as an instrument of reveng. screw everyone. get the irs on them, the cia, the fbi. you name it. >> order a firebombings of the it's really important that the notion that this was some kind of caper or that the coverup is worse than the crime, which is not the case i certainly believe, that this was an assault on democracy by the president of the united states and his men. and that the system then worked. the judiciary. judge siricca, the chief justice appointed by richard nixon, who would expect to get a pass from

the chief justice. 577-0 vote by the snar of the united states vote to undertake the investigation. imagine today getting a $777-0 vote to investigate purported crimes or malfeasance of a sitting president, unanimous, both parties. the republican party being really the people who cast the most important votes for impeachment of of the president of the united states in the house jbt. republicans led by senator barry goldwater who marched down o to the white house and said to richard nixon, "you don't have the votes in the senate, you're going to be convicted" and oh, you're right.

this might be an opportunity to finally put this in perspective after 40 years. bop talks very upon about the five wars of watergate. >> and you have to -- guess, got into the details of this but -- and we all, including carl and myself kind of ran buy it because the issue became what did nixon know and when did he know it and the pursuit of the tapes. about when you they did their investigation, i wall it the five warz. surveillance, wire at thing, break-ins, fixon, fbi, cia. -- >> the press. >> and then the second war was against the press, where, oh, the press is covering this antiwar movement aggressively. they were going to set up what

was called the houston plan, which nixon signed off on, which was a series of illegal activities to read people's mail, break into apartments and so for the. so this had that rahal -- they took the mindset and the apparatus and the people and again it's in the tapes that they tell nixon they're moving all of this over to one campaign or another. >> the sabotage. >> yeah, the sabotage. >> and the fourth war was really the war against the system of justice, which was the coverup. and the fifth war, which we still see elements of today, is the war against history to say it was a caper, it was a third rate burglary when you look at the details of richard nixon and

his team actually picked who to run against in 1975. they didn't want to run against muskie. they thought he was the strong candidate. all the sabotaged spying efforts -- >> it's important to point out nixon wasn't in danger. >> that's not the case. first they were worried about ted kennedy and they got a former secret service agent to tail kennedy, report back to the white house, they infiltrated of aspect from way back of the democrat being campaign. >> one thor thing about this is the tapes never on those tapes had we found a single instance where the president of the united states or those around him say what would be the right thing for the country? on any matter.

>> is there one thing that if it hadn't happened, we wouldn't be up here talk today? i would argue alex butterfield played a huge role in revealing the existence of taping system. >> i think that's right. i think if you didn't have the tapes, there would have been an ambiguity about all of this but it's the clarity of the tapes and the people who have listened to them, particularly republicans on the house judiciary committee would not only deal with the substance but it was the rage that nixon would get in about small things and the indifference to the law and as carl so rightly says, the indifference to the responsibility nixon had as president. you know, there is goodwill that everyone feels toward a president, even if they disagree, even if they're in the

opposition party. and for nixon, he could never leverage that goodwill. he always was suspicious. at the end he kind of unlocked the key to the way he thinks when -- the day he resigned. he said "always remember, others may hate you but if you hate them" -- what is it? let's try again. "always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, then you've destroyed yourself". i mean, think of that. the piston was hate and he kind of realized had it destroyed him. that's what the tape showed. >> i wanted to ask you about myths. one is the two of you single handedly took down the president of the united states. is there one that bothers you?

>> that's certainly one. this was about the system working, about the judiciary, the legislature, everybody. it worked. i think that's the principal myth that i find it's an oversimplification. and the other one i mentioned, this idea that this was a cape person. >> and the idea that what we were writing was just following what the fbi or the prosecutors were chasing. in january of '73 the prosecutors put on the first watergate trial and said gordon liddy was the mastermind. we had written a couple of dozen stories saying the people behind watergate were haldeman, the chief of staff, john mitchell, the former aer-- that nixon's

