Playboy Interview: Carl Bernstein

a candid Conversation with the Watergate reporter and real-life model for "heartburn" about journalism, early success and divorce as public spectacle

The simple outline of the story isn't so extraordinary. A young, ambitious guy gets a break, enjoys a big success, gets caught up in the heady excitement of it all, sees his marriage unravel and his work suffer and struggles to regroup as he moves into his 40s.

The difference, in Carl Bernstein's case, is one of degree. Perhaps no journalists in history were as celebrated as Bernstein and his partner. Bob Woodward, after they broke the Watergate stories in The Washington Post that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. At the same time, Perhaps no man has ever been taken to task so publicly and Piercingly as Bernstein was in "Heartburn," the roman à clef that Nora Ephron Wrote about the dissolution of their marriage.

Indeed, Bernstein's life could be a movie--if it weren't for the fact that it is already two.

In the first, "All the President's Men," he's played by Dustin Hoffman--as an incredibly tenacious reporter questing, against all odds, after truth. In the second, "Heartburn," Ephron's just-released adaptation of her novel, the Bernstein Character in played by Jack Nicholson--as a Philandering husband who falls in love with a married woman when his own wife is pregnant with their second child.

It is life as public spectacle: and for Bernstein himself, the 14 years since the Watergate break-in have been a relentless roller-coaster ride--big ups followed by big downs.

Even before Watergate, Bernstein was a man characterized by extremes--and his attitudes plainly have their origin in his childhood. Born in 1944 in Washington, D.C., to left-wing parents, he grew up in the full flush of the McCarthy era. His father, Alfred, began his career as a union lawyer but lost his job after being called to testify before Senator James Eastland's Internal Security Subcommittee about his political activities. Virtually blacklisted, he ran a small laundromat with his wife, Sylvia, until he could finally get a better job, years later, as a fund raiser.

Carl was not political--though he was skeptical of and even hostile to authority from an early age. In high school, he was a classic underachiever. At 16, he got a job at the Washington Star as a copy boy--and. fell in love with journalism. He tried college, at the University of Maryland, but never graduated. From the Star, he went to The Daily Journal in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Where he quickly reinforced his reputation: talented but difficult, street-smart but undisciplined.

The following year, 1966, after winning a passel of writing awards, he was hired by The Washington Post as a reporter. He quickly made it clear that he would not play by its rules, either. He worked fitfully, fought constantly with editors and hung on to his job only because when he did Produce, he could be very good--unusually Knowledgeable about Washington neighborhoods, terrific at working the phone, tenacious when he finally latched on to a story. When he married fellow reporter Carol Honsa, things briefly smoothed out; but the marriage did not survive, and the tensions at the paper did. By 1972, neither the Post nor Bernstein was happy with each other. He wanted to be a national correspondent or cover Vietnam or become the paper's full-time rock critic. The Post editors simply wished that he would leave the paper.

And then, suddenly, there was Watergate.

The big ride began on a June night in 1972, when five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the apartment/office/hotel complex in Washington known as the Watergale. Over the next two years, Bernstein and Woodward wrote 225 stories in The Washington Post that systematically exposed the Most far-reaching American Political Scandal of the 20th Century. For their work, The Washington Post was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Two best-selling Woodwarde-Bernstein books followed--"All the President's Men," the whodunit tale of their reporting feats, which became a movie starring Hoffman and Robert Redford, and "The Final Days," which unfolded, in intimate detail, the last 100 days of the Nixon Administration.

But from that point, in 1976, the ride got considerably rougher for Bernstein-- both professionally and personally. After a brief and frustrating return to The Washington Post, he set off on his own to do a book about growing up in a left-wing family in the Forties and Fifties.

In 1980, feeling blocked on his book, Bernstein took a job as Washington bureau chief for ABC News. It was precisely at that point that his three-and-a-half-year-old marriage to writer Nora Ephron broke up, after she discovered that he had begun an affair with Margaret Jay, the wife of former British ambassador Peter Jay. The news was announced by columnist Liz Smith, who quoted Ephron's summation of her husband's actions: "Carl is a rat." It was a marriage made and unmade in the media.

The ABC job, meanwhile, was a disaster, by all accounts; and a year into it, Bernstein was replaced. He then became a correspondent for ABC's "Nightline" and did some solid reporting, particularly on the British invasation of the Falklands. But when his contract came up for renewal in 1984, he and ABC could not come to terms and he left the network and decided to resume work on his book. For the past two years, that has been his central focus--and he says he is about two thirds finished.

The reverberations of the breakup of his marriage continue, however. "Heartburn" was published in 1983--an account that characterized Bernstein as a man "capable of having sex with a Venetian blind." Bernstein did little to diminish the womanizing image created by the book when he chose to squire a series of highly visible women, ranging from Bianca Jagger to "Hill Street Blues' " Betty Thomas to Elizabeth Taylor. (He is currently seeing Kathleen Tynan, widow of New Yorker writer Kenneth Tynan.)

Shortly after "Heartburn" was published and it was announced that Mike Nichols was interested in making it into a movie, Bernstein was arrested in Washington, D.C., for driving while intoxicated. Although the charges were dropped, the incident provoked him to hospitalize himself for observation. Not long after that, he decided to bring legal action against Ephron, in an attempt to exercise some control over his portrayal--and its potential effect on their two children, Jacob, seven, and Max, six--in the movie version of "Heartburn."

