Woodward and Bernstein on Imus

IMUS:  Well, do you think he had other people helping-helping him provide you with the guidance that you were provided to allow you to investigate this?  I mean, were there other agents?  Was there-was there somebody checking to see if the flower pot was moved or that sort of thing or...

WOODWARD:  Possibly. 

BERNSTEIN:  You know, in terms of a network, I think that’s probably unlikely, but we’d have to speculate there too.  But certainly he worked among other people.  And whether he might have asked somebody else what’s going on here or what’s going on there, that’s certainly within the realm of possibility. 

IMUS:  So that would mean that there maybe were other people who knew that he was talking to you, Bob, do you think? 

BERNSTEIN:  I doubt that seriously. 

But what do you think, Bob? 

WOODWARD:  Yes, I doubt it also.  But again, there-and this is-you know, we know what happened from our end, and we’ll put all of this down, each step.  And all our notes are at the University of Texas.  The notes on this will go there, and people can kind of pick through and see how it happened.  And, you know, it’s...

IMUS:  When you guys were writing this, did you have a-was there a concern that you were unable to provide any context for the information you were receiving?  Not who was providing it, but why they were and how they were in a position to know? 

BERNSTEIN:  I think that was the great thing we were able to do in terms of giving us a kind of certainty and context of everything.  Partly from Deep Throat.  There were one or two others who were also really crucial to that, including giving us a picture of the atmosphere of the Nixon White House, which was, you know, a place of great intrigue, criminality and hysteria. 

IMUS:  Well, when you-I forget now, but when you-when you wrote these stories, how did you characterize the source for the information that you got from Felt? 

WOODWARD:  We just said “sources close to the investigation.” The deal with him was...

BERNSTEIN:  It differed time to time, depending on how many sources were involved.  In other words, if something came from an original source at-in one of the executive departments, then had gone to Felt, you know, we might say in the executive branch.  At another point, we might say close to the investigation.  It would depend on the circumstances. 

There are almost no instances except the one toward John Dean’s testimony when Felt said, “Look, this goes everywhere.”  Outside of that one, I think there were almost always other sources involved, with maybe one or two exceptions. 

IMUS:  Where would this story have gone without his help, Felt’s help? 

WOODWARD:  It’s really hard to tell.  But what’s so clear from, we hope, “All the President’s Men,” that there were dozens of sources.  And in the committee to re-elect the president, in the White House, now it’s clear, in the FBI  and other places, and so it’s a matter of piecing together. 

You know, I think somebody was talking about one of our stories about the tape gap, and it said five sources.  We often had five sources for stories. 

IMUS:  We’re talking with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein here on the IMUS IN THE MORNING program.  It’s nine minutes before the hour. 

Back to this-your relationship with him over the past 30 years, and before he lapsed into these stages of apparently dementia, how-and you may have told me this, but bear with me.  How did he feel about all of this, all of these years? 

WOODWARD:  Well, that’s what-that’s the story we’re going to tell, because it’s got some surprising twists and turns.  Just, you know, as a matter of public record, Nixon testified at Mark Felt’s trial when he was indicted for authorizing break-ins at the homes of family members of the weather (ph) underground.  The irony of that. 

When Felt was convicted, he was pardoned by none other than Ronald Reagan.  So there’s a whole three-decade story here. 

IMUS:  It seems like, just looking at it, that everybody who was involved in this, you and Carl and Ben and a number of other people, survived this and had a-you know, developed fairly successful careers out of all of this, and that the only one who didn’t benefit from this all in terms of not financially, but either-psychologically, particularly, was Mr. Felt himself.  It seems like-the impression I get is that he had a fairly miserable life for 30 years, full of regret and torment and whatever. 

WOODWARD:  I think uncertainty.  But as I was saying earlier...

BERNSTEIN:  He had a full family life, too, and a wonderful life, I think, with his wife.  I think that he-he was someone, I think, who was tormented by what had happened to this bureau that he had been a part of, and then by what his role was. 

I think there was-you know, that he did have ambivalence.  I mean, I think that’s one of the things that’s so compelling about-about the whole story.  It’s a very human enterprise.