The Pentagon Papers

by Katharine Graham

  In fact, I loved the movie. I wrote Redford afterwards, sending the letter via Woodward:

  I suddenly realized that the impact of the movie as we saw it, with you and with each other, was so great and we were all so tense, that I have never told you what I thought of it. It’s just extraordinary in every way.

  You really did what you told me you were trying to do—and I thought impossible—but you did it. It proves a lot of things that defy reason. My reasoning was that the story couldn’t be laid out straight, because if you did, it would bore people. And if you had to hype it, it would hurt the paper. My other concerns for the paper and all our lives were no doubt overdrawn but real. I’m only sorry about them because I’m afraid I let them interfere with the kind of simple, direct relations I usually enjoy and value.

  So I want to be very sure you know that I deeply admire what you did in creating “All the President’s Men.”

  It pictures Carl and Bob almost, eerily, as I perceive them. They are tenacious, able, complex, intelligent and wise beyond their years, funny and nice. Incidentally, they have also withstood fame sensibly and decently.

  It really does tell people what a newspaper is like—the important thing I thought you couldn’t do.

  …We are grateful for the vision you had, for all the incredible hard work, financial investment, passion for your profession, consuming attention to detail—all those things we all strive for—and most of all the love and care that makes the movie one of which we will all be proud always.

  To pile one irony on another, the world premiere of the movie took place in April at the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center, next door to the Watergate, and President Ford sent me tickets for the presidential box, along with the key to the refrigerator in the box, which contained champagne for me and my guests with his compliments.

  The movie’s effect on us at the Post was electric, yet a little like a bite from the apple of discord. Maybe it wasn’t just the movie but, rather, the outcome of Watergate itself. Sometimes the gods give us too much and then exact a price. I suggest this discord because the portrayals in the movie of the roles various people had played had a negative effect on several real-life relationships. The movie gave everything to Ben, largely because that made for a simpler story line and because he was played by Jason Robards, but of course that wasn’t Ben’s fault. Howard Simons was made quite bitter by the movie. He was poorly treated—all for the sake of clarity and simplicity. Much of what he had actually done throughout Watergate was divided up in the movie between Ben and Harry Rosenfeld. Barry Sussman was left out altogether, which must have hurt his feelings even more than mine were hurt by having been omitted. Alan Pakula later justified my exclusion by pointing out that I figured only marginally in the book as well.

  Although Ben’s and my relationship had been strengthened by Watergate, others were not so lucky. The relationship between Howard and Ben, which had been so generous and fruitful, was never the same again. Meg described it best later when she said: “We had had a lot of fun together. There was trust and affection among us….That came apart in many complicated ways….People got on each other’s nerves. Everybody would claim a different reason for it. Each of us would claim we were without sin.”

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  AS A STORY, Watergate was in many ways a journalist’s dream—although it didn’t seem that way in those first months when we were so alone. But the story had all the ingredients for major drama: suspense, embattled people on both sides, right and wrong, law and order, good and bad.

  Watergate—that is, all of the many illegal and improper acts that were included under that rubric—was a political scandal unlike any other. Its sheer magnitude and reach put it on a scale altogether different from past political scandals, in part because of the unparalleled involvement of so many men so close to the president and because of the large amounts of money raised, stashed, and spent in covert and illegal ways. This was indeed a new kind of corruption in government.

  Even today, some people think the whole thing was a minor peccadillo, the sort of thing engaged in by lots of politicians. I believe Watergate was an unprecedented effort to subvert the political process. It was a pervasive, indiscriminate use of power and authority from an administration with a passion for secrecy and deception and an astounding lack of regard for the normal constraints of democratic politics. To my mind, the whole thing was a very real perversion of the democratic system—from firing people who were good Republicans but who might have disagreed with Nixon in the slightest, to the wiretappings, to the breaking and entering of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, to the myriad dirty tricks, to the attempts to discredit and curb the media. As I said in a speech at the time, “It was a conspiracy not of greed but of arrogance and fear by men who came to equate their own political well-being with the nation’s very survival and security.”