Bernstein won, in an addendum to his divorce agreement with Ephron, a number of concessions, including a promise that "the father in the movie 'Heartburn' will be portrayed at all times as a caring, loving and conscientious father" and that he himself would have the right to read all drafts of the screenplay, submit written comments and be permitted to meet with both Nichols and Ephron to discuss his concerns.

Until now, Bernstein has steadfastly declined to discuss publicly his marriage and divorce, Ephron's book and movie or his work in the years since Watergate. For all those reasons, Playboy asked free-lance writer Tony Schwartz, who has written widely about the media and had conducted "Playboy Interviews" with Dan Rather and Paul Simon, to sit down with Bernstein in New York. This is Schwartz's report:

"It was a struggle from the start--even trying to get Bernstein to commit himself to times to sit down and talk. In the end, we did half a dozen sessions, in restaurants, flying to and from Chicago, where Bernstein gave a speech to the meats division of the Jewish United Fund, in his rented duplex in an East Side brownstone.

"But Carl Bernstein is nothing if not difficult, and from the start, he was intent on doing everything he could to control the terms of the interview. He sought quote approval. Turned down, he sought modified quote approval. Turned down, he sought the right to review for syntax.

"It made me understand why he can be such an effective reporter. The man is relentless. If I posed a question he didn't like, he would turn off the tape recorder and insist that it be rephrased. More than once when I asked a probing question, he accused me--combatively--of being more interested in confrontation than in eliciting truth. He had an agenda, and he was not about to give ground easily.

"If there was one thing that Carl Bernstein did not want to project, it was vulnearbility. He has a bit of Pangloss in him--putting a good face on even the worst events--but I came to believe that what he says, he seems genuinely to believe. And Bernstein is consistent--not just in his sunny self-assessment but in his resistance to revealing, in any detailed way, the more intimate aspects of his private life. In a kiss-and-tell world, I could not help admiring Bernstein's reluctance to join the fray.

"Ironically, perhaps, the most likable quality about him is the very one he tries so vigorously to conceal: his vulnerability. Beneath his bluff exterior, there is a bad-boy quality that is far more appealing. Yes, he arrives an hour late for a meeting, but with such a sheepish look on his face that you can't stay truly angry at him for long. As David Halberstam wrote about him in 'The Powers That Be,' 'Whenever he was in trouble, he seemed to be able to talk his way out of it.' Moreover, he did--at least once--show some lighthearted sympathy for a fellow reporter's slip-up. After our first meeting, I left my tape recorder--and our first tape--at his apartment. Before he returned it, he added this message at the end: 'Journalism 101. First rule. Never leave behind your notes or your tape recorder in the office or home of the source, because you could get fucked up. I thought it would be funny to give you an 18-1/2-minute gap--but I've been very honest, and all I did was turn the tape over.'

"Before long, however, the Bernstein bark and bravado were back. The tenacity that makes him such a good reporter came through, and so did--however veiled--a sense of the pain he must have felt at times these past several years. But the question that nagged at me persistently, and still does, is not so much whether Carl Bernstein believed what he was saying as whether--as one friend recently wondered--he had ever been completely honest with himself."

[Q] Playboy: It's been more than ten years since All the President's Men and The Final Days, books that marked the end of the extraordinary reporting you and Bob Woodward did on Watergate. Hasn't it all been a tough act to follow?

[A] Bernstein: You know, we used to get asked that all the time, and we'd say, "Oh, no, we're not going to let that brother us. We're just interested in going out and being the cops on the beat: 'Just the facts, ma'am.' " Well, the question is a reasonable one, and we're always going to hear it. So Bob Writes Wired and gets the shit kicked out of him by the critics; my marriage falls apart and it becomes a national soap opera. Some of this goes with the territory, and some we've helped along ourselves; some has been helped along by other people, some of whom wish you ill. We've had plenty of shots taken at us, some deserved, some self-inflicted, some wild-assed, and you get used to occupying that territory.

[Q] Playboy: But it's you, not Woodward, who are occupying the territory these days--and not only because of Heartburn. You've had a lot of bad press, some of it about how little you seem to have done in the decade since Watergate. What do you think of your output?

[A] Bernstein: I've got my life. I've got my children. I've got my work. I don't make sausages. I don't measure my work by sheer output. I'm more interested in the quality of what goes into it, the continuing quality of the product. I'm proud of the work I've done since I was 16 years old. I'd be glad to hold it up against any standard. Would I like to see more? Sure, I'd always like to see more.

[Q] Playboy: Still, you have one of the two most famous names in journalism. And the perception is that Woodward has been, and continues to be, a major success--

[A] Bernstein: He should be. He's the best Journalist in the business.

[Q] Playboy: And the perception of you is much more mixed.

[A] Bernstein: I totally agree.

[Q] Playboy: Here's what we're driving at: Some of your colleagues would say, "Look, here's a guy who broke Watergate, wrote a couple of great books, then squandered a good deal of money, took a job as bureau chief at ABC, failed at it, spent three years as a TV correspondent, had his marriage come apart in public and really hasn't been able to produce much since 1977 except the beginning of a book."

[A] Bernstein: There are elements in there that might be accurate and elements that are absurd. I've got to address the points individually.

The book I've been writing during that time--about my parents and the McCarthy period of the Fifties--will speak for itself. Clearly, I'm feeling pretty terrific about the book.

I went to work in 1980 for ABC, and being a bureau chief was an unmitigated disaster. Then, in 1981, I went on the air, and I did work I really am proud of and which, I'm sure if you talk to any of my colleagues, is pretty highly respected.

