- "Let the silence suck out the truth."

Those are the words of Bob Woodward of Watergate fame.

Woodward of the "Washington Post" continues to break stories 50 years after the famous break in that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Since then he has interviewed nearly all of our presidents, witnessing up close a span of recent history.

Why does he believe we could be in peril?

Woodward explains.

I'm Becky Ferguson, and this is "One Que?tion."

(dramatic music) When you Google world's most famous journalist, up pops Bob Woodward right there with Walter Cronkite and Hunter S. Thompson.

Woodward, along with Carl Bernstein, both of the "Washington Post," broke the Watergate story that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Woodward in his 50th year with the Post, still breaking stories and chronicling history as it happens through so far 21 books on presidents, the Supreme Court, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Reserve.

Woodward sat down with one question to share stories of his journey in journalism, how he convinces the powerful to agree to his interviews, why unnamed sources provide the best information, how silence is a tool to suck out the truth.

During our time with him, he also shared a story of Gerald Ford's confession 25 years after the resignation of Richard Nixon and of how Bill Clinton was afraid Woodward would tell of his going purple.

Woodward shared why he doesn't vote in presidential elections.

His belief that cable news blurs the line between news and opinion, how the things are not always what they seem and why he believes the country and the world could be in peril.

Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with us today and I'm gonna take you back way in time and you I think have indicated that the first seeds of your getting to the bottom of things started when you were a teenager working as a janitor in your father's law office.

- [Bob] That's correct.

- Tell us a little bit about that.

- Well, you'd go down at night and this was the, you know, the late fifties, yes, late fifties, everyone smoked.

And so it was a matter of cleaning out ashtrays and toilets.

And then you inevitably, you're there alone at night.

And you look at the papers on your father's desk and his partners.

And you realize there is a reference to a case involving somebody I went to high school with and that there's a dark side to conflict in families and police cases and tax cases.

And then they had the disposed files in the attic alphabetically, and I would look and see and this is Wheaton, Illinois, Billy Graham territory you know where everything is on the surface evangelical and intensely Christian.

And, you see that you're not getting the full story.

Great lesson for journalism.

- Absolutely, well, I have read that former CIA director and defense secretary, Robert Gates has said that he wished he had recruited you to work for the CIA because he says that your ability to get people to talk about stuff they shouldn't be talking about is just extraordinary and may be unique.

So I wanna know how you get people, powerful people to talk to you.

- Well, I don't like that quote from Gates because he's saying people are talking about what they shouldn't be about.

I'm asking questions about what the CIA does, the White House, the Supreme Court and the job is to make those institutions transparent.

And he's saying, oh, no, people are spilling their guts.

Well, I'm glad they are.

I think we know then about the federal reserve and the White House and the, you know, you name it the institutions I've written about.

So they're not spilling their guts.

They're being transparent.

- Well, how do you get people to agree to talk to you because you don't write puff pieces?

- Well, let me tell you an example of a story.

In working on the Bush wars, George W. Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was a general who would not talk.

And I sent messages, emails, even intermediary radio silence.

And I realized I was getting lazy, not going out to see people who were reluctant witnesses.

So I found out where he lived and I went and knocked on his door.

Best time to go.

When would you go knock on a four star General's door?

- Saturday morning, maybe?

- No, that Saturdays is his.

You want to go turns out 8:17 PM on a Tuesday is the best time because he will have had dinner if he's there.

Those, the leisure hours, if he's home.

And so I knocked on his door I'm gonna quote him if I may, and he opened the door and he said, "are you still doing this?"

And "is that okay?"

That's what he said.

And I poker faced it.

I didn't show any expression.

CIA, Gates, people I know who worked in the CIA always said let the silent suck out the truth, blank poker face.

So general looked at me, got a disappointed look on his face.

And I think not me, but in himself because he said, okay, come on.

Sat for two hours, answered many of the questions, not all.

I was able to come back and develop a relationship with him that was very useful to getting what really goes on, what's hidden.

And now why did he let me in?

Because somebody showed up, you've gotta show up.

And I find myself not showing up enough.

And so that was a lesson.

Just go back or drop in.

Now you go around and knock on general's doors you're liable to be shot.

So it's more hazardous than it was decades ago but you can still do it.

- How did you develop a relationship with Mark Felt or deep throat as we know him?

- Well, I was working in the Pentagon, working for the chief of naval operations.

And he sent me as a courier to take documents over to the White House a number of times.

And I took them once and I remember sitting outside the NSC, National Security Council offices in the basement and we both were waiting.

He was there, this man, gray hair, white shirt, introduced myself.

So we're like two passengers on a trans-Atlantic flight.

I introduced myself, he introduced himself, Mark Felt, FBI, got his phone number and called him for kind of what am I gonna do after the Navy?

I was gonna go to law school, probably he'd gone to law school.

So then when I went to work for the "Washington Post" the first story he helped me on was the shooting of Governor Wallace, which was in Maryland and Felt wanted to make it clear to the public he didn't wanna be identified, but he wanted the information out.

