Book to Movie: All the President’s Men 1976

Book to Movie: All the President’s Men 1976
Screenplay by William Goldman
Directed by Alan J. Pakula

As I noted in my review of the book, All the President’s Men, it read very much like a suspense thriller. Apparently, Hollywood felt the same way because the screen treatment of the book which chronicled Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s methodical pursuit of Richard Nixon’s cadre of miscreants in his reelection campaign, into a full blow suspense thriller.

The movie does not closely follow events as they transpired in the book, but sticks very closely to its theme of investigative journalism on steroids. Dramatic license was taken with various editors’ meetings to which neither Woodward or Bernstein were privy where the editor’s debated who should actually be covering Watergate and how or even if it should be covered.

I also noted in my review of the book that it would be difficult for someone who was not at least somewhat familiar with the internal structure of a presidential campaign or a White House executive office of the president was staffed, to follow the movie. This must be doubly true for those watching the movie.

Names like Bob Haldeman, John Mitchell, Gordon Liddy, and Howard Hunt are thrown around by Woodward and Bernstein – portrayed respectively by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman – without any mention of or context as to what these men actually did for Richard Nixon and his political campaign. Mitchell is mentioned as attorney general and as campaign chairman. Yet, viewers are never told that he resigned as attorney general to become campaign chairman.

Other names that come into play as the movie climaxes toward the disclosures that there was White House involvement in the campaign’s dirty tricks shenanigans are Donald Segretti and Jeb Stuart Magruder. Again, viewers are provided no information to allow them to appreciate the roles these men played.

This is pertinent and important information. Woodward and Bernstein found it necessary to provide a list of names and their job titles at the beginning of the book to help keep the players straight. Perhaps moviegoers should have been provided a program with their admission.

Oddly missing from the movie in any context is the name John W. Dean. Dean was the man who ordered the break-in, who instigated the coverup, then threw everyone else under the bus when he could no longer hold it together. One of the most important misdeeds of Watergate, which was revealed during Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage, was that acting FBI director Patrick Gray, burned the contents of Howard Hunt’s White House safe on Dean’s orders.

Perhaps this omission is because John Dean was every liberal’s hero for being the main player in bringing down the Nixon administration. His book, Blind Ambition, had been published that year and Dean was viewed as the repentant hero.

Parts of the book which seemed melodramatic in writing came across as silly to those who know anything about history. The scenes with Deep Throat were overacted by both Redford and Hal Holbrook. The silliest scene was near the end of the movie when Bernstein was told that their lives were in danger. It read like melodrama and played out on the screen like a bad spy movie.

Those scenes seem even more foolish now. No president or administration has been as heavily scrutinized as that of Richard Nixon. Nowhere in any of the taped conversations, secret memoranda, or the revised history of the scandal’s participants is there even the slightest hint that anyone wanted the reporters dead. But it did make for a great scene.

What made the movie good was actually what was occurring in the background in a number of scenes. News coverage of the 1972 Republican convention played in the background as Woodward and Bernstein discussed Nixon’s misdeeds. An interview with Attorney General Richard Kleindienst played on a home television as he tried to explain the FBI’s narrow investigation of the case. These scenes and others, from old newscasts, helped put the events portrayed in the movie into a proper historical context.

All the President’s Men was nominated for an Oscar for best picture in 1976. I wonder if this had more to do with Hollywood’s political leanings than quality of the movie. It was an entertaining movie, but not the stuff of best pictures.

It is a movie that people should see. Behind the melodrama plays out what is perhaps the best piece of investigative journalism in history. If you can follow the players, your enjoyment of the movie will be dramatically increased. For history buffs and aspiring journalists, the movie is a must see. Others should regard it as a historical drama – not a documentary.

All the President’s Men By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

All the President’s Men
By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Copyright 1974

This was the book that started it all. Since Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote their 1974 best seller about the Watergate scandal, nearly 100 books have been written since. Most of the major players in the scandal wrote books to defend their conduct and even a few of the minor players authored books to make a little money.

The Woodward and Bernstein investigation also put into motion the investigation that would ultimately result in the demise of the presidency of Richard Nixon.

All the President’s Men opens with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward receiving a call early Saturday morning from an editor telling him to cover the break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s offices inside the Watergate complex. From covering the break-in and the arraignment of the five burglars, the story took off and erupted into one of the most important constitutional crises this nation has ever faced.

The book, authored by Woodward and Bernstein, starts out a bit awkward since they write about themselves in third person. Woodward tells us Woodward didn’t think much of Bernstein and Bernstein tells us he didn’t think much of Woodward. It’s all very stilted.

What’s not stilted is the meticulous nature Woodward and Bernstein applied to their research to take it from what Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler ridiculed as a “third rate burglary,” into a story with constitutional implications.

It didn’t take long for the burglars to be linked to the Campaign to Reelect the President and the White House itself. Among the items found on the burglars was a notebook containing the name Howard Hunt and a White House phone number. That established a link between the burglars and the White House itself. That was enough to convince Washington Post editors they were onto something big.

Interested in how the burglars were paid and their operation financed. Woodward and Bernstein were able to uncover a money laundering operation. The CRP’s Midwest finance chairman, Kenneth Dahlberg transferred unreported cash donations to Mexico where checks were issued and cashed at a bank in Miami. The cash then ended up in a safe inside the CRP. The cash in that safe was under the direct control of CRP finance chairman (and former treasury secretary) Maurice Stans. At one point, it appeared that Stans’s safe contained up to $700,000 in undeclared cash. The CRP argued that the cash was to be used for security and political intelligence. However, the reporters were able to demonstrate that most of it went to fund illegal campaign dirty tricks authorized by former campaign chairman John Mitchell and Deputy Campaign Chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder.

As they interviewed workers within the CRP and officials close to the investigation, the reporters discovered a whole host of political shenanigans designed to undermine the Democrats’ run for the presidency in 1972.

