Bob Woodward facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Bob Woodward
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Woodward at the LBJ Library in 2016
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| Born |
Robert Upshur Woodward
March 26, 1943 Geneva, Illinois, U.S.
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| Education | Yale University (BA) |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Known for | Reporting on the Watergate scandal |
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Notable credit(s)
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The Washington Post |
| Spouse(s) |
Kathleen Middlekauff
(m. 1966; div. 1969)Frances Kuper
(m. 1974; div. 1979)Elsa Walsh
(m. 1989) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parent(s) |
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| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Service/ |
 United States Navy |
| Years of service | 1965–1970 |
| Rank |  Lieutenant |
| Unit | USS Wright (CVL-49) USS Fox (CG-33) |
Robert Upshur Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is an American investigative journalist. He started working for The Washington Post as a reporter in 1971 and now holds the title of associate editor.
While a reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Woodward teamed up with Carl Bernstein, and the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by longtime journalism figure Gene Roberts.
Woodward continued to work for The Washington Post after his reporting on Watergate. He has written 21 books on American politics and current affairs, 13 of which have topped best-seller lists.
Contents
Woodward was born in Geneva, Illinois, the son of Jane (née Upshur) and Alfred E. Woodward, a lawyer who later became chief judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit Court. He was raised in nearby Wheaton, Illinois, and educated at Wheaton Community High School (WCHS), a public high school in the same town. His parents divorced when he was twelve, and he and his brother and sister were raised by their father, who subsequently remarried.
Following graduation from WCHS in 1961, Woodward enrolled in Yale College with a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship and studied history and English literature. While at Yale, Woodward joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and was a member of Book and Snake. He received his B.A. degree in 1965.
After Yale, Woodward began a five-year tour of duty in the United States Navy. During his service in the Navy, Woodward served aboard the USS Wright, and was one of two officers assigned to move or handle nuclear launch codes the Wright carried in its capacity as a National Emergency Command Post Afloat (NECPA). At one time, he was close to Admiral Robert O. Welander, being communications officer on the USS Fox under Welander's command.
Career
After being discharged as a lieutenant in August 1970, Woodward was admitted to Harvard Law School but elected not to attend. Instead, he applied for a job as a reporter for The Washington Post while taking graduate courses in Shakespeare and international relations at George Washington University. Harry M. Rosenfeld, the Post's metropolitan editor, gave him a two-week trial but did not hire him because of his lack of journalistic experience. After a year at the Montgomery Sentinel, a weekly newspaper in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, Woodward was hired as a Post reporter in 1971.
Watergate
Woodward and Carl Bernstein were both assigned to report on the June 17, 1972, burglary of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in a Washington, D.C., office building called Watergate. Their work, under editor Ben Bradlee, became known for being the first to report on a number of political "dirty tricks" used by the Nixon re-election committee during his campaign for re-election. Their book about the scandal, All the President's Men, became a No. 1 bestseller and was later turned into a movie. The 1976 film, starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, transformed the reporters into celebrities and inspired a wave of interest in investigative journalism.
The book and movie also led to the enduring mystery of the identity of Woodward's secret Watergate informant. Woodward said he would protect his identity until the man died or allowed his name to be revealed. For more than 30 years, only Woodward, Bernstein, and a handful of others knew the informant's identity until it was claimed by his family to Vanity Fair magazine to be former Federal Bureau of Investigation Associate Director W. Mark Felt in May 2005. Woodward immediately confirmed the veracity of this claim and subsequently published a book, titled The Secret Man, that detailed his relationship with Felt.
Woodward and Bernstein followed up All the President's Men with a second book on Watergate, entitled The Final Days (Simon and Schuster 1976), covering in extensive depth the period from November 1973 until President Nixon resigned in August 1974.
The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
George W. Bush administration
Woodward spent more time than any other journalist with former President George W. Bush, interviewing him six times for close to 11 hours total. Woodward's four books, Bush at War (2002), Plan of Attack (2004), State of Denial (2006), and The War Within: A Secret White House History (2006–2008) (2008) are detailed accounts of the Bush presidency, including the response to the September 11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In a series of articles published in January 2002, he and Dan Balz described the events at Camp David in the aftermath of September 11 and discussed the Worldwide Attack Matrix.
Woodward believed the Bush administration's claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction prior to the war. During an appearance on Larry King Live, he was asked by a telephone caller, "Suppose we go to war and go into Iraq and there are no weapons of mass destruction", Woodward responded "I think the chance of that happening is about zero. There's just too much there." Woodward later admitted his error saying, "I think I dropped the ball here. I should have pushed much, much harder on the skepticism about the reality of WMD; in other words, [I should have] said, 'Hey, look, the evidence is not as strong as they were claiming.'"
