Bob Woodward | |
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.jpg) Woodward in 2023 | |
| Born | Robert Upshur Woodward (1943-03-26)March 26, 1943 (age 82) Geneva, Illinois, U.S. |
| Education | Yale University (BA) |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Known for | Reporting on theWatergate scandal |
| Notable credit | The Washington Post |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 2 |
| Father | Alfred E. Woodward |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch |  United States Navy |
| Years of service | 1965–1970 |
| Rank |  Lieutenant |
| Unit | USS Wright (CVL-49) USS Fox (CG-33) |
| Website | bobwoodward |
Robert Upshur Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is an Americaninvestigative journalist. He started working forThe Washington Post as a reporter in 1971 and now holds the honorific title of associate editor there, though the Post no longer employs him.[1][2]
While a reporter forThe Washington Post in 1972, Woodward teamed up withCarl Bernstein, and the two did much of the original news reporting on theWatergate scandal.[3] These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of PresidentRichard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by longtime journalist and former editor ofThe New York TimesGene Roberts.[4]
Woodward continued to work forThe Washington Post after his reporting on Watergate. Since 1974, he has written 21 books on American politics and current affairs, 14 of which have topped best-seller lists.
Woodward was born inGeneva, Illinois, the son of Jane (née Upshur) andAlfred E. Woodward, a lawyer who later became chief judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit Court. He was raised in nearbyWheaton, Illinois, and educated atWheaton Community High School (WCHS), a public high school in the same town.[5] His parents divorced when he was twelve, and he and his brother and sister were raised by their father, who subsequently remarried.[6]
Following graduation from WCHS in 1961, Woodward enrolled inYale University with aNaval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship and studied history and English literature. While at Yale, Woodward joined thePhi Gamma Delta fraternity and was a member ofBook and Snake.[7][8] He received his B.A. degree in 1965.[9]
After Yale, Woodward began a five-year tour of duty in theUnited States Navy, working as a communications officer.[9] Woodward has sometimes been cited as working in intelligence,[10] but this is mistaken.[11] During his service in the Navy, Woodward served aboard theUSSWright, and was one of two officers assigned to move or handle nuclear launch codes theWright carried in its capacity as aNational Emergency Command Post Afloat (NECPA).[12][page needed] At one time, he was close to Admiral Robert O. Welander, being communications officer on theUSSFox under Welander's command.[13]
After being discharged as alieutenant in August 1970, Woodward was admitted toHarvard Law School but elected not to attend. Instead, he applied for a job as a reporter forThe Washington Post while taking graduate courses inShakespeare andinternational relations atGeorge Washington University.Harry M. Rosenfeld, thePost's metropolitan editor, gave him a two-week trial, but did not hire him because of his lack of journalistic experience. After a year at theMontgomery Sentinel, a weekly newspaper in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, Woodward was hired as aPost reporter in 1971.[14]
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Woodward andCarl Bernstein were both assigned to report on the June 17, 1972, burglary of the headquarters of theDemocratic National Committee in a Washington, D.C., office building calledWatergate. Their work, under editorBen Bradlee, became known for being the first to report on a number of political "dirty tricks" used by theNixon re-election committee 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, starringRobert Redford as Woodward andDustin Hoffman as Bernstein, transformed the reporters into celebrities and inspired a wave of interest ininvestigative journalism.
The book and movie also led to the enduring mystery of the identity of Woodward'ssecret Watergate informant known asDeep Throat, a reference to the title of apopular pornographic movie at the time. 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 toVanity Fair magazine to be formerFederal Bureau of Investigation Associate DirectorW. Mark Felt in May 2005. Woodward immediately confirmed the veracity of this claim and subsequently published a book, titledThe Secret Man, that detailed his relationship with Felt.