secretary was running part of the sabotage campaign, it was a competely different picture from the sources we had. so that's one of the myths that's out there. >> so as you know, there a's a new book out called "leak." in 1976 you talked in one of these old videos about describing deep throat as a conscience stricken man who crossed the line for the best of reasons. this new book he felt was synergist synergistic. >> did a book in 2005 when mark kelt came forward and identified himself as that source. there's nothing in that book that isn't -- there was an am bags, there was a manipulation

one of the things you discover as a reporter -- they sometimes have three, four, five layers. one of them was his disappointment at not being made fbi director. i knew him and dealt with him. he was troubled by what was going on in the nixon white house. he was also trying to protect the fbi and people forget about, this he was not a volunteer. he didn't come to us. we went to him and i actually was -- you used the term stalker to get him to talk. >> there's another fundamental flaw in this book. bob maybe won't be as forth right as i am about it it, and that is the idea that felt

somehow played us, tricked us. that we obtained information all over the lot. it was rare he volunteered information. he would certainly confirm it. certainly the idea that he played us is uter nonsense. the people who got police department were the prosecutors. and they really good played prp partly because the attorney general and assistant attorney general were in on the play and we wrote it. >> the panel is called how would the story unfold in the digital age. i want to bring other people in as well. josh, tell us where does watergate fit in your life and how do you see investigative reporting today?

>> i think like everybody else it's the totemic investigative story. >> how old were you? >> i was 3 and 4. >> how old? >> 3. i'm not even that young, 43 years old. so, yeah, everything is compared to it, falls short, doesn't whatever. so i think it's the same for me as everyone else has talked. it's funny, i'm very -- i mean, one of the things and maybe this is generational, is it's always been difficult for me to grasp how the initial story didn't -- i mean, i get there were holy shit moments for you guys but for me, breaking news stories at

headquarters, even if it's totally coincidental. what i think about most is the way that digital reporting breaks the news cycle. and i think from our own experience, even more than breaks the news cycle, that in the way that the newspaper business ran 40 years ago, there were extras in extreme cases but basically it's cli it's a once a day buy at the apple and there's a whole series of things that fall out from that, one of which is no matter what you have has to be framed into, you know, two or three basic formats of newspaper journalism, certain length, a lead, an arc and so forth. and i think the way that things are the most different in my mind is the way that operating on the web frees you from that. that you can, you know, today we can take one fact and as long as

we know it's accurate, we can go right to press with that. we don't have to -- we not bound into that cycle. and i think in my experience -- obviously that's great, you don't have to maybe worry as much about someone scooping you, but that also create as much more interactive relationship with the audience and i think that can be actually kind of transformative. >> do you have see a down side to that at all? >> you know, there are many potential down sides. obviously there are huge down sides in as much as the amount of competition that we face today, that there's tremendous pressure to run with things before you've got them nailed. i don't think that's inherent. >> let me throw out two ideas here. one, bob or ben, was there any story that you think we would have done better to rush into the paper on this cycle?

can you think of a single one that would have made a difference if we would have jammed to push the edge? >> that's the thing, i'm actually describing something different. there are stories that you i think on the web today stories are reported in a basically different way. you have stories that have many individual component parts to them. they're putting them together. >> in realtime. >> basically. and i think that has plusses and minuses but it's not just a matter of the ability to rush to print. >> sure. i mean, i think there's a very positive side to it. i think also their also is a down side because you have to step back and say what's the goal? the goal is understanding. and if we'd gone to bradley and said we had one fact, he would have looked at us and said get the [ bleep ] out of my office. >> everybody learned a new word. >> we could not have gone in and said hey, ben, we're going to

tweet the following words. it would not have worked. >> we had 140 characters. >> that's right. >> now, what is interesting about the process is that we would actually do a draft and we would write on six-ply paper and copies would go out to paper who would know computers and then sometimes editors would meet with us or themselves. have we got the story? is this ready? get more sources, get more information. i don't understand x and y. and it was that process of delay that allowed us to kind of, okay, those are good questions. ben never said we're not never printing that story about haldeman or nixon or mitchell. he would say, "you don't have it yet." >> i think that process can happen in a different fashion in that kind of platform.

