Carl Bernstein

Carl Bernstein (1944- ), American investigative journalist and author, who with Bob Woodward reported on the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post between 1972 and 1974.

Born in Washington, D.C., Bernstein was the son of radical activist parents whose membership of the Communist Party of the United States of America attracted attention during the “Red Scare” of McCarthyism. Bernstein started work as a copyboy at the Washington Evening Star in 1960 while finishing high school, and later began a part-time course at the University of Maryland. In 1965 he began writing stories for the Star before working for the Elizabeth Daily Journal, in New Jersey. He returned to the capital in 1966 to become a reporter for The Washington Post.

A colourful writer, in June 1972 Bernstein was assigned with Woodward to work on the story of the break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Bernstein and Woodward tracked the “burglars” who were attempting to copy documents and bug the offices, and many of whom had had experience with the Central Intelligence Agency, back to the Committee to Re-elect the President, which was the Republican committee established to support the re-election campaign of Richard Nixon. The continued investigations of Bernstein and Woodward revealed the involvement of top aides to the Nixon administration in the scandal and the attempt to cover it up. Eventually, following the investigation of a Senate Committee, tapes of conversations between Nixon and his aides proved that Nixon had ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to stop the investigation of the Watergate break-in. Nixon resigned from the presidency in August 1974. The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973 on the back of the Watergate investigations.

Bernstein and Woodward wrote a book based upon their investigations entitled All the President’s Men (1974; later made into a film starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford). In this, they revealed that their investigation had benefited from a high-level source whose identity was known only to Woodward, Bernstein, and their editor, Ben Bradlee, and was referred to only as “Deep Throat”. The identity of Deep Throat remained a mystery until 2005 when Mark Felt, who at the time had been deputy director of the FBI, revealed himself as the journalists’ source—Felt had been passed over as director of the FBI by Nixon. Bernstein and Woodward later wrote a second book on the scandal, The Final Days (1976).

Bernstein left The Washington Post in 1976, contributing articles to such publications as Time, Vanity Fair, and New Republic. In 1979 he joined ABC television as Washington bureau chief, later becoming senior correspondent between 1981 and 1984. Other books include Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir (1989) and His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time (1996).