I also did a long piece on Ronald Reagan for The New Republic that I worked on for several months and got a good deal of attention.

So. Am I pleased with my output? No. Am I pleased with the quality of it? Yes. Am I ever pleased with my work? I'm always sort of beating up on myself about my work. And, yes, this period has been one of great upheaval, but I feel terrific for having come out of it. But I think your question was a little bit of a filibuster.

[Q] Playboy: It was a legitimate question.

[A] Bernstein: I just think you wouldn't find many people who would put the question the way you did. I should also say that one effect of all the publicity on my private life--and I understand how the press works--is to create a caricature that will inevitably trivialize me.

[Q] Playboy: Still, you watched your partner, a guy who is your close friend--

[A] Bernstein: Closest friend--

[Q] Playboy: Your closest friend going off to even greater success. You must have had some problems with jealousy--

[A] Bernstein: You'd have to ask a shrink.

[Q] Playboy: What we're saying is that during the period we've talked about, Woodward wrote two best-selling books--The Brethren and Wired--a TV movie and a historical miniseries, all while continuing as an editor and reporter for The Washington Post. Isn't Woodward a tough act to follow?

[A] Bernstein: Inevitably, there's a comparison made between Bob and me, and in terms of sheer output, I'm always going to come out on the short end of the stick. But if I were to measure my life in those terms, I'd spend the rest of it beating my head against the wall.

We do different things. Bob and I are competitive. At the same time, we love each other deeply. We're proud of each other. We're so close that it's something like being siblings.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Bernstein: We've been through something that nobody else has been through. It's an experience that I suspect nobody else is ever going to have. Like any great marriage, it has had its really difficult moments, ups and downs and periods of rage and anger on both sides. And yet, for all that, we've weathered it.

[Q] Playboy: You've just come through a stormy period in your personal life. The end of your marriage to Nora Ephron was widely reported--including the fact that you'd had an affair with the wife of the former British ambassador. Your wife then wrote a thinly disguised novel about the marriage, Heartburn, which became a best seller--and that book has now been turned into a movie starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. How has all the attention affected you?

[A] Bernstein: It's the most difficult period of my life, and it's had an effect on my work, on my equilibrium. It takes a certain toll, saps your energy. I'm not an unemotional person, and it's taken a lot of time and attention, caused a lot of anger and pain.

Any divorce is painful for the people involved, if they're two people who really cared about each other, as Nora and I did. And when you exacerbate it by making it a public spectacle, inviting everyone into your bedroom and your living room, that causes you more pain. And then, when you add to it the fact that you're trying to be a responsible parent and you're worried about the effect of this publicity, you create the kind of situation that doesn't give you the opportunity to really divorce.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean by "really" divorce?

[A] Bernstein: The end of a marriage is, to some extent, about failure. And failure is not something you like to confront, particularly if--like me or Nora--you're not used to failing. Then, instead of our having the ordinary situation, where you're able to move on rapidly from the point at which you separate, Nora created the single vehicle that could keep us connected, in terms of the destructive aspects of the marriage--which was to say, "Shit, now we don't have a marriage to fight over; we have a book and movie to fight over." It would be funny if our lives weren't involved and, particularly, the lives of little kids.

[Q] Playboy: For years, however, you declined to speak publicly about your ex-wife's fictionalized version of your marriage. Why?

[A] Bernstein: I didn't want to get up and have a big pissing match, saying, "Well, this is what happened, this isn't what happened; this is true, this isn't true." So when the book came out, I made a decision: "Don't say a thing about it." At the time, all I said was, "Look, I've always known that Nora writes about everything that happens in her life. And I think the book is just like her--it's very clever."

[Q] Playboy: Were you surprised that she chose to write a book about the marriage?

[A] Bernstein: Knowing Nora, I could understand why she had to do it, to get certain feelings out. But I have a surprisingly naïve side. I should have had no reason to be surprised, knowing that Nora has said, "Everything in your life is material."

Nora's parents were well-known writers, too. They wrote two plays about her, one about her birth. I think she never got over that, though she might say otherwise. You know, this would be a truly hilarious Freudian joke if little kids weren't involved.

[Q] Playboy: You're a writer. Don't you feel that your life is material, too?

[A] Bernstein: I think you learn from everything, but I don't think you put it straight into the typewriter. I think you apply the knowledge, and you use it to become a better writer or a better journalist.

But it seems to me, particularly if you are a public person, that, Jesus, you ought to retain your privacy as much as you can. Let people think whatever the fuck they want to think of your private life. Never give it to them. Never give it away. Your marriage, particularly your children, ought to be something that you zealously keep for yourself. Does everything belong to Liz Smith?

[Q] Playboy: How disturbed have you been about the beating you've taken in the gossip columns?

[A] Bernstein: It is disturbing sometimes. I try to say to myself, "Who gives a shit about what's in the gossip columns?" but there are still times you don't like it. To some extent, I think the gossip celebrity game is meant to be a soap opera: Look at him, up high; let's see how he falls. Smart people learn to live with it. To let the gossip columns be a determining factor in your life is meshuga.

You know, we live in a celebrity culture quite unlike any that's ever existed. And celebrity has very little to do with merit anymore. People are becoming famous for trying to murder their wives, then going on the talk-show circuit for the next year.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you a professional celebrity, in the sense that you get paid large sums of money to give speeches about journalism, even though it's been years since the events that made you famous?

