All the President's Men

All the President's Men is a 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two of the journalists investigating the first Watergate break-in and ensuing scandal for The Washington Post. The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein from Woodward's initial report on the Watergate break-in through the resignations of H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and the revelation of the Nixon tapes by Alexander Butterfield in 1973. It relates the events behind the major stories the duo wrote for the Post, naming some sources who had previously refused to be identified for their initial articles, notably Hugh Sloan. It also gives detailed accounts of Woodward's secret meetings with his source Deep Throat whose identity was kept secret for over 30 years.

A film adaptation, produced by Robert Redford and starring Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, respectively, was released in 1976. That same year, a sequel to the book, The Final Days, was published, which chronicled the last months of Nixon's Presidency, starting around the time that their previous book ended.

Background

Woodward and Bernstein had toyed with the idea of writing a book about Watergate, but didn't commit until actor Robert Redford contacted them and expressed interest in purchasing the film rights. In Telling the Truth about Lies: the Making of 'All the President's Men' , Woodward noted that Redford played an important role in changing the book's narrative from a story about the Watergate events to one about their investigations and their reportage of the story.

The name of the book alludes to the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty ("All the king's horses and all the king's men / Couldn't put Humpty together again"), an allusion similar to that made more explicitly a quarter-century earlier in the Robert Penn Warren novel "All the King's Men," which describes the career of a fictional governor loosely based on Huey Long.

Cast of characters

The President

Richard M. Nixon

The President's Men

(listed with their 1972 positions in either the president's executive staff or in his re-election committee, where applicable)

White House

Alexander P. Butterfield, Deputy Assistant to the President
Dwight L. Chapin, Deputy Assistant to the President
Ken W. Clawson, Deputy Director of Communications for the President
Charles W. Colson, Chief Counsel for the President
John W. Dean III, White House Counsel
John D. Ehrlichman, Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs
H.R. Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff
E. Howard Hunt, Jr., President's Special Investigations Unit ("White House Plumbers")
Henry A. Kissinger, National Security Advisor
Egil Krogh, Jr., head of the President's Special Investigations Unit ("White House Plumbers")
Gerald Warren, White House Press Secretary, succeeding Ziegler
David R. Young, special assistant at the National Security Council
Ronald L. Ziegler, White House Press Secretary

Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP)

Kenneth H. Dahlberg, CRP's Midwest finance chairman
Herbert W. Kalmbach, personal attorney to United States President Richard Nixon and Deputy Finance Chairman of CRP
G. Gordon Liddy, CRP employee
Clark MacGregor, CRP Chairman
Jeb Stuart Magruder, Deputy Director, and assistant to the Director of CRP
Robert C. Mardian, CRP political coordinator
John N. Mitchell, Attorney General, and CRP campaign director
Robert C. Odle, Jr., Director of Administration ("office manager") for CRP
Kenneth W. Parkinson, CRP counsel
Herbert L. Porter, CRP organizer and former White House aide
Donald H. Segretti, political operative for CRP
Hugh W. Sloan, Jr., CRP treasurer
Maurice H. Stans, CRP finance chairman
Gordon C. Strachan, staff assistant to Herbert G. Klein but was assigned to be H.R. Haldeman's liaison to CRP