Carl Bernstein: press beginning to document the implosion of a presidency

Carl Bernstein Finds Plame Parallels To Watergate

By Joe Strupp

Published: October 27, 2005 7:30 AM ET

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001391666

NEW YORK As the anticipation over possible indictments in the Valerie Plame case reaches excruciating levels, Watergate legend Carl Bernstein warns that comparisons to the case that made him famous more than 30 years ago must be viewed carefully. Still, the former Washington Post reporter who shared a Pulitzer Prize for helping to expose the Nixon administration's wrongdoing says some parallels can be drawn between the two investigations, particularly the way both helped uncover extended dishonesty in the White House.

"We are obviously watching and the press is beginning to document the implosion of a presidency," Bernstein said Thursday, just hours before the Plame grand jury is set to expire. "How destructive that implosion is going to be, ultimately, we don't know yet.

"But what the Plame leak investigation has unveiled is what the press should have been focusing on long before and without let up--how we went to war, the dishonesty involved in that process in terms of what the president and vice-president told the American people and the Congress, and the routine smearing by members of the Bush administration of people who questioned their actions and motives."

Bernstein compared that to the way the Watergate investigation uncovered widespread dishonesty in the Nixon administration in a similar way. "Beware of exact comparisons," he said. "However, in Watergate, the cover-up of the role of Nixon's aides in the Watergate break-in led to the discovery by the press and the political institutions of the larger crimes -- the so called 'White House horrors' -- meaning the constitutional crimes of the president and his men.

Thank God ONE of them still has some integrity!

I have seen them several times lately in interviews and this is who Bernstien is. There is no green eyed monster in his closet. He still loves his country the way he did in the 60's and 70's. It's Woodward that has sold out.

Woodward admits that he's a Republican, and Bernstein looks at him as if he (Woodward) is an idiot.

Woodward sold out a long time ago.

the Bushboy and his daddy.

What's your excuse.

was whoring himself for Bushco.

What a contrast between the two!!! You wonder how they ever worked together way back when!!