Redefining the legacy of two star reporters and Watergate

WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN: LIFE IN THE SHADOW OF WATERGATE

By Alicia C. Shepard

John Wiley & Sons, $24.95, 304 pages

REVIEWED BY ROBERT VERBRUGGEN

After more than three decades of newspaper stories, books, movies and magazine features, America really should be sick of hearing about Watergate. It’s easy to attribute the constant coverage to the media’s obsession with itself — after all, superstar Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are an integral part of the narrative.

But if anything the country needs a refresher course, because the myths surrounding the tale are many. Nixon-haters, breathless journalism students and the general public alike wax incessantly about the pair that “brought down a presidential administration!” and how important whistle-blower Deep Throat was to the whole thing.

“Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate,” by American University’s Alicia C. Shepard, takes a good, solid shot at being that refresher course. It chronicles the journalists lives before, during and after Watergate, drawing on newly available archives.

Ms. Shepard is clearly a fan of “Woodstein,” but from the work’s early pages she is careful not to overstate the duo’s importance. If only all of America would read a few sentences from the preface:

“[T]he two reporters did not single-handedly bring down the president … The courts, the Congress, the grand jury, and the FBI all played key roles. In reality, had former Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield not told Senate investigators on Friday, July 13, 1973, that Nixon kept a secret taping system, Nixon might never have resigned.”

Even within the media Woodward and Bernstein were occasionally scooped, despite having the best general grip on the situation. In July 1972 — during a lull in Post coverage — the New York Times broke the news that burglary ringleader Bernard Barker had made calls to the White House. In October of that year, the Los Angeles Times ran an interview with Alfred C. Baldwin III, who’d monitored transmissions from the bugs planted at Watergate.

But as Ms. Shepard explains later, other reporters “did not write a best-selling book or have Hollywood turn their tale into a box-office success.”

Other reporters didn’t have Deep Throat either, but as Ms. Shepard reminds us, the source wasn’t all he’s been cracked up to be. He’d only confirm information the reporters got elsewhere, rendering him of significant but limited usefulness.

For obvious reasons “Woodward and Bernstein” dwells extensively on the Watergate years, but it also gives readers a good summary of the ensuing decades. Everyone knows what happened to Mr. Woodward — a string of bestselling books on various institutions and presidential administrations, most recently a trilogy about President George W. Bush’s Iraq war.

Mr. Bernstein also accomplished some things, after a botched stunt as a bureau chief at ABC News and a particularly messy marriage (resulting in his wife’s “fiction” novel about a philandering husband). He wrote an autobiographical book about having communist parents during the McCarthy era, as well as a controversial article stating that the pope had helped mastermind the fall of communism. He later co-authored a book on the latter subject as well.

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