MM#439--Watergate & Woodward Rewritten

The Watergate story most of us learned feels cinematic: fearless reporters, shadowy parking garages, and a presidency brought to heel by truth-tellers. We take a different path—back through court records, publishing timelines, and the motives of the people who leaked—so we can separate what happened from what we were sold. Drawing on Jeff Shepard’s deep archival work, along with Max Holland’s and Jim Hougan’s challenges to the canon, we examine how Mark Felt’s identity as Deep Throat reshaped the legend and why his ambitions matter to the credibility of the leaks. We look at what prosecutors already knew, how quickly the bestselling narrative was rushed into print, and the unusual judicial turns that steered the legal endgame.

If you’re ready to rethink Watergate with fresh eyes and stronger standards, this conversation is for you. 

Key Points from the Episode:

• the official Watergate narrative set against counter-evidence
• Mark Felt’s motives and credibility as Deep Throat questioned
• what prosecutors knew versus what the press reported
• publication timelines and the rush to cement a story
• Judge Sirica, the grand jury “road map,” and legal strategy
• how appendices, memos, and timelines change the picture
• victors, vanquished, and the books that shaped public memory
• practical habits for weighing leaks, sources, and claims

Be sure to check out our show page at TeamMojoAcademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources

Other resources: 

Geoff Shepard's incredible website

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting the Stage: Watergate Redux
• 0:26 All the President’s Men, Revisited
• 1:05 Introducing Jeff Shepard’s Counter-Narrative
• 2:45 Dismantling the Official Story
• 4:35 Media, Myths, and Deep Throat Unmasked
• 8:18 Mark Felt’s Motives and Limits
• 11:12 Timeline Gaps and Publishing Rush
• 14:18 Courts, Indictments, and “Road Map”
• 17:28 Appendices, Sources, and Sorting Characters
• 19:17 Victors vs Vanquished: Who Wrote What
• 22:01 Alternative Authors and New Doubts
• 24:20 Lessons, Parallels, and Accountability
• 25:47 Closing and Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books and left time to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

