Watergate | Live in New York

Summary

Slow Burn – Watergate | Live in New York (May 22, 2018)

Episode Overview

This lively episode of Slow Burn, recorded before an audience at Baruch College in New York City, explores how the Watergate scandal came to shape American cultural memory and collective understanding of presidential misconduct. Through engaging conversations with journalists, first-hand witnesses, and investigators, the show examines how news transforms into history, who controls the narrative, the myth of Watergate-era bipartisanship, and the resonance between the Nixon era and contemporary politics.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How News Becomes History—and Nixon's Fight for His Legacy

• Host Leon Neyfak opens on Nixon's determination to influence his historical legacy after Watergate. Nixon’s attempts at rehabilitation included interviews (notably the 1977 Frost interview), dinners with journalists, political memoranda for the Reagan administration, and a bestselling memoir, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978).

• Neyfak’s Reflection: Despite Nixon’s prodigious efforts, the endeavor to recast himself largely failed. Polls and public opinion have cemented the image of Nixon as a symbol of presidential corruption. Neyfak highlights how, over decades, consensus formed organically, despite Nixon’s revisionism.

  “There doesn’t seem to be a very large or at least vocal contingent of people out there in 2018 who love Richard Nixon.” – Leon Neyfak (05:10)

2. Inside the Senate Watergate Investigation

Guests: Mary DiIorio & Mark Lackritz (Senate Watergate Committee investigators, and spouses)

• Investigative Focus: Initially, the committee prioritized "political dirty tricks," but immediately shifted to the Watergate break-in and cover-up as the scandal escalated.

  “On my very first day on the committee staff, Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned, Dean was fired, and I think Kleindienst was also resigned… At which point we thought, gee, there’s more here than we even thought was possible.” – Mark Lackritz (09:42–10:19)

• Work Culture and Social Life: DiIorio and Lackritz describe an all-consuming work environment, with investigators working almost round-the-clock, their social lives limited to their fellow staffers. Across party lines, relationships were cordial but limited.

  “Social life was an oxymoron. I mean, we literally were working 24/7.” – Mark Lackritz (11:30–11:34)

• Public Obsession: They recognized the hearings’ national obsession only when seeing crowds lining up around the block to enter Senate hearings, and from their friends’ awe at their involvement.

  “There was just palpable energy… I realized that this was not just another congressional hearing, that this had a lot more weight, momentum, gravitas…” – Mark Lackritz (14:11–14:23)

• Aftermath and Doubts: Nixon’s resignation was emotionally stirring for the investigators, who grappled with the weight of having contributed to a profound constitutional crisis, and the unknowns about its impact on democracy.

  “When you see that the President of the United States has now resigned, what have you unleashed?” – Mary DiIorio (16:03)

• Bipartisanship is Complicated: Although Watergate is mythologized as a bipartisan triumph, Lackritz recalls distrust and information barriers even among the staff, emphasizing it was not pure collaboration.

  “There was such a thing in those days as a moderate wing of the Republican Party… There was an overlap of the parties at the time.” – Mark Lackritz (20:53)

• Feminist Anecdote: DiIorio, the only woman on the investigative staff, shares a humorous story about escorting an angry Rosemary Woods (Nixon’s secretary) to a secret Senate office, suggesting how gender dynamics intersected with Watergate’s cast.

  “I most definitely know what I’m doing. I wanted to be sure we weren’t being followed.” – Mary DiIorio, outwitting Rosemary Woods (22:01–23:24)

3. Bob Woodward: The Origins and Power of the Watergate Narrative

Guest: Bob Woodward (Washington Post reporter, co-author All the President’s Men)

• Woodward’s Influence: Woodward reflects on how his and Carl Bernstein’s work, and the subsequent book—published before Nixon resigned—became the dominant Watergate narrative. The reason: it offered a coherent package at a time when the scandal was bewilderingly complex.

  “It packages it in a way that's understandable... And Watergate was complex.” – Bob Woodward (28:25)

• Reporting as Only Part of the Story: Woodward emphasizes that All the President’s Men covers only the press’s perspective—not the crucial roles of the Senate, House, special prosecutors, or the courts.

  “It’s not the whole story... The real issue in Watergate... It was an attempt to destroy the electoral system in the United States...” – Bob Woodward (33:40)

• Nixon’s Downfall as Personal Destruction: He recounts Nixon’s resignation address, underscoring Nixon’s own realization that his presidency was driven by “hate”—using power for revenge, not just the illegal acts.

  “Here, Nixon got it. That hate was what his presidency was about... And that's what is the real sickness of Watergate. It’s not just that it was illegal, but that it was about hate.” – Bob Woodward (29:39)

• Journalism, Time, and the Search for Truth: Woodward warns against the impatience of modern media, contrasting Watergate’s two-year investigation with the desire for swift answers in the Trump era.

  “There needs to be an accumulation of evidence. There needs to be debate… These things take a lot of time.” – Bob Woodward (26:41)

4. How Ordinary Americans Experienced Watergate & the Nixon Mystique

Guests: Gail Sheehy (journalist) & Virginia Heffernan (journalist)

• Blue-collar Nixon Voters: Sheehy’s original New York Magazine reporting chronicled working-class Nixon loyalists at Terry’s Bar in Astoria, Queens. She observes their enduring loyalty, their sense that Nixon “gave them a voice,” and the parallels to the modern populist right.

  “These guys all felt like nobodies until Richard Nixon gave them a voice… and they never gave that up.” – Gail Sheehy (38:53)

• Nixon–Trump Parallels: The panel explores the uncanny resemblance between Nixon’s grassroots supporters and those backing Trump, highlighting persistent themes of economic anxiety, resentment, and “strongman” adulation across decades.

  “There was no daylight between how they sounded when they talked about Nixon and how Trump supporters sound...” – Leon Neyfak (40:04)

  “The people who mystify me are not those voters as much as the many bankers, lawyers, even professors… We haven't seen a really convincing profile of the Goldman Sachs crowd that were behind him…” – Virginia Heffernan (41:21)

• Changing Demographics: Sheehy describes returning to Astoria in 2018, finding a more mixed, integrated scene—Veronica’s Bar, now woman-owned, with a political science grad tending bar and diverse clientele, revealing shifting urban politics.

