I recently read some of the transcripts of Nixon’s Watergate tapes, and they spent hours trying to figure out who was leaking and providing information to Carl and myself.
Nixon had some large achievements in foreign affairs. They will be remembered. But a president probably gets remembered for one thing, and Watergate will head the Nixon list, I suspect.
I think that everyone is kind of confused about the information they get from the media and rightly so. I’m confused about the information I get from the media.
Not a season passes without new disclosures showing Nixon’s numerous attempts at criminal use of his presidential powers and in fact the scorn he held for the rule of law.
If information is true, if it can be verified, and if it’s really important, the newspaper needs to be willing to take the risk associated with using unidentified sources.
When you hear in the tape recordings Nixon’s own voice saying, We have to stonewall, We have to lie to the Grand Jury, We have to pay burglars a million dollars, it’s all too clear the horror of what went on.
Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story.
I believe Watergate shows that the system did work. Particularly the Judiciary and the Congress, and ultimately an independent prosecutor working in the Executive Branch.
When you practice reporting for as long as I have, you keep yourself at a distance from True Believers. Either conservatives or liberals or Democrats or Republicans.
The source known as Deep Throat provided a kind of road map through the scandal. His one consistent message was that the Watergate burglary was just the tip of the iceberg.