[A] Bernstein: I'm obviously someone who's well known, but I've done something to become well known, and I've continued to do work. I was on the air for ABC. I did good stuff. I've done other pieces of journalism. I'm working on a book.

[Q] Playboy: But you wouldn't command $5000 a speech on the basis of those activities alone.

[A] Bernstein: If it hadn't been for Watergate, obviously not. But, again, I'm talking about becoming celebrated in this culture not by doing a good job as a journalist but by simple exposure.

[Q] Playboy: Haven't you encouraged gossip about yourself? When you choose to go out with some of the most famous women in the world--Elizabeth Taylor, Bianca Jagger--aren't you asking for it?

[A] Bernstein: It goes with the territory. I'm not complaining about it.

[Q] Playboy: We're not asking about territory now. The question is, Don't you seek the attention?

[A] Bernstein: I don't court the attention. One of the interesting things about Elizabeth and me was that we managed to keep it a secret for a long time, and I was real insistent about it. But I think that if anyone pisses and moans too much about being a public person, you ought to turn him upside down and shake him and make him tell the truth. Because, obviously, there are parts of it that are fun. I don't give a shit who anybody sees me with.

[Q] Playboy: For the record, what's Elizabeth Taylor like?

[A] Bernstein: She's a nice, single Jewish girl.

[Q] Playboy: OK. Although you had kept your relationship with Taylor secret, you decided to tell Nora about it, right?

[A] Bernstein: I was just trying to be nice, because I knew it was going to be in the London papers the next day.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true that Nora's reaction was, "You're going to have to leave now, Carl; I have to call my friends"?

[A] Bernstein: That's fairly accurate. What Nora wanted to do, as she often does, was gossip--to treat it as material.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you having it both ways? You go out with Elizabeth Taylor, try to keep that a secret and criticize Nora for--

[A] Bernstein: Look, what's important to me is relationships. You have to insulate them from outside pressures, particularly if you're with someone who is well known. The more you can keep it to just the two of you ... you know, this gets to the heart of what Nora really did these past six years, so it's a good question.

Let people think what they want about your private life. Let them see you walking down the street holding hands with whomever. But when you give it away to the public, when you give away what you sing to your infant child in the nursery, when you give away a poem that you wrote to your wife, you give away your soul! And that's what Nora did.

[Q] Playboy: That's pretty tough.

[A] Bernstein: The fact is, I'm rather protective about Nora. She's my ex-wife. I try to be protective of her feelings regardless of all this; nonetheless, I'll say some rather strong things about what she did, because I think it was reckless and irresponsible. And she worked at it like a dog at a bone.

But that doesn't obviate the fact that Nora is a wonderful person, capable of great work. She has truly wonderful qualities, and she is a terrific mother.

[Q] Playboy: What made you decide to keep silent about all of this?

[A] Bernstein: Well, I think there's a limit, particularly when children are involved. And there came a certain point--when I saw there was going to be a movie--and I said, "Enough, that's it; we've reached the limit. From now on, I'm going to be real hard-assed about this, about what can be in this, movie and what can't be in this movie, and I'm going to make sure this is an experience that causes the children the least harm." Because if I'd just let this go on, without legal remedy, I'm not sure it would have ever ended. We could have been reading this story on cereal boxes.

[Q] Playboy: Actually, you ended up settling rather than going to court--and as part of your divorce agreement, there was an addendum assuring that you'd be portrayed as a loving father, giving you the right to review scripts for the movie and make comments to the director, Mike Nichols. Why do you think Nora agreed to those conditions--and a series of others?

[A] Bernstein: Well, I think she desperately wanted this movie to be made, and she was willing to do damn near anything to have it made. I was surprised that she agreed to certain of the conditions.

[Q] Playboy: Do you and Nora stay in touch?

[A] Bernstein: Sure, and we both have agents. Right now, Nora has a movie coming out and a boyfriend on the best-seller list. Usually, when that happens, Nora gets married. [Ephron was married to writer Dan Greenburg before Bernstein and now lives with writer Nicholas Pileggi.] the trouble starts when you slip off the best-seller list.

[Q] Playboy: Did you give Nora alimony?

[A] Bernstein: No, I gave her an entire industry.

[Q] Playboy: Your only comment about the novel Heartburn up to now has been that it was "clever." Do any other adjectives come to mind?

[A] Bernstein: It had a kind of Joan Rivers sensibility. It's got a nasty tone, a smarmy edge. In the end, the only reason Heartburn came to be was exploitation. Basically, Nora wrote a clever piece of gossip that owed its success to who we were publicly. It came from the fact that Bob Woodward and I were well known, and then Nora and I were well known by virtue of being married.

In that regard, I think, Heartburn is truly a book for our time. It is absolutely the perfect book for the Eighties. It is prurient. It obliterates everybody's dignity, even the little dignity that children ought to have by having a private childhood.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't your life together already something of a media soap opera?

[A] Bernstein: There was a pattern. First, the marriage was announced in a gossip column. Then Nora's way of ending the marriage--the strangest way to end a marriage I've ever seen--was to go to a gossip columnist, Liz Smith in this case, and say, "The marriage is over; here's why." And then the purported story of the marriage and its disintegration becomes a book, and then it becomes a movie. If it were truly interesting, if it were Philip Roth or Woody Allen dealing with the subject with honesty, with grace, with seriousness, it might be worth while--but this was a different kind of exercise.

Among other things, Heartburn is hardly an accurate portrayal of a marriage and a divorce, because it never deals with the reality of what happened in the marriage. The woman in the book suddenly wakes up one day to find out that her husband has fallen in love with another woman and that things are going to hell in a hand basket.

