By Frederick Schultz
It all started in 1972 for Bob Woodward, when he teamed with another young reporter, Carl Bernstein, to investigate the nighttime break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington. What they found, published in a long series of articles for The Washington Post, ultimately led—in twists and turns from clandestine meetings with sources—to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. These days, Woodward spends a lot of time writing books, something he has done for more than four decades. With the publication in September of The New York Times bestseller Fear: Trump in the White House, the 75-year-old Bob Woodward has now authored 19 of them and reported on every U.S. president since Nixon. He sat down recently with What’s Up? Media to talk about his new book, one life lesson he learned as a naval officer, as well as where he likes to spend his “off” time.
Only a few people I’ve talked to know you own a waterfront weekend-getaway property. What made you choose the Annapolis area to be your retreat from Washington?
It’s in Edgewater on the south side of the South River. It looks right down the river, and then into the bay. It’s very nice. We have five acres there. We bought the property in 1984 because a real estate agent, a retired Navy captain, had been looking at places for us for years and told us this would be going on the market the next day. We had to buy it right away, but it was a great bargain, a beautiful spot. There’s nothing like it, in many ways.
The Baltimore Sun Magazine did a piece in 2011, written by Susan Reimer and titled “A Place to Exhale.” In the story, your wife is quoted as saying, “He”—meaning you—“probably likes it best in fall and winter, when it is starker with more poetic beauty.” Was that the case?
Well, it’s great year ‘round. But it’s true. My wife has got it right. In fall and winter, it’s a little stark, but that makes it a better place. We try to go there each weekend. It’s one hour from our home in Georgetown, and if we beat the traffic on Friday afternoon, it’s a very simple ride. We have a guesthouse, and I wrote one of my books there, called Shadow, about the legacy of Watergate. There’s no better place, as far as both of us are concerned.
I interviewed you years ago about your books Bush At War and Obama’s Wars. Looking back on our discussion concerning Obama’s Wars, I thought it turned out pretty well. But it seems kind of quaint, now that Fear has come out.
(Laughs) You never know what the political system is going to dish up. This is a surprise and different. Working on it, I dropped out for at least a year—no television, no stories for The [Washington] Post—and really focused on this book. President [Donald] Trump called me in August last summer—I don’t know that you saw that—to complain that I hadn’t interviewed him for it.
I did see that.
I made the maximum effort, as I said to him. I broke my spear on it with six people, and he claimed it never got to him. But then he did acknowledge one or two of my efforts. I said to him that I realized I couldn’t do the interviewing in the White House. I had to see people at home. That’s what I did. I kind of reexamined my process and went back to the old Watergate approach. Sometimes you just have to knock on doors at night.
When did you know you were finished with the book?
This is always a great question. You’re never finished with a president, even if that president is out of office. There are always new things. The kind of standard is, “Do you have enough to explain?” There are three ways of reporting on Trump, I think. One is the documented untruths he says. I think my paper, The Washington Post, has documented over 4,000 (untruths) or highly misleading statements. I don’t think the answer to fully understanding him is there.
The second area would be the [Robert] Mueller special-counsel investigation of Russian meddling in the [2016] election. I didn’t find anything new on that. I think it’s a question mark, what they’re going to come up with, whether it’s going to be serious. It’s a very serious investigation, but there’s got to be something new.
The third area is what Trump does as president, and that’s the focus of this book. From North Korea, Afghanistan, all the national-security issues, the Middle East, but also the domestic issues. All the internal trade debates and actions, immigration. It covers the full range. It tells people what he’s doing as president. In the end, I think that is what matters to most people.
How do you verify that your “deep-background sources” are credible? In other words, can they be considered reliable just because of the person’s position? Quite frankly, some of the quotes in the book are so detailed that I can’t imagine somebody can remember the exact wording. How did that work?
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the 1980s, a decade after their groundbreaking Watergate news story, which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
Photo courtesy of Bob Woodward.
First, deep background means I’m not going to identify the source, but I’m going to use the information. I have hundreds of hours of taped interviews with people, from the White House, the administration, Trump’s circle, and other people involved in the Trump presidency. I spent enough time on a group of people to find that they had notes and diaries. As I say in the beginning of the book, I think the notes and diaries are key.Just one example, off the top of my head—I don’t remember the page in the book, but I think it’s 5:15, Tuesday, July 18th. [Reince] Priebus, who had been chief of staff, called [Rex] Tillerson, then secretary of state, to his office for a kind of standard review: “Are you achieving your objectives,” and so forth. [H. R.] McMaster, the national security advisor at the time, walked in uninvited, and they had a back and forth, which was, I thought, very illuminating. McMaster accused the secretary of state of undermining the national-security process. Somebody took notes, and the book centers on the trust of people who took notes or have documents. It was the documents I quote from, those I’ve seen or have copies of.
What I’m getting at is that there are passages throughout the book in quotation marks. For instance, I picked just one, because there are so many. On page 44, [then-Trump campaign strategist Steve] Bannon talks about Hillary Clinton going to Arizona. He says . . . .
