Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward (1943- ), American journalist and author, whose investigative journalism with Carl Bernstein for The Washington Post publicized the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

Robert Woodward was born in Geneva, Illinois, and educated at Yale University, from where he graduated in 1965. He then joined the United States Navy as a communications officer. Five years later, he left the navy to work in journalism, first for the Montgomery County Sentinel, and, beginning in 1971, for The Washington Post.

In June 1972, Woodward was assigned to work with Bernstein on the story emerging from the break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Woodward and Bernstein tracked the “burglars” who were attempting to copy documents and bug the offices, many of whom had had experience with the Central Intelligence Agency, back to the Committee to Re-elect the President, the Republican committee established to support the re-election campaign of Richard Nixon. The continuing investigations of Woodward and Bernstein revealed the involvement of top aides to the Nixon administration in both 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 as president in August 1974. The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973 on the back of the Watergate investigations.

Woodward and Bernstein wrote a book based upon their investigations entitled All the President’s Men (1974; later made into a film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman). In this, they revealed that their investigation had benefited from the insights of 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”. In 2005, Mark Felt, who at the time of the scandal 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 following the death of J. Edgar Hoover. Woodward and Bernstein later wrote a second book on the scandal, The Final Days (1976).

Woodward remained at The Washington Post, and in 1981 became the newspaper’s assistant managing editor. He has remained an important commentator on presidential politics, upon which subject he has written a number of books, including The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House (1994), Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate (1999), Bush at War (2002), and Plan of Attack (2004). He also wrote The Secret Man (2005), following the disclosure of the identity of Deep Throat.