SPEAKER_01: 0:26

Hello, I name David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute and another episode in the Saga and the Wicked Ways of Washington, D.C. during the Watergate scandal. And we're going to cover this because when I was growing up, I had to hear all about the book and the movie All the President's Men, starring Robert Redford. Had to hear about the book by Woodward and Bernstein. It was such an epic book. And now, 2025, I want to share the other side of that story, one of which is much, much closer to the truth. We're going to go back to our gem of books that we recently talked about by Jeff Shepard, who has done incredible work in correcting this god-awful record. And that gem of books is the secret plot to make Ted Kennedy president inside the real Watergate conspiracy, followed by the real Watergate scandal, collusion conspiracy, and the plot that brought down Nixon, and the Nixon conspiracy, his latest book, Watergate in the plot to remove the president. Because that's what it was. It was exactly a prod plot to bring down the president. And Woodward and Bernstein had nothing to do with it. Now, before we go, we're going to hear all about this claptrap, this official narrative about Watergate that we've had to listen to for the last 50 years. And I'm going to pull this from one of these newly surfacing, quote, hourly histories on Amazon. They're slowly becoming the digital other version of, or I should just say the digital Wikipedia version of books that really don't give you the facts. They give you the officially political narrative narrative. So, with that all said, because we're going to dispel it and knock it out of the park and completely dismantle it and eviscerate it, let's hear about this politically correct narrative of the Watergate scandal. The events that became known as the Watergate scandal formed a seminal period in the political history of the United States in the 20th century. Before details of underhanded and illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration became known, the majority of American voters seemed to generally regard the president as a person who should be both respected and trusted. Previous presidents such as John F. Kennedy were widely regarded with something approaching veneration. And Nixon himself had made a number of important steps in foreign policy. He had an opening dialogue with the Communist People, Communist People's Republic of China for the first time. He negotiated the first significant arms control talks with the Soviet Union, and he was finding, finally, he was finally finding a way to end America's long-running military involvement in Vietnam. Given these successes, it probably wasn't surprising that he, when he re stood for reelection in November of 1972 against Democrat George McGovern, Nixon won by a landslide. That landslide was taking over 60% of the popular vote. When Nixon was inaugurated for the second term in January of 1973, there didn't seem to be any reason that he would not continue to be an effective, popular, and successful president. But even before his inauguration, it had become apparent that men involved in the attempted break-in of the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in June of 1972 were connected to members of the Nixon administration. Some news reports were speculating that the purpose of the burglarly had been to plant wiretaps and to photograph files held by the DNC. Clearly, the burglarly was illegal, but the critical question became just how much did the Nixon administration and the president himself know about it, and had they tried to cover it up? Some reporters, here we go, some reporters began to suggest that the Watergate Burgerly were had been part of a larger web of illegal activities undertaken to ensure that Richard Nixon would be re-elected. On August 29th, 1972, at the height of the presidential campaign, Richard Nixon gave a press conference in which he told reporters that a detailed investigation into the Watergate Burglarly had been carried out by members of his staff, and that, quote, I can say categorically that no one in the White House staff, no one in this administration presently employed was involved in this very bizarre incident. For most people, that was enough to reassure them. Presidents simply didn't lie. And if President Nixon was certain that his staff had not been involved in such a case, then clearly that must be true. However, over the next 18 months, it would become only too clear that the president had not only systematically lied to the public, not sure about that, but that he had known of and sanctioned a cover-up of the attempted burglarly and other illegal activities. By the time that Nixon finally resigned in August of 1974, these things had been had become widely known. And never again would trust and respect be automatically given to any president. The Watergate scandal changed everything, not just in terms of short-term political fallout, but also in the way in which America regarded its leaders. So that is the official narrative. And as we know now, even though this hourly history was written in 2023 and doesn't contain any of the newly released books on the subject. And what I really found ironic is that at the end of page 61 of this book, at the start of chapter 10, there is a quote of the aforementioned Mr. Bob Woodward of all the president's men, movie fame, and book fame. You know that dogged journalist who broke the Watergate story, so to speak. And here's the quote at the start of chapter 10. Quote, we're not going to have another Watergate in our lifetime. End quote. Hmm, sir.

unknown: 7:36

Mr.