Life is not quite like that. I think that, happily, the book reflects enough of Nora's talent for self-deception that there is some fictional refuge in there for the family.

[Q] Playboy: What did happen to the marriage, from your perspective?

[A] Bernstein: By the time the events described in the book and the movie took place, the marriage was about done. And, obviously, it takes two people to do that, to get a marriage to that state, and we had done it to each other. And at that point, I fell in love with someone else.

[Q] Playboy: Specifically, your wife, seven months pregnant, discovered that you were having an affair with someone else--and she moved out. Is that right?

[A] Bernstein: Let me say, unequivocally, that the breakup of my marriage is a consequence of my actions. Absolutely. There's no question about it. But whatever happened before, in terms of a disintegrating marriage, that's something quite apart.

[Q] Playboy: Why, in your view, did the marriage disintegrate?

[A] Bernstein: I think we both came to believe a little too much of what we were reading in the papers about the marriage. We had come to expect that it had to be storybook perfect, and when one of us wasn't Cinderella or Prince Charming, it created havoc of a degree totally out of proportion to whatever the event would have been in an ordinary marriage.

I read recently a comment Nora made that I thought was telling. She referred to the "chemistry" between Jack and Meryl on screen being like that of Tracy and Hepburn. Perhaps Nora had this idea in her head about us.

Again, I go back to this question of privacy. I think it's very important--particularly for people who are well known--to remain an ordinary person. When you get into trouble is when you start thinking you're real special. And I'm the first to admit that I've done it. And it usually gets my ass into trouble.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think monogamy is an essential ingredient in a good marriage?

[A] Bernstein: I certainly think monogamy is desirable. Clearly, if you're going to be with someone, you want to really be with her, and you can't have a marriage and spend all your time fucking your brains out. That's not what happened with Nora and me. I think it would surprise a great number of people to know that monogamy was never the basic issue in our marriage. Yes, I did eventually choose to be with someone else. But did I fuck around during our marriage? No.

[Q] Playboy: Yet, in Heartburn, Nora describes you as a "piece of work in the sack," a guy who just can't get enough.

[A] Bernstein: Well, I'm certainly not about to talk about how I am in bed. I'll leave that to Nora, since she's done it already. I've got to tell you, the important thing about a man is not how he is in bed. It's how he is with people. Now, bed is fun. Bed is terrific. Sex is great. I'm all for it. I've tried it. I like it. But I think the book has sort of drawn a picture that, though I'd like to take credit for all these adventures that I'm supposed to have had, has a great deal of exaggeration and mythology.

[Q] Playboy: At one point in Heartburn, Nora describes the husband as "capable of having sex with a Venetian blind." Are you?

[A] Bernstein: I think your question addresses the absurdity of what's happened. It's truly ridiculous. I'm glad it's come to this. Boy, am I not indiscriminate about women. I like to be with women, not hit on them.

[Q] Playboy: Was it the depiction of you as a philanderer that disturbed you most?

[A] Bernstein: The bedroom is a pretty private place, and it ought to be that. Also, I'm very sensitive to the implication of disloyalty, because, basically, I am one loyal person. Look, I have done things in my life that I'm not particularly proud of--and, obviously, there's a lot to feel bad about in terms of what happened in my marriage. At the same time, one thing I know about myself is that I have certain values, and I'm certainly not a bad person, and I've done some pretty good things.

[Q] Playboy: You went to an early screening of the movie. What did you think?

[A] Bernstein: Ultimately, the problem with the movie is that it doesn't have anything to say. The reaction I heard from other people who went to screenings was that the movie was slight. People keep saying it's a slight movie. Why do we have Mike Nichols and Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson doing this?

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think they did it?

[A] Bernstein: You'd have to ask them. But, clearly, Mike is someone that people wanted to work with. His reasons for doing it are still a little obscure to me. I think he must have been hallucinating when he bought this thing. When Nora decided that she would sell this as a movie and Mike decided to buy it, I called him and said, "Let's have lunch," because we've been friends for a long time.

So we went to the Russian Tea Room, and I said, "I can't believe you're going to do this." We both have sons named Max, and I said, "If this were a movie that had to do with your Max, as opposed to my Max, and had to do with your private life and your marriage and its ups and downs, as opposed to my marriage, you would go crazy. Particularly since, more than anybody I know, you're a person who cherishes his privacy and that of his children." To which Mike responded, "I am your friend, and somebody's going to make this movie, and you're much better off if I make it, because I'm your friend."

[Q] Playboy: Was he able to convince you?

[A] Bernstein: No. He went on at great length about how he saw something very different from Nora's book, that he saw it from a man's point of view and even applied his own life to it. I wasn't buying it.

[Q] Playboy: Now that you've seen the movie, do you have a better idea of why Nichols wanted to do it?

[A] Bernstein: Well, the other night, I was at the Lincoln Center gala for Elizabeth Taylor, watching clips from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which was directed by Mike Nichols. And it suddenly occurred to me that Mike, who knows both Nora and me very well, saw in us this kind of titanic, classic male-female struggle. Which is nuts! Because what you see when you see this movie is a very little story, a very silly story. It's no epic.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Bernstein: For a number of reasons--not the least of which is the legal action I took--the movie is forced to come quite close to the truth in terms of what really happened in the marriage. The problem is the subject. I'll say it again: It's a silly little story about two people who fucked up.

