Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2004 | 9:34 a.m.
Two of the journalists who exposed the conspiracy that forced Richard M. Nixon to resign his presidency in 1974 told a UNLV crowd Thursday this year's presidential election had amounted to little more than "shallow sound bites" that do little to address the nation's future.
And with Thursday's presidential debate on the horizon, current Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward and former executive editor Ben Bradlee told a packed crowd at UNLV's Artemis Ham Hall they had little hope the debate would add new fuel to the election.
"It's so sanitized," said Bradlee, who now teaches part-time at Harvard University and serves as the Post's vice president at large. "It's like each person is giving a personal press conference."
Bradlee, 83, was in charge of the Post's newsroom in 1972 when Woodward, and fellow junior reporter Carl Bernstein, broke stories about a series of scandals when they followed up on a break-in at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., then home to the Democratic National Headquarters.
The break-in proved to have been orchestrated by the White House and eventually led to Nixon's resignation in 1974.
The series of more than 400 stories won Woodward and Bernstein the Pulitzer Prize and spawned the book and movie "All the Presidents' Men" chronicling their efforts.
In an interview before their speech, the first in the 24th season of UNLV's Barrick Lecture Series, Woodward, now 61, said modern technology has since hindered such comprehensive investigative efforts.
"People say, 'Screw getting to the bottom of it' and get it on the Web site before noon," he said of the high-tech nature of modern journalism.
The pair also took aim at a string of recent scandals, including Janet Cook, a former Post reporter who fabricated a Pulitzer Prize-winning story under their watch, and CBS anchorman Dan Rather, who has in past weeks come under fire for stories about the president's service in the Air National Guard.
Rather has since acknowledged the network pursued the story, which alleged George W. Bush had received preferential treatment while in the Texas unit, based on questionable documents passed off as internal guard memos.
"I think Dan Rather is on very thin ice right now," Bradlee said. "I'm glad it's not me."
Bradlee faced similar accusations during the Watergate scandal, when White House insiders repeatedly bashed the Post's reporting.
Woodward also criticized both presidential campaigns, saying Sen. John Kerry has proven reluctant to explain his positions to reporters.
For his most recent book, "Plan of Attack," which details Bush's run-up to the war in Iraq, Woodward subjected the president to two 3.5-hour interviews during which time he pummeled him with 500 questions.
The conversation is the longest interview a sitting president has conducted with a journalist on a single subject, Woodward said.
"They (the government) try to keep their secrets," he told the crowd. "It's our job to find them."
Although the men started the speech with an non-scientific poll of the audience's presidential pick and outlook on the war in Iraq, both declined to answer questions about whom they planned to vote for. Bradlee, however, later told the crowd he would have "a hard time" voting for Bush.
Both declined to budge on a decadeslong promise to protect the identity of the most famous anonymous source in U.S. history, "Deep Throat," the political insider who fed Woodward much of the key information that led to the Watergate stories.
Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee have all repeatedly said they will not divulge the source's name until Deep Throat's death.
"When will we reveal the identity of Deep Throat?" Woodward said when asked by an audience member. "The answer is not tonight."
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