Woodward and Bernstein followed upAll the President's Men with a second book on Watergate, entitledThe Final Days (published in 1976), covering in extensive depth the period from November 1973 until President Nixon resigned in August 1974.[15]
The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers are housed at theHarry Ransom Center at theUniversity of Texas at Austin.[16]
In September 1980, a Sunday feature story appeared on the front page of thePost titled "Jimmy's World" in which reporterJanet Cooke wrote a profile of the life of an eight-year-old heroinaddict.[17] Although some within thePost doubted the story's veracity, it was defended by the paper's editors including Woodward, who was assistant managing editor. It was Woodward who submitted the story forPulitzer Prize consideration, and Cooke was awarded thePulitzer Prize for Feature Writing on April 13, 1981. The story was then found to be a complete fabrication, and the Pulitzer was returned. In retrospect, Woodward made the following statement:
I was blown away by the story. . . . I think that the decision to nominate the story for a Pulitzer is of minimal consequence. I also think that it won is of little consequence. It is a brilliant story—fake and fraud that it is. It would be absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of stories that are nominated for prizes.[18]
China's alleged role in the1996 United States campaign finance controversy first gained public attention when Woodward and Brian Duffy published a story stating that aUnited States Department of Justice investigation into the fund-raising activities had uncovered evidence thatChinese agents sought to direct contributions from foreign sources to theDemocratic National Committee (DNC) before the1996 presidential campaign. The journalists wrote that intelligence information had shown theChinese embassy in Washington, D.C. was used for coordinating contributions to the DNC.[19]
Woodward spent more time than any other journalist with former PresidentGeorge W. Bush, interviewing him six times for close to 11 hours total.[20] Woodward's four books,Bush at War (2002),Plan of Attack (2004),State of Denial (2006), andThe War Within: A Secret White House History (2006–2008) (2008) are detailed accounts of the Bush presidency, including the response to theSeptember 11 attacks and the wars inAfghanistan andIraq.In a series of articles published in January 2002, he andDan Balz described the events atCamp David in the aftermath of September 11 and discussed the Worldwide Attack Matrix.
Woodward believed the Bush administration'sclaims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction prior to the war. During an appearance onLarry King Live, he was asked by a telephone caller, "Suppose we go to war and go into Iraq and there are noweapons of mass destruction", Woodward responded "I think the chance of that happening is about zero. There's just too much there."[21][22] Woodward later admitted his error saying, "I think I dropped the ball here. I should have pushed much, much harder on the skepticism about the reality of WMD; in other words, [I should have] said, 'Hey, look, the evidence is not as strong as they were claiming.'"[23]
In 2008, as a part of theTalks at Google series, Woodward, who was interviewed by Google CEOEric Schmidt, said that he had a fourth book in hisBush at War series in the making.[24]
On November 14, 2005, Woodward gave a two-hourdeposition to Special CounselPatrick Fitzgerald. He testified that a senior administration official told him in June 2003 thatIraq war criticJoe Wilson's wife (later identified asValerie Plame), worked for the CIA as a WMD analyst, not as an undercover operative.[25] Woodward appears to have been the first reporter to learn about her employment (albeit not her name) from a government source. The deposition was reported inThe Washington Post on November 16, 2005, and was the first time Woodward revealed publicly that he had any special knowledge about the case. Woodward testified the information was given to him in a "casual" and "offhand" manner, and said that he does not believe it was part of any coordinated effort to "out" Plame as a CIA employee.[26] Later, Woodward's source identified himself. It wasRichard Armitage,Colin Powell's deputy and an internal critic of the Iraq War and the White House inner circle.
Woodward said the revelation came at the end of a long, confidential background interview for his 2004 bookPlan of Attack. He did not reveal the official's disclosure at the time because it did not strike him as important. Later, he kept it to himself because it came as part of a confidential conversation with a source.
In his deposition, Woodward also said that he had conversations withScooter Libby after the June 2003 conversation with his confidential administration source, and testified that it is possible that he might have asked Libby further questions about Joe Wilson's wife before her employment at the CIA and her identity were publicly known.
Woodward apologized toLeonard Downie Jr., editor ofThe Washington Post, for not informing him earlier of the June 2003 conversation. Downie accepted the apology and said even had the paper known it would not have changed its reporting.