They had no movie. So there came a point where they brought Jack Nicholson in to save it. I mean, that's true. Mandy Patinkin [originally signed to play the Bernstein character] wasn't the right choice, and Mike wanted a certain point of view in the movie. And to save the movie, he went out and bought Jack.

[Q] Playboy: But come on; you could do worse than to be played by Jack Nicholson.

[A] Bernstein: It's certainly no hardship to be played by him. Or by Dustin Hoffman [who portrayed the real-life Carl Bernstein in All the President's Men]. I figure that by now, those guys have gotten about $8,000,000 or $9,000,000 to play me in movies. It makes me think that next time out, I should play myself. It's not my line of work, but I like the money. Eight or nine million dollars. That's a lot of money to play me.

I did have one hilarious moment in all this. They're making a movie of Wired. My lawyer got a call from the people making the movie, asking me if I wanted to play Jack. I said no. [Woodward's book about the life and death of John Belushi includes descriptions of Nicholson's drug habits during the Seventies.]

[Q] Playboy: Who do you think does a better job playing you--Hoffman or Nicholson?

[A] Bernstein: They're very different. All the President's Men is probably the best movie ever made about journalism--that, and His Girl Friday.

The reason All the President's Men is such and extraordinary movie is its fidelity to the process. There are moments when you see Redford working the telephone when you learn as much about journalism as you could in six months in a journalism school. The same is true when you watch Dustin doing the scene where he goes to interview a person who works for the Nixon re-election committee and elicits information from someone who doesn't want to give it.

[Q] Playboy: What happens in that scene?

[A] Bernstein: I can't remember all the details. You'd have to go back and look at it again. One of the truly hilarious drawbacks of having all this attention is that it's now gotten to the point where sometimes I can't remember what happened in real life, what happens in the book and what happens in the movie. There comes a point at which they all bleed together and I have to go back and check my notes to see what was real. It's absurd.

[Q] Playboy: Did Nicholson call you after he agreed to do the part?

[A] Bernstein: Jack did not call me before he did Heartburn, and I didn't call him. But we did run into each other in a restaurant right after they wrapped the movie. He came up to me and sort of threw up his hands and said, "Well, buddy, I sure as hell wasn't going to call you during the shooting. I didn't want to know anything more about you than I know already."

[Q] Playboy: Let's return to your work. After The Final Days--your second best-selling book with Woodward--came out, why didn't you collaborate with him on The Brethren, which became his next book?

[A] Bernstein: I wasn't particularly interested in doing a book about the Supreme Court or any Government institution. Also, it was not a period when Bob and I were getting along great. We'd been back at the Post for six months, after The Final Days, and we were spinning our wheels. We were frustrated in finding a project. Nora and I had been married for about a year, and Woodward and Nora had never gotten along real well--they didn't like each other much--and I'm sure that had something to do with it.

[Q] Playboy: So what happened?

[A] Bernstein: I decided to leave the Post, and my thoughts about the kind of reporting I wanted to try started to change. Subconsciously, I'd always known that at some point, I would want to write about my parents. So that idea started to take shape.

[Q] Playboy: And in 1977, you began to write the book you've titled Progressive People.

[A] Bernstein: I did, and, in fact, I did all the interviewing--happily, because a lot of the people are now dead. And I started to write, and I had written what really was the beginning of the book, and still is, 40 pages or so that set the tone and the voice. Then I got what I thought was blocked. In 20 years of working for newspapers, I had never, ever been blocked. In retrospect, I think it was that my marriage was falling apart. Also, I was too young to write this book. So at that point, I decided, Well, I think I'll go back to work for the Post.

[Q] Playboy: We're talking about 1979--so you'd been away for more than two years.

[A] Bernstein: It's an interesting story. Woodward and I talked, and then we started talking at great length with Bradlee [Ben Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post]. First, there was a plan that we would go back as co--metropolitan editors. And I must say, since I was a kid, I'd always wanted to be an editor.

So we had serious discussions about it. Ben took the idea to Katharine Graham [publisher of the Post], and I think she had some real reservations about it. I think everyone had reservations. They knew we'd had some rough times. There were periods when we weren't even talking to each other. And I think there was also probably some genuine fear about the two of us going into management together and running roughshod over everybody.

[Q] Playboy: How was the idea finally dropped?

[A] Bernstein: I had always been very interested in television. I knew Roone Arledge [president of ABC News] from Long Island, where I had a house, and I saw him occasionally. I made a proposal to Roone in the summer of 1979, while Bob and I were still negotiating with the Post. Because if Bob and I took that job, it wouldn't happen for six months. I wanted to do some pieces for Roone. I thought it would be a good way to learn television. He liked the idea.

[Q] Playboy: So you went after a TV career?

[A] Bernstein: I made my proposal to Roone's executives and they said, "We've got a different idea. Why don't you come work for us as Washington bureau chief?" I said, "Well, for starters, I don't know anything about television." They said, "You don't need to know anything about television. We want someone who knows news." Eventually, I accepted the job. I was very relieved not to have to go back to The Washington Post. Also, there was a part of me that didn't want to be in this race with Woodward, competing against each other as editors. He was determined to be an editor, and it would have been ... there could have been real bloodshed. So I thought the ABC job was really a good solution. But I was disastrous at the job, and it was a disaster for me. Jesus Christ, being a Washington bureau chief is a job that's nothing but that of a paper shuffler. It's got no power. I had virtually no editorial authority. That lies in the hands of the producers, and I wish I had known that when I took the job. I just hated it, because I was beating my head against the wall. Instead of being smart, I let things deteriorate. I never went to Roone and his people; I never had the guts to say, "Either you guys sold me a bill of goods about this job or you don't know what the fuck goes on at your network."

