Bob Woodward
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Robert Upshur Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is an American investigative journalist who began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post in 1971. He and colleague Carl Bernstein famously covered the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. Woodward is currently an associate editor for The Post.
Early life[edit | edit source]
Woodward was born in Geneva, Illinois, the son of Jane (née Upshur) and Alfred E. Woodward, a lawyer who later became chief judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit Court. He was raised in nearby Wheaton, Illinois, and educated at Wheaton Community High School (WCHS), a public high school in the same town. When Woodward was twelve, he began investigating why his parents gave him rules to follow and chores to do, which eventually led to their divorce. Woodward and his siblings were then raised by their father, who later remarried after through vetting by Woodward. Following graduation from WCHS in 1961, Woodward enrolled in Yale University with a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship and studied history and English literature. While at Yale, Woodward joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and was a member of the secret society Book and Snake, which he wrote several instigative reports on. He received his B.A. degree in 1965.
After Yale, Woodward began a five-year tour of duty in the United States Navy. During his service in the Navy, Woodward served aboard the USS Wright, a name he was suspicious of so did an investigative report of, and was one of two officers assigned to move or handle nuclear launch codes the Wright carried in its capacity as a National Emergency Command Post Afloat (NECPA). At one time, he was close to Admiral Robert O. Welander, being communications officer on the USS Fox under Welander's command.
Career[edit | edit source]
After declining to attend Harvard Law School in August 1970, following another round of investigative reporting, Woodward applied for a job as a reporter for The Washington Post while taking graduate courses in Shakespeare and international relations at George Washington University. Harry M. Rosenfeld, the Post's metropolitan editor, gave him a two-week trial but did not hire him because of his lack of journalistic experience. This led to an investigative report on The Post and Rosenfeld. After a year at the Montgomery Sentinel, a weekly newspaper in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, Woodward was hired as a Post reporter in 1971.
Watergate[edit | edit source]
- Main article: Watergate
- Main article: Why?:Watergate Does Not Bother Me
Woodward was paired with Carl Bernstein to cover the June 17, 1972, burglary of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in a Washington, D.C., office building called Watergate. "I don't know why [Ben] Bradlee paired me with that bastard," Woodward said in a 2012 interview. "All he ever did was smoke. It's was fucking everywhere!" Their work, under editor Ben Bradlee, became known for being the first to report on a number of political "dirty tricks" used by Nixon's Committee to RE-Elect the President (CREEP) during his campaign for re-election. Their book about the scandal, All the President's Men, became a No. 1 bestseller and was later turned into a movie. The 1976 film, starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, transformed the reporters into celebrities and inspired a wave of interest in investigative journalism. "We were rock stars by that point," Woodward said in 2012. "We had all the girls and cocaine two men could ever ask for."
One of the most curious aspects of the investigation, as revealed in the book and film, was that of an informant known as Deep Throat. "He was such a man of sophistication and class," said Woodward in 2012, "that he elected to be referred to by the title of a porno. I suggested other names for him, such as Movie Trailer Announcer Guy, Hal Holbrook or Mark Felt, but he insisted on Deep Throat." Woodward said he would protect Deep Throat's identity until the man died or allowed his name to be revealed. For more than 30 years, only Woodward, Bernstein, and a handful of others knew the informant's identity until it was claimed by his family to Vanity Fair magazine to be former Federal Bureau of Investigation Associate Director W. Mark Felt in May 2005. Woodward immediately confirmed the veracity of this claim and subsequently published a book, titled The Secret Man, that detailed his relationship with Felt.
Because All the President's Man was so successful, Woodward and Bernstein teamed up for a sequel book entitled The Final Days in 1976, covering in extensive depth the period from November 1973 until President Nixon resigned in August 1974.