And he gave me some very good data about Arthur Bremer who shot Wallace and his travels to New York stalking Nixon.

And so that was the first time and then the next month, J. Edgar Hoover's deceased, Felt is number two and really in charge of the Watergate investigation.

And so I called him and he was willing to help, but very covertly in an underground parking garage.

- You kept him as a confidential source.

- [Bob] Yes.

- Until he outed himself.

Is that right?

- Like 30 years after.

- That's amazing.

Just after President Nixon was reelected in 1972, I read that the Post publisher Catherine Graham invited you to come and have lunch with her and asked you a question.

When will we know all there is to know about Watergate?

Can you tell us that story?

- Well, I mean, she was continually asking that question.

So we were asking it of our ourselves.

And of course the answer is you never get the full story.

It took a long time to get the full Watergate story to the point that the Republicans rebelled against Nixon and abandoned him.

And when he realized that he voluntarily resigned.

- You and Carl Bernstein worked on Watergate day and night for two years and two months as did I know a lot of other reporters on the Post.

Do you think that kind of investigative journalism could happen today?

- Sure, I've worked with Robert Costa on the the third Trump book, "Peril."

We've done recently, just a couple of stories about all the email exchanges between Mark Meadows, who was Trump's chief of staff and Jenny Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas or about this seven hour and 37.

- You were still still breaking stories 50 years later.

- Well, the, we, again, Costas, not even half my age, he's 37 years old.

He's got more energy.

He's a great reporter.

He works all the time.

He knows everyone.

A name will come out and say, o"h yes, I've known so and so since 2016."

He started covering Trump in 2009, 13 years ago.

- I want you to talk a little bit about journalistic ground rules.

When we're reading an article sometime we read that something is on the record or on background or on deep background.

Can you explain those terms and why you use those particular techniques?

- Yes, well deep background means you can use the material, but you won't say where it came from.

And that's very important in doing reporting on what's going on and really going on in politics or the Pentagon or the White House or the CIA, but you verify it from other participants and witnesses and it actually gives you a better version of the truth than if you even go to say some Senator, he tells you on the record and lies.

It doesn't tell you the story as it should be told.

So it's a matter of digging and looking for those moments.

What happened on January 6th?

The insurrection of capital was, you know, the committee in the House has worked on it four months.

The 770 people have been charged formally by the Justice Department.

They're working on the case.

Trump just gave an interview to Josh Dawsey, a colleague of mine at the "Washington Post" that appeared today, an incredible interview.

Dawsey did a great job of pressing Trump, but letting Trump talk and talk as he tends to.

And as I found in 2020 during the reelection campaign, I did 18 interviews with Trump, talked to him for over 10 hours.

Some of it very revealing, some of it Trump just talking.

- How do you manage in interviews to keep your personal bias or your opinions on a particular topic?

- I'm not sure I have many opinions on things because so often you start out and think the answer is this and it turns out to be something very different.

So you see true believers on the left, on the right and the Democratic party and the Republican party.

It's great people are true believers and have deep convictions as they do, I just think it gets in the way of reporting.

- I believe I have read that you don't vote in presidential elections, is that right?

- Yes, that's correct.

- And that's because of the reasons that you're talking about that you try to stay in the.

- You really wanna get in a neutral zone.

Now I have, when my daughter Diana was very young I took her to the polling booth with me a couple of times and a child is allowed to go in the voting booth with the parent and I let her select who to vote for.

- That's fun.

I have heard that you caution journalists and you spoke to it just a bit ago to not be wedded to your theory of the case and that you have given as an example, your theory of the case when President Ford pardoned President Nixon.

Tell that story.

- Well, it extends over a period of time.

In September of 1974, Ford had been president for 30 days and he went on television early on a Sunday morning announcing he was giving Nixon a full pardon for Watergate.

I didn't see it.

My colleague Carl Bernstein called me up and was quite worked up and has a way of saying what occurred with the most drama and the most clarity.

And he said, the son of the pardoned the son of.

- Okay.

- And I felt good cause I was able to figure out what happened.

And there was always an aroma about the pardon that there was some sort of deal, something untoward that I think finished Ford two years later when he ran for reelection as president, Carter beat him, then 25 years later I tracked down Ford, knocked on the door essentially, called him never met, never interviewed him, did a series of seven long interviews with him and kept asking what happened in the pardon?

What was the real story?

And I think in the seventh interview, I'm out at the home he and Betty Ford had in Rancho Mirage, California and you know what happened on the pardon?

And he said, you keep asking a question.

And I just said because I don't think you've answered it fully.

And he said, you're right, I haven't.

In fact, I've never told Betty what happened.

And in full, he laid out how Al Haig, who was Nixon's chief of staff came and offered a deal.

And I said, oh, well there was a deal because Nixon got a pardon and you got the presidency.

And he slammed his hand on the desk.

He said, "there was no deal.

Let me tell you what happened."

And this of course is what you can be fortunate enough to do as a reporter, really get in somebody's mind.

And here he is telling the story.