They found a man by the name of Donald Segretti whose job it was to pull foolish, but disturbing pranks on Democratic candidates such as ordering unsolicited pizzas for non-existent rallies, announcing rallies that were never scheduled, and announcing schedule changes for rallies to confuse supporters. Segretti undermined the campaign of Edmund Muskie by planting the details of Muskie’s wife’s off color jokes and erratic behavior. Muskie’s response to that crisis destroyed his campaign.

They found that E. Howard Hunt had once worked for White House aide, Charles Colson to investigate Ted Kennedy and the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick and to dig up dirt on other candidates. Hunt had also created a false telegram to make it appear that President Kennedy had directly ordered the assassination of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem.

The money trail led Woodward and Bernstein to conclude that CRP chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder and former CRP Chairman and former Attorney General John Mitchell also had oversight. Eventually, Woodward and Bernstein were able to indirectly tie control of the money to White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman.

What disturbed the reporters the most was the lack of investigation by the FBI. The FBI was determined not to investigate the matter beyond the burglary itself. The burglars and their direct supervisors, Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, were tried and convicted without talking about any other people involved. This frustrated judge John Sirica who presided over the trial.

When it came time for the Senate to confirm new FBI Director, L. Patrick Gray, senators grilled him on Watergate and the apparent lack of follow through on the investigation. Gray then made several bombshell disclosures. He told the senate panel that he’d burned the contents of Hunt’s White House safe at the orders of White House counsel, John Dean.

For most of Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation of Watergate, they were hounded and harassed by the White House. Gray’s disclosures led the White House to change its tone somewhat since misconduct linked to Watergate had been directly tied to the executive branch and to the highest levels of the Nixon Administration.

Later investigation revealed the existence of an internal White House organization known as the Plumbers. Their job was to recommend wire taps of reporters and government officials to find out who was leaking information to the press. The creation was apparently spurred by the disclosure of the notorious Pentagon Papers to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsburg. The reporters eventually uncovered a break-in into the office of Ellsburg’s psychologist, carried out by Hunt and members of the Plumbers unit.

Eventually, the scandal rose to the level that Democrats in the Senate felt compelled to convene a special committee to investigate. That committee, chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin, became a source of damning information about the Nixon White House as it conducted its investigation.

Through interviews with anonymous sources and a justice department officials, Woodward and Bernstein learned that the balance of the unreported campaign cash was funneled to the burglars' families by Nixon's personal attorney, Herbert Kalmbach. These sources believed that the White House was either trying to buy their silence or the president was being blackmailed. When Hunt's wife, Dorothy, was killed in a plane crash, among her belongings were thousands of dollars of cash, seemingly confirming these suspicions.

The book ends with President Nixon on television, announcing the resignations of H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman as well as the dismissal of John Dean. Those three, along with Chuck Colson, Kalmach, Mitchell, Magruder, Dean, Hunt, Liddy, and various other aides and campaign officals would eventually end up going to prison for their roles in the Watergate coverup.

All the President’s Men reads like a spy thriller. It is difficult to follow if the reader is not familiar with how campaigns are structured and how the executive office of the president is structured. But if you can follow the large cast of characters, the book is compelling reading.

The authors writing about themselves in the third person is awkward and sometimes foolish. They write about arguing, but one has to wonder from whose perspective it was written.

Of course, this was the book that made a legend of the secret source Deep Throat. Deep Throat, named after the porn movie popular at the time, was a highly placed official within the government who claimed he was appalled at what he witnessed within the White House and within the FBI. Woodward and Bernstein hype the drama of secret signals, losing tails, and midnight meetings in parking garage basements. It all sounds a little too melodramatic to be true, but it makes for interesting reading.

We now know that Deep Throat was not motivated by nobility. He as a disgruntled job seeker that thought he should have been named to head the FBI instead of L. Patrick Gray. W. Mark Felt identified himself as Deep Throat in 2005. Felt was Gray’s chief deputy and had spent 30 years in the agency. When he didn’t get the nod from Nixon, the lifelong Republican turned on his president.

As an avid student of the Watergate scandal, I should have known that Deep Throat was an FBI agent. The White House, the Justice Department, and the Ervin Committee all complained that much of what the Post wrote dame directly from FBI 302s which are the forms used by the FBI to compile notes on interviews and investigations.

Something that disgusted me as much as the conduct of the Nixon men was the attitude and conduct of Washington Post editor, Benjamin Bradlee. Bradlee was a strong Democratic partisan and relished “getting” Nixon. He approved an erroneous article that falsely accused Bob Haldeman of authorizing cash payments from the Stans safe and apparently had no compunction about doing it. As Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Zeigler put it, Ben Bradley was little more than a Kennedy coat holder.

The conduct of the Nixon campaign is disgusting on two levels. First and foremost was, of course, the illegal activities such as breaking and entering and the coverup that followed which was entirely unnecessary. Nixon was going to win in 1972. Had Nixon disclosed that Hunt once worked in the White House, the information revealed by Woodward and Bernstein would have hurt, but certainly not derailed the Nixon campaign and the president’s hands would have still been clean. The shenanigans were foolish and the coverup even more foolish.

The other disturbing component is just how amateurish and clownish the agents of the CRP behaved. Fake wigs and mustaches, illicit pizza orders. stupid pranks carried out by clowns. It is remarkable since Richard Nixon was a statesman of stature in 1972, having been on a national ticket five times. His campaign manager, John Mitchell, was a wise and skilled lawyer, a sage of politics, and a man not given to childish behavior. How it all came to pass is still a mystery that baffled Nixon to the day he died. He eventually came to understand the coverup and even acknowledged his role in it. But he never understood why the Watergate break-in ever occurred. We may never know for sure.

All the President’s Men is a great first draft of the history of Watergate and documents the events that led to the coverup. Much has been written about Watergate, but most of it focuses on post break-in activities. This is the authoritative book on what led to the tragic events that followed and eventually toppled the Nixon presidency.

The Final Days By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

The Final Days
By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Copyright 1976

Woodward and Bernstein chronicle the last year of the Nixon administration as it crumbles slowly under the weight of disclosures of cover up and deception on the part of the president.


Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are out as Nixon’s top advisers. Stepping into the role of chief of staff is Gen. Al Haig. Stepping in as chief political adviser on all matters Watergate is Ron Ziegler, the president’s press secretary who will soon be elevated to communications chief.

The book opens with the president’s two lawyers, Len Garment and Fred Buzhardt traveling to Florida to tell Nixon he ought to resign. This takes place in late 1973, before the existence of the Oval Office taping system or the existence of tapes is revealed.

As Woodward and Bernstein described it, these two men said Nixon, in defending himself, had “laid time bombs,” with a series of lies. These lies would eventually be revealed as the Ervin Committee went about investigating and hearing testimony from former aides.

Alexander Butterfield, who worked in Nixon’s appointments office before being appointed head of the FAA disclosed the existence of the White House taping system. Immediately, the Senate Watergate Committee, the House Judiciary Committee, and special prosecutor Leon Jaworski began demanding tapes.

Nixon and his lawyers fought hard against releasing the tapes. First they released redacted and altered transcripts, which reflected badly on the president who appeared to conspire with John Dean on March 21, 1973, to pay Howard Hunt’s hush money demands. Hoping to appease all parties, the president and his lawyers began releasing tapes a few at a time. But the release of some tapes just created demands for more.

Nixon and his lawyers encountered greater problems when a gap of 18 minutes and 15 seconds was found on one of the tapes. The gap seemed to be the result of two separate erasures. The first lasted approximately four minutes. The second lasted 14 minutes.

Ultimately, Nixon’s personal secretary, stood up to take the blame for the “accidental” erasure. Rosemary Woods claimed that she’d accidently hit the erase/record button when she paused to take a phone call and kept her foot on the dictabelt pedal. When someone demonstrated how the 56 year old Woods would have had to contorted herself, skepticism of Nixon’s veracity increased. The contortion became known as “The Rosemary Stretch.”

Much of the book details the negotiations of the lawyers with the special prosecutor and judge John Sirica over the tapes and testimony. Nixon’s lawyers were in constant legal jeopardy themselves because they would make claims before the grand jury and before judge Sirica based on lies told to them by Nixon.

To Woodward and Bernstein’s credit, they did not hype up or overplay the “drama” of the firing of special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. They described how the lawyers advised Nixon that he had the constitutional power to discharge any member of the executive branch. Nixon deliberated a great deal over this decision before he pulled the trigger. This is much contrary to the drama the media created by dubbing it the “Saturday Night Massacre,” and showing on live television the FBI agents sealing his office.

Nixon and his lawyers did not expect the strong public and congressional rebuke that came after Cox’s firing. That is because they are lawyers, unschooled in the ways of politics. Nixon should have known better. Haig, being a man of military with a clear chain of command, did not anticipate it either. Nixon was ill served by having Haig’s tin ear as his chief advisor.

It’s not stated by the authors, but it’s painfully clear that the Nixon White House chose to fight its primary battle on the legal battlefield. This was a horrible miscalculation because the tapes clearly demonstrated that Nixon had conspired with his aides. Some aides and friends suggested that Nixon make a full disclosure and apologize to the American people (the strategy that worked for Ronald Reagan in Iran/Contra and Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinksy case). Instead, the lawyers fought Nixon’s battle in Judge Sirica’s court.

Sirica is portrayed as an even handed, impartial dispenser of justice in The Final Days. In fact, Sirica routinely overstepped his bounds as a judge. He sentenced the Watergate burglars to many years in prison for a simple breaking and entering, despite the fact that the men had no prior criminal records and years of public service. His goal was to force their testimony against those who had given the orders. That is the prosecutor’s role, not the judge. Sirica was a glory hound, pure and simple.

Al Haig is also held up as a paragon of leadership in difficult final days of the Nixon administration. That is probably because he was the primary source for Woodward and Bernstein’s book. Haig was a leader. That much is true. But he was politically tone deaf. He failed to recognize pitfalls political veterans would have recognized. Watergate was a political matter. While criminal acts were committed, Nixon’s ultimate fate was determined by the politics of the situation.

Woodward and Bernstein routinely portray Nixon as drunk, distracted, and out of touch with reality. This flies in the face of all other published accounts of Nixon’s last days in the White House. Was he distracted? Sure. Watergate consumed Nixon’s time and caused him great distress. But, White House insiders and historian Stephen Ambrose have claimed that Nixon never lost control. He was always the man in charge. Ambrose asserts that Nixon’s drinking did increase during the Watergate battle, but was far from the disconnected drunk depicted by Woodward and Bernstein.

One can look to Al Haig for creating this perception. Haig’s character as a control freak and glory seeker would be publicly displayed many years later in the Reagan White House. Haig probably wanted to show how it was he who stepped up and led the nation while the president wallowed in self pity.

The authors also go out of their way to disparage the Nixon marriage. They claim the couple were distant and detached from each other. They also claim that Pat Nixon was going to divorce Nixon after the failed 1962 campaign for governor of California.

The Nixon marriage has fascinated historians and has been closely examined by scholars, primarily because Nixon gave the appearance of detachment. He did not hold hands with Pat in public. He rarely acknowledged her. Pat exacerbated this problem by appearing aloof from politics. She hated politics and hated being in the spotlight. Many historians have noted how distant the couple appeared, but none went as far as Woodward and Bernstein in saying the couple were completely emotionally detached and on the verge of divorce.

Nixon undid some of this damage in his memoir, In the Arena when he wrote about Pat, her courage, her love of her family, and how much she meant to him in those and other troubled times.

The final portion of the book deals with Nixon’s last struggles to stay in power. After each disclosure of tapes came more and more calls for his resignation, so he emphatically refused to turn over any more of the tapes. Leon Jaworski appealed directly to the Supreme Court to try to force the release of the tapes.

