Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward’s Watergate reporting began with an early-morning telephone call and developed into a long investigation conducted through records, interviews, and guarded exchanges with a source inside the executive branch. Working with Carl Bernstein at The Washington Post, he pursued leads that linked the burglary to the Nixon campaign, while the confidential relationship with Deep Throat supplied a separate means of checking information and interpreting its significance.

Identity and Entry into the Investigation

On Saturday morning, June 17, 1972, Woodward was asleep when the city editor called. Five men had been arrested earlier that morning during a burglary at Democratic headquarters; they had been carrying photographic equipment and electronic gear. The assignment brought Woodward into a police story outside the usual work of the national staff. The next morning, at Barry Sussman’s request, he and Bernstein returned to the newsroom to follow up.

The first consequential correction came through an Associated Press wire item. Campaign spending reports identified James McCord, one of the arrested men, as security coordinator for the Committee for the Re-election of the President. That formal connection made further scrutiny of McCord necessary and shifted the burglary from an isolated crime toward a question about campaign involvement. Woodward’s reporting began with an arrest, but its direction was set by checking a name against a public record.

A police source then gave the reporters another lead: two address books belonging to men arrested inside the Watergate contained the name and telephone number of Howard E. Hunt, marked with references to the White House. Woodward checked a telephone directory, found a listing for E. Howard Hunt, Jr., in Potomac, Maryland, and called. There was no answer. The episode illustrates the investigation’s early method: a clue established a possible connection, but the reporters still had to identify, pursue, and verify it.

Following the Money and Testing Leads

Woodward’s reporting extended from the men arrested at the Watergate to the campaign’s finances. In one examination of checks, Bernstein copied a cashier’s check for $25,000, dated April 10 and payable to Kenneth H. Dahlberg. It had been deposited with four Mexican checks, producing a total deposit of $114,000. Four days later, $25,000 was withdrawn, and the remaining $89,000 was withdrawn separately. The transaction supplied concrete figures and a sequence to investigate; on its own, it did not establish who had directed the money or what every withdrawal financed.

Other reporting helped establish how campaign money had been distributed. Hugh Sloan described the procedure as routine within a campaign budget exceeding $50 million. When first approached for money, he had telephoned John Mitchell at the Justice Department; Mitchell told him to distribute it. Sloan recalled a series of calls beginning in 1971. The account connected an apparently ordinary disbursement process to Mitchell, while leaving the reporters to distinguish the existence of a channel from proof of the purpose and authorization of particular payments.

The Post reported that funds for the Watergate espionage operation were controlled by several principal assistants to Mitchell, the former manager of Richard Nixon’s campaign, and held in a special account at the Committee for the Re-election of the President. The reporting thus joined a financial mechanism to the campaign organization. Woodward’s investigations repeatedly depended on building such links from separate kinds of material rather than treating one name, check, or association as a complete explanation.

Deep Throat and Confidential Reporting

Woodward maintained a highly restricted relationship with Deep Throat, a source in the executive branch with access to information at both the Committee for the Re-election of the President and the White House. The source’s identity was unknown to others. Woodward had promised not to identify the source or the source’s position, and not to quote him, even anonymously. Their conversations were limited to confirming information Woodward had obtained elsewhere and adding perspective. The arrangement gave the source a narrow but important function: corroboration and interpretation, not a substitute for independent reporting.

The relationship required Woodward to manage contact as carefully as information. In his earlier apartment, he used a flower pot and a small flag on the balcony as a signal. After moving to a two-bedroom flat two blocks from The Washington Post, he found that the new apartment had no balcony and that newspapers left outside neighbors’ doors could be taken. Before choosing it, he had inspected less obvious features of the building, including back stairways, fire exits, and window sills. At the end of a difficult meeting about H. R. Haldeman, he and Deep Throat adopted a one-way signal: Woodward would place his yellow kitchen wastepaper basket upside down on the fire escape to initiate contact.