there are two or three fairly big parts of the u.s. attorney story we're never right. sure they're true but we just didn't have it. there are many things that we waited days or weeks, things that had to do with carol lamb's dismissal down in southern california. >> but your first story on the u.s. attorneys, how long did it take for the reporting to be done on this? >> before you went live with it. >> right. >> you know, a couple days, two or three days. >> but it wasn't a tweet? >> there was no tweeting. even back then. i guess my point is that you can still have that very deliberative process in this different platform. and i think the point that i would make is that there are, again, can you have a broad arc of a story but even a sometimes, you know, a resignation happens.

resignation is a pretty self-contained story. you want to let readers in on it. there are incremental bits of information, it allows you to have more of an ongoing conversation with the readers. >> there's two kinds of investigative reporting and this is one of the legacies of watergate. there's what i would call scandal coverage, which is very fast movement, very public, a thousand reporters are clawing over the same information and sources. it reminds me of monica lieu inski where i swear there were 5,000 stories and four breaks in all of it. then there are the longer term, very quiet, deliberate investigations that are done, the pulitzer will be out next week, the kinds of things that win pulitzers. some call them elephants, dave

perry calls them mega turds. watergate was a running investigation where you guys were trying to get things but you also took time to nail them down. >> i think we have to talk about the current environment because i think a dominant fact of the current environment is the way the information is being received that is correct the readers and viewers are very different today, that we had a readership and the networks had a viewership, i think, that was much more open to real fact than today. whereas today i think there's a huge audience, partly whipped into shape by this 24-hour cycle that is looking for information to confirm their already held political, cultural, religious prejudices, beliefs, ideology and that's the calderon into

which all information is put. we had a bit of that in watergate because the white house tried to make our conduct in the press the issue in watergate rather than the conduct of the president and his men and it worked for a while and they called us democrats and they said bradley was a well-known liberal and jfk-ite and all the rest. it then it didn't work anymore. i have no doubt there are dozens are great reporters and news organizations today that could do the story. i'm not so sure that it would withstand this cultural reception that it might be ground up in the process. >> i don't think that's the problem. the question is would you have the institutional support -- >> yes. >> if you go back and look at this -- >> that's right. >> from the perspective of 40 years ago, as carl and i have

said, the risk was bradley's and katherine graham's. they were the ones who were in peril. old and if it didn't work out, didn't check out, carl could have gone to cover rock music, something he wanted to do. i could have gone to the dark side and gone to law school. so, but they were the ones who had it on the line. >> "the washington post" had gone public right at that point, and the nixon administration had decided on a strategy of going after the tv licenses of "the washington post," to gut the basic economic health of the company. this is you know, a huge undertaking of courage on the part of "the washington post." >> you look at the stock had just gone public and it was in the toilet because of the challenge. >> the daily attacks. >> could i ask you to do something for me just an

exercise. you were 29 years old when this happened, you stayed in the news business, you got lots more experience, you are certainly aware of the climate, of the existing political climate, the existing news climate. you have a long distinguished journalistic career. it's a beautiful day out there and marcus has the staff of "the washington post" home, they are gone, the phone call has come in that says there has been a break-in. and you two are the only people on earth who can cover it. what do you do today? tell me today, given everything you know, what are you going to do, what's your first thing you're going to do, what's the next thing you're going to do? you. >> well, i mean -- >> are you going to post the police report? >> be smarter and more organized and quite frankly, work harder and more focused on it. but you know, maybe it wouldn't lead anywhere. maybe it is not the sort of

story like watergate. so not everyone is. as jeff points out, some of the really great investigations are explanations of who people are, what they have done, what institutions mean and so forth. and no one goes to jail. somebody does not have to go to jail. >> the thing about an institution that in those first days, while we were doing what -- he was in the courtroom, i was calling down to florida to track the burglars and learn about their past. we had a guy at police headquarters at night who learned from a detective that howard hunt had in his pocket a note book and in that notebook -- >> the burglars. >> the burglar, had a note book with howard hunt's name and said w house. >> you and i looked at w house and carl said w house, could only mean one of two things.