  “It’s a totally integrated bar… in what used to be Archie Bunker country and now is much, much more polyglot.” – Gail Sheehy (45:48)

5. Watergate & Trump: Time, Memory, and Myth

• Persistent Myths: The idea that Watergate was the last gasp of true bipartisanship is probed by both Lackritz and Woodward, with reminders that the full story is more fraught.

• Danger of Simplification: The panel notes how “Watergate” as a shorthand for political scandal shapes American cultural parsing of any subsequent controversy (e.g., Iran-Contra-gate, Emailgate).

• Media's Modern Role: Woodward cautions about the temptations of instant narrative, especially in the Trump era, urging patience and rigor:

  “There needs to be debate. We run by all kinds of stories because we don't do enough work in the media to really dig out what happened. And it’s hard.” – Bob Woodward (35:21)

6. Quiz: Nixon or Trump? (46:48–50:14)

• Leon closes with a playful quiz, reading quotes about White House scandals and polling panelists whether they refer to Trump or Nixon, highlighting the echoing language and cycle of partisan complaint, media attacks, and scandal fatigue.

• Memorable twist: Donald Trump is the source of one of the most effusive quotes about Nixon.

  “I’ve seen some real killers in my line of work, but [Nixon] makes them look like babies. This man is a rock… even more amazing.” – Donald Trump, about Nixon (50:12)

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Nixon’s rehabilitation efforts:

  “Nixon was tireless as a Watergate revisionist for the final 20 years of his life.” – Leon Neyfak (02:01)

• On Watergate’s personal toll:

  “We burst into tears. You know, it was sort of like, oh, my God, what have we done?” – Mark Lackritz (15:09)

• On the myth of bipartisan purity:

  “Despite the bipartisan front.” – Mark Lackritz (17:31)
  “There was such a thing in those days as a moderate wing of the Republican Party… It wasn't until the 80s... that you really weren't a Republican [without a litmus test].” – Mark Lackritz (20:53)

• On Nixon’s downfall:

  “Others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” – Richard Nixon, quoted by Woodward (29:39)

• On press and time:

  “Watergate took two years, two months… There needs to be an accumulation of evidence. There needs to be debate.” – Bob Woodward (26:41)

• On loyalty and 'nobodies':

  “These guys all felt like nobodies until Richard Nixon gave them a voice…” – Gail Sheehy (38:53)

Memorable Moments & Tone

• The audience laughs warmly at the investigators’ account of their romance under the glare of Watergate’s spotlight.
• A standout moment: Mark Lackritz running into Bill Clinton on the Senate Watergate staff—long before presidential fame (12:41).
• The quiz segment humorously exposes the linguistic and emotional overlap between Nixon and Trump’s defenders.

Timeline of Important Segments

• 00:32 – Introduction, Nixon’s legacy, and revisionism
• 08:57 – Mary DiIorio & Mark Lackritz on Watergate committee staff experience
• 23:29 – Bob Woodward: Owning the Watergate narrative
• 37:12 – Gail Sheehy and Virginia Heffernan: Nixon voters and their echoes in today’s politics
• 46:48 – Nixon or Trump? Quiz segment

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This episode vividly demonstrates how history’s meaning is constructed, not just in memoirs and magisterial histories, but through lived experience, journalism, and cultural myth. It’s a rich, often funny, and sometimes sobering meditation on how we remember—and how we repeat—the lessons of Watergate.

Transcript

[Leon Neyfak]

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[Leon Neyfak]

Hey Slow Burn listeners, we're busy working on season two of the show, but for now we have a special episode for you and it's a live one. Literally. It took place on Thursday, April 19th at Baruch College in New York City. It was a lovely night with appearances by Bob Woodward, Gail Sheehy, Virginia Heffernan, and best of all, for fans of Slow Burn, episode four Mary Diorio and Mark Lackritz of the Senate Watergate Committee staff Enjoy. So I wonder to spend tonight's show thinking out loud about how news becomes history. This is something that Richard Nixon thought a lot about. Throughout his post Watergate life, Nixon tried really hard to exert his influence over how history would remember him. In 1977, he famously gave an interview to the British journalist David Frost. This was when he said the line about how if the President does it, it means it's not illegal. It's also the interview where he blamed Watergate on Martha Mitchell. That interview, the Frost interview, was probably Nixon's most concentrated act of personal rehabilitation up to that point. But the comeback tour had really started as soon as he left office. That same month. The same month he left office, in late August of 74, Nixon began his attempts to take control of his image.

[Bob Woodward]

Richard Nixon's offering to write a book.

[Mark Lackritz]

For a 2 million dollar advance if any publisher will pay it.

[Leon Neyfak]

This was before he was even pardoned and the book ended up selling for 2.5 million, most of which went towards his legal bills. The book was elegantly and almost flirtatiously titled RN The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. It was published in 1978, and in it Nixon sought to set the record straight about Watergate. He insisted that he was right to assert executive privilege with regard to the White House tapes. He insisted that he was right to fire Archibald Cox, and at one point in the book he writes quite specifically about certain of the White House tapes. He addresses a few of the more damning passages. There's one standout act of reinterpretation that I wanted to highlight pertains to a Nixon quote that is usually transcribed as I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it. Let them plead the fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else if it'll save it, save the plan. In his book, Nixon characterizes this comment as nothing more than an oblique way of confronting the need to make a painful shift in the White House's Watergate strategy. He had a wild imagination. Nixon was tireless as a Watergate revisionist for the final 20 years of his life. So basically through the 80s and into the 90s before his death in 94. And this effort was wrapped up in a broader campaign to get back some of his status that he lost when he stopped being president. The American people ready to pardon Richard Nixon for Watergate.

[Mark Lackritz]

Since 1952, a series of new Nixons has rolled off the assembly line and we are now looking at the 1984 model.

[Leon Neyfak]

It was a small thing.

[Mark Lackritz]

The break in and break ins have occurred in other campaigns as well.