Meanwhile, the White House – actually Nixon himself – discovered a damning piece of evidence in one of the subpoenaed tapes. On June 23, 1972, He and Bob Haldeman sat in the Oval Office and discussed the Watergate break-in. Haldeman told Nixon that acting FBI Director, L. Patrick Gray wanted to work with the White House in containing the investigation, but his agents were finding evidence that was indicating others were involved. Haldeman then proposed a plan, recommended by John Mitchell and approved by John Dean. Nixon would tell CIA Director, Richard Helms, to call Gray and tell him that the break in was a CIA operation and the FBI should back off, lest they expose the operation.

It was a plausible plan. Several of the Watergate burglars were former CIA men with Cuban ties and ties to the aborted Operation Mongoose of the Eisenhower years. The burglary’s mastermind, E. Howard Hunt was an old CIA hand who trained operatives for Mongoose. The problem for both men was, they knew that the burglary was not a CIA operation.

It is very clear from the language on the tape that Nixon and Haldeman had no national security concerns on their mind as they discussed the plan. They wanted to halt the FBI investigation – thus, obstruct justice. Nixon asked Haldeman if John Mitchell knew of the plan. Haldeman told Nixon that Mitchell didn’t know the details, but he knew of the plan.

So on that day, less than a week after the burglary, Nixon sealed his fate. He had worked with Haldeman, Mitchell, and Dean to obstruct justice. The tape also refuted his claim that he had no knowledge of administration involvement in Watergate prior to John Dean’s disclosure of March 21, 1973.

Nixon at first thought the tape was fatal. Then he thought perhaps it could be managed. Others in the administration listened to the tape. The lawyers thought it was fatal. Haig thought it also fatal. Only Nixon’ most ardent supporters within the administration – Ron Ziegler, Pat Buchanan, and Tricia Nixon-Cox, thought that the situation could be managed.

The White House tried a damage control operation. They began alerting the president’s supporters in Congress that a new, damaging disclosure was on its way. They hoped that these men would find a way to salvage the Nixon presidency in the inevitable Senate trial. But nobody saw any hope. As they heard the information revealed, Nixon’s supporters in the House and Senate fell away, one by one.

Vice President Gerald Ford’s people had been secretly meeting with White House officials for more than a month to plan a transition. This was the most delicate political operation in U.S. history with stark constitutional ramifications. Ford had not been elected vice president, having been nominated by Nixon to take over from Spiro Agnew who resigned in his own scandal. Any inference that Ford was planning to take power might taint Ford. Ford feared (justly) that it would look like a coup by an unelected vice president.

Yet, wise men knew that Ford could not just jump in and start leading the nation without some groundwork being laid. Finally, in August, when it became clear that Nixon would have to resign or face impeachment, Jerry Ford began meeting with these men who had been planning the transition. Gerald Ford was finally accepting the reality that he, a congressman from Michigan, was soon going to be president of the United States.

Nixon lost badly in the Supreme Court with the court voting 8-0 (with Nixon appointee Renquist abstaining) demanding that Nixon turn over the tapes. For just a few moments, the White House considered defying the court. But the constitutional ramifications were just too dire. The president was not above the law and would comply. The tapes were turned over.

The June 23rd tape – or Smoking Gun Tape – had just the effect the White House feared. What support Nixon had collapsed. Friends that had supported him found out they’d been duped. His detractors had the sword with which to slay him. It was now not a question as to if the president would resign, but when.

Nixon struggled with the decision, but ultimately decided he could not survive a senate trial. He informed his family that he would resign. The moment of disclosure to his family was captured on film by the White House photographer at Nixon’s request. Nixon then informed Haig who informed the cabinet. Nixon would resign on August 9th. He would make a televised announcement on August 8.

Bob Haldeman, facing multiple felonies in relation to Watergate made an eleventh hour plea for a pardon. Haldeman suggested that Nixon pardon all involved in Watergate and offset the political fallout with a pardon of Vietnam draft dodgers. Perhaps with a sense of morality, or a mind’s eye on his place in history, Nixon refused all pardons – including of himself.

Woodward and Bernstein do a wonderful job of describing those tense moments in the Oval Office as Nixon prepared to announce his resignation. Just minutes before he was scheduled to go on air, he began to tear up. He composed himself and distracted himself by making small talk with the network photographers in the room. Just seconds before air, he put on his game face. When the light went on, he began speaking. “. . .therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in in this office at that time.”

A one sentence letter of resignation, addressed to secretary of state Kissinger was typed and Nixon signed it.

The next day, the Nixon family left the residence and came to the East Room where they bade farewell to the White House staff. There, Nixon spoke extemporaneously in a rambling, but heartfelt speech. He warned his friends and supporters to not hate those who hated them – that that hate would ultimately be their downfall. Apparently Nixon finally got the hard lessons of his own downfall.

The Nixon family was escorted to the Marine One helicopter by President Ford and his wife. Nixon shook Jerry Ford’s hand and said, “Good luck Mr. President.” Betty Ford simply said, “Have a nice trip, Dick.” With that, Nixon turned and gave his trademark V for Victory salute and boarded the plane. The somber new president and first lady walked slowly back to the White House.

The Final Days is an interesting chronicle of the inside workings of the White House during the last battles of Watergate. One wonders how much is entirely accurate because the men who gave their accounts knew they were framing their own places in history. Nixon would tell his story several years later.

That Bob Woodward hates Richard Nixon is undisputed. As the 40th anniversary of the break in approached, the Washington Post ran a story headlined, “Nixon was worse than we thought!” over Bob Woodward’s byline. The story then goes on to quote the Nixon tapes darkest moments.

Nixon was foolish to tape himself. That is certain. But how many of us would want to be defined by our darkest thoughts uttered? Bob Woodward works hard to assure that Nixon is defined in just that way.

Historian Stephen Ambrose sees Nixon much differently. Ambrose was not a Nixon supporter, having never voted for him. Like most of the country, he was outraged at Ford’s pardon of the former president. But Ambrose, like most Americans, has come to weigh Nixon’s achievements against Watergate and finds that there was much to be liked about Richard Nixon. His war on cancer, his efforts on behalf of workers and the environment, and his great international achievements. None of those things mean as much to Bob Woodward as his own aggrandizement. Ambrose was a scholar. Woodward is a reporter. I’ll go with the scholar.

