Fifty years ago this month, actors Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford and Jason Robards brought to life and movie screens All The President’s Men. The non-fiction account of enterprising Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl  Bernstein’s investigation, under the guidance of legendary editor Ben Bradlee, of the break in of the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC is a hallmark of investigative journalism. It helped establish the newspaper’s bona fides as a national daily while the involvement of the president elevated the scandal from a story of political corruption at the highest levels to cultural watershed and parable.

Woodward and Bernstein’s tenacity in pursuing the story - pulling threads and connecting the dots, as investigators might say - of the five men arrested on June 17, 1972 led to the identification of the quintet as operatives acting on behalf of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP, or, more notoriously, CREEP). Though perhaps mythologized by the refraction of time and cinematic treatment, the duo’s reporting was the sine qua non for a singular event in our nation’s history: the first and only resignation of a sitting United States President. The final act was arguably predicated on what has now become commonplace to say and hear: the coverup is worse than the crime.

While the events of Watergate may seem quaint by today’s standards, it remains a defining event in American politics. It is also, perhaps, an object lesson about how the consequential discoveries investigations produce can emerge from applied methodology, good source work and small details and moments that can be overheard, or overlooked and missed. To wit:

  • Watergate Office Building security guard Frank Willis identified during his rounds after beginning a midnight shift a security breach in the form of tape over the lock of a door. He removed it. On a subsequent round, he again found the tape, allowing ingress and egress from the building’s parking garage to its office spaces and became convinced that it wasn’t the accidental legacy of maintenance staff working in the building. He called the police who shortly thereafter arrived and subsequently arrested the burglars at 2:30 am  in the morning on June 17, 1972.
  • The burglars were arraigned in Washington, DC Superior Court later that morning where Washington Post reporters covering the court heard arrestee James McCord tell the judge he worked as a security consultant for the Central Intelligence Agency.
  • Law enforcement sources Woodward and Bernstein cultivated provided them with entries from address books belonging to two of the burglars following an FBI raid on their hotel room the day after the arraignment. The leads they provided, including abbreviated names and telephone numbers, confirmed that retired CIA agent Howard Hunt was reachable at the White House through Nixon advisor Charles Colson.
  • Substantive truth is not the same as factual truth and credibility rests on accuracy. Woodward and Bernstein incorrectly reported that Hugh Sloan, treasurer for the Committee to Re-Elect the President, had identified Nixon’s Chief of Staff HR Haldeman as having authority over CRP slush funds which were financing the committee’s intelligence operations. While true in substance, it was not factually accurate and exposed the paper to vociferous denials from the White House and unnecessary pressure on the credibility of its reporting, its fundamental currency.
  • Follow the money!!!

While many investigators may tout their technology fluency and tools (these are important, to be sure, in the digital age), All The President’s Men is a great reminder that the fundamentals of great investigative work haven’t changed.

 

Photo Source: Warner Bros