[Q] Playboy: A year into the job, the folks at ABC made your decision for you--and decided to replace you. What happened?

[A] Bernstein: The executives said, "This isn't going to work." And I said, "I agree. I want out."

[Q] Playboy: Was it then that you suggested setting up a special investigative team?

[A] Bernstein: This was still in the days when Arledge wanted reporting--something I'm not sure he really wants anymore. So I made a proposal to them, and I said, "Maybe I'll try some stuff on the air myself, go to television school, learn how to parse my sentences." And producer Dick Wald said, "Look, if you want to go on the air, go on the air. Forget this other stuff." So I became an on-air correspondent. And I feel very good about what I did on the air at ABC.

[Q] Playboy: After some troubles with World News Tonight, you ended up with Ted Koppel and Nightline--and doing some reporting overseas. How did that happen?

[A] Bernstein: I went to Ted, who'd become my closest friend at ABC and is the best newsman on TV, and he decided to send me to London. I just knew that I could find out something about the Falklands war--the story we'd begun to report--that other people couldn't.

[Q] Playboy: How did you develop news sources in London?

[A] Bernstein: I just went there as a reporter and started moving around, asking questions. I found this one guy in particular who was one of the people running the operation in the Falklands. Interestingly enough, he was misleading British reporters, because part of the deal was for the Argentines to get bad information from the British press. But I was able to get good information from him. I got on the air virtually every night with what was really going on. And then we went on the air 24 hours before everyone else with the story of the actual invasion.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think are the key ingredients to being a good reporter?

[A] Bernstein: They're different. For example, Woodward is much more direct than I am. He'll just sit there and say, "All right, that's when you took the money, right?" Whereas I'll spend three hours listening to a guy's tales, learning everything around the edges and trying to get all this in context. To me, the thing about reporting has always been to be a good listener and to try to understand and be empathic to the person you're speaking to. I always got along with the people I was dealing with in the Nixon Administration. I did not go in saying, "You're a crook." I heard them out.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't the nature of reporting often adversarial?

[A] Bernstein: I think that there is a myth about adversarial journalism, the idea that the reporter and the subject always have to be at loggerheads. Nonsense. You don't learn things by fighting right off the bat. If there comes a reason to fight, to be adversaries, then engage. But I think a lot of reporters go in to a subject with questions that are intended not so much to elicit information or the truth as to engage and trap--and, quite often, to do a number on somebody. And I think that's perverse.

[Q] Playboy: Are you speaking from personal experience as the subject of such attacks?

[A] Bernstein: One thing I've learned, that Woodward and I have learned, is that people are going to take some real tough shots at you. If you were to look, for instance, at the Washingtonian magazine from the time of Watergate to today, I doubt that you would find a single issue without a shot at either Woodward or myself. I'm better adjusted to it now, more used to the ebb and flow of criticism. It has a certain rhythm. But you never get used to it completely. I'm always going to be a person who, when pricked, bleeds a little.

[Q] Playboy: It may surprise a lot of people to hear you say that you don't see yourself as an adversarial reporter.

[A] Bernstein: I think that people like to tell the truth. I think reporters often don't give them the chance to tell the truth. Truth is not simple. People are not simple. The truth is complex, and reporters ought to recognize that.

I don't think this is a period of American journalism when reporting the best obtainable version of the truth is the real priority of our news institutions. In television, it's become the last priority, and I think that the same is true, generally, of newspapers--though The Washington Post and The New York Times are somewhat exceptions. But if you ask somebody at the New York Daily News, "What's your priority? Whom are you paying more money to--a reporting team to find out what's going on in this city or Liz Smith?" you'll find that Liz Smith is what counts. Now, I read gossip and enjoy it along with everybody else. But I think that the priorities are a little screwed up now--more than a little screwed up.

[Q] Playboy: So you've become a press critic?

[A] Bernstein: I don't want to generalize too much, but I think there is a perception among a lot of people in public life that reporters often cannot get quotations straight and skew things out of context. Reporters often are in too much of a hurry, and they often have preconceived notions about stories.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any preconceived notions when you started reporting Water-gate?

[A] Bernstein: We had no idea what the story of Watergate was. And we kept disbelieving it every step of the way. I mean, I couldn't believe this stuff we were getting. If nothing else, we thought of Richard Nixon as being prudent. Maybe because of my radical background, I bent over backward trying to think it was impossible that Nixon could have any connection with this.

[Q] Playboy: Let's go back to that time. It was early in the morning of June 17, 1972, when five men were arrested for a burglary at the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate. Bob Woodward was assigned to the story. How did you manage to insinuate yourself into it?

[A] Bernstein: You have to remember that Saturday morning is a real quiet time at most newspapers, particularly the Post. At the time, I was the chief Virginia correspondent, and I was finishing a long profile of a wonderful man named Henry Howell, who was running for governor there. I walked by the national desk, and I heard this talk about the break-in. So I went over to the city desk and said to whoever was on the desk, "Do you want me to make some calls?" And whoever it was said, "Sure, go ahead and make some calls." Among other things, I always had a reputation for using the phone very well.

[Q] Playboy: What does that entail?

[A] Bernstein: The first thing is to know whom to call. That's three quarters of it. And to get there quickly. That's the real trick. How to get the phone number, how to make sure the person comes to the phone, how to engage right away. It's always better if you have some information; then you can use it to get more.