[Leon Neyfak]

In 1985, there was a New York Times article headlined Nixon's Rehabilitation of Nixon. It was all about Nixon's successful, pretty successful attempts to regain political and intellectual influence in the years after Watergate. So just for example, the story describes how Nixon held two dinners for Washington journalists in his New Jersey home in which he offered opinions on topics ranging from the 84 presidential campaign to the likely presidential contest in 88. Also, this part is truly amazing. He engaged in meetings with key Reagan political operatives and crafted a memorandum offering advice on how Mr. Reagan could prevent his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale Electoral College votes to win. It's honestly like a dark joke that Richard Nixon is giving someone advice on how to win re election against a Democrat. Anyway, two years after the Times piece, Newsweek put Nixon on the COVID under the headline he's back. So what strikes me is that for all the time and energy that Nixon put into rehabilitating himself, I don't think it really worked like his memoir was a best seller. He got to go and meet the press a bunch of times and talk about foreign policy and all the other presidents said very nice things about him at his funeral. May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life.

[Mark Lackritz]

And career come to a close.

[Leon Neyfak]

It might just be that I'm in a bubble, but from where I sit, there doesn't seem to be a very large or at least vocal contingent of people out there in 2018 who love Richard Nixon. Polling suggests that any gains that Nixon might have made in public opinion prior to his death have been Erased since. So in 1987, which was roughly the height of his term offensive, Nixon's disapproval ratings were at 47%. By 2006, that number had shot up to the mid-60s, and it stayed there ever since. You don't need polling to know that Watergate is still synonymous with corruption and power hungry derangement. There's a remarkable amount of consensus that Nixon was a villain. That no matter what other achievements he had in office, the opening of China, the creation of the epa, all the stuff that's bound up in Watergate, amounts to a tragedy that was embarrassing and painful and scary. And that's how we feel now. But the way we feel now is the result of four decades of informal struggle over what Watergate was. This was a process that has shaped and reshaped conventional wisdom about what happened and what it meant. And Richard Nixon was just one of many, many, many people who have tried to intervene in that process. You know, there were all the other players in the drama who wrote memoirs. There were countless major works of history that are still being written about Watergate. There were a few movies, and now there's a podcast, which is why we're here. And I wanted to say that when we started working on Slow Burn, we had to figure out what the conventional wisdom on Watergate was. One aspect of that was deciding how much do people know, what level of expertise should we assume on the part of our listeners, and what conception of Watergate would they be bringing to the show? Because in order to justify doing this at all, we had to believe that there was something to push against or to add texture to some kind of standard story, the version of Watergate that exists in the public imagination. So Martha Mitchell, was she in the public imagination? How many people here knew who Martha Mitchell was before they heard on Slow Burn? Well, so I don't know if my boss, Jacob Weisberg, is here, but when he had me on his show, after Slow Burn launched on his show, Trumpcast, he gave me a really hard time for not knowing who Martha Mitchell was. And I didn't have the stomach to tell him at the time that I didn't even really know who John Mitchell was. So, like I said at the top, my goal with tonight's show is to sort of think out loud about this question of how history settles, how memories and assessments get passed down, how they calcify and how they arrange themselves in our collective memory. What determines what everyone knows, which revisions to the standard story last and which ones don't? And why is it so exciting to Learn something new about something you thought you understood. This is Slow Burn Live. I'm your host, Leon Neyfak. We have a great show for you today. My first guests tonight are a couple. They've been married 45 years and you might remember them from episode four of the show. They work together on the Senate Watergate committee staff. Please welcome Mary DiIorio and Mark Lackritz. Mary and Mark. So I've been referring to you in promotional materials as the first couple of the Senate Watergate committee staff. Is that fair?

[Mary DiIorio]

Well, it's fair because we were open and out about being a couple.

[Leon Neyfak]

Were there others who.

[Mary DiIorio]

Yeah, I'm confident.

[Mark Lackritz]

Well, we were above board about it.

[Mary DiIorio]

Yeah.

[Leon Neyfak]

So as a refresher, the two of you came to Washington D.C. together to work for the Senate committee staff as investigators. Can you just refresh our memories? What were you investigating? I don't mean Watergate. More specifically, what were you trying to find out?

[Mark Lackritz]

Well, we were trying to find out the facts behind the Watergate break in, the COVID up, the political dirty tricks and the campaign finance shenanigans that went on throughout the campaign.

[Leon Neyfak]

But you were focused on one specific part of that, weren't you?

[Mark Lackritz]

Initially, we were focused on political dirty tricks, but we quickly moved toward the Watergate break in and cover up because on my very first day on the committee staff, Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned, Dean was fired, and I think Kleindienst was also resigned. And so that hit the news. And then my boss, Terry Lenzner said, get in the car, we've got an appointment. And we went out to National Airport and interviewed the bag man, Tony Ulasewicz, at which point we thought, gee, there's more here than we even thought was possible.

[Leon Neyfak]

One of my great regrets about the show is we didn't have more Tony Ulasewicz in it because he.

[Mary DiIorio]

Great accent.

[Leon Neyfak]

A great accent. He's like a New York City cop, basically.

[Mary DiIorio]

But just to emphasize, that was Lacris first day.

[Leon Neyfak]

That was your first day.

[Mary DiIorio]

Prior to that all unfolding, the committee staff had organized around those three issues. And Linsner had thought, thought before this day that the dirty tricks would be the real story. So that's what he wanted to get behind. And that's what we thought we were investigating initially. It obviously got redirected.

[Leon Neyfak]

Right. So I think one thing that really helped me understand like what this thing was that you guys were part of was realizing that there was a minority staff and a majority staff and that, you know, you guys were a unit, you guys had friends you guys were all friends with each other and you worked through the night. And then there was the minority staff who worked over here, and they were maybe friends with each other. How central was it to your sort of personal life and your social life, this group of people that you were surrounded by? I mean, did you guys have outside friends who asked you constantly questions about this thing that was on TV every day and that was the obsession of the entire country at that point?

[Mary DiIorio]

Yes, but we were never home. We were never home.

[Mark Lackritz]

We would leave. Social life. Social life was an oxymoron.

[Mary DiIorio]

Yeah.

[Mark Lackritz]

I mean, we literally were working 24 7. We were getting in the office at 8 in the morning. We were leaving at 11:30 or midnight every night. We were working all weekend. And thank God we were living together because otherwise our relationship, there's no way it could have survived.

[Mary DiIorio]

Yeah, yeah, that's really true. We wouldn't have. I would have been jealous of his work. Yeah. I wanted his time, and then I'd want the news.

