Ron Ziegler’s apology to The Washington Post

Ron Ziegler’s apology to The Washington Post was a public reversal of the White House’s attacks on the newspaper’s Watergate reporting. The day after Richard Nixon’s April 30, 1973 address, Ziegler acknowledged that he had been wrong to criticize the investigation as he had, and apologized to both the paper and its reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The exchange did not erase the earlier denunciations; it made their reversal part of the public record.

From Dismissal to Counterattack

The apology followed months in which the White House had tried to narrow the meaning of the break-in and discredit reporting that connected it to a broader political operation. At the Florida White House in Key Biscayne, Ziegler had initially called it “a third-rate burglary attempt” and said it did not merit further White House comment. As The Washington Post published accounts of secret campaign funds and political sabotage, his responses shifted from dismissal to attacks on the newspaper’s methods and credibility.

When a reporter asked about allegations concerning Richard Nixon’s concern with opposition stories, Ziegler framed the problem as the press’s use of “hearsay, innuendo, guilt by association.” He asserted that no link to the White House had been established and argued that anonymous sourcing and unsubstantiated claims were being combined into an allegation of corruption. The denial thus challenged not only the reports’ conclusions but also the legitimacy of the reporting process that produced them.

The dispute sharpened when The Washington Post reported testimony tying a senior Nixon aide to a secret fund. Ziegler called the coverage shabby and absurd, characterized its headline as distorted, and said John Dean had told him there was no such fund. He also described the story as character assassination. These statements made the later apology more than a general gesture toward civility: Ziegler was revisiting a public campaign that had presented the newspaper’s investigation as irresponsible and politically motivated.

The Reporting and Its Reception

The reports had not immediately commanded broad attention. After stories about the secret fund appeared, The New York Times did not mention them the next morning, the networks carried neither story, and most newspapers did not publish them. Senate Republican leader Hugh Scott dismissed Watergate as a matter of interest to George McGovern and the media rather than the average voter. Woodward and Bernstein waited in the newsroom for the afternoon Washington Star-News; its only Watergate item concerned a law professor’s motion seeking a special prosecutor.

Coverage widened as reporting accumulated. When The Washington Post’s nationwide account of political espionage and sabotage went out over the Washington Post–Los Angeles Times News Service wire at about 7:00 p.m., more than half of its 220 domestic subscribers used it, several on their front pages, and non-subscriber coverage was also broad. The New York Times then contacted people who confirmed approaches by Donald Segretti and published its own account. These developments formed part of the changing context against which Ziegler would later reassess his comments.

The White House’s counterattack also sought to define who could be trusted to describe the events. An analysis in The New York Times characterized the administration’s strategy as denouncing newspapers that printed allegations without directly discussing them. It suggested that aides believed the public regarded the alleged conspiracy as remote from the Oval Office and distrusted Eastern media as elitist, anti-Nixon, and pro-McGovern. Ziegler’s repeated attacks fit that contest over whether the stories represented substantiated investigation or partisan insinuation.

The Apology After Nixon’s Address

Nixon’s televised address on April 30 changed the immediate setting of the dispute. He announced that he had accepted the resignations of Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, said that the easiest course would be to blame those delegated to run the campaign, and rejected that course as cowardly. He accepted responsibility as the person at the top and credited the process of investigation, including a determined grand jury, honest prosecutors, Judge John Sirica, and a vigorous free press, with bringing facts to light. His declaration that there could be no whitewash at the White House stood in marked contrast to the earlier strategy of attacking the newspaper that had pursued the story.

The next day, Bernstein was at his desk reading The New York Times and the Washington Star when a copy aide handed him a United Press International wire story reporting Ziegler’s apology. At the White House briefing, a reporter asked whether the administration owed The Washington Post an apology. Ziegler answered, “In thinking of it all at this point in time, yes,” and specifically named Woodward and Bernstein alongside the newspaper. He conceded, “When we are wrong, we are wrong, as we were in that case.” His explanation was that he had been overenthusiastic in his criticism, particularly when viewed against developments since those comments.

Ziegler began to add “But,” and a reporter stopped him with, “Now don’t take it back, Ron.” The interruption captured the delicacy of the moment: the apology was welcome precisely because it could still be qualified or withdrawn. Bernstein took the wire copy and laid it on Woodward’s desk. Woodward later called Ziegler to thank him; Ziegler replied, “We all have our jobs.” The exchange ended without resolving every dispute over the reporting, but it recorded an explicit admission that the White House’s earlier treatment of the reporters had been wrong.

Significance

The apology marked a change in the administration’s public posture, not a replacement of the earlier record. Ziegler had first minimized the break-in, then attacked the newspaper’s evidence and motives as its investigation grew. After Nixon publicly accepted responsibility and recent developments altered the context, Ziegler acknowledged error and apologized to the journalists he had criticized. The sequence made the struggle over Watergate a struggle over credibility as well as facts: official denunciation could not remain unchanged once the administration’s own account and actions had shifted.