New York University professorJay Rosen severely criticized Woodward for allegedly being co-opted by the Bush White House and also for not telling the truth about his role in thePlame affair, writing: "Not only is Woodward not in the hunt, but he is slowly turning into the hunted. Part of what remains to be uncovered is how Woodward was played by the Bush team, and what they thought they were doing by leaking to him, as well as what he did with the dubious information he got."[27]
On February 22, 2013, shortly before theUnited States federal budget sequester took effect,The Washington Post published a column by Woodward in which he criticized the Obama administration for their statements in 2012 and 2013 that the sequester had been proposed by Republicans in Congress; Woodward said his research showed that the sequester proposal had originated with the White House.[28][29] Press SecretaryJay Carney confirmed, "The sequester was something that was discussed, and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward."[30]
On February 27, Woodward toldPolitico that before the column was published, Woodward had called a senior White House official, later identified by reporters as economic adviserGene Sperling, to discuss the piece, and that the official had "yelled at [Woodward] for about a half-hour" before sending him a page-long email that included the sentence, "I think you will regret staking out that claim." InPolitico's reporting, Woodward's focus on that line was described as "making clear he saw [that sentence] as a veiled threat", although Woodward did not use the word "threat" or "threatened".[31] Several other sources also indicated that Woodward had described the line as an intended threat.[32][33][34]
The next day,Politico published the complete email exchange between Woodward and Sperling. Sperling's statements leading up to the "regret" line read: "But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim."[35] The White House subsequently released a statement that "of course no threat was intended...The note suggested that Mr. Woodward would regret the observation he made regarding the sequester because that observation was inaccurate, nothing more."[36] Upon release of the emails, several conservative commentators indicated they no longer agreed with characterizing the "regret" statement as a threat.[37]
In a February 28Fox News Channel interview, Woodward said he had never used the word "threat" but said Sperling's conduct was "not the way to operate in a White House". He also said: "I've been flooded with emails from people in the press saying this is exactly the way the White House works, they are trying to control and they don't want to be challenged or crossed".[38]National Journal editorRon Fournier, conservativeWashington Post columnistJennifer Rubin, and Fox News contributor and formerClinton adviserLanny Davis expressed support for Woodward; Fournier and Davis described similar experiences with Obama administration officials.[39][40][41]
In January 2025,The Guardian reported that in Congressman'sJames Comer's then upcoming book,All the President's Money, Comer alleges that Woodward confided to him at a private dinner in February 2023 "that everyone in DC knew thatJoe allowed his family to sell access to him, but as far as he was aware, that was not illegal."[42] Woodward denied the allegation.[43]
Although Woodward is no longer employed by thePost, Woodward has continued to write books and report stories forThe Washington Post, and has the title of associate editor at the paper, which was described byPost media columnistMargaret Sullivan ashonorific with no regular responsibilities.[2] He focuses on the presidency, intelligence, and Washington institutions such as theU.S. Supreme Court,The Pentagon, and theFederal Reserve.[citation needed]
Although not a recipient in his own right, Woodward made contributions to twoPulitzer Prizes won byThe Washington Post. First, he and Bernstein were the lead reporters onWatergate and thePost won thePulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973.[44] He was also the main reporter for thePost's coverage of theSeptember 11 attacks in 2001. ThePost won the 2002Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for 10 of its stories on the subject.[45]
Woodward himself has been a recipient of nearly every major American journalism award, including theHeywood Broun award (1972), Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting (1972 and 1986),Sigma Delta Chi Award (1973),George Polk Award (1972),William Allen White Medal (2000), and theGerald R. Ford Prize for Reporting on the Presidency (2002). In 2012,Colby College presented Woodward with theElijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courageous journalism as well as an honorary doctorate.[46]
Woodward has authored or co-authored 21 nonfiction books in the past 40 years. All of them have been national bestsellers and 14 of them have been No. 1 national nonfiction bestsellers, the most of any contemporary author for this genre.[47]
In his 1995 memoir,A Good Life, formerPost Executive EditorBen Bradlee singled out Woodward in the foreword. "It would be hard to overestimate the contributions to my newspaper and to my time as editor of that extraordinary reporter, Bob Woodward—surely the best of his generation at investigative reporting, the best I've ever seen.... And Woodward has maintained the same position on top of journalism's ladder ever since Watergate."[48] In 1995, Woodward also received the Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement.[49]
