remarks to groups around the country—indeed, internationally as well. My larger responsibility was to the company as a whole—beyond the paper—and to our shareholders.

I have often been credited with courage for backing our editors in Watergate. The truth is that I never felt there was much choice. Courage applies when one has a choice. With Watergate, there was never
one
major decisive moment when I, or anyone, could have suggested that we stop reporting the story. Watergate unfolded gradually. By the time the story had grown to the point where the size of it dawned on us, we had already waded deeply into its stream. Once I found myself in the deepest water in the middle of the current, there was no going back.

It was an unbelievable two years of pressured existence, which diminished only a little as other publications joined us and as the separate investigations and the court cases spawned by Watergate began to confirm and amplify our reporting. When it was perfectly obvious that our existence as a company was at stake, we of course became embattled. Watergate threatened to ruin the paper. The
Post
and The Washington Post Company survived partly because of the great skill and tenacity that our reporters and editors and executives brought to bear throughout the crisis, and partly because of luck.

In fact, the role of luck was essential in Watergate—and luck was on our side. One has to recognize it and use it, but without luck the end result for us could have been very different. From the first incident of the guard finding the taped door at the Watergate building, to the police sending to the scene of the crime a beat-up-looking undercover car that
was cruising in the area rather than a squad car that might have tipped off the burglars, to the sources willing—some even eager—to talk and help, we were lucky. We were lucky that the original burglary took place in Washington and was a local story. We were lucky that those under investigation compounded their own situation by further mistakes and misas-sessments. We were lucky we had the resources to pursue the story. We were lucky that both Woodward and Bernstein were young and single and therefore willing and able to work sixteen- and eighteen-hour days, seven days a week for months on end, at least with fewer repercussions than married men might have had. We were lucky Nixon was eccentric enough to set up a taping system in the White House, without which he might have completed his term.

We were also lucky that none of us went over the precipice under the staggering pressures. During the summer of 1973, the strain on Ben was so great—his responsibility for all the people under him, for being right, for being accurate—that his eyelid began to droop. A doctor told him it might be a serious symptom, indicating a brain tumor or an aneurysm. After ten days of torture from the suspense, it turned out to be a nervous condition. The calmer people look and act under extreme pressures, the more likely they are to pay the price with physical symptoms.

W
ATERGATE WAS
a transforming event in the life of
The Washington Post
—as it was for many of us at the paper and throughout journalism. Anything as big as Watergate changes you, and I believe it changed not only the
Post
and me but journalism as a whole. There were both positive and negative effects.

At the
Post
, Watergate tested our whole organization: our talents, our skills, our ability to organize and mobilize resources to handle a long-term major investigation while still covering the daily news. Ultimately, Watergate showed what could be done by reporters arduously and painstakingly pursuing investigative work, by editors remaining skeptical and demanding and as dispassionate as possible under the circumstances, and by editorial writers helping to keep the questions foremost in the minds of our readers.

More important in terms of its effect, Watergate catapulted the
Post
to true national and international prominence. The paper became known throughout the world because of it. On one level, the changed image of the
Post
was flattering; on another, it was both “disturbing and distracting to getting on with other things,” as I wrote Denis Hamilton of the London
Sunday Times
. The positive press we began to get was heady and head-turning stuff, but the world, fortunately, has a way of keeping one humble. If the world didn’t do it, I was determined to remind all of us of the need,
as I said in a letter to Carl and Bob, to keep “the demon pomposity” in control: “The sound of our own voices, while listened to by us with some awe and even some admiration, is receding. And if it isn’t, there are all sorts of stark realities before us to restore balance and defy hubris.”

I came to be talked about and written about more and more. I was especially bothered by being talked about as “powerful,” often referred to in one headline or story or another as “The Most Powerful Woman in America,” making me feel like some kind of weight-lifter or body-builder. Actually, I was amazed at this perception relating to power, and confounded by how absurd it was to be singling me out as more “powerful” than Punch Sulzberger or Bill Paley, for example, who controlled more powerful companies but were men.

I was also concerned—for the paper and for all of us, including myself—that if your profile gets up too high it will be a target. Someone or something will bring you down. Accordingly, I did only interviews that I thought were professional, and tried very hard to avoid the personal ones.

I was fairly confident that the work of
Post
reporters and editors would withstand critical scrutiny. I once said to Truman Capote that it looked as if “either I’m going to jail or they are.” On the other hand, I have to admit that I was frightened. I was frightened of the power of a man and his minions, of a president who thought he had the power to wrap himself in the cloak of national security. I was frightened for the future of The Washington Post Company, and, particularly after Fritz died and I became chairman as well as publisher, my responsibilities weighed heavily on me.

Watergate also changed the way journalism and journalists are viewed, and in fact the way they work. During the Watergate affair, we—at the
Post
at least—had developed certain habits that were hard to break. John Anderson, an editorial writer, insightfully discussed this in some notes he made on the editorial page at the time:

Young people flocked into journalism, some for good reasons and some hoping to be Woodward or Bernstein. Certainly, Watergate provided a great deal of evidence that the national media do indeed shape events. Clearly, press reports contributed to Judge Sirica’s doubts about what he was hearing in his courtroom, to congressional questions, to public concern. But we don’t set out to have such a major impact. No one—least of all the press itself—thinks we are free from errors and faults or completely without bias. I never once have believed that we in the press do everything right, but we try to keep our opinions confined to the editorial page.

The natural adversarial relationship between the press and the president was subverted in the case of Watergate, and that, too, affected journalism. I was somewhat alarmed by certain tendencies toward over-involvement, which I felt we should overcome as quickly as we could. The press after Watergate had to guard against the romantic tendency to picture itself in the role of a heroic and beleaguered champion, defending all virtues against overwhelming odds. Watergate had been an aberration, and I felt we couldn’t look everywhere for conspiracies and cover-ups. On the other hand, I don’t believe we “overcovered” Watergate, as some Nixon supporters claimed to the last.

As astounding as Watergate was to the country and the government, it underscored the crucial role of a free, able, and energetic press. We saw how much power the government has to reveal what it wants when it wants, to give the people only the authorized version of events. We relearned the lessons of the importance of the right of a newspaper to keep its sources confidential.

The credibility of the press stood the test of time against the credibility of those who spent so much time self-righteously denying their own wrongdoing and assaulting us by assailing our performance and our motives. In a speech I made in 1970—before the Pentagon Papers and before Watergate—I said: “[T]he cheap solutions being sought by the administration will, in the long run, turn out to be very costly.” Indeed, they did.