Page 44?
Yes, 44. “When I saw her go to Arizona, I said, ‘they’ve lost their f-ing minds,’”
brBannon said. “What are they doing?” That’s in quotes. You’re saying that
brsomeone wrote that down?
As I say in the beginning of the book, trying to be very explicit about when I have attributed exact quotations, thoughts, or conclusions to the participants, that information comes from the person, a colleague with direct knowledge, or from meeting notes, personal diaries, files, and government or personal documents. That quote could come from Bannon, could come from somebody who was there, who was a witness, or from somebody’s notes.
I just wondered about the remarkable detail in the quotes as I was reading.
Some people have argued with it, but I think they realized that it’s done as carefully as it can be done. That’s what you reach for in journalism—the best obtainable version of the truth. In other words, where you’ve talked to people, you’ve reviewed, you’ve confirmed. As you well know, if you can get people’s notes and diaries, which I was able to do, that gives it the foundation that doesn’t normally accrue to somebody working on a daily news story.
Has anything equivalent to “Deep Throat” [the name given by Woodward and Bernstein to their principal Watergate source, identified as then-FBI Associate Director Mark Felt] emerged? Will such a person ever emerge?
I’m just not going to talk about sources at all.
Okay, okay. What, then, did you think of the anonymous op-ed from an administration official published in The New York Times just before Fear was released?
If that person had come to me and said, “This is what I want to say in your book,” and it was some high official, somebody inside, I would say, “Where are the specifics? Where’s the 5:15, Tuesday, July 18th?” This book rests on specifics. If that person declined to provide specifics, I would not have used it. I would have said, “Take it to The New York Times.”
Most of the other questions I could have asked you’ve answered in other venues still easily accessible. So let’s change gears a bit. Have you seen the film, The Post, and if so, what did you think of it?
Yes, I have seen it. That was about the Pentagon Papers and before I went to work there. But I got to know Katharine Graham quite well—and obviously, Ben Bradlee. I think it’s a different Bradlee than the Bradlee of All The President’s Men. But it’s much the same in that I thought it was a powerful performance by Tom Hanks. Meryl Streep playing Katharine Graham I thought was also powerful, and got the nature of her personality, which was very insecure at times, but then willing to make decisions and assume the risk the way she did with the Pentagon Papers, or in the publication of the Watergate stories. The decision on the Pentagon Papers was in the hands of Katharine Graham, whereas for Watergate, the decision was in Bradlee’s.
How did you feel about Robert Redford playing you in the film version of All The President’s Men?
You have no idea how many women I’ve disappointed. And I promise that’s true.
How did your service as a U.S. Navy officer inform your chosen career as a journalist?
I’ve read reports on the collisions last year involving the USS McCain and the Fitzgerald, some of which say that the cause was an over-reliance on technology. I guess that’s part of the explanation, but I remember a personal story, which really strikes me as relevant. I served on the USS Fox in 1968 off the coast of Vietnam. I was the communications officer and was doing OOD [officer of the deck] duty. I remember once the captain of the ship said, “You know, the really important rule of physics is that a ship can only go in one direction at once. The direction you want to have the ship going is away from trouble.”
"If you can get people’s notes and diaries, which I was able to do, that gives it the foundation that doesn’t normally accrue to somebody working on a daily news story."
It was a Sunday afternoon, and everyone’s life on the ship depended on me. We were in what was called a radar picket ship, which was I think 60 miles from the demilitarized zone. We were doing 25 knots. Suddenly, a lookout hollered out, “Mine, dead ahead!” I got out my binoculars and there indeed was a floating mine 200 or 300 yards away. I did something I’ve never done and had never seen done. I ordered “Right, full emergency” to the helmsman.
It was scary because the ship tilted. The skipper came running up to the bridge and screamed, “What are you doing?” I said, “There’s a mine out there, and we were heading toward it. As I recall, captain, your instructions were, ‘Head the opposite direction of trouble.’” He calmed down and said, “You’re right.” I’ll never forget that rule.
I tie that to the book of Trump. I think it shows, in about 10 or 12 areas, Trump is just gambling. He’s gambling with North Korea and in the Middle East. We now see the fruition of that. He’s gambling on taxes, gambling with China on the tariffs. It’s one gamble after another. Doing new things, if he or she is so inclined, is only part of a president’s job. But I think the president also needs to review the old order to avoid heading into trouble.
He has said, “We are footing the bill for all of our allies. We’re subsidizing them.” Of course, the generals and [Secretary of Defense James] Mattis are saying, “No, no. Those are great deals for us. These are mutual security agreements. NATO works to our advantage.” As I document in the book, on a new arrangement with the Saudis, there’s a meeting in the situation room, which I recount, where Mattis and McMaster and Tillerson are all saying, “Don’t do it.” Jared Kushner stands up at the end of the table and says, “I understand, but this is an opportunity.” And now, look at what we may have wrought.