  The role of the Post in all of this was simply to report the news. We set out to pursue a story that unfolded before our eyes in ways that made us as incredulous as the rest of the public. The Post was never out to “get” Nixon, or, as was often alleged, to “bring down the president.” It always seemed to me outrageous to accuse the Post of pursuing the Watergate story because of the Democratic bias of the paper. A highly unusual burglary at the headquarters of a national political party is an important story, and we would have given it the same treatment regardless of which party was in power or who was running for election. I was often asked why we didn’t cover Ted Kennedy’s debacle at Chappaquiddick as fully as we were covering Watergate. The point is, we did, and the further point is that the Kennedys were probably as angry at us then as the Nixon administration was. Throughout Watergate, I was amazed at the regular allegations that somehow we had created the agony of Watergate by recklessly pursuing certain stories and thereby causing the turmoil that the president was in. How could anyone make this argument in light of the fact that the stories we reported turned out to be true?

  In the end, Nixon was his own worst enemy. The Post had no enemies list; the president did. Nixon seemed to regard the Post as incurably liberal and ceaselessly antiadministration. In fact, the Post supported a great many of his policies and programs, but his paranoia, his hatred of the press, his scheming, all contributed to bringing him down—helped along by the appropriate constitutional processes, including the grand juries, courts, and Congress. Woodward and Bernstein were critical figures in seeing that the truth was eventually told, but others were at least as important: Judge Sirica; Senator Sam Ervin and the Senate Watergate Committee; Special Prosecutors Cox and Jaworski; the House Impeachment Committee under Representative Peter Rodino. The Post was an important part—but only a part—of the Watergate story.

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  MY OWN ROLE throughout Watergate is both easy and hard to define. Watergate no doubt was the most important occurrence in my working life, but my involvement was basically peripheral, rarely direct. For the most part I was behind-the-scenes. I was a kind of devil’s advocate, asking questions all along the way—questions about whether we were being fair, factual, and accurate. I had a constant conversation with Ben and Howard, as I did with the top two editorial writers, Phil and Meg, so I was informed in general. As was my habit before Watergate, I often attended the daily morning editorial meetings, where the issues were regularly discussed and where editorial policy was formed.

  What I did primarily was stand behind the editors and reporters, in whom I believed. As time went on, I did this more publicly, defending us in speeches and remarks to groups around the country—indeed, internationally as well. My larger responsibility was to the company as a whole—beyond the paper—and to our shareholders.

  I have often been credited with courage for backing our editors in Watergate. The truth is that I never felt there was much choice. Courage applies when one has a choice. With Watergate, there was never one major decisive moment when I, or anyone, could have suggested that we stop reporting the story. Watergate unfolded gradually. By the ti
me the story had grown to the point where the size of it dawned on us, we had already waded deeply into its stream. Once I found myself in the deepest water in the middle of the current, there was no going back.

  It was an unbelievable two years of pressured existence, which diminished only a little as other publications joined us and as the separate investigations and the court cases spawned by Watergate began to confirm and amplify our reporting. When it was perfectly obvious that our existence as a company was at stake, we of course became embattled. Watergate threatened to ruin the paper. The Post and The Washington Post Company survived partly because of the great skill and tenacity that our reporters and editors and executives brought to bear throughout the crisis, and partly because of luck.

  In fact, the role of luck was essential in Watergate—and luck was on our side. One has to recognize it and use it, but without luck the end result for us could have been very different. From the first incident of the guard finding the taped door at the Watergate building, to the police sending to the scene of the crime a beat-up-looking undercover car that was cruising in the area rather than a squad car that might have tipped off the burglars, to the sources willing—some even eager—to talk and help, we were lucky. We were lucky that the original burglary took place in Washington and was a local story. We were lucky that those under investigation compounded their own situation by further mistakes and misassessments. We were lucky we had the resources to pursue the story. We were lucky that both Woodward and Bernstein were young and single and therefore willing and able to work sixteen- and eighteen-hour days, seven days a week for months on end, at least with fewer repercussions than married men might have had. We were lucky Nixon was eccentric enough to set up a taping system in the White House, without which he might have completed his term.