[Mark Lackritz]

But to get to your point, yes, we did have social life with our colleagues on the Democratic staff. Yeah. We did not have much social life. I mean, we tolerated the Republicans is the best way. And you played nice, but then you did what you needed to do.

[Mary DiIorio]

There wasn't a lot of social life with the Republicans. It was separate.

[Leon Neyfak]

Yeah. But I guess what I'm curious about is how people on the outside, people who were just watching on their TVs, like, how they interacted with you, if not during your work, then afterwards. I mean, how is that in the years since, perhaps. What have you found in terms of the memories people have of this thing that you guys worked on?

[Mary DiIorio]

Well, I think Mark had an interesting guest one day.

[Mark Lackritz]

One day I got a call from the front desk. And I'd been friends with Bill Clinton when we were at Oxford together. And the front desk was.

[Leon Neyfak]

I got an interview for my next podcast.

[Mark Lackritz]

And the receptionist said, mark, there's some guy out here who says he knows you. So I went out to the front.

[Mary DiIorio]

We were important then. He wasn't that important.

[Mark Lackritz]

And Clinton sees me and gives me a big bear hug and says, can I see the office? And I said, sure. And I said, what are you up to? And he said, well, I'm heading out to Arkansas to teach law school. And he looked around and said, this is kind of neat because Hillary was coming down to work on the impeachment inquiry at the House Judiciary Committee at the same time. So it was open. The other thing is, it was sort of. It was A different era in the sense that we had one Capitol Hill policeman standing outside the auditorium. And this is the auditorium where Bobby Kennedy announced in 1968 that he was reconsidering going into the presidential campaign. So it had, as a room itself, it had some historical significance.

[Mary DiIorio]

It had history. Right. But anyway, we were cool then and our friends did want to be with us. Yeah, yeah.

[Leon Neyfak]

At what point did you realize this was, you know, this sort of the obsession of the country? I mean, was it clear to you from the, from the inside of the fishbowl that everyone's eyes were on these hearings and that people were, you know, starting. I think we have a picture here of the Sam Irvin fan club, that this was a phenomenon.

[Mary DiIorio]

Yeah, well, by the time we were. By the time I was there in May, it was. The hearings were on. People were lining to get into the hearings. There was, there was just palpable energy.

[Mark Lackritz]

What was surprising, I thought Mary and I would take the bus to work from an apartment we were living in, and we get off the bus up on Capitol Hill and there would be a line of people coming out of the Russell Senate Office Building and it would loop around the block of people waiting to get into the hearings. And that's when I think I realized that this was not just another congressional hearing, that this had a lot more weight, momentum, gravitas, whatever you want to call it, plus all the reporters that were there, I mean, the networks were there and all the big feet of the media. And that was, I mean, for a 26 year old, you sort of look at, you're sort of overwhelmed about all this.

[Leon Neyfak]

And then what was it like when it ended? I mean, did your lives suddenly feel very empty?

[Mark Lackritz]

What I remember about the end was how poignant it actually was for both of us. And I remember waking up on August 9th. We'd seen Nixon's resignation speech the night before, and on August 9th he was actually going to formally resign. And we slept in late, the first time in two years, basically, and turned on our little black and white TV at the foot of our bed and we saw him talking to his staff and ranting about his mother and this and that, and he was obviously unhinged. And then he went out to the helicopter and he waved goodbye and helicopter door and it flew off and we burst into tears. You know, it was sort of like, oh, my God, what if we just. What have we done?

[Mary DiIorio]

We thought we were investigating this guy. Just.

[Mark Lackritz]

No, we didn't expect this to happen.

[Mary DiIorio]

Yeah, well, that's not true. But it is true. You know, it's scary.

[Leon Neyfak]

Did you guys think at that point about how history would remember the work that you did and how it would be described in books and how it would be understood by people who weren't even born yet at the time?

[Mary DiIorio]

Exactly.

[Mark Lackritz]

The unborn.

[Mary DiIorio]

We had the unborn way. We had earlier conversations right off the bat because I wasn't quite sure what we were doing. And I was concerned initially.

[Leon Neyfak]

What do you mean?

[Mary DiIorio]

Well, initially, we were involved in a big investigation. We weren't sure where it was going. And I was concerned because of the McCarthy hearings. And I thought, well, God, you know, Bob, there were a whole bunch of people associated with those hearings who for a moment, believed they were doing the right thing. And then, of course, it runs amok. And I thought, well, what if we're doing the same thing? You know, how do we know if this is really. I think eventually we did very much know that we were on the right side, but that was the concern I had initially. And then at the end, we. When you see that the President of the United States has now resigned, what have you unleashed and what's going to be next? And how do we pull the democracy together and how do we not so discourage people that they don't get involved with politics? I mean, there was a lot of negative stuff. Obviously, that falls out to the next generation. And you want to encourage your leaders. You don't want to scare them to death.

[Bob Woodward]

Mark.

[Mark Lackritz]

I would completely subscribe to what Mary said. I mean, I think we were concerned about what this meant longer term. And in retrospect, a lot of the nastiness that's come to characterize our politics today, you can trace directly back to Watergate and the partisanship that arose in that, despite the bipartisan front.

[Leon Neyfak]

Yeah, I was gonna say people, when they're writing stories today, they mostly reference Watergate as a. The last time there was bipartisanship in Washington.

[Mark Lackritz]

Right. And yet I know early on in our investigation, one of my colleagues, Scott Armstrong, found Senator Baker's administrative assistant in the Office of the White House Counsel, which made it very, very awkward for us to share information if it was going to go immediately back to the White House. And so we maintained.

[Mary DiIorio]

So we didn't share.

[Bob Woodward]

So.

[Mark Lackritz]

Yeah, so we didn't share.

[Mary DiIorio]

We didn't share. There was no point in sharing because.

[Leon Neyfak]

You knew it would just go right back to the White House.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Yeah, right.

[Mark Lackritz]

And it's really hard to do an investigation if people are going to know what you're going to ask and what.

[Mary DiIorio]

You and the stuff we wouldn't share is the stuff that was leading up to. But then if we were finally going to interview you, we didn't do it with just the Dems. We would bring the Dems and the Republicans. Now they may not know why we wanted to talk to you. We knew why we wanted to, to talk to you. And that's how we were building our end of the hearing. And they of course were trying to do the same thing.

