By Patrick J. Buchanan
In his new biography “Being Nixon: A Man Divided
,”
Evan Thomas concedes a point. Richard Nixon, he writes, “was not
paranoid; the press and the ‘Georgetown set’ really were out to get
him.”Carl Bernstein’s review found Thomas’ book deficient in its failure to chronicle the “endemic criminality” of the Nixon presidency.
Yet,
recent revelations suggest that “endemic criminality” is a phrase that
might well be applied to the newsroom of The Washington Post when Bob
Woodward and Bernstein worked there.Consider. In “All the President’s Men,” Woodward and Bernstein admit that, in collusion with Post editors and with the approval of Post lawyers, they approached half a dozen Watergate grand jurors.