The signaling system became a practical part of the reporting relationship, not merely an emblem of secrecy. On one occasion, Woodward moved the red-flagged flower pot in the morning, anticipating what he knew would be their grimmest meeting. At another point, he made an emergency call from a predesignated telephone booth, said nothing, and hung up after ten seconds; he waited almost an hour for the return call. The physical arrangements reveal the constraints under which the source could be reached, while the agreed procedures preserved the distinction between a confidential conversation and material suitable for publication.

Reporting Against Denial and Indifference

Early coverage did not guarantee that other institutions or news organizations would treat the investigation as consequential. After the secret-fund stories, The New York Times did not mention them the next morning; the television networks carried neither story, and most newspapers did not either. Republican Senate leader Hugh Scott dismissed Watergate as a matter of interest to George McGovern and the media rather than the average voter. In the newsroom, Woodward and Bernstein waited for the afternoon Washington Star-News; its only Watergate item concerned a law professor’s motion seeking a special prosecutor.

The pattern continued when a Post story ran against the implication of the indictments. The reporters expected substantial attention, but major outlets mostly ignored it or emphasized Robert Mardian’s denials. Later, the Post–Los Angeles Times News Service wire carried another story at about 7:00 p.m.; more than half of its 220 domestic subscribers used it, several on page one, and coverage among nonsubscribers was broad. The contrast shows how the reach of a story could change: limited attention and official denials did not prevent later distribution from widening its audience.

As reporting brought Watergate closer to the White House, the administration’s response focused on attacking newspapers without directly addressing the allegations. The stated calculation was that the public saw the alleged conspiracy as distant from the Oval Office and that discussing it would give the charges greater visibility. One aide also invoked the belief that the public regarded the Eastern press as elitist, anti-Nixon, and pro-McGovern. The White House selected The Washington Post as its target even though Time had developed damaging information as well. The resulting contest over credibility gave the Post’s allegations greater currency, according to the account of the response.

Later Reporting and the Investigation’s Reach

Woodward continued to seek evidence about who was cooperating with prosecutors. On April 18, the morning after a presidential turnabout, he called a man from the Committee for the Re-election of the President and asked who was talking to prosecutors. The next day, the Post reported that Jeb Stuart Magruder said Mitchell and White House Counsel John Dean had approved and helped plan the Watergate bugging operation. The claim brought senior figures directly into the account, but its evidentiary status remained tied to Magruder’s reported statement; the story identified an allegation and its source rather than making the source relationship itself proof of every element.

Woodward also continued to use Deep Throat’s information to check developments in the investigation. Deep Throat confirmed an account concerning L. Patrick Gray and files associated with E. Howard Hunt. According to the source, Gray had been told by John Ehrlichman and Dean that the files were political dynamite and should never become public; Ehrlichman had separately urged Dean to dispose of them. Gray kept the files for about a week, then said he put them in a burn bag. The source described Gray as understanding what the two men wanted, while also reporting that Gray said he had not been explicitly told to destroy the files. Those distinctions mattered: the account described pressure and disposal, but also preserved the difference between a direct order and an understood expectation.

By the opening of the Senate hearings on May 17, 1973, Woodward and Bernstein had saved notes and memoranda since June 17, 1972, and periodically reviewed them for unexplored leads. They had increasingly relied on access to committee investigators and attorneys, and their nighttime meetings with Deep Throat had become less frequent. One unchecked name remained on both reporters’ lists: presidential aide Alexander P. Butterfield, whom both Deep Throat and Sloan had mentioned. Sloan had said, almost in passing, that Butterfield was in charge of internal security; Woodward had visited Butterfield’s Virginia-suburban home in January, but nobody answered the door. The unresolved lead at the hearings’ opening captures the investigation as continuing work: accumulated disclosures had widened the inquiry, yet its notes still contained names not fully pursued and questions not yet answered.