[Leon Neyfak]

So what do you, I mean, what's your, how does it feel to see Watergate being bandied around as the like example we should all wish we could follow in 2018? Like this was like the last time that Democrats and Republicans could work together and that Republicans could buck their party loyalty in favor of the truth. Like, how did that, how did that happen? How did that idea take take root?

[Mark Lackritz]

Well, I think it was because we were successful. I mean, I think what happened is we became the prototype. What I was concerned about is we became sort of the prototype for every scandal later on. And whether it was Korea gate or file gate or Burt Lance gate, whatever the scandal was, always had a gate attached to it. And it became sort of almost shorthand for gee, maybe this will be another Watergate. I remember being a little bit concerned a couple times when people on the Hill reached out to Terry and me about coming up to staff something. The one I remember most clearly was Alexander Haig got nominated to be Secretary of State by Ronald Reagan. And the Democrats wanted to do a reprise of Haig's role in Watergate and wanted us to go back and do that again. And I, I really didn't want to. You know, it's sort of like it was a one off. It was a set of circumstances, a unique time in history. A lot of different forces came together because of a lot of different institutions and people, you know, some of whom are going to follow us up here tonight. I mean, Bob is. Without his work, none of this could have happened. And I think that people now want to fit scandals into some box that makes sense. And so Watergate's a familiar box.

[Leon Neyfak]

But how did the, how did they. I mean, it sounds like you think that the bipartisanship, you know, bipartisanship helped Watergate have a happy ending, is a myth is how I gathered what I've gathered from talking to you about this.

[Mark Lackritz]

No, I don't think it's a myth there was such a thing in those days as a moderate wing of the Republican Party or even a liberal wing of the Republican Party. Senator Javits of New York was a leader of it. There were lots of senators on the Republican side that were pro civil rights, pro lots of anti war things like that. And it wasn't until the 80s when all of a sudden they developed these loyalty tests and purity tests that if you weren't for tax cuts and increasing defense spending and anti gay rights and anti that sort of thing, that you really weren't a Republican. So there was an overlap of the parties at the time.

[Leon Neyfak]

Yeah. Mary, we just have a minute left. I meant to find a way to set you up to tell a wonderful story that I want you to tell these people about. Related to the fact that you were the only woman on the investigative team.

[Mary DiIorio]

Yes, just tell the story.

[Leon Neyfak]

There's no segue.

[Mary DiIorio]

I'm sorry, there's no segue at all. I was often given the boys were afraid of the girls as strong women and Rose they terrified. And Rosemary woods was going to be interviewed.

[Leon Neyfak]

Rosemary woods was Nixon's personal secretary and.

[Mary DiIorio]

She was responsible something for. Well, for an 18 minute gap in these tapes. In any event, Ms. Woods was coming to the committee to be interviewed in an executive session in Senator Ervin's office. But by mistake, she and her counsel came to G308, which was that room we were describing. We get a telephone call, she's out front, and Terry goes, oh, Mary, Mary, you go take her and you take her over to Ervin's office. Well, I'm a staffer. I've been to Ervin's office once. I mean, it's his secret hideaway office. It's not the regular office. So I dutifully go and I see Ms. Woods and she is furious. There's been a cartoon that one of the secretaries had put up on the wall showing her stretch for the 18 minute gap. So I don't just get Rosemary, I get a really angry woman. And I said, no problem. So off I go. I have no sense of direction. I'm not confident how to get to this place. And I blow it. We go take her down the stairs and down the hallway and up the next set of stairs and you look out the window and there's the Capitol. And we're supposed to be in the Capitol and I'm nowhere. So she said to me, I knew it. I knew you didn't know what you were doing. And I said, I most definitely know what I'm doing. I wanted to be sure we weren't being followed. So down we go and we get her there.

[Leon Neyfak]

See, we needed a segue. No Segue.

[Mary DiIorio]

No segue.

[Leon Neyfak]

Thank you both so much, you guys.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Thank you.

[Leon Neyfak]

Let's give a round of applause to Mary Giorio and Mark Lackers. All right, our next guest used to write for the Washington Post. Still does. Bob Woodward, come on out. I wrote my opening joke, which is going to be to say, what's your connection to all this? Thanks for being here, Bob.

[Mark Lackritz]

Thank you.

[Leon Neyfak]

I want to talk to you about what it's like to be responsible for the overwhelmingly dominant version of the Watergate story. Every time I talk to anyone about this podcast, I would say, well, before it started coming out, I would say, what do you know about Watergate? And nine times out of 10, people say, well, I pretty much know what's in all the President's Men. And I want to know from you what. How that is, how you've experienced that. I guess, in the years since it.

[Bob Woodward]

Was published, you have no idea how many women I've disappointed. As a starting point, and it's incomplete. We did stories in 1972, and the reality was they were not believed. And it was Senator Ervin who called me up and said, come and visit. He was thinking of doing this investigation of Watergate for the Senate. He would be the chairman, and he wanted our sources. And I said, we can't tell you our sources. And he said, that's fine. And if you look at the. What he did with that committee, it's the gold standard of congressional investigations. They got all the witnesses on television, John Mitchell, all Bob Haldeman, Nixon's top aides, and you could see who they were and what they said. And then they discovered the secret taping system. So Watergate went to the Senate Watergate Committee, the special prosecutor was appointed, and then the first one, Archibald Cox, fired, that started the House Judiciary Committee looking at impeachment. And the issue kind of reached a climax when the supreme court decided that 64 of Nixon's tapes had to be turned over. And it was an extraordinary moment because the impeachment investigation became bipartisan. I think the first vote was 27 to 11 or something like that. And when the final tape was released in August, everyone, all the Republicans, joined the Democrats, saying Nixon should be impeached. And, of course, when that tape came out, Nixon resigned.

[Leon Neyfak]

And so hardly any of that is in all the President's Men.

[Bob Woodward]

Yeah, right. And this is why, as we go through the Trump, Russia, et cetera, investigation, people want quick answers and solutions. And Watergate took two years, two months. And these things take a lot of time. There needs to be an Accumulation of evidence. There needs to be debate. And so I feel kind of calm about what's going on right now, though. I think it's mighty serious, and it may reach some ending that ends the Trump presidency, or it may not. But that's going to be decided on the evidence, like Nixon's case was decided on the tapes. Thousands of hours. I mean, imagine thousands of hours of your private conversations.

