All the President's Men

All the President's Men is a 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two of the journalists who investigated the June 1972 break-in at the Watergate Office Building and the resultant political scandal for The Washington Post. The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein from Woodward's initial report on the Watergate break-in through the resignations of Nixon Administration officials H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman in April 1973, and the revelation of the Oval Office Watergate tapes by Alexander Butterfield three months later. It relates the events behind the major stories the duo wrote for the Post, naming some sources who had previously refused to be identified for their initial articles, notably Hugh Sloan. It also gives detailed accounts of Woodward's secret meetings with his source Deep Throat, whose identity was kept hidden for over 30 years. Gene Roberts, the former executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and former managing editor of The New York Times, has called the work of Woodward and Bernstein "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time."
A film adaptation, produced by Robert Redford, starring Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, respectively, was released in 1976. That same year, a sequel to the book, The Final Days, was published, which chronicled the last months of Richard Nixon's presidency, starting around the time their previous book ended.
Background
Woodward and Bernstein had considered the idea of writing a book about Watergate, but did not commit until actor Robert Redford expressed interest in purchasing the film rights. In Telling the Truth About Lies: The Making of "All the President's Men", Woodward noted that Redford played an important role in changing the book's narrative from a story about the Watergate events to one about their investigations and reportage of the story.
The name of the book alludes to the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty ("All the king's horses and all the king's men / Couldn't put Humpty together again"). An allusion similar to that was made more explicitly a quarter-century earlier in Robert Penn Warren's 1946 novel All the King's Men, which describes the career of a fictional corrupt governor, loosely based on Huey Long.
Important individuals
The President
Richard Nixon
The President's Men
They are listed with their 1972 positions in either the president's executive staff or in his re-election committee, where applicable.
White House
Alexander Butterfield, Deputy Assistant to the President
Dwight Chapin, Deputy Assistant to the President
Ken W. Clawson, Deputy Director of Communications for the President
Charles Colson, Chief Counsel for the President
John Dean, White House Counsel
John Ehrlichman, Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs
H. R. Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff
E. Howard Hunt Jr., President's Special Investigations Unit ("White House Plumbers")
Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor
Egil Krogh, head of the President's Special Investigations Unit ("White House Plumbers")
Gerald Warren, White House Press Secretary, succeeding Ziegler
David R. Young, special assistant at the National Security Council
Ron Ziegler, White House Press Secretary
Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP)
Kenneth H. Dahlberg, CRP's Midwest finance chairman
Herbert W. Kalmbach, personal attorney to President Richard Nixon and Deputy Finance Chairman of CRP
G. Gordon Liddy, CRP employee
Clark MacGregor, CRP Chairman
Jeb Stuart Magruder, Deputy Director, and assistant to the Director of CRP
Robert Mardian, CRP political coordinator
John N. Mitchell, Attorney General, and CRP campaign director
Robert Odle, Director of Administration ("office manager") for CRP
Kenneth Parkinson, CRP counsel
Herbert Porter, CRP organizer and former White House aide
Donald Segretti, political operative for CRP
Hugh W. Sloan Jr., CRP treasurer
Judy Hoback Miller, CRP bookkeeper
Maurice Stans, CRP finance chairman
Gordon C. Strachan, staff assistant to Herbert G. Klein but was assigned to be H. R. Haldeman's liaison to CRP
Rest of the President's Men
Alfred C. Baldwin III
Jack Caulfield
L. Patrick Gray, acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Richard Kleindienst, Attorney General (succeeding John Mitchell)
Fred LaRue, no rank, title, salary or even listing in the White House directory
Powell A. Moore
Kenneth Rietz
DeVan L. Shumway
The Burglars
Bernard L. Barker
Virgilio R. Gonzalez
Eugenio R. Martinez
James W. McCord, Jr.
Frank A. Sturgis
The Prosecutors
Henry E. Petersen, United States Assistant Attorney General
Earl J. Silbert, United States Attorney for the District of Columbia
Donald E. Campbell, Assistant U.S. Attorney
Seymour Glanzer, Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia
The Judge
John J. Sirica, District Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
The Washington Post
Carl Bernstein, Reporter
Bob Woodward, Reporter
Benjamin C. Bradlee, Executive Editor
Katharine Graham, Publisher
Harry M. Rosenfeld, Metropolitan Editor
Howard Simons, Managing Editor
Barry Sussman, City Desk Editor
Brett Gurganious, Local News Reporter
The Senator
Sam Ervin (D–NC), chair of the Senate Watergate Committee
The Informant
Deep Throat (revealed in 2005 to be Mark Felt)
Publication
Dick Snyder of Simon & Schuster purchased the right to publish the book through the agent David Obst. The authors received an advance of $55,000. In his memoir, Michael Korda said of the book's publication that it "transformed book publishing into a red-hot part of media" and books became "news" instead of history.
Because the book was embargoed until publication day, there were no advance copies for reviewers. Simon & Schuster became known as the "Watergate" publisher by following up All the President's Men with books by John Dean, Maureen Dean, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell.
See also
All the Prime Minister's Men, 2021 documentary
The Final Days, 1976 book
References
External links
The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers, an exhibition at the University of Texas at Austin
40 years later retrospective joint interview on CBS
CBS News: Watergate: High Crimes in the White House, 50th Anniversary
1974 non-fiction books
Books about journalism
Books about the Watergate scandal
Books by Bob Woodward
Books by Carl Bernstein
Collaborative non-fiction books
English-language books
Non-fiction books adapted into films
Simon & Schuster books
The Washington Post