And he said, "look, I became president on August 9th, 1974.

And he, Ford then said publicly, the long national nightmare is over, Watergate, Nixon."

And then he pardoned him 30 days later.

And he said "what happened in that 30 days is I, it was every news story, every question almost was about Nixon.

What about the tapes?

Is he gonna be prosecuted?

What about this?

What about that?

Is Kissinger staying Secretary of state?

Is this about Nixon?"

And then Ford, we're sitting there in this little office he had tape recorder going for history and he sat in a very plaintiff way.

I needed my own presidency.

I had to think about the national interest and the national interest was to get Ford to, I'm sorry for Ford to get Nixon off the front page and the way to do it, pardon him.

And he said, so that's why I did it.

I knew I was gonna kill myself politically.

And then I'll never forget this, asked him, people have criticized you for not getting from Nixon a full acknowledgement of guilt.

And reached in, got his wallet out.

He had a little piece of paper and he read from a Supreme court decision, verdict decision, I think 1915 that said the acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt.

So he read that to me.

And he said, so when anyone raises that, I'm always caught comforted that I can cite the Supreme Court saying that Nixon admitted guilt, according to the Supreme Court by accepting the pardon and then Ford puts it back in his wallet to be used again when somebody asks him why didn't you get a full confession from Nixon?

But of course, part of Ford's genius in all of this was insisting that the government get Nixon's tapes back.

- Yeah.

- And of course Nixon's tapes are more than a confession of guilt.

As we know in showing a presidency dedicated to crime and you can hear in his own voice cover up high to the grand jury.

You can, a year before Watergate, he wanted to break into the Brookings Institution to get, you know, break in, blow the safe.

This is the President of the United States.

And when this was heard, all Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, all but five in the Senate, essentially not essentially they abandoned it.

Said, no, you gotta go.

That's when Nixon resigned.

- You've interviewed so many presidents, but I have read that you caution be aware of Bill Clinton's charm.

Will you tell us why you need to beware of Bill Clinton's charm.

- Well, as we know, he can be very charming.

I did interview him just once for the book I did on his economic plan, book called "The Agenda."

And he can be very charming, but I'm, that's not my job to get him to be charming.

And I asked tough questions and I remember at the end, now this was a background interview, but he's talked about it.

And I just asked him, so what do you think?

He said, "I think you're gonna make me look like a mad man" because I had lots of incidents of his going purple as they called it, blowing up, his temper.

- I read an article recently from the Columbia School of Journalism that indicated 25% of people don't understand the difference between a news story and an editorial.

Do you think that is the fault of consumers or do you think that that is at the feet of the news outlets?

- Well, I think everything's at the feet of the news outlets.

We've gotta explain ourselves and we certainly do not do that sufficiently.

I, you know, I wonder is that possible that 25% of the people, maybe it is, but we need to make it clear.

This is opinion.

This is analysis.

This is a news story.

And particularly on cable news it gets blurred more and more.

- In your three most recent books all about former President Trump you titled them "Fear," "Rage," and "Peril."

Why those titles?

- Well, the first one "Fear" was an interview in 2016 that Robert Costa and I did, and we asked Trump who was, it was in his hotel and he was on the verge of getting the Republican nomination.

No one thought he was gonna win, so what's what's power?

And he said, "well, power, I hate to use the word is fear."

Right out of his own mouth, an expression of how he governed lots of fear.

And we also asked him, cause he said, he brings people to a boil, what do you mean?

What, well I bring out rage in people and that was the second title.

The third title, "Peril" was Robert Costa and I looking at the whole situation of the Trump administration.

It was a massive national security crisis.

The general milli chairman and the joints chiefs of staff had to deal with the Chinese was intelligence that the Chinese thought we were going to attack them.

And of course that's the worst, most volatile situation.

And when somebody thinks you're gonna attack maybe they will attack first and going through the Trump presidency and what happened and particularly the pressure on Vice President Pence to not do the constitution duty of certifying the winner, Joe Biden.

And so Trump's gonna run again I think, Costa thinks.

And so the country and the world are in peril.

- Okay, last question.

And I'm taking a note from your master class as we end this interview.

Was there something I didn't ask that I should have asked?

- Oh wow.

I mean you, the title of this is One Question" of which you actually went beyond one question.

(Becky laughs) You know, first of all it's figuring out what the questions are.

I'm going to talk this evening about presidents and how they exercise their power and have a little maybe extended discussion about what's the job that the president.

You have to figure that out or figure out how they figured out what their job is.

And that's a starting point and that's a complicated you know, what is the job of the president?

I asked Trump once sitting in the Oval office, you know what's the job of the president.

And he said right off, "to protect the people."

I found in my interviews with him and others and excavating how he handled the coronavirus and he failed to protect the people and failed to carry out the obligation as he stated.

- I really appreciate your taking time with us.

- [Bob] Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

Finally, thank you for joining us for this special edition of "One Question."

We will be back periodically with special interviews of interest.

I'm Becky Ferguson, goodnight.

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