[Leon Neyfak]

I'd probably get impeached.

[Bob Woodward]

Yeah, you would. They'd give your show to somebody else.

[Leon Neyfak]

I mean, what you just said, I mean, reminds me of the quite startling fact that I didn't appreciate when I began this process, is that your book came out before the story ended, right?

[Bob Woodward]

Yes.

[Leon Neyfak]

June of 74 is when it was published?

[Bob Woodward]

No. Well, it was April of 74, so about four or five months before Nick was signed. Yeah.

[Leon Neyfak]

It's quite amazing that a book that came out before the story even ended ended up being the one everyone knows and the source of everyone's conception of this story. What do you think accounts for that? Why do you think your take took?

[Bob Woodward]

Because it packages it in a way that's understandable. And Watergate was complex, and it had multiple investigations going on, the Senate, the House. Ultimately, the Supreme Court had to decide. So I just think the question you were asking Mark and Mary is really still pulses throughout any discussion of Watergate. And that is, what was it? And it was not just a burglary. In the end, Watergate was a mindset. Nixon's mind, if you think about it, the day he resigned, he gave this speech in the east wing of the White House, called his friend staff there, and it was televised live nationally. And Nixon was sweating. It was kind of a psychiatric hour. He talked about his mother and his father and his brothers, and people in the audience were really worried he was going to have a nervous breakdown on live national television. And then Nixon kind of waved his hand like, this is why I called you here. And he said something very profound and memorable and that he said, always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself. So here, Nixon got it. That hate was what his presidency was about. Let's use the power of the presidency to settle scores. Use that power as an instrument of revenge. And that's what is the real sickness of Watergate. It's not just that it was illegal, but that it was about hate. And that was the piston that drove him in so many of his actions.

[Leon Neyfak]

I mean, it's interesting because someone pointed out to Me that people have written.

[Bob Woodward]

Lots of books about Watergate. I know, but there is an endless reexamination. Good.

[Leon Neyfak]

Yeah. Part of what I'm curious about, and I just don't have an answer to this, is how do some of them become influential? How do some of them kind of gain traction and become part of sort of this era that's between us all and that we all can kind of assume everybody else is aware of and others don't.

[Bob Woodward]

Well, our book came out at a time when it looked like Nixon was really in serious trouble. And it explained the orig and people are interested in the origins. It was the story about. Carl and I were young, I think we were 11 and 12 years old. We were 28 and 29, and it was a contest against the White House, which was just denying and lying. And we had editors and a publisher at the Post stuck with us who said, I remember Catherine Graham inviting me up for lunch once and we're going through this. And she said, when's all the truth going to come out? And I said, and this was in January of 73. I said, because there's a cover up going on because the investigation is weak. That when Carl and I in this phase go knock on doors, we get doors slammed in our faces. And so my answer is it's never going to come out and never the full story or the truth. And she was never, don't tell me, never. I was jolted and left. This was a lunch. A highly motivated employee after she said that. But what, it wasn't a threat, it was a statement of purpose. And what she said was, and this is critical, said, you know, this is the President. We believe we have good sources, so we have to triple, quadruple our effort and get to the bottom of this. And then she asked why? And I didn't have a real good answer. She had a great answer to her question. And she said why? Because this is the business we're in. This is what we do in the newspaper business.

[Leon Neyfak]

Do you think anything, I mean, is anything lost in having the main story of Watergate be so focused on reporting? Like you walked through all these different stages of the process, Right. That required the Senate committee, that required the House Judiciary Committee, it required the special prosecutor's office. And yet when I think most people think of Watergate because of all the President's men, they think this is a story about reporting.

[Bob Woodward]

You must have seen the movie of all the President's men at a very young age. Age, because it stuck with you, hasn't it?

[Leon Neyfak]

I Don't think I'm the only one, am I?

[Bob Woodward]

No, no. Okay. But it's not the whole story. And I, and I think that's, I think that's the point. And I think we. The real issue in Watergate is, and it was Senator Ervin in his final reports that asked the question, what was Watergate? And says it was an attempt to destro the electoral system in the United States on the way candidates are nominated from both parties and the final election. And you look at all the dirty tricks and illegal operations. I mean, they had 50 people running around conducting all, you know, if I put 50 people on you and you're running for president, I can pretty much make sure you're not going to win. And it stemmed from this anger that Nixon had about. No one really appreciated him, and my God, he made it to the presidency and there was a feeling of entitlement. No one's going to take it away. And when he was running in 72, he was going to make sure that he won and that. So it's at root a very ugly story.

[Leon Neyfak]

We only have a few minutes left and I want to talk about Trump for a second because I'm curious what you think people in the future will remember about the past couple years that we've lived through and what you think the dominant narrative will be. I mean, I know the story's not over, but based on what we know.

[Bob Woodward]

So far, I'm glad you asked that question because I have the answer written down right here. This is part of the problem with journalism in the Internet era of impatience and speed. Tell me not just a sound bite, but tell me what's going to happen. Tell me what the future is. And I think it's a disease in the media, frankly, and I'm sorry. And you've got it, because what it does is it absorbs lots of repertorial energy and discussion. And as you point out, we don't know and we're not going to find out until it happens. But in the course of events, we run by the story, we don't. I'm doing a book on Trump now and I'm able to do six hour interviews with people. I don't have a deadline. I have that luxury of time. And we run by all kinds of stories because we don't do enough work in the media to really dig out what happened. And it's hard. And it's not as if people in the Trump White House are calling reporters, saying, hey, come on over, we want to tell you the whole Tale. They don't. There's lots of resistance. There's lots of negative feelings about the media. So focus back. Try to figure out what really did happen and not. So I'm going to deprive you of what I've written out in terms of my prediction.

[Leon Neyfak]

That's fair enough. All right, well, that's a good place to stop. Bob, thank you so much for being here.

[Mark Lackritz]

Thank you.

[Bob Woodward]

Thank you.

[Leon Neyfak]

Our next guests are Virginia Heffernan, the host of Trump cast, and legendary journalist Gail Chehy. Have a seat. All right, so, Gail, you wrote an amazing piece. Two pieces, actually, 1973, that I was just delighted by when I read them in New York Magazine.

