A: I don't think that characterizing it as a pro-Nixon book is very useful.

It's like the rationale Alexander Cockburn used for attacking the movie JFK because it's trying to bring back Camelot. I mean, that is sort of irrelevant. There is some merit to wanting to know the truth without having to say that it's furthering another agenda.

Q: Right. That's why I'm saying that isn't the real story, the thing that some people are afraid to get out, is the real reason that Nixon was run out of office, from whatever perspective?

A: Different people have different motives. The motive of the Washington Post in attacking Silent Coup was to protect the reputation of Bob Woodward because his reputation is what has earned the Post, and Woodward, and a number of people associated with him, many millions of dollars since then in book and movies and inflated salaries. I don't think the Post cares why Nixon was brought down. I don't think that that's what their interest is. Their interest is in closing ranks around Woodward and saying you can't question our golden boy because if you do the greatness of the Washington Post is all a lie.

Q: Let's question the golden boy a bit. Can you tell us what you know about Woodward?

A: Bob Woodward has consistently lied about his background ever since the first time anybody started asking who this person is. He came from Wheaton, Illinois. His father was a judge. He joined the Navy and became a communications officer, which is not Naval Intelligence per se. Naval intelligence is a separate organization. Communications officers are at the very highest level of receiving coded and top secret information from around the world and they get it before anybody else does. It's up to them to relay this information to the people in power.

In Woodward's case, first he was in the Navy serving somewhere in California for four years. At the end of his term he was in California, before that he was on a ship I believe. He's never said what he was doing in California. He just won't talk about it. But you remember that this was the time of the height of the anti-war movement and there was a domestic counter-intelligence operation going on called Operation Chaos, which was coordinating Army, Navy and FBI and CIA intelligence on the anti-war movement, spying on leaders and so on, trying to find foreign influence. And I believe that this is what Woodward was involved in at that time.

So after his four years were up he was eligible to leave the Navy, having completed his service. Instead he re-enlisted for another year and he came to Washington and he started working in a top secret Naval unit inside the Pentagon. Actually, they went between the Pentagon and the White House. This was during the first years of Nixon's presidency. And I believe that at this time he started working directly with Richard Ober, who was the deputy chief of counter-intelligence under James Angleton. He was the one who was running Operation Chaos and I believe that he was the one who was Deep Throat. I disagree with those people in Silent Coup, although it hardly matters who exactly it was because I know Woodward had many sources.

But the point is that at this time he was getting top secret information. He was briefing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was briefing the National Security Council and he was briefing Alexander Haig, who was Nixon's chief of staff. He was right in the very, very center of the Nixon White House in terms of the information that was being conveyed and the people he knew. After that, he decided for some mysterious reason that he wanted to be a reporter and he went to the Post and the Post has thousands of applications a year of experienced reporters, most of whom never get in. But instead they took this guy who couldn't write, who had never been a reporter in his life and they said, "You have to learn how to write better so go work on the suburban paper for a year and then we'll hire you." Now I don't know how they decided that he was somebody they wanted to cultivate or whether somebody had the word on him ahead of time or what. But after a year he came to the Post and right away Ben Bradlee, the executive editor, started giving him the choice assignments. They felt a common bond between each other because Bradlee had a very similar back ground in the Navy himself.

Carl Bernstein was coming from a whole different place. He was a very messed up person, you know, had a lot of trouble keeping his job at the Post. He would always fall asleep on the job, stay up all night and miss deadlines and he was just a mess. If it weren't for the newspaper guild rules about not firing reporters, he would have been fired a long time ago. But he had a sense about politics. He still does. He had a very good sense about politics and he hated Nixon because during the McCarthy era, when Nixon was a congressman, his family, his father and mother, who were very left-wing, had experienced a lot of persecution during the McCarthy era. So he associated Nixon with this. And he had his won reasons for wanting to do a story that he thought might lead to exposing Nixon and bringing down Nixon.

It's a very strange friendship. There was a lot of tension between Woodward and Bernstein and there's a very strong bond between them because each of them owes the other one the fact that they are now millionaires and can get book contracts for any amount of money they want.