David Gergen, who had worked in theWhite House during theRichard Nixon and three subsequent administrations, said in his 2000 memoir,Eyewitness to Power, of Woodward's reporting, "I don't accept everything he writes as gospel—he can get details wrong—but generally, his accounts in both his books and in the Post are remarkably reliable and demand serious attention. I am convinced he writes only what he believes to be true or has been reliably told to be true. And he is certainly a force for keeping the government honest."[50]
In 2001, Woodward won theWalter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.[51]
Fred Barnes of theWeekly Standard called Woodward "the best pure reporter of his generation, perhaps ever."[52] In 2003,Al Hunt ofThe Wall Street Journal called Woodward "the most celebrated journalist of our age." In 2004,Bob Schieffer ofCBS News said, "Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time."[53]
In 2014,Robert Gates, the former director of theCIA andSecretary of Defense, said that he wished he'd recruited Woodward into the CIA, saying, "He has an extraordinary ability to get otherwise responsible adults to spill [their] guts to him...his ability to get people to talk about stuff they shouldn't be talking about is just extraordinary and may be unique."[54]
JournalistNicholas von Hoffman has made the criticism that "arrestingly irrelevant detail is [often] used",[55] whileMichael Massing believes Woodward's books are "filled with long, at times tedious passages with no evident direction."[56]
Joan Didion published a comprehensive criticism of Woodward in a lengthy September 1996 essay inThe New York Review of Books. Though "Woodward is a widely trusted reporter, even an American icon", she says that he assembles reams of often irrelevant detail, fails to draw conclusions, and make judgments. "Measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent" from his books after Watergate from 1979 to 1996, she said. She said the books are notable for "a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured." She ridicules "fairness" as "a familiar newsroom piety, the excuse in practice for a good deal of autopilot reporting and lazy thinking." All this focus on what people said and thought—their "decent intentions"—circumscribes "possible discussion or speculation", resulting in what she called "political pornography".[57]
ThePost's Richard Harwood defended Woodward in a September 6, 1996, column, arguing that Woodward's method is that of a reporter—"talking to people you write about, checking and cross-checking their versions of contemporary history," and collecting documentary evidence in notes, letters, and records."[58]
Woodward has been accused of exaggeration and fabrication regarding Deep Throat. AfterMark Felt was announced as the true identity behind Deep Throat in 2005,John Dean[59] and Ed Gray,[60] in separate publications, used Woodward's bookAll The President's Men and his published notes on his meetings with Deep Throat to argue that Deep Throat could not have been only Mark Felt. They argued that Deep Throat was a fictional composite made up of several Woodward sources, only one of whom was Felt. Gray, in his bookIn Nixon's Web, even went so far as to publish an e-mail and telephone exchange he had withDonald Santarelli, a Washington lawyer who was a Justice Department official during Watergate, in which Santarelli confirmed to Gray that he was the source behind statements Woodward recorded in notes he has attributed to Deep Throat.[61] However, Stephen Mielke, an archivist at theUniversity of Texas who oversees the Woodward-Bernstein papers, said it is likely the page was misfiled under Felt because no source was identified. The original page of notes is in the Mark Felt file but "the carbon is located with the handwritten and typed notes attributed to Santarelli." Ed Gray said that Santarelli confirmed to him that he was the source behind the statements in the notes.[62]
J. Bradford DeLong has noted considerable inconsistencies between the accounts of the making of Clinton economic policy described in Woodward's bookMaestro and his bookThe Agenda.[63]
Some of Woodward's critics accuse him of abandoning critical inquiry to maintain his access to high-profile political actors.Anthony Lewis called the style "a trade in which the great grant access in return for glory."[64]Christopher Hitchens accused Woodward of acting as "stenographer to the rich and powerful."[65]
Writer Tanner Colby, who co-wrote a biography ofJohn Belushi with the late actor's widow Judy, wrote inSlate that, while Woodward's frequently criticized 1984 bookWired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi is largely accurate in its description of events, Woodward either gets the context wrong or does not find any context at all. For example, Belushi's grandmother's funeral, which led him to make a serious effort to sober up, gets merely a paragraph in Woodward's retelling, while a 24-hour drug binge in Los Angeles goes on for eight pages simply because the limo driver was willing to talk to Woodward. "It's like someone wrote a biography of Michael Jordan in which all the stats and scores are correct, but you come away with the impression that Michael Jordan wasn't very good at playing basketball," he concluded. Because it was unique among Woodward's books in that it made no use of confidential or anonymous sources, Colby was able to interview many of the same sources that Woodward had used, making comparisons of their recollection of events to Woodward's accounting of them relatively easy.[66]