[Gail Sheehy]

Amazing piece of research you did. I mean, that was like, what, 45 years ago.

[Leon Neyfak]

It's cited in a bunch of books. It lives on. And I want you to just briefly tell us what you did for that piece, what the reporting was and where you went and who you met.

[Gail Sheehy]

It was really fun. Okay, so nobody was writing about the real Nixon supporters. And so I, for New York magazine, went out to the most popular bar in Astoria, Queens, to find the bar called Terry's Bar, Irish bar, full of pipe fitters and iron workers and tough Nixon supporters who were all Democrats up until then. But in 1968, you know, the lid blew off the country, and they were hysterical over all these anarchists and, you know, anti war people and terrorists and communists, you know, bringing down our country. And Terry's Bar was where they gathered.

[Leon Neyfak]

This was basically Southern Democrats, but in New York.

[Gail Sheehy]

But in New York.

[Mark Lackritz]

Yeah.

[Gail Sheehy]

So. And then the sign over Terry's Bar told you everything you needed to know was it was a certificate saying. The certificate to the nobodies.

[Leon Neyfak]

Yes. And all those guys, Nobody of the Year award.

[Gail Sheehy]

Nobody of the Year award.

[Mark Lackritz]

That's right.

[Gail Sheehy]

And these guys all felt like nobodies until Richard Nixon gave them a voice where we heard that, you know, rehearse again. They really loved this guy. And I wanted to watch the Watergate hearings with them in that space. So I would sit on the bar. I mean, I had a little different legs in those days. And I would say, hey, guys, you want to watch that Watergate thing? And all of a sudden, somebody would say, turn it off. You know, I want to hear it. And somebody else would say, all right, let's hear. We'll throw something at it. And they were just. They thought this was all a big show to bring down their guy, their president, and they never gave that up. You know, the most fascinating thing about.

[Leon Neyfak]

That follow up is so Gayle did a follow up a couple months later after the hearings were pretty much over, where she went back to the same bar, talked to the same guys, and.

[Gail Sheehy]

They were still there. But I'm talking about same stools, but they were. I'm talking about three months after Nixon resigned, 23% of American voters were still in support of him and thought he had been run out of office.

[Leon Neyfak]

See, 23. Yeah, that's not that many.

[Virginia Heffernan]

But post resignation.

[Leon Neyfak]

Yeah, I guess there's a way to fall.

[Virginia Heffernan]

That's a lot.

[Leon Neyfak]

I want to ask you both a question which is so okay. Gail's part in the show, I think was many people's favorite because the quotes that Gail got from these guys at Terry's bar were like there was no daylight between how they sounded and when they talked about Nixon and how Trump supporters sound when they talk about Trump. In what people at Slate call when someone goes to Trump country and looks around and interviews people, we call that a Cletus safari. And the quotes from your people are identical to the quotes from the folks in those modern day Trump pieces. And I don't understand why. Like, what explains the fact that these people were so similar to each other? And I wonder, Virginia, if you have any insight.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Well, I want to say a word about the Cletus safari. There have been, I think Alexander Petrie did an amazing parody of the typical New York Times story of we went back to West Virginia, saw a guy chewing on a rusty nail and talking about how he still loved Trump in spite of getting no cold job back and so forth. The people who mystify me are not those voters as much as the many bankers, lawyers, even professors and upper middle class professionals who voted for Trump. And we haven't seen a really convincing profile of the Goldman Sachs crowd that were behind him, where ideology doesn't play into it, even self interest doesn't play into it. That's what you discover at say, a bar like that. Or now in the chewing on a rusty nail stories that they may be motivated or may have said that they worried they had economic anxiety, which I think we've all had economic anxiety, to me seems like. Do you agree with the statement I have sometimes worried about money, but in any case, they suffer from some kind of economic anxiety, human condition. But then they. Why? That I understand. But why do they latch on to this particular personality and as a remedy, the idea of being part of some imagined clique of aggrieved, mostly white men. Right.

[Gail Sheehy]

Well, they are. And you know what notable about Terry's bar was. There were never any women there. I mean, the wives were back home, you know, making chili. So. And the guys. And they would say, you know, we need a strong man on top. You know, a really strong man on top, and whip everything in shape. This is Terry. And then he'd say to me, you know, that might scare some people. Doesn't scare me. And the other guy's like, oh, it doesn't scare us. You know, we know what we need on top. That's right out of Trump's mouth. Right. So I think that. But the other thing that I found when I went. And I'll tell you later about the bar that I went to last night that's replaced Harry's bar. Whole different scenes, but the same kind of guys, some of them. And what they are really about is the same thing the Goldman Sachs guys are. You know, I kind of. I like seeing my, you know, I like seeing the market go up. I like seeing that I'm working full time now. And when they. And I said, okay, so when were the guys at the current bar quiet about Trump? Well, they zipped their lip when it looked like the market was going down. There was no big rah rah Trump thing. So it's that same economic anxiety, I think, runs through all class levels.

[Virginia Heffernan]

It's interesting that the keeping score happens with the market, of all places. I don't think Nixon voters maybe would consider themselves invested or shareholders.

[Gail Sheehy]

Not then, but I think they do now.

[Virginia Heffernan]

They do now.

[Gail Sheehy]

Yeah.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Yeah.

[Leon Neyfak]

We're going to close this segment with a quiz. It's going to be really fun. But first, Gail, I want you to tell us what you did last night.

[Gail Sheehy]

Oh, yeah, I have.

[Virginia Heffernan]

I like hearing about this.

