I Urge Young DUers To Read the Book and Watch The Movie, "All The President's Men"

For the following reasons:

(1) Yes, we did actually have a press that took on power in this country and did real investigative journalism.

(2) It's fun to see a low tech civilization. Yes, mankind was able to function without the internet, cell phones, and Starbucks. I laughed out loud when Redford went through phone book after phone book looking for Dahlberg.

(3) Most importantly, you need to realize the most important lesson from the film. Yes, in the end, Nixon resigns, and you're left with that good triumphs evil feeling. However, the Ford admin that succeeded Nixon introduced to the world, Alan Greenspan, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney. That's right when you cut off the head of evil, three more pop up in its place.

The sad thing is that the amazing Woodward and Bernstein of the 70's have become worthless , self-serving sell-outs today.

What happened? How can we recover?

but all too common.

Woodward has always been portrayed as this cub reporter who got lucky and was able to bring down the evil Nixon with his Robert Redford good looks and plucky youthful lucky streak. It was all bullshit.

Woodward was no cub, he was former Naval Intelligence. In fact, he was the Naval presidential briefer for a while during Vietnam. He would sit outside the Oval waiting to tell Johnson the latest naval intelligence, and that's where he struck up a friendship with the #2 guy at the FBI, Mark Felt (Deep Throat).

Everybody in Naval Intelligence knew it was Nixon's CIA pal, Howard Hunt who did the job on Kennedy, who was also a Navy man. When Hunt got nabbed at the Watergate, it wasn't obvious for a while what the connections were, but Felt knew.

Nixon knew he was in deep shit if it got out that one of his plumbers was the guy who offed Kennedy, so that's what the coverup was all about. It wasn't about the two-bit crime that took place at the DNC, it was about who knew what about the Kennedy assassination. It was all about rivalries and vendettas between intelligence services.

Woodward is evil, he was evil then and he's an evil Bush ass kisser now.

Don't believe the fairy tale that is All The President's Men...

I did enjoy the movie and knew about the Naval Intelligence background, but never made the connection.

we might still find out someday ---

Meanwhile, Nixon certainly was involved in keeping a lid on the JFK coup -- a more or less open secret in DC where I understand the weekend of the assassination most people knew the long list of the names of the plotters ---

However, Nixon was adding to the pile of crimes --- "The Huston Plan" for one --- a more domestic
version of "Operation Northwoods" . . . but in this case Nixon was working on cancelling the '72
elections, if necessary, by any means possible!

We also had attempted bribery of the new Director of the FBI -- and many other major corruptions and
crimes -- all topped off with a phony pardon.

Undoubtedly Nixon and Howard Hunt were directly involved in the JFK coup as were many others ---
from LBJ and Hoover to the oil industry -- Hunt & Murchison --- who also represented organized crime.

No one comes into the White House these days unless they are part of the corruption and can be counted on to protect the coverups and keep them going --- plus adding to the pile of crimes.

No, kids, it isn't fiction (the movie is fictionalized a bit).

Imagine calling to follow up on leads instead of having them e-mailed to you from the Heritage Foundation Press Room.

Imagine editors that would ream your sorry ass for printing something that could not be confirmed.

It was real. We had a PRESS then, not media personalities.

And Ben Bradlee KNEW he would catch shit at the next cocktail party - and went ahead any way.

For the PRINCIPLE of it.

the myth of a "free press" died with the assassination of JFK ---

plans which seem to have been saved in put into use recently --- !!!

Based on a play (The Front Page) written by former Journalist Ben Hecht. It may be comedy but nevertheless, an enlightening example of how the press twists the truth to sell newspapers.

I had my communications major child watch both films. "His Gal Friday" came first and she almost dropped her major. Then came "All the Presidents Men" and she felt a wee bit better about her choice of profession.

My father was a newspaperman. I have no illusions. Journalists can be righteous and they can be dangerous.

said the discussion was very vivid and they really talked about today's climate

K&R

in the summer of 98 and was appalled at such a young age about how much the media had slipped in the 25 years since it was written. Nobody cared about any real news just whether or not the president got a bj...it was pretty sad

I'm trying to get caught up with the classics. And I wasn't even a gleam in my daddy's eye when Watergate happened!