Shadow: Five Presidencies and the Legacy of Watergate

Shadow: Five Presidencies and the Legacy of Watergate
By Bob Woodward
Copyright 1999

Introduction
Bob Woodward played a formative role in the downfall of President Nixon, therefore is fully qualified to examine the legacy of Nixon’s deception of the country (as well as that of Lyndon Johnson) and how those lies and deceit changed the nature of the relationship of the presidency, the men who held the office, and the media.

The presidents who followed Nixon withstood greater scrutiny than their predecessors. They withstood it to varying degrees. Woodward examines the scandals that befell the Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton presidencies and how each president dealt with them.

He also examines the “Ethics in Government Act” and how that law that created the office of special prosecutor dramatically changed the relationship between the president, his attorney general, Congress, and the American people.

Gerald Ford
Woodward opens with a narrative account of a meeting between President Nixon and his chief of staff, Alexander Haig on August 1, 1974. Nixon has spent the evening prior listening to tapes of conversations he held with his then chief of staff, Bob Haldeman in June 1974. Nixon, who still believes he’s innocent of any wrongdoing, is a smart enough lawyer to comprehend the damning nature of the Smoking Gun tape. He knows it will end his presidency. He’s preparing to resign he tells Haig.

Al Haig immediately contacts Vice President Gerald Ford’s staff and informs them that they need to be prepared for a transition. He asks for permission to meet with Ford to prepare him for that transition. That meeting is set for the next day.

Inexplicably, Haig shows up at that meeting, not with notes on how an unprecedented transfer of power will take place, but with a list of pardon options for the man who will soon be president of the United States. He starts to list for Ford his options and the precedents of presidential pardons. Ford listens for awhile before telling Haig he will consider pardons later.

That meeting would cause Gerald Ford and his staff great trepidation in the months ahead.

Ford would assume the presidency on August 9, 1974 upon the resignation of Richard Nixon. Approximately one month later, Ford would grant Richard Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for all crimes that were committed in Watergate.

Woodward examines the behind the scenes battles among Ford’s staff over Nixon’s pardon. Most of Ford’s staff – especially his younger staffers – were against the pardon. They saw it as political suicide. Ford argued that constant questions about Watergate and Congress’ ongoing obsession with the scandal were hindering his ability to address the country’s problems which were vast and deep at the time. He wanted to put Watergate behind him and behind the country.

There was also a personal aspect to the Nixon pardon. Gerald Ford genuinely liked and cared about Richard Nixon. They had been colleagues in Congress for years and Ford had worked closely with Nixon’s White House. The reports he was receiving from San Clemente (Nixon’s home in political exile) were alarming. Nixon was physically frail, emotionally exhausted, and seemingly had lost the will to live. Ford was not going to allow the scandal to physically kill Richard Nixon the man as it had Richard Nixon the president.

The political backlash against President Ford upon his pardon of Nixon shocked him and even his most cynical staffers. Immediately, rumors of a secret deal between Ford and Nixon whereby Nixon would relinquish the presidency in exchange for the pardon developed. Congress was demanding a full scale investigation of this alleged deal.

To meet the challenge, Ford resolved to take the unprecedented step of going to Capitol Hill and testifying before a House subcommittee investigating the matter. Ford disclosed his meeting with Haig on August 2, but did not reveal its true substance. As Woodward put it, Ford hid the truth in plain site.

The pardon and the rumors of a secret deal haunted Jerry Ford throughout his presidency and for many years after. Time and the forgiving nature of the American people erased that ire, but there is little doubt that the pardon of Richard Nixon was the largest factor that cost Gerald Ford the presidency in 1976.

Jimmy Carter
Through the primaries of the 1976 election, Jimmy Carter’s stock line had been, “Hi. I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president.” After the primaries, when everybody knew he was running for president, he came up with, “I’ll never lie to you.”

After Watergate and the uncertainty around President Ford and the pardon of Richard Nixon, it had a nice ring to it. It was simple and from the heart. But Carter’s campaign people – and even Carter’s own mother – tried to discourage him from using it. It was not a standard any president could meet.

Carter came to DC a decided outsider. He spurned the Washington establishment and brought in his own people from Georgia. Among those he brought with him was a banker named Bert Lance who was to serve as Carter’s budget director. Lance was Carter’s close friend and the two prayed together to start every morning.

It wasn’t long before Carter’s sterling reputation for honesty and squeaky clean deportment would take a serious hit. Bert Lance came to him one day in late 1977 and told him he was in deep financial trouble. He was heavily leveraged, heavily mortgaged, and Congress would soon be asking questions. Before the situation could taint Carter and his administration, Lance wanted to resign.

Carter thought it was nonsense. He refused to allow Lance to resign despite Lance’s reservations. It wasn’t long before Congress schooled Jimmy Carter in the ways of Washington.

The scandal broke into the mainstream when former Nixon speechwriter William Safire wrote a column in the New York Times about mismanagement at Calhoun First National Bank in Atlanta. Safire revealed assets double and triple leveraged, schemes to fool bank inspectors, and sweetheart loans for friends. The column won Safire the Pulitzer Prize.

Carter piously held onto Lance, despite the overwhelming appearance of impropriety. (Lance was later found not guilty of all charges related to Calhoun First National). Republicans were eager to take shots at Carter who, before the scandal, enjoyed high popularity. Democrats in Congress, whom Jimmy Carter immediately alienated upon his arrival in Washington, were not willing to expend any political capital on his behalf. Lance was doomed and eventually resigned – but not before putting a hit on Carter’s sterling reputation. Carter’s poll numbers went up and down for another year before starting their final plunge, but the American people never looked at Carter the same way again.

The combined congressional classes of 1974 and 1976 were eager to prevent future Watergates and future Saturday Night Massacres (referring to when Nixon fired special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox on Saturday, October 20, 1973). They authored the Ethics in Government Act which required a three judge panel to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate wrong doing by administration officials. The threshold for triggering the act was exceptionally low (painfully low as Democrats would find out decades later). It didn’t take long for the law to find its first test case.