SPEAKER_01: 7:36

Woodward, we have just been uncovering what is turning out to be ten times worse, if not a hundred times worse than Watergate. We have so many conspiracies around the Obama and Biden administrations, from Russia collusion hoax to Hunter Biden laptop hoax, to spying on U.S. Senators and their phones to the deep state and James Comey's shenanigans, not to mention auto pens and pardons which reach into the thousands. Sir Mr. Woodward, if you're such a dogged reporter, then all of this has been happening right under your nose. In three books. From his book Fear in 2018 to Rage in 2020 to war in 2024, Bob Woodward not only got one thing right, that's the only thing he got right, the Steele dossier. He said of the Steele Dossier that he was highly skeptical of it, and rightly so. But, sir, you missed everything else. So that's just incredible. Or perhaps it was intended. Not sure. But just like Woodward's Woodward's fact about Watergate never seemed to line up. Let's get to the real facts of Watergate as outlined from a much better writer and a much better author. Jeff Shepard's book, The Real Watergate's Story. And let's go to our opening quote from that book. The media. The news media acted as irresponsibly as they customarily do in national scandals, breathlessly reporting rumors as established fact and inflaming the public with rank speculation. It's great sport as long as you're not the target, but it is hardly the proper role of an independent press that is accorded such special status by the First Amendment. For many years, one of the most famous Watergate figures was paradoxically unknown. Bob Woodward's secret inside source known as Deep Throat. While the public was encouraged to believe that, quote, Deep Throat was a member of Nixon's White House staff, who was appalled at the wrongdoing of his colleagues. We then learned in 2007 that it was really Mark Felt, the ambitious associate director of the FBI, who was angling for the top job. Now we can better appreciate prosecutor Earl Siebert's or I'm sorry, Earl Silbert's assertion that nothing in Woodward and Bernstein's stories was helpful in the building of their case. What Mark felt was leaking had already been known to federal prosecutors. One might ask whether merely reporting what prosecutors already know and are actively pursuing really constitutes the sort of groundbreaking, hard-hitting investigative reporting for which Mr. Woodward and Bernstein have been receiving national acclaim for the last 50 years. More troubling, it was revealed in 2013 that this duo had in fact successfully interviewed at least one Watergate grand juror, seemingly more than once, a flagrant breach of the law that they had piously denied for decades. Wow. So there is the truth getting revealed that the movie version of Woodward and Bernstein's book, All the President's Men, that was released in 1976, and it starred Robert Redford as Woodford Wood Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein. The movie grossed over$70 million at the time and was, quote, well received by both critics and the public, said so many reviews. But it wasn't the truth, as we just learned. John Dean also denies that Watergate was part of some larger espionage and sabotage operation, as Deep Throat had so dramatically asserted in one of the meetings with Woodward. He goes on to say Woodward and Bernstein have been focused on what was responsible for the break-in and on portraying it as a part of a larger espionage and sabotage effort. If that operation existed in any organized fashion, I did not and do not know who was behind it. And even four decades later, I've never found the evidence for its existence. It seems instead to have been a fantasy scenario apparently advanced by their deep throat source, one Mr. Mark Felt. So there you have it, Mr. John Dean himself, as he later admitted, was the in fact the desk person of the Watergate cover up. And we just heard from him, and I'll repeat it again, Woodward and Bernstein had been focused on who was responsible for the break-in and on portraying it as a part of a larger espionage and sabotage effort. And here's the key nugget. If that operation existed in any organized fashion, I did not and do not know who was behind it. And even four decades later, I have never found evidence for its existence. It seems instead to have been a fantasy scenario apparently advanced by their deep throat source, Mr. Mark Feld. So it was pretty much made up either by Mark Felt or by Woodward and Bernstein. Let's keep going through the book because. Actually, we're gonna switch. We're gonna switch to another book because I think this is even more powerful. Let's go to a very liberal author's opinion. One Mr. Max Holland in his book Leak why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat that was written in 2012. Go on to that book. Felt's credibility should be evaluated in that context. So there we have it. Max Holland, a very liberal author, and even he had to say somewhat closer to the true saying that Mark Felt's credibility should be very questioned. Mark Felt wanted to be the FBI director and had an ax to grind with President Nixon when he was picked over for that position and put Pat Gray as the acting FBI director. And the greatest omission of this is that Mark Felt left the federal government retiring in 1973, just as the Watergate trial was even then just kicking into gear. And see, if you line up the timeline, Woodward and Bernstein lost their major source, who in the end really gave them nothing, but they lost their major source by January of or early of 1973. I'm not sure when Mark Feld retired. So then Woodward and Bernstein, without a major source, they turned around and published their book so quickly as to cash in on the newly found fame as the dogged reporters that they ended up not being. They published all the president's men in June of 1974. Just to be clear, for all the president's men, the timeline from the final graft to the final draft to publication at the time was probably, at least typically in 1974, three to six months. It could be shorter than the standard schedule, but faster due to its newsworthiness. Six to nine months before publication would be typical for non-rush titles, but we would give them three to six months. So that at least puts the latest timeline at March of 1974. And nothing really gets going with the Watergate hearings until March of 1974, when the grand jury indicts seven people for the Watergate cover-up. Mitchell Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Meriden, Straken, and Parkinson. And then they name 18 unindicted