  We were also lucky that none of us went over the precipice under the staggering pressures. During the summer of 1973, the strain on Ben was so great—his responsibility for all the people under him, for being right, for being accurate—that his eyelid began to droop. A doctor told him it might be a serious symptom, indicating a brain tumor or an aneurysm. After ten days of torture from the suspense, it turned out to be a nervous condition. The calmer people look and act under extreme pressures, the more likely they are to pay the price with physical symptoms.

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  WATERGATE WAS a transforming event in the life of The Washington Post—as it was for many of us at the paper and throughout journalism. Anything as big as Watergate changes you, and I believe it changed not only the Post and me but journalism as a whole. There were both positive and negative effects.

  At the Post, Watergate tested our whole organization: our talents, our skills, our ability to organize and mobilize resources to handle a long-term major investigation while still covering the daily news. Ultimately, Watergate showed what could be done by reporters arduously and painstakingly pursuing investigative work, by editors remaining skeptical and demanding and as dispassionate as possible under the circumstances, and by editorial writers helping to keep the questions foremost in the minds of our readers.

  More important in terms of its effect, Watergate catapulted the Post to true national and international prominence. The paper became known throughout the world because of it. On one level, the changed image of the Post was flattering; on another, it was both “disturbing and distracting to getting on with other things,” as I wrote Denis Hamilton of the London Sunday Times. The positive press we began to get was heady and head-turning stuff, but the world, fortunately, has a way of keeping one humble. If the world didn’t do it, I was determined to remind all of us of the need, as I said in a letter to Carl and Bob, to keep “the demon pomposity” in control: “The sound of our own voices, while listened to by us with some awe and even some admiration, is receding. And if it isn’t, there are all sorts of stark realities before us to restore balance and defy hubris.”

  I came to be talked about and written about more and more. I was especially bothered by being talked about as “powerful,” often referred to in one headline or story or another as “The Most Powerful Woman in America,” making me feel like some kind of weight-lifter or body-builder. Actually, I was amazed at this perception relating to power, and confounded by how absurd it was to be singling me out as more “powerful” than Punch Sulzberger or Bill Paley, for example, who controlled more powerful companies but were men.

  I was also concerned—for the paper and for all of us, including myself—that if your profile gets up too high it will be a target. Someone or something will bring you down. Accordingly, I did only interviews that I thought were professional, and tried very hard to avoid the personal ones.

  I was fairly confident that the work of Post reporters and editors would withstand critical scrutiny. I once said to Truman Capote that it looked as if “either I’m going to jail or they are.” On the other hand, I have to admit that I was frightened. I was frightened of the power of a man and his minions, of a president who thought he had the power to wrap himself in the cloak of national security. I was frightened for the future of The Washington Post Company, and, particularly after Fritz died and I became chairman as well as publisher, my responsibilities weighed heavily on me.

  Watergate also changed the way journalism and journalists are viewed, and in fact the way they work. During the Watergate affair, we—at the Post at least—had developed certain habits that were hard to break. John Anderson, an editorial writer, insightfully discussed this in some notes he made on the editorial page at the time:

  We had become accustomed to a high degree of tension and drama. Morning editorial conferences had become obsessive, as we went back and forth for hours over each day’s events. Quickly they came to take up the entire morning, as we sat around Phil’s [Geyelin] office with the papers spread out before us. The Post’s triumph in Watergate is well known, but we paid a large price for it that has had little attention. When it finally ended with Nixon’s resignation, life for all of us was suddenly less interesting. For a long time afterward news coverage was eccentric and spotty because half the staff, particularly young Metro reporters, were off chasing mini-scandals. It was a matter of years before we got back to consistent, orderly coverage of school boards and county councils….