[Q] Playboy: You make it sound simple.

[A] Bernstein: Being a reporter ain't being a brain surgeon. I think that the more exotic you make it, the farther off the mark you're going to get. And, indeed, the reason that we were able to do with Watergate what a lot of other people weren't is that we kept it real simple--basic, empirical kinds of police-reporting techniques.

We talked to the people who would have the information. We had never covered the White House, so you get yourself a chart, and you say, "Who works here?" You see, oh, yes, this secretary. You look her up in the phone book; she lives in Rockville; you go to Rockville, you go at night, not when she's working at her office and her boss is going to see you talking to her.

That's exactly why the Federal prosecutors didn't get a fucking thing the first time around. They interviewed people in their offices, with attorneys for the Nixon people around. The subjects were under duress. We got them at home. Common sense. Then you work your way up.

[Q] Playboy: Actually, the story goes that at the time you began work on Watergate, your job at the Post was in jeopardy. Is that true?

[A] Bernstein: That's myth. The truth of the matter is, I was getting ready to quit. I was having a good time covering Virginia, but I was also the part-time rock critic. I really loved doing the rock pieces, and the paper had just created the Style section and, among other things, we were going to have a full-time rock critic. So I went to Bradlee and said, "I want to be the rock critic, as well as do some long, discursive pieces." Eventually, Bradlee said OK.

Then there was a little bit of a palace revolt, which at The Washington Post happens every three or four days. And suddenly, somebody else was going to be editor of Style, and he had his own candidate for the rock-critic job. So I was unselected, and I was truly pissed off. I said, "That's it; I'm out of this place. I've had enough of The Washington Post." I wanted to go to Vietnam, and Bradlee wouldn't send me, and I was feeling unappreciated.

[Q] Playboy: What did you see as the solution?

[A] Bernstein: Well, I knew that Hunter Thompson was leaving Rolling Stone. I knew Jann Wenner [the editor of Rolling Stone], so I wrote to him, saying, "Hey, I'd really like to take Hunter's job." And, of course, Wenner being Wenner, he took forever to make up his mind about what the hell he was doing. In the meantime, the Watergate break-in happened, and I stayed at The Washington Post, and that was the end of that.

[Q] Playboy: In other words, if Wenner had been quicker, you might have ended up as a rock critic.

[A] Bernstein: That was certainly a possibility. I must say that when I finish my book, I am going to go back to writing some music pieces. You are looking at a rock-'n'-roll person.

[Q] Playboy: A rock-'n'-roll person who happened to do a little police reporting on the side. When did you first think there was a White House connection to Watergate?

[A] Bernstein: In September 1972--three months after the break-in--we wrote a story saying that John Mitchell [then Attorney General] controlled a secret fund that had financed the Watergate bugging and other intelligence-gathering activities. Then you really had to start thinking that it had a much larger dimension.

I remember standing with Woodward, right after we had named Mitchell. There had never been a story like this. An Attorney General of the United States, the highest law-enforcement officer in the country, had controlled a secret fund and paid for the undermining of the Nixon opposition. I said to Woodward, "You know, this guy [Nixon] is going to get impeached."

The word hadn't been uttered anywhere up to then. Woodward looked at me in astonishment. "You know, you're right," he said. "But neither of us can ever mention that word again to anybody except each other." At the time, it was a breathtaking thought.

[Q] Playboy: It's interesting that as we speak [in May], Richard Nixon is on the cover of Newsweek, with the headline "He's Back." What do you think when you see that?

[A] Bernstein: Journalistically, I think the Newsweek cover was an awful piece of work and a piece of puffery. It's at variance with the truth, both in terms of what Nixon says about his actions--the idea that Watergate was some little bugging and miscalculation on his part--and in terms of the credence the piece gives to that notion.

At the same time, I think Richard Nixon is infinitely the most interesting political figure of our time. He's been around for 40 years. He's been a part of almost every major event for more than two generations. And part of the fascination with him is due to his ability to come back from the dead--or near dead. I mean, he's had his last press conference; he's had his Checkers speech; he damn near died after Watergate. Some say he was suicidal. But he came back. Whatever one thinks of Richard Nixon and what he did in office, you've got to have some admiration for the way the guy comes back. And a little bit of awe.

[Q] Playboy: Nixon's perspective in the Newsweek interview is that while he made some mistakes in Watergate, their magnitude was overblown. How do you see it?

[A] Bernstein: He's being disingenuous, and any body familiar with the way Nixon has spoken over the years recognizes that. It was not small potatoes. It's not as he describes it. It was not about misjudgment. It was about a series of events, about undermining the very system that the President of the United States takes anoath to uphold.

[Q] Playboy: Yet there is also evidence that many Americans--looking back--are no longer as appalled by Watergate.

[A] Bernstein: Well, one thing is that we have a memory of about four minutes in this country, and I'm not sure people remember what really happened. It was not about merely planting a bug at the Watergate. The term Watergate came to mean a pervasive abuse of the powers of the Presidency by those closest to the President, on an unprecedented scale--bugging, wire tapping, following people, breaking into a psychiatrist's file, starting a private police force in the White House to undertake illegal activities against the opposition.

Then, if you remember, Nixon engaged in a cover-up, an obstruction of justice in which he told his subordinates, "I don't give a shit what you do. Lie, stonewall, whatever you have to do to get past the grand jury." I mean, it's