Personal History

Readers, too, were writing me, accusing the Post of ulterior motives, bad journalism, lack of patriotism, and all kinds of breaches of faith in our effort to get the news to the people. It was a particularly lonely moment for us at the paper. Other organizations were beginning to report the story, but we were so far ahead that they couldn't catch up; Woodward and Bernstein had most of the sources to themselves. The wire service and AP sent out our stories, but most papers didn't even run them, or buried them somewhere toward the back pages. [Post managing editor] Howard [Simons] used to get on the phone to his editor friends around the country to tell them they were missing a big story. Because an exclusive story usually remained so for only about twenty-four hours before every- one jumped on it, I sometimes privately thought: If this is such a hell of a story, then where is everybody else?

Bearing the full brunt of presidential wrath is always disturbing. Sometimes I wondered if we could survive four more years of this kind of strain, of the pressures of living with an administration so completely at odds with us and determined to harm us. As I later wrote to Isaiah Berlin, ""The idea of living with that gang in the White House whacking at you for four more years was depressing beyond words.'' I couldn't help speculating about what condition we'd all be in--including the paper--at the end of it all. The best we could do while under such siege, I felt, was to keep investigating, to look everywhere for hard evidence, to get the details right, and to report accurately what we found.

Helping spearhead the Nixon administration's counterattack was Sen. Bob Dole, then head of the Republican National Committee. In his speeches, Dole quoted Mrs. Graham as saying she ""hated'' the president:

THAT FALL, AFTER THE ELECTION, PARTLY IN RE-sponse to the escalating campaign we felt was being waged against the reputation of the Post, I began to make more speeches defending the press in general and the Post in particular. One of the first big ones was to the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, quite a conservative group. [Deputy editorial-page editor] Meg [Greenfield] led the team that worked on the speech, which was a strong defense of freedom of the press. I was in something of a panic about the question period to follow the speech, worrying that I would be quizzed on the minutiae of the Watergate story and not know all the players or the various events relating to it. Meg gave me a chronology of the complicated events that had been put together by the Democratic National Committee, and I took it with me to study on the plane on the way out. I settled into my seat for the cross-country flight and began to look over this document, but promptly fell asleep. I woke up as we landed, at which time the man across the aisle from me leaned over to say, ""Hello, Mrs. Graham, can I help you with your bag?'' I looked up into the eyes of Senator Dole and was immediately frozen with fear that he had seen me studying the Democratic Party-prepared document, since this was not long after his accusations that we were reporting Watergate because I hated Nixon. However, either he hadn't observed it or else he was being polite, but he was very friendly, helped me off the plane, and did indeed carry the bag for me. We talked pleasantly, and I finally worked up my nerve to say, ""By the way, Senator, I didn't say I hated Nixon.'' ""Oh, you know,'' he casually replied, ""during a campaign they put these things in your hands, and you just read them.'' His reaction amazed me, dismissing so lightly something that had had such a powerful effect on all of us at the Post, especially me.

Though Mrs. Graham was held responsible for the Post's stories, she tried not to intrude into the editorial process. She trusted Bradlee to handle Woodward and Bernstein. Still, her worries--and her curiosity about Deep Throat--finally surfaced at a lunch in January 1973.

BY EARLY 1973, I WAS GROWING INCREASINGLY ANXIOUS and thought I ought to meet with Woodward and Bernstein in addition to the editors. Surprisingly, to this point--seven months into the story--I had had hardly any contact with the reporters. So, on January 15, Bob and Howard and I sat down to lunch together (Carl was out of town). Characteristically, Bob went right downstairs to the newsroom afterwards and made extensive notes about what we'd said --even going so far as to write down what we ate, the main course being eggs Benedict, which led to our future reference to this gathering as the ""eggs-Benedict lunch.''