Across the pond

Applications are invited for this year’s Laurence Stern Fellowship which sends a young British journalist to Washington for three months in the summer to work on the national desk of the Washington Post. Past winners include David Leigh, investigations supremo at The Guardian, James Naughtie, now at Radio Four’s Today programme, Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, Sarah Neville, also on The Financial Times, Glenda Cooper of the Daily Mail and last year’s winner, Anushka Asthana of The Observer.

There is a potted history of the Fellowship on another page of this site written in my old journalistic style. This blog attempts to convey the spirit of this unique award, which commemorates two extraordinary men.

One of them is unknown to the general public. He does not even get a mention in Wikipedia. The other, Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee became a legend in his own lifetime. He was immortalised by Jason Robards Junior, who played him in All the President’s Men, the 1986 film which tells the story of the Watergate investigative reporting. That film swelled the recruitment of American journalism schools, with hundreds of youths who wanted to emulate Bob Woodward, played by Robert Redford, and Carl Bernstein, played by Dustin Hoffman.

But Ben was already a legend when he stepped into my office at City University in 1980 to pick the first Stern fellow. He was then, and is now, at 85, a giant of a man with the most booming voice I have ever encountered. I can still remember his first very moving speech at the first Stern party, when he talked about Larry Stern, ‘Struck down in his prime. Stung by a goddam bee.’

Stern, who died in 1979, aged 50, had spent most of his working life at the Washington Post. He had a huge capacity for friendship as well as exceptional journalistic skills. Many British journalists, swanning in and out of Washington had reason to be grateful for his hospitality and guidance.

But the spirit of comradeship, which was honed amongst Bradlee’s team at the Washington Post during the Watergate years, and survives in friendships between the Stern fellows, is rooted in the harsh realities of doing decent journalism. In an age when the power of the presidency and the power of the leaders of major companies is enormous, even in democracies.

The film, good though it is, helps to foster the myth that it was investigative journalism that brought down Nixon. Not so. Ben Bradlee’s autobiography, (Simon & Shuster, 1995) tells it how it was.

The Washington Post got the essence of the story on 17 June 1972, that a burglary of the offices of the Democratic Party in the Watergate building was linked to senior Nixon aides in the White House (particularly ex-CIA man Howard Hunt who has just died, aged 88). But Nixon did not resign until over two years later in August 1974.

The Washington Post, thanks to some valued sources, including Deep Throat was out on its own initially. But on 27 October 1972 the guts of the Washington Post story was reported on the national television show of Walter Cronkite, whom Bradlee calls ‘the most trusted man in America’. Which, of course, all the newspapers reported. Despite that on 7 November Nixon won the Presidential election by one of the biggest margins in history. Presidential spin had triumphed over journalistic truth-telling. Bob Dole, the Republican Party chairman, described the ‘brazen’ attack’ by the Washington Post, as ‘the greatest scandal of the election campaign’. Bradlee was called ‘an old Kennedy coat-holder’ who allowed his newspaper to be used ‘as a political instrument of the McGovernite campaign.’ Bradlee, he said, travelled the country as a ‘small-bore McGovern surrogate’.

The story got legs again when the wheels of American justice started to turn via Judge Siricia’s grand jury, which led to the conviction of senior aides in April 1973. Nixon, however, continued to deny his personal involvement. It took another arm of the American system, the Congressional committee led by Senator Ervin, to finally nail him.

Bradlee’s considered view is that Nixon might have survived these constitutional processes, had it not been for the fact that he had taped his own conversations: ‘Nixon – not the Post – got Nixon’. But it was the Post who forced the story on to the national agenda. And, as Bradlee re-iterates again and again, the journalists would have not been able to keep on the story had it not been for the full support of the proprietor, Katharine Graham.

To give you the flavour of those times, here’s how Bradlee starts his chapter on Watergate.

Some stories are hard to see, generally because the clues are hidden or disguised. By accident, or on purpose. Other stories hit you in the face. Like Watergate, for instance.

Five guys in business suits, speaking only Spanish, wearing dark glasses and surgical gloves, with crisp new hundred-dollar bills in their pockets, and carrying tear-gas fountain pens, flashlights, cameras and walkie talkies, just after midnight in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

The best journalists in the world could be forgiven for not realising that this was the opening act of the scandalous political melodrama – unparalleled in American history – which would end up with the resignation of a disgraced President and the jailing of more than forty people, including the Attorney General of the United States, the White House chief of staff, the White House counsel, and the President’s chief domestic adviser.

Of course, it could never happen again, could it?

This Washington Post article today tells the story of Howard Hunt’s part in Watergate and his other exploits, including the Bay of Pigs attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.