co-conspirators, including Nixon. That was the big news then. And then separately, the grand jury asked Federal Judge Sarica to forward its report, known as the roadmap, to the House Judiciary Committee. And then later that day, Federal Judge Sirica in a judicial coup that no one had ever picked up until Jeff Shepherd reported it and covers it in detail. Later that day, Federal Judge Sirica assigns himself as the trial judge for the cover-up case. So Woodward Bernstein's book is all about the break-in and their belief that there's some other larger conspiracy. And history should record that all the president's men, both book and movie, are a fantasy portrayal of nothing close to the truth. Now, just two final notes on this whole wicked way of Washington, DC around the Watergate affair. First, at the end of the book, Shepard has a list of over 15 appendices with historical memos, charts, timelines, all giving you, the reader, the key nuggets of information to dig deep with just one book, which I have found just so invaluable. Super well done and well put together. Now, the second note I want to talk to you about is at the very end of Shepard's book, The Real Watergate Conspiracy. He helps us sort out who were the real men and women of character and who were not. He gives us a list of all those that wrote the books all about Watergate in the last 50 years. And since we are a podcast all about good books and sometimes even the bad books, those books to avoid, we wanted to share some of this list. Now the lists are long for each of these sections, and I'll cover just a few of each section. But I highly encourage you to get Jeff Shepherd's book so you will know the full truth of someone who has spent their entire life trying to correct the record of Watergate. Now, the first category of these this list of books is the victors. And this is, as Shepard says, this is in the eyes of the world and their peers, they were the victors. Those who think they got away with only telling the half truths of the story, but history is finally catching up with their lies. So with that, let's go to the book. The victors and their progeny have had a field day writing self-congratulatory books. They also contain the most tantalizing admissions against interest, if read with a critical eye. Let's start with the aforementioned Mr. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's All the President's Men, written in 1974. Supposedly, Robert Redford approached these authors with the idea for the movie and urged them to do a book first about their roles as reporters. Interestingly, there's no indication in the book of where Deep Throat might have actually been employed. Another book by Barry Sussman, titled The Great Cover Up, Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate, the first complete account from Break In to Resignation, also written in 1974. Sussman was Woodward and Bernstein's editor at the Washington Post and played a huge role in the paper's Watergate coverage. But he was written out of all the president's men. Fame can be fickle. And then we have another book by Woodbird and Bernstein because they couldn't cash in enough, could they? Called The Final Days, written in 1976. And as became their habit, the authors tended to favor and protect their sources and punish those who declined to cooperate. As such, their rendition of the collapse of the Nixon presidency is rather biased and surprisingly uninformed. Now we move to the second category of the vanquished, or what what uh yeah, it's what what uh Jeff Shepard calls the vanquished. This is the group that those that got caught up in the storm, so to speak, of Watergate, and sometimes were drowning in that storm, but they wrote their books, and as always, the truth will eventually come out. We're gonna go to that list of books. Richard Nixon wrote a book, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, in 1978. The former president's section on Watergate comes as close as it could be to an emission of deliberate inattention, if not actual wrongdoing, around all the events of Watergate. Now we also have John Ehrlichman's Witness to Power, The Nixon Years, written in 1982. Of the major Watergate defendants, Ehrlichman was the least involved and received the shabbiest treatment at the hands of the prosecutors. Although Nixon's counsel, the taping system was kept secret from him, for which he never forgave Haldman nor the president. This series of books raises doubts about the accuracy of the conventional wisdom regarding the Watergate scandal. And interestingly, most were not written by Republican stalwarts, but by authors and journalists who identified disturbing discrepancies in all the facts. We had already talked about him, but it's worth mentioning again Max Holland's leak, Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat, written in 2012. Again, the author argues that Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt leaked the information about the Watergate investigation to Bob Woodward, not out of a disinterested patriotism, but in the hope of displacing the then acting director of the FBI, Pat Gray. And Mark Felt's credibility should be evaluated in that context. And then there's one more worth mentioning. Jim Huogan's Secret Agenda, Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA, 1984. It was written in 1984. Hugen did the early and seminal work of highlighting all the discrepancies in the stories of how the break-in occurred and was investigated in such a very strange manner. So in today's mojo minute, even as we begin to correct the record of what happened with Watergate, we have to ask ourselves how do we as citizens protect our country some from some such abuses and happen so that they don't happen in the future? And sadly, ironically, we are living through a repeated presidential coup, just like the one that happened in Watergate. Yet this time it's not ten times, it's not, it's perhaps one hundred times worse. Perhaps the real legacy of Watergate is that they can get away with whatever and never be held accountable. And if they have a roadmap of how they did it one time, will they do it again? And who will hold them accountable? Will a GOP Congress this time hold them accountable? Truth be told, we at the Mojo Academy won't be holding our breath. And as for Woodward and Born Bernstein, let history record that all the president's men, both book and movie, are a fantasy land portrayal that is nothing close to the truth.

SPEAKER_00: 25:47

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at TeamMojoAcademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.