Hamilton Jordan was a young, brash good ole boy from Georgia who worked in the Carter administration, eventually becoming Carter’s Chief of Staff. But in 1978, his world came crashing down around him when the owners of New York’s notorious Studio 54 night club claimed that Jordan had used cocaine and tried to purchase cocaine at the club.

Forget that the charges were leveled by two men facing multiple felony drug and conspiracy counts. There was an appearance of wrong doing and an independent prosecutor was named. Jordan endured six months of hell as a lawyer armed with a staff of lawyers investigated the claims. Only two witnesses claimed to have seen Jordan use cocaine. Neither could provide specific dates, locations within the club, or other witnesses to corroborate their story. Eventually, the prosecutor cleared Jordan. But not before his reputation was smeared.

With weakness and political ineptitude being the hallmarks of the Carter presidency, Carter might have looked to hang his hat on the political peg of honesty. Despite the fact that no one had ever proven any of the charges against Carter’s men, his well known penchant for honesty in government was a joke by the 1980 election.

Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan’s ordeal with the independent prosecutor’s office would last much longer, be much more painful and result in real convictions – and deservedly so, because Reagan’s national security staff subverted Congress and the law to trade arms for hostages and to divert profits from illegal weapons sales to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

However, before Iran-Contra, was the quixotic investigation of EPA counsel Ted Olson. Olson’s case demonstrated how the Ethics in Government Act could be deployed for political purposes.

Democrats in Congress alleged that, in testifying before a congressional committee, Olson had deliberately withheld information about EPA policy. Of course he did. Testifying before a hostile Congress, the opposing party doles out as little information as possible. In 1986, three years after his testimony before the committee, some Democratic congressmen alleged that Olson had withheld documents and provided false and misleading testimony. The accusation had been made, creating an appearance of impropriety. A special prosecutor had to be appointed, even though Olson had been out of government for nearly three years.

Olson had the temerity to challenge the constitutionality of the Ethics in Government law. He claimed the law essentially established a fourth branch of government and usurped the congressional authority to oversee and check the executive branch. He lost in the Supreme Court with only Justice Scalia agreeing with his arguments.

The special prosecutor dissected Olson’s life. Olson had made casual remarks to some friends at a basketball game. They were summoned to testify. Olson himself withstood hours of grilling by the prosecutor and his staff. Millions of dollars were spent. The conclusion: Olson had been artful and evasive, but had not perjured himself or deliberately mislead Congress.

Another special prosecutor was needed to investigate Iran Contra in 1986. I have dissected and examined Iran-Contra in my review of Lou Cannon’s President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. Clearly, there was wrongdoing within Reagan’s National Security Council and Judge Lawrence Walsh was appointed as special prosecutor to oversee the investigation.

Walsh’s investigation would set the gold standard for slow, inefficient, sometimes mindless examination of facts and witnesses and would cost the taxpayers millions while yielding few convictions. Many of the convictions Walsh did obtain were overturned on appeal because of prosecutorial misconduct.

While Walsh managed to convict Admiral Richard Secord (overturned), Lt. Col. Oliver North (overturned), and Admiral John Poindexter (overturned), for trading arms to Iran in exchange for hostages held in Lebanon, and then taking cash earned in these transactions and diverting it to Contra rebels, he was never able to nail Reagan with the charges.

Reagan was in deep political trouble in 1986 at the height of Walsh’s inquiry and a competing congressional inquiry. There was talk of impeachment. Reagan’s standing with the public had taken a severe nosedive. However, Reagan did something that no president had ever done. He went on television and told the American people that what he’d told them earlier was not true; that people within his administration had misled him and the American people.

That solved Reagan’s political problem and got him through his presidency. It was not until 1991 that Walsh got around to cross examining Reagan. By then, it was too late. The Alzheimer’s that would eventually take his life was already at work on the former president. Not only could he not remember details, he could not remember the names of his closest aides. He did not provide any information the prosecutors could use. Walsh concluded that Reagan set the tone, allowed the crimes to be committed, but had not instigated any criminal activity nor been a participant in it.

But Walsh wasn’t done yet. A new president was soon to take office and Walsh set his sights on George Bush.

George Bush
If the Lawrence Walsh couldn’t nail a president in his years and millions of taxpayer dollars investigating Iran-Contra, perhaps he could nail the vice president. After it was clear to Walsh that Reagan’s declining mental faculties had put him out of reach, he set his sights on George Bush.

Ronald Reagan often complimented George Bush as the most effective and most engaged vice presidents in history. That was a true statement at the time. pessimists would argue that VP Dick Cheney was the power behind the George W. Bush presidency and one could make a strong case for the effectiveness of Joe Biden. George H.W. Bush was certainly the most engaged vice president since Richard Nixon served Dwight Eisenhower.

Yet, when suspicion began swirling around the vice president just as he was launching his own pursuit of the presidency, he fell back on the traditional role of the vice president as not being a figure in policy making. Bush argued he was “out of the loop” in Iran-Contra decision making.

History seems to have borne out the fact that Bush (despite his intelligence background) was not involved in the planning or execution of Iran Contra, his own journal entries as well as the testimony of Reagan advisors put him in the loop and in the know.

Walsh was desperate to show something for all the time and effort he’d put into his investigation. He decided to indict former defense secretary Casper Weinburger on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for providing misleading testimony regarding Bush and Reagan. Walsh hoped to get Weinberger to divulge what Bush knew and when he knew it.

Walsh announced the Weinberger indictment on October 30, 1992, on the eve of the presidential election. Furthermore, Walsh’s statement directly implicated Bush in the plot, despite any tangible evidence other than Bush mentioning the episode in a couple passing diary entries.

Bush had run behind Clinton throughout the entire campaign, but had been closing the gap. The Walsh announcement took the wind out of the sails of the Bush campaign. George Bush, bitter and angry upon losing the campaign, took the wind out of Walsh’s sails, pardoning Cap Weinberger on Christmas Eve of 1992.