In 2008, as a part of the Talks at Google series, Woodward, who was interviewed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, said that he had a fourth book in his Bush at War series in the making. He then added jokingly that his wife had told him that she would kill him if he decides to write a fifth in the series.
Other professional activities
Although Woodward is no longer employed by the Post, Woodward has continued to write books and report stories for The Washington Post, and has the title of associate editor at the paper, which was described by Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan as honorific with no regular responsibilities. He focuses on the presidency, intelligence, and Washington institutions such as the U.S. Supreme Court, The Pentagon, and the Federal Reserve.
In 2018, Woodward announced participation in an online class on investigative journalism.
Sequester dispute with Obama administration
On February 22, 2013, shortly before the United States federal budget sequester took effect, The Washington Post published a column by Woodward in which he criticized the Obama administration for their statements in 2012 and 2013 that the sequester had been proposed by Republicans in Congress; Woodward said his research showed that the sequester proposal had originated with the White House. Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed, "The sequester was something that was discussed, and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward."
On February 27, Woodward told Politico that before the column was published, Woodward had called a senior White House official, later identified by reporters as economic adviser Gene Sperling, to discuss the piece, and that the official had "yelled at [Woodward] for about a half-hour" before sending him a page-long email that included the sentence, "I think you will regret staking out that claim." In Politico's reporting, Woodward's focus on that line was described as "making clear he saw [that sentence] as a veiled threat", although Woodward did not use the word "threat" or "threatened". Several other sources also indicated that Woodward had expressed the line as an intended threat.
The next day, Politico published the complete email exchange between Woodward and Sperling. Sperling's statements leading up to the "regret" line read: "But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim." The White House subsequently released a statement that "of course no threat was intended...The note suggested that Mr. Woodward would regret the observation he made regarding the sequester because that observation was inaccurate, nothing more." Upon release of the emails, several conservative commentators indicated they no longer agreed with characterizing the "regret" statement as a threat.
In a February 28 Fox News Channel interview, Woodward said he had never used the word "threat" but said Sperling's conduct was "not the way to operate in a White House". He also said: "I've been flooded with emails from people in the press saying this is exactly the way the White House works, they are trying to control and they don't want to be challenged or crossed". National Journal editor Ron Fournier, conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, and Fox News contributor and former Clinton adviser Lanny Davis expressed support for Woodward; Fournier and Davis described similar experiences with Obama administration officials.
Career recognition and awards
Although not a recipient in his own right, Woodward made contributions to two Pulitzer Prizes won by The Washington Post. First, he and Bernstein were the lead reporters on Watergate and the Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973. He was also the main reporter for the Post's coverage of the September 11 attacks in 2001. The Post won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for 10 of its stories on the subject.
Woodward himself has been a recipient of nearly every major American journalism award, including the Heywood Broun award (1972), Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting (1972 and 1986), Sigma Delta Chi Award (1973), George Polk Award (1972), William Allen White Medal (2000), and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Reporting on the Presidency (2002). In 2012, Colby College presented Woodward with the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courageous journalism as well as an honorary doctorate.
Woodward has authored or co-authored 20 nonfiction books in the past 35 years. All 18 have been national bestsellers and 12 of them have been No. 1 national nonfiction bestsellers—more No. 1 national nonfiction bestsellers than any contemporary author.
In his 1995 memoir, A Good Life, former Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee singled out Woodward in the foreword. "It would be hard to overestimate the contributions to my newspaper and to my time as editor of that extraordinary reporter, Bob Woodward—surely the best of his generation at investigative reporting, the best I've ever seen.... And Woodward has maintained the same position on top of journalism's ladder ever since Watergate." In 1995, Woodward also received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
David Gergen, who had worked in the White House during the Richard Nixon and three subsequent administrations, said in his 2000 memoir, Eyewitness to Power, of Woodward's reporting, "I don't accept everything he writes as gospel—he can get details wrong—but generally, his accounts in both his books and in the Post are remarkably reliable and demand serious attention. I am convinced he writes only what he believes to be true or has been reliably told to be true. And he is certainly a force for keeping the government honest."
In 2001, Woodward won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.
Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard called Woodward "the best pure reporter of his generation, perhaps ever." In 2003, Al Hunt of The Wall Street Journal called Woodward "the most celebrated journalist of our age." In 2004, Bob Schieffer of CBS News said, "Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time."
