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Re-Readings

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

Moyukh Mahtab takes one hack to the mess of Watergate
IN retrospect, Richard Nixon's presidency was destined to be a failure. Leaving aside his diplomatic and foreign policy debacles -the most significant of which has to be the support rendered to Pakistan as it waged a systematic genocide on its own people - Watergate was enough to taint his name forever. What happened in 1972 at the Watergate building is relevant today, as wire taps and illegal bugging have been taken over by mass surveillance in the name of national security by the NSA. But even more relevant is the role of a journalist in pursuing a story and holding those in power accountable. Bob Woodward and Gari Berstein's book, All The President's Men, is a documentary, a thriller and a lesson in journalism all at once, portraying the duo's rollercoaster ride of reporting which started with five men caught during a burglary and culminating in the resignation of the president of the United States.
Woodward, a reporter for the
Washington Post for just nine months at the time, was assigned the job when five men, four of whom had ties to the CIA and the other a former employee of the agency, were caught in a burglary gone wrong. Bernstein, who had more experience in hard news, was quick to smell out a potential story, and the book truthfully narrates how he barged into the job alongside Woodward.
It is right after this that the book starts sounding like a paperback spy thriller one would buy at an airport. As the movie by the same name put it, Woodward and Berstein started to "follow the money". On one hand, two young reporters had stumbled onto something big and potentially disastrous for the Post if they made a mistake; and on the other the unwillingness of witnesses and officials to talk was proving to be a major challenge for the Post high-ups. This is the point where the book reads best as Woodward and Bernstein knock on every door, corner lawyers and borderline manipulate sources into giving them information. But in spite of that, the biggest help came from a mysterious source of Woodward's, who was never quoted even as an anonymous source, and named by the Post's managing editor as Deep Throat.
Deep Throat's identity (then Associate Director of the FBI, Mark Felt) was only revealed in 2005. Guided by him, the reporters scrambled, trying to connect the Watergate burglary to a bigger picture. What they uncovered, after hundreds of reports, phone calls, interviews and one report where they got some facts wrong, was beyond what anyone then could have imagined.
From the existence of a secret fund in a committee to re-elect Nixon, money siphoned and channelled to people across America to spy on the Democrats, connections to the White House Chief of Staff and finally Nixon's own attempts at a cover-up, the Watergate stories have all the twists and turns to keep one glued to the book.
The two reporters were on a par with what the FBI was doing in the same case, sometimes uncovering more than them. And though all evidence proved that Nixon himself did not have any idea about the burglar}' before the incident, he did attempt a cover up to save those responsible.
All The President's Men is a brilliant work of documenting one of the most historic moments of US history. If the legacy of Nixon is that every political scandal ends up with a -gate suffix, then that of the
Washington Post reporters is an example of investigative journalism done right.
As history shows, for the longest time, the duo's work was largely ignored, the White House categorically denied till the last moment it had any ties to the burglary. Sometimes with carefully drafted statements and sometimes with outright denials, the response of the government seems very familiar to those who know how the NSA did the same about the scope of their surveillance and still does to a point.
From Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras' investigative reporting on the Snowden files to portals and news agencies like The Guardian, Pro Publica and the more recent, The Intercept, journalism has never been more important for the public interest. And though, as the Washington Post on its Watergate special pointed out, what Woodward and Bernstein did was nothing new, it's their persistence and resilience which becomes a lesson for journalists.
As the scope and legality of a government's right to infringe on those of its people are challenged more and more each day, investigative journalism becomes more important than ever. Because sometimes, a journalist's work can make sure that all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put everything back together again.
MOYUKH MAHTAB IS WI TH HIE DAILY STAR