The Walsh investigation was a travesty that should have demonstrated to Congress just what a poor mechanism for oversight the special prosecutor was. Walsh didn’t release his final report until 1993 – seven years after he was appointed to investigate.

Walsh should have come away with more convictions than he did because there is no doubt that those within the Reagan intelligence community had thwarted the will of Congress. But because of his ineptitude, nobody got punished.

Bill Clinton
President Bill Clinton was destined to be a special prosecutor’s delight. An affable man who was exceptionally intelligent and as politically shrewd as any in Washington, he often had trouble telling the truth – even in the simplest of matters. Clinton’s series of half truths and outright lies soon landed him in the sights of the most onerous and prolonged investigations in American government history.

The Clintons – both Bill and Hillary – came under investigation after the New York Times reported the accusations of a Little Rock Banker, David Hale, that, while he was governor of Arkansas, Clinton had pressured him into providing loans to Jim and Susan McDougal.

The McDougals were partners in a land investment along the Whitewater River in Arkansas. The deal soured and the Clintons lost money. A federal investigation had implicated the McDougles in illegal doings, but found no evidence that either Clinton had done anything wrong. Nonetheless, there was an appearance of wrongdoing and that was enough to trigger the appointment of a special prosecutor. Robert Fiske

Fiske investigated the land deal. He was also handed the investigation of the death of Clinton aide and long time family friend, Vince Foster, who had apparently committed suicide in a Washington, D.C. park. Some speculated that Vince Foster may have been murdered and that records from when he and Hillary Clinton had worked together at the Rose Law Firm.

Fiske quickly disposed of the Foster investigation, concluding that there was no evidence of any foul play and that Vince Foster had indeed committed suicide. His ambiguous suicide letter, where he declared that Washington was a place where people were ruined for fun and sport, was the source of much speculation long after Fiske wrapped up his investigation.

On the same day Fiske released his report on the Foster death, Clinton signed a new law that changed the title of special prosecutor to independent counsel. With the change of title came a new investigator -- Ken Starr.

Starr soon found his operation the repository for a number of accusations of wrong doing by the Clintons. Starr was called upon to investigate the firings of employees of the White House Travel Office – allegedly ordered by Hilary Clinton. When some of Vince Foster’s files mysteriously appeared in the White House residence, seemingly out of thin air, Filegate as it came to be called, landed in Starr’s lap.

Ultimately, Starr would get convictions of Jim and Susan McDougle was well as Arkansas Governor, Jim Guy Tucker, for their roles in the botched Whitewater land investment. That alone gave Starr a better track record than Walsh.

Meanwhile, in Little Rock, an Arkansas government employee by the name of Paula Corbin Jones was suing Bill Clinton for having sexually harassed her in a Little Rock hotel room, groping her and inviting her to perform oral sex. A federal judge ruled that the lawsuit could go forward, ruling that the president of the United States was not immune from civil litigation. A criminal investigation was also proceeding.

Clinton was forced to provide grand jury testimony in the case. He testified that he’d not behaved in the manner in which Jones described. Prosecutors were trying to establish that Clinton had a pattern of behavior with women that lent credence to the Jones allegations. They had a list of women they suspected Clinton of having affairs with. One name on that list was a former White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. Clinton denied ever having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. The die was cast for one of the most dramatic showdowns in U.S. government history.

Lewinsky’s name got on the list because a woman by the name of Linda Tripp had informed prosecutors that Lewinsky, a friend and coworker with her at the Pentagon public affairs office, had confided in her that she’d had a physical, sexual relationship with the president. Furthermore, she had tapes of phone conversations with Lewinsky discussing the relationship and how Lewinsky acted to make sure that evidence such as gifts exchanged could be returned to cover up the relationship.

Lewinsky had signed a false affidavit in the Jones case, saying she did not have a physical relationship with the president. Starr knew he had this young girl cornered before she even knew that the independent counsel was looking at her.

Starr forced Lewinsky to recant her affidavit, offering her immunity from prosecution. Lewinsky would go on to testify, in graphic detail, each sexual encounter she had with the president.

Bill Clinton was once again forced to testify in a grand jury. This time, they were looking into the possibility the president had committed perjury and obstructed justice. The testimony, later released to the public, was not one of Clinton’s finer moments as he parsed the meaning of the word, “is” and gave evasive answers.

When the case went public, Clinton’s people opened up a new front in the battle. Through Whitewater, Vince Foster, Travelgate, and Filegate, the fights had all been handled by lawyers and courts. Now, the Clinton people started an all out war on Starr politically, trashing his reputation and making him appear to be an overzealous partisan on a witch hunt.

That was not true of Ken Starr early on. Woodward’s sources demonstrate a Ken Starr who respected the president and the presidency and pursued his investigation doggedly, but within the confines of his mandate and without an accompanying political campaign. The turning point, which one can conclude, turned the investigation into a truly sordid episode in American history came when Ken Starr attempted to resign to take a job as Dean of Law at Pepperdine University.

Clinton’s political attack dog, James Carville, took to the talk shows, calling Starr a coward and demanded that he stay and finish the job he started. Had Carville let Starr go, another prosecutor may have been more measured in his behavior than Starr was after the political attack. Instead, an angry, bitter, Ken Starr agreed to stay on. But he was angry at having his reputation besmirched by the likes of Carville. Starr’s tactics changed. Instead of an impartial lawyer, he became a political warrior.

From that point on, Starr’s release of information was timed to bring maximum embarrassment to Clinton. Finally, Clinton was backed into a political corner when it was revealed that semen on a dress owned by Lewinsky contained his DNA.

Clinton took to television and, in an angry, bitter address, admitted that he had had an improper relationship with Lewinsky. He denied he’d done anything illegal and from that point on, the matter was one between himself, his family, and his God.