>> right. >> so he called the whore house and i called the white house. >> but it goes back to this institutional question. there's already a mechanism in place. >> i have a question for you guys. >> able to capitalize. >> you guys are the models for us. who are the models for you? and i don't mean as editors and you know, as ben and catherine were. who were the reporting models, was it jack anderson or did you create your own model as you went along? >> i grew up at the washington star, and it had the most remarkable staff of reporters. this is before bradley got to the post. and the basic kind of reporting that we did in watergate was the kind ever thing that the star did routinely, i think before

bradley got to the post, it was more -- it was more exceptional at the post than at the star. >> i think the people like david halberstan and the work he had done, a lot of the vietnam reporters, cy hirsh. there was suspicion about that. i think one of the -- seeing we're asking the question what should we think about 40 years after this, i think one of the questions we should ask is, do we know what's going on now? how plugged in are we at the d.c. city council, out in montgomery county, the state legislature, in virginia, the white house, the food and drug administration and so forth. and my sense and i think carl share this is view is the people in these institutions, because even the reporters for the post have to file multiple times a

day, you are unnecessarily beholding to people say, in the white house, you have to talk to to get a response to the running daily story. if they don't like what you do, you printed or broadcast, they won't call you back. and you're kind of out hanging. i asked an editor for one of the very big important papers recently. i said when is the last time you wrote something in your paper the obama administration didn't like? and he was -- he couldn't think of any. so we are, in a sense, the question is what should we worry about, and we should worry about secret government. there is more secrecy, it is better organized, it is concealed better. it doesn't mean it's necessarily illegal. but the judge who said it got it

right. democracies die in darkness, and i don't have the kind of confidence that you would hope about are we penetrating, are we describing these basic institutions at all levels. >> even today, you know, the president said an interesting thing today at lunch. he basically challenged the people in the audience to go out and find out if what he was telling -- if what he was saying was the truth. and i think he laid something out that is possible. we know that what he said today is going to be the basis of his campaign in terms of his domestic and economic message. and i think it's a real question of whether we will go out there and determine whether what he said is the truth. there was an awful lot that he asserted today that's checkable. and that back if your newspaper

is in cleveland, you can go to the ohio senator who is a republican and say all right, was obama telling it. there is a way to work, the most important thing in some ways -- >> this is my next book. >> right. the most important thing we do is determine what is news. that's really -- >> i want to say that the environment is very fast moving and fluid and dynamic but it's not shallow. there's many levels of you know, from the bloggers to the reporters who take a year to get the story. we still do a heck of a lot of stories that piss off the administration, the congress, believe me i hear about them so. it's more about where you put the resources you do have. >> are there enough of those? >> that's the question. >> that is the question. and are you comfortable that there are enough of those stories? >> i'm comfortable with the commitment that a place like the post has which is you know, they

put their money where their mouth is. the legacy of watergate, the willingness from the walter reid investigation on down they are willing to really still put their money where their mouth is. and there's every level of engagement from the tweeters and the bloggers down to people like dana priest. >> amanda, what about where you are? what is the commitment to investigative journalism there? >> not the commitment but the craft. one of the things i'm thinking is despite the talk about the tweets and things, how little has actually changed. how similar it seems, the process you're describing. the pulling of the string, the coming in on sunday, the nature of what you were doing, the fact you didn't know, you didn't know that watergate was watergate. it wasn't watergate when you started. you just kind of followed a string. and so much of that seems exactly the same and exactly the same as what we should be doing. i'm not clear, jeff, do you

disagree? >> i have a quote i like to give which is the internet has changed everything, the internet has changed nothing. it's still the methodology that these guys used to do their story. bob has a famous saying during big stories where he says someone needs to go out in the night and knock on a door. and he's talking about finding a source. you need to find a source, you need to find a document, you need to do the honest pursuit of the truth. and the methods are eternal and ancient. and they get more -- we have computer assisted reporting, multiplatforms, we can get the word out faster, we can use social media but at the heart and center of the game remains the type of reporting that these guys did. >> can josh jump in? >> i feel it's sort of the luming over this conversation of what's different, what's possible, what's not possible. and what i would like