[Gail Sheehy]

Well, I went to the equivalent of Terry's Bar of today in Queens. I looked it up to see what's the most popular bar in Astoria, Queens. Okay. It's called Veronica's Bar. That's the first thing you have to know. Wait a minute. A woman owns Terry's Bar. She's Irish, but she's not a guy. And her daughter is the favorite bartender, and she's educated. She was a bartender from out of high school for 10 years, made enough money to go to college, political science major. And she comes out and she's now getting a nursing degree. She's 32 years old, and she's totally anti Trump. So I go in there and I'm talking to these guys, and they're. They're like, there's a. There's actual, you know, disparate People there. There's a Hispanic couple, and there's a woman with her boyfriend. And why she goes there is because Veronica and her daughter make it safe for single women or married women to come in there. And later at night, when the old timers get really soused and start groping, she cuts right in and she says, you know, okay, Oscar, you get any closer than that, and I'm going to call her boyfriend. She's got a really big, nasty boyfriend. And it's fake, but it stops the guys. So it's a totally integrated bar. They have women, men. And what they talked about was, some of them were talked about, I love the guy. I love Trump, you know, because I'm working full time now. And then another guy will say to him, oh, my God, come on, I didn't even vote this time. I voted all my life. But I'm not voting this time because I'm so sick of voting for the lesser of the two evils. And then there'll be a Bangladeshi guy, and he'll say, piece of garbage. Say, do you say that out loud when more of the Trump supporters are here? Yeah, I do. So they never come to blows. But there's a real spread in this bar in what used to be Archie Bunker country and now is much, much more polyglot.

[Leon Neyfak]

Well, I hope you write it up, and I hope you send it to New York Magazine, because I think we need an update.

[Gail Sheehy]

Well, I'm going to go back there on a warm night because the doors are open. They make so much noise in there that people come and stand outside to just listen to what's going on inside, because it's so entertaining.

[Leon Neyfak]

Thank you for sharing that. I. I was so excited when Gail told me that she was going back to the equivalent of Terry's Bar the night before our show. So I'm glad you actually did. All right, as promised, I have a short quiz. We're going to guess whether the quote I'm about to read is someone talking about Donald Trump or someone talking about Richard Nixon.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Excellent.

[Leon Neyfak]

I'm not going to direct them to either one of you. You guys can just shout it out.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Okay? Okay.

[Leon Neyfak]

It's a whole lot of nothing. It's pathetic. They're sweeping up a whole lot of people who have nothing to do with the president or his campaign. After two years, they have nothing to.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Show Trump the giveaway.

[Leon Neyfak]

There, you say Trump.

[Gail Sheehy]

Yeah.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Oh, I think that's Nixon.

[Leon Neyfak]

It's Trump.

[Gail Sheehy]

Oh, yeah, it's Trump Gathering all those people.

[Virginia Heffernan]

A whole lot of nothing. And it Sounds like the period and so does the two years.

[Leon Neyfak]

I know I was trying to kind of talk in an old timey way a little bit.

[Virginia Heffernan]

But also two years is wrong.

[Leon Neyfak]

Yeah, it's true. All right. Out here you don't hear the bitching about blank that you do back east. It's Congress that's lost its credibility here. Nixon.

[Virginia Heffernan]

I think everything's Nixon.

[Gail Sheehy]

Nixon, Nixon.

[Leon Neyfak]

It's Nixon.

[Virginia Heffernan]

The only Trumpites I talk to are bots too. So I don't really understand how they kill the flesh and blood ones. I should get to a bar and.

[Gail Sheehy]

I'll gotta go to the bar.

[Leon Neyfak]

All right, a couple more. If there are any tapes, they have to be turned over. You can't be cute about tapes.

[Gail Sheehy]

Well, that's gotta be Nixon.

[Virginia Heffernan]

I'll say Nixon too. Even though we talk about tapes all the time. The idea that there's a pee tape, for example.

[Leon Neyfak]

So this was in fact a reference, I think to the tapes that Trump claimed to have of him and Comey talking.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Oh, that was a trouble the Lordy, I hope they're tapes. Tapes.

[Gail Sheehy]

And then weren't the rumors about tapes that Stormy Daniels has some tapes or pictures.

[Leon Neyfak]

There's a lot of tapes. There's going to be lots of tapes.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Her Lawyer put a DVD. I will say he's getting no MP3s yet, but we have seen a TV. I don't understand. Tapes must just be the locution.

[Gail Sheehy]

Yeah.

[Leon Neyfak]

I think we had a poll actually at the Slate office about who pictures a dvd, who pictures a VHS tape and who pictures like a file. When you think about the pee tape, I don't remember what the.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Oh my God. That is the nerdiest discussion of the pee tape I've ever heard.

[Leon Neyfak]

All right, a couple more. The President puts his life on the line. Why should he have to pay any taxes?

[Gail Sheehy]

Oh my God. I can't imagine anybody thinking that Trump has put his life on the line. I mean he has bone spurs. Come on. Poor man.

[Virginia Heffernan]

I know that's painful. I think that's Trump because. Right. Because Nixon wasn't a tax dodger.

[Gail Sheehy]

That's right.

[Leon Neyfak]

Oh, wasn't he?

[Gail Sheehy]

No.

[Leon Neyfak]

Oh, he was. That's about Nixon. Yeah. This is a great subplot about Nixon not paying his taxes. And in fact this is a lovely factoid. When Nixon said I am not a crook, that's what he was talking about. He was defending himself against accusations of tax evasion, not Watergate.

[Gail Sheehy]

Right.

[Leon Neyfak]

No one was accusing him of actually going into the DNC himself and taking stuff. Right. So now it makes more sense.

[Mark Lackritz]

Right?

[Leon Neyfak]

Okay, I got two more. Let it go and move on. The media is the one that's propagating it. They just won't let it die. There are things that are more important right now, and that's over and done with.

[Gail Sheehy]

I'd say Trump.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Trump.

[Leon Neyfak]

It's Trump.

[Virginia Heffernan]

They would have said the press in those days, I think.

[Gail Sheehy]

Anyway, propagating isn't a word they use in bars.

[Leon Neyfak]

All right, last one. I've seen some real killers in my line of work, but blank makes them look like babies. This man is a rock. Like him or not. And when you think of how far he's come back and the things he's endured, he's even more amazing.

[Virginia Heffernan]

Nixon.

[Gail Sheehy]

Nixon?

[Leon Neyfak]

You think it's about Nixon? Yeah, it is about Nixon. The person who said it is Donald Trump. That's good. On that happy note, let's have a big round of applause for all of our guests tonight. Thank you so much for being here. This live event was executive produced by Faith Smith, and the version you just heard was produced by Andrew Parsons. Special thanks to Gabriel Roth, editorial director of Slate, plus Slow Burn script editor Josh Levine, Slow Burn editorial assistant Madeline Kaplan, and Slate Live intern Lizzy Welch. Thanks also to Jeff Bloomer and Shirley Chan from Slate's video team, as well as Baruch College and the NBC News Archive.