Starr wasn’t going to let Clinton or his friends off that easy. He prepared a report to the House Judiciary Committee detailing what he believed to be incidents of perjury and obstruction of justice. The law stated that he needed to advise the committee of any impeachable offenses he found. But Starr went one step further in his report, actually advocating impeachment. He then released his salacious report which was 50 percent legalese and 50 percent cheap romantic novel. It was a bombshell.

The rest was history of the highest drama. The House Judiciary Committee voted out four articles of impeachment. While they deliberated, someone released information that Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) who chaired the judiciary committee had carried on affair thirty years prior. Allegations of an affair came out against Clinton’s chief antagonist in the House, Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN). Eventually, allegations of an affair took down House Speaker Robert Livingston who had just taken over the job from the disgraced Newt Gingrich who had a litany of moral and legal issues that drove him from office. Livingston promptly resigned from the speakership and the House, inviting Clinton to do the same.

The House voted on and passed two articles of impeachment, mostly along party lines. In a moment of historical high drama, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and his delegation met Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott (R-MS) in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol and formally delivered the articles to the Senate.

A trial was held in the Senate. All through the trial, public opinion showed that the American people thought that Clinton was a scumbag, but had made a good faith effort to conduct his office in a legal manner. His approval rating was in the 60s. Democrats in the Senate knew they had the political cover to vote for acquittal no matter what kind of case prosecutors put forward.

Wary Republicans and Democrats not too pleased with their president tried to find a means through which the drama of a president on trial could be avoided, yet see that Clinton was properly rebuked for his behavior. The idea of presidential censure was bandied about.

One of the most outspoken opponents of censure was my boss at the time, Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH). DeWine, a trial lawyer and a man well acquainted with the Constitution, said that the Constitution laid out the remedy for a president who had broken the law and that censure was not a constitutional remedy. DeWine and his colleagues won the day. The trial went forward.

The senate voted not to remove Bill Clinton from office. But the Clinton presidency and his place in history are forever tainted. Soon after the vote, Starr wrapped up his investigation.

What emerges from the Clinton episode is that Bill Clinton was the cause of all of his own problems. He admitted that his administration, early on, were amateurs who bungled the travel office firings, the handling of the Vince Foster files, and the Rose Law Firm files. Clinton, like Nixon, sometimes parted ways from the truth and got away with it. Like Nixon, Clinton made enemies that would gladly use a sword thrust into their hands by the target of their ire. The political shenanigans of the Clinton White House in its early years coupled by Bill Clinton’s behavior with Monica Lewinsky and the lies he told to try to get out of it were the stuff of such swords. While his enemies did not slay him with that sword, they certainly did permanent damage.

Starr’s conduct later in the scandal was also beyond the pale. The notorious Starr report should never have been released in the manner in which it was written. Starr wanted to stab back at the Clinton people who had dragged his name through the mud. Much like Lawrence Walsh, he acted vindictively when he laid out the case for Clinton’s impeachment, far beyond his legislative mandate.

It was an episode that should have never happened. Clinton’s enemies were overzealous in taking advantage of the special prosecutor/independent counsel statute. They could produce just the flimsiest of evidence to trigger an investigation.

Clinton just could not bring himself to tell the truth when cornered. His entire career was checkered with lies and half truths. He also left a trail of women who alleged they’d had sexual relationships with him and at least two women came forward to say that Clinton forced himself upon them. Whether or not they were all true, some were. And Bill Clinton put himself in that position of not being believable. Then to be so reckless as to engage in a sexual relationship with an immature intern and put the country through nearly two years of political trauma was Clintons’ greatest misdeed. He and his behavior put this country through a needless constitutional crisis when it should have been enjoying some of the happiest and most tranquil times in its history.

I am fortunate to have actually lived day to day with this historic event. I worked in one of Sen. DeWine’s state offices, answering the phones and discussing events with hundreds of people as they unfolded. I was but a minor staffer and speechwriter, but I consider it a rare privilege to have been on the front lines of such historic events, however unpleasant and tawdry they might have been.

Conclusion
Woodward states that none of his successors truly learned the lessons of Watergate – that every deed committed in good faith or bad, was subject to the scrutiny of this ambiguous fourth branch of government. Woodward concludes that Watergate diminished the presidency inviting unprecedented scrutiny of presidential behavior – official and unofficial. I disagree.

To be president is to make huge decisions with huge ramifications. Sometimes, especially in crisis, those decisions can take a president outside the boundaries of the law. Ford may have not been truthful in talking about pardon discussions with Al Haig, but history has borne out Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon as the correct one.

I make no secret that I find Jimmy Carter to be a poor president and loathsome person. However, he made the correct call in standing by Bert Lance at least early on. A president willing to jettison aides at the first hint of scandal will not earn his staff’s loyalty. The Hamilton Jordan fiasco followed by the Ted Olson non-scandal should have served as evidence that the Ethics in Government Act was a horrible statute that was as effective in ruining the reputations of the innocent as anything perpetrated by the Red Baiters of the 1950s.

Iran-Contra certainly deserved scrutiny. But instead of employing a half-assed, vindictive jerk like Lawrence Walsh, Congress should have used the Watergate model of appointing a committee to investigate, take testimony, and forward it to the justice department for action. Yes, there was an Iran Contra committee, but Daniel Inouye’s committee did not come close to achieving the results of Sam Ervin’s Watergate committee. Walsh’s political indictment of Cap Weinberger will always taint him as a bitter man willing to influence elections and ruin reputations to justify his own incompetence. The fact that so many who were guilty escaped punishment while Walsh pursued what he regarded as big fish put the exclamation point on that tarnish.

The book ends shortly before the end of the Clinton presidency. Like Nixon, Clinton turned to foreign affairs where he had unmitigated influence. But Bill Clinton – the leader of domestic tranquility was diminished badly. No major legislation passed after the scandal. Domestic policy seemed to have shut down. Meanwhile, bubbling within the dark chambers of Wall Street, was the dotcom fiasco. Clinton’s people never made a move to defuse the crisis that would destroy the retirement plans of so many Baby Boomers.

Thankfully, the independent counsel law is dead. We still have the Constitution that clearly provides Congress with the legal means to investigate the actions of the executive branch.