All the President's Men

Bob Woodward had been an employee of the Washington Post for nine months when he was assigned to the Watergate story (8). He went to Yale with the Navy ROTC program and served a five-year tour with distinction. After his discharge, Woodward spent a year working for a weekly local newspaper following low-level stories before moving up to the Post. For most of that time, he had worked for the city desk, reporting on stories about unsanitary restaurants or small-time police corruption. He had a reputation for being a prima donna and skilled at playing office politics. Woodward was also often criticized for his poor, stilted writing. What Woodward excelled at was developing contacts and working stories, no matter how small, to their finish. He also had an eye for the big picture and loved to pitch theories back and forth with the Post’s editors. He was 29 at the time the first Watergate story was published (9).

Woodward claims in the book that he started out as a Republican but, during the course of the investigation, came to refuse to support Richard Nixon as the details of the case came out. Later in his career, Woodward became an editor with the Post. He remained active in political reporting, though none of his stories were as impactful as the ones he wrote about Watergate. In the 2000s, Woodward clashed horns with the White House regarding his reporting on a CIA scandal. During the Obama administration, he again fought over White House rhetoric. His reporting once again came to the forefront of American politics when Woodward used his conservative credentials and fame to gain unprecedented access to members of Donald Trump’s administration.

In his work on Watergate, Woodward is portrayed as more cautious, more theoretical, than his counterpart. His caution saves the two and the Post from several embarrassing mistakes. Woodward also works hard to develop working theories regarding the chaos of the break-in and cover-up. While he is sometimes wrong, these theories are vital in directing and managing the investigation. 

John Dean is an Ohio-born lawyer who became involved with Richard Nixon in 1968. He was promoted into the White House in 1970 to replace John Ehrlichman as White House counsel. Dean often served as an intermediary between the White House, the FBI, and the Justice Department. As a result he often interacted with John Mitchell and Patrick Gray. Both men were his superior, both in position and age, but reporting suggested that Dean often passed instructions to Mitchell and Gray. During the initial stages of the Watergate affair, Dean was tasked with the White House’s internal investigation. He sat in on many of the FBI’s interviews with the burglars and CRP officials. Reports of these meetings passed further into the White House, and Dean himself was ordered by Ehrlichman and Haldeman to help destroy compromising documents and stonewall the investigation. After James McCord testified to Congress about his perjury, Dean attempted to persuade the President to come clean about the break-in. Instead, Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman attempted to portray Dean as a rogue official who had tried to disrupt the investigation to protect Nixon. Their gambit failed, and Dean became one of the most important sources to the Senate Select Committee.

In 2005 it was revealed that the long mysterious figure “Deep Throat” was really Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt. Felt, second in command at the FBI, was one of the most important sources in the Post’s Watergate reporting. On the day of the Watergate break-in, Patrick Gray directed Felt to provide daily updates on the status of the investigation. Felt saw every report, confidential document, and interview transcript the FBI produced. He also saw how shallow the investigation was going to be. Felt made the extraordinary decision to selectively leak Watergate materials to Woodward in an attempt to publicize the truth of the crimes that he was watching spill across his desk. Felt’s decision cost him his job at the FBI and ended his career in 1974, but his contributions played a major role in promoting full disclosure of the Watergate affair.

L. Patrick Gray took over as the acting FBI director after the death of J. Edgar Hoover. Gray was intensely ambitious and deeply political, and as a result he was more willing than his predecessor to comply with the Nixon administration’s requests. Days after the Watergate break-in, Gray destroyed sensitive documents produced by CRP and Hunt to save the White House from embarrassment. When Nixon directed the CIA to obstruct the FBI’s investigation, Gray complied and only prosecuted the Watergate burglars. Gray ultimately parleyed these clearly illegal favors into a nomination for permanent FBI director. However, Gray’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee was, willfully or not, extremely damaging to both him and the White House. Gray’s ultimate motivations remain unclear, but it is also the case that he knew of Felt’s disclosures to the Washington Post and had taken steps to protect Felt’s access from White House obstruction. In many ways Gray seemed to play both sides to his own advantage. When word leaked that he had destroyed materials on behest of John Dean and John Ehrlichman, Gray’s career ended.

H. R. Haldeman was Richard Nixon’s chief of staff. His job was to stand between the President and all those who clamored for his attention. In many ways Haldeman was the President’s personal fixer. Haldeman also had a reputation for cruelty: Many in Washington feared that if Haldeman turned against them they would soon lose their jobs, their access, or their good standing in the White House. Haldeman was also deeply involved in the dirty tricks program and the subsequent cover-up. He helped coordinate the release of materials that Hunt had fabricated, provided oversight and guidance where needed, and, after the botched break-in, worked to obtain the burglars’ silence. In the “smoking gun” tape that eventually brought Nixon down, Haldeman details the nature of the FBI’s investigation and asks Nixon for instructions regarding how to proceed. After John Dean’s revelations, Haldeman was forced to resign. Even in resignation, he tried to save himself and the President by painting Dean as the true Watergate conspirator. While Haldeman was politically deft, these accusations did not survive the release of the Nixon tapes in 1974.

Howard Hunt was the leader of the White House espionage and dirty tricks program. Hunt’s first assignment after he was hired in 1971 was to create a team to investigate Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg had leaked a document collection, known as the Pentagon Papers, to the New York Times. The White House wanted to find documents that would embarrass and discredit Ellsberg, including confidential medical and psychiatric records. Hunt led a team to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychologist. While the mission failed to recover the file, it proved that Hunt and his team could be trusted to conduct sensitive missions for the White House. Hunt was then tasked with organizing the dirty tricks team that had been formed to nudge the election in Nixon’s favor. Hunt would be in charge of Donald Segretti’s team in addition to his own operations. These activities continued until the morning of the Watergate break-in, when Hunt’s espionage team was discovered by DC police. Hunt was quickly implicated in the break-in, and his role as team leader was revealed. He stood trial along with the five burglars and chief planner G. Gordon Liddy. When it became clear that the team would be found guilty, Hunt bought their silence for a $1 million bribe.