In 2014, Robert Gates former director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense, said that he wished he'd recruited Woodward into the CIA, saying, "He has an extraordinary ability to get otherwise responsible adults to spill [their] guts to him...his ability to get people to talk about stuff they shouldn't be talking about is just extraordinary and may be unique."
Criticism
Style
Woodward often uses unnamed sources in his reporting for the Post and in his books. Using extensive interviews with firsthand witnesses, documents, meeting notes, diaries, calendars, and other documentation, Woodward attempts to construct a seamless narrative of events, most often told through the eyes of the key participants.
Nicholas von Hoffman has made the criticism that "arrestingly irrelevant detail is [often] used", while Michael Massing believes Woodward's books are "filled with long, at times tedious passages with no evident direction."
Joan Didion published a comprehensive criticism of Woodward in a lengthy September 1996 essay in The New York Review of Books. Though "Woodward is a widely trusted reporter, even an American icon", she says that he assembles reams of often irrelevant detail, fails to draw conclusions, and make judgments. "Measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent" from his books after Watergate from 1979 to 1996, she said. She said the books are notable for "a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured." She ridicules "fairness" as "a familiar newsroom piety, the excuse in practice for a good deal of autopilot reporting and lazy thinking."
The Post's Richard Harwood defended Woodward in a September 6, 1996, column, arguing that Woodward's method is that of a reporter—"talking to people you write about, checking and cross-checking their versions of contemporary history," and collecting documentary evidence in notes, letters, and records."
Content
- Woodward has been accused of exaggeration and fabrication regarding his Watergate informant. After W. Mark Felt was announced as his true identity in 2005, John Dean and Ed Gray, in separate publications, used Woodward's book All The President's Men and his published notes on his meetings with the informant to argue that he could not have been only Mark Felt. They argued that he was a fictional composite made up of several Woodward sources, only one of whom was Felt.
- J. Bradford DeLong has noted considerable inconsistencies between the accounts of the making of Clinton economic policy described in Woodward's book Maestro and his book The Agenda.
- Some of Woodward's critics accuse him of abandoning critical inquiry to maintain his access to high-profile political actors. Anthony Lewis called the style "a trade in which the great grant access in return for glory." Christopher Hitchens accused Woodward of acting as "stenographer to the rich and powerful."
- Woodward believed the Bush administration's claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war, and the publication of the book At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA by former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet led Woodward to write an account of the extent of his pre-war conversations with Tenet in an article in The New Yorker in which he also chastised New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd for being critical of him.
Despite these criticisms and challenges, Woodward has been praised as an authoritative and balanced journalist. The New York Times Book Review said in 2004 that "No reporter has more talent for getting Washington's inside story and telling it cogently."
Lecture circuit
As of 2008, Woodward was giving speeches on the "lecture circuit" to industry lobbying groups, such as the American Bankruptcy Institute, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, and the Mortgage Bankers Association. Woodward was commanding speaking fees "rang[ing] from $15,000 to $60,000" and donating them to his personal foundation, the Woodward Walsh Foundation, which donated to charities including Sidwell Friends School. Washington Post policy prohibits "speaking engagements without permission from department heads" but Woodward insisted that the policy is "fuzzy and ambiguous".
Woodward also lectures at colleges and universities. He gave the 2001 Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecture at Central Connecticut State University, and has spoken at the University of Arkansas, University of Alabama, Eastern Connecticut State University, West Texas A&M University, and Oklahoma City Community College. Following the publication in 2018 of Fear: Trump in the White House, he spoke to an overflow crowd of students, faculty, and guests at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Personal life
Woodward has been married three times. His first marriage (1966–1969) was to his high school sweetheart Kathleen Middlekauff, now an English professor. His second marriage (1974–1979) was to Frances Kuper. In 1989, he married for a third time to Elsa Walsh (b. August 25, 1957), a writer for The New Yorker and the author of Divided Lives: The Public and Private Struggles of Three American Women.
His oldest daughter, Tali, is also a journalist. She directed a graduate program in journalism at Columbia University for six years before becoming an editor for The Trace.
Television
Woodward co-wrote the 1986 NBC made-for-TV film Under Siege about a series of terrorist attacks in the United States. The film's other co-writers include Christian Williams, Richard Harwood, and Alfred Sole.
Woodward again collaborated with Williams when they were story writers for the 1989 TNT TV miniseries adaptation of The Nightmare Years about American journalist William L. Shirer stationed in pre-World War II Nazi Germany. The miniseries' screenplay was written by Ian Curteis.
See also
In Spanish: Bob Woodward para niños