  Young people flocked into journalism, some for good reasons and some hoping to be Woodward or Bernstein. Certainly, Watergate provided a great deal of evidence that the national media do indeed shape events. Clearly, press reports contributed to Judge Sirica’s doubts about what he was hearing in his courtroom, to congressional questions, to public concern. But we don’t set out to have such a major impact. No one—least of all the press itself—thinks we are free from errors and faults or completely without bias. I never once have believed that we in the press do everything right, but we try to keep our opinions confined to the editorial page.

  The natural adversarial relationship between the press and the president was subverted in the case of Watergate, and that, too, affected journalism. I was somewhat alarmed by certain tendencies toward over-involvement, which I felt we should overcome as quickly as we could. The press after Watergate had to guard against the romantic tendency to picture itself in the role of a heroic and beleaguered champion, defending all virtues against overwhelming odds. Watergate had been an aberration, and I felt we couldn’t look everywhere for conspiracies and cover-ups. On the other hand, I don’t believe we “overcovered” Watergate, as some Nixon supporters claimed to the last.

  As astounding as Watergate was to the country and the government, it underscored the crucial role of a free, able, and energetic press. We saw how much power the government has to reveal what it wants when it wants, to give the people only the authorized version of events. We relearned the lessons of the importance of the right of a newspaper to keep its sources confidential.

  The credibility of the press stood the test of time against the credibility of those who spent so much time self-righteously denying their own wrongdoing and assaulting
us by assailing our performance and our motives. In a speech I made in 1970—before the Pentagon Papers and before Watergate—I said: “[T]he cheap solutions being sought by the administration will, in the long run, turn out to be very costly.” Indeed, they did.

  ALSO BY

  KATHERINE GRAHAM

  PERSONAL HISTORY

  In this bestselling and widely acclaimed memoir, Katharine Graham, the woman who piloted the Washington Post through the scandals of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, tells her story—one that is extraordinary both for the events it encompasses and for the courage, candor, and dignity of its telling. Here is the awkward child who grew up amid material wealth and emotional isolation; the young bride who watched her brilliant, charismatic husband—a confidant to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson—plunge into the mental illness that would culminate in his suicide. And here is the widow who shook off her grief and insecurity to take on a president and a pressman’s union as she entered the profane boys’ club of the newspaper business. As timely now as ever, Personal History is an exemplary record of our history and of the woman who played such a shaping role within them, who discovered her own strength and sense of self as she confronted—and mastered—the personal and professional crises of her fascinating life.

  Memoir/Women’s Studies

  KATHARINE GRAHAM’S WASHINGTON

  A Huge, Rich Gathering of Articles, Memoirs, Humor, and History, Chosen by Mrs. Graham, that Brings to Life Her Beloved City

  As a fitting epilogue to a life intimately linked to Washington, D.C., Pulitzer Prize–winner Katharine Graham, the woman who transformed the Washington Post into a paper of record, left behind this lovingly collected anthology of writings about the city she knew and loved, a moving tribute to the nation’s capital. To Russell Banks, it is a place where “no one is in charge and no one, therefore, can be held responsible for the mess.” To John Dos Passos, it is “essentially a town of lonely people.” Whatever your impressions of Washington, D.C., you will likely find them challenged here. Experience Christmas with the Roosevelts, as seen through the eyes of a White House housekeeper. Learn why David McCullough is happy to declare “I love Washington,” while Sally Quinn wonders, “Why Do They Hate Washington?” Glimpse David Brinkley’s depiction of the capital during World War II, then experience Henry Kissinger’s thoughts on “Peace at Last,” post-Vietnam. Written by a who’s who of journalists, historians, first ladies, politicians, and more, these varied works offer a wonderful overview of Katharine Graham’s beloved city.