Woodward believed the Bush administration's claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war, and the publication of the bookAt the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA by former Director of Central IntelligenceGeorge Tenet led Woodward to write an account of the extent of his pre-war conversations with Tenet in an article inThe New Yorker in which he also chastisedNew York Times op-ed columnistMaureen Dowd for being critical of him.[67]
Woodward was also accused of fabricating a deathbed interview with CIA DirectorWilliam Casey, as described inVeil, where Casey supposedly admitted to his knowledge of the Iran-Contra affair. Casey's widow and several individuals from the agency stated that Casey was incapable of speaking at the time of the alleged interview.[68][69][70][71] However,Robert M. Gates, Casey's deputy at the time, in his bookFrom the Shadows, recounts speaking with Casey during this exact period. Gates directly quotes Casey saying 22 words, even more than the 19 words Woodward said Casey used with him.[72] The CIA's internal report found that Casey "had forty-three meetings or phone calls with Woodward, including a number of meetings at Casey's home with no one else present" during the period Woodward was researching his book.[73] Gates was also quoted saying, "When I saw him in the hospital, his speech was even more slurred than usual, but if you knew him well, you could make out a few words, enough to get sense of what he was saying."[74] Following Casey's death, President Ronald Reagan wrote: "[Woodward]'s a liar and he lied about what Casey is supposed to have thought of me."[75]
Woodward has also been widely criticized for having withheld interviews with PresidentDonald Trump in which Trump revealed thatCOVID-19 was a much greater threat than he had publicly claimed. These interviews were conducted in February 2020, but were not released until September 2020 during the promotion ofRage, Woodward's book about the Trump presidency.[76][77]
Woodward has taken part in giving speeches on the "lecture circuit" to industry lobbying groups, such as the American Bankruptcy Institute, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, and theMortgage Bankers Association.[78] Woodward was commanding speaking fees "rang[ing] from $15,000 to $60,000" and donating them to his personal foundation, the Woodward Walsh Foundation, which donated to charities includingSidwell Friends School.[79]Washington Post policy prohibits "speaking engagements without permission from department heads", but Woodward insisted that the policy is "fuzzy and ambiguous".[80]
Woodward also lectures at colleges and universities. He gave the 2001Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecture atCentral Connecticut State University,[81] and has spoken at theUniversity of Arkansas,[82]University of Alabama,[83]Eastern Connecticut State University,[84]West Texas A&M University,[85] andOklahoma City Community College.[86] Following the publication in 2018 ofFear: Trump in the White House, he spoke to an overflow crowd of students, faculty, and guests atVirginia Commonwealth University.[87] His May 4, 2019 speech atKent State University contained the startling revelation of previously unreleased audiotape on which then-presidentRichard Nixon can be heard lauding the1970 shooting of four students for its effect on those who disagreed with him.[88]
Woodward has been married three times. His first marriage (1966–1969) was to his high school sweetheartKathleen Middlekauff, now an English professor. His second marriage (1974–1979) was to Frances Kuper.[89] In 1989, he married for a third time toElsa Walsh (b. August 25, 1957), a writer forThe New Yorker and the author ofDivided Lives: The Public and Private Struggles of Three American Women.[90]
His oldest daughter, Tali, is also a journalist. She directed a graduate program in journalism at Columbia University for six years before becoming an editor forThe Trace.[91][92]
Woodward was portrayed byRobert Redford inAll the President's Men (1976),J. T. Walsh inWired (1989),Will Ferrell inDick (1999),Julian Morris inMark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House (2017), andSpencer Garrett inThe Front Runner (2018). Redford's voice fromAll the President's Men, depicting Woodward's telephone call toHoward Hunt, was reused in episode 4 of the 2023 HBO miniseries,White House Plumbers, in depicting the call from Hunt's perspective. Woodward was also referenced as the author of a fictional investigative book "The Truth About Whacking Day" in the episodeWhacking Day ofThe Simpsons.
Woodward has co-authored or authored 14 No. 1 national bestselling non-fiction books.[93]
Woodward co-wrote the 1986 NBC made-for-TV filmUnder Siege about a series of terrorist attacks in the United States.[100][101] The film's other co-writers includeChristian Williams, Richard Harwood, and Alfred Sole.
Woodward again collaborated with Williams when they were story writers for the 1989 TNT TV miniseries adaptation ofThe Nightmare Years about American journalistWilliam L. Shirer stationed in pre-World War IINazi Germany.[102] The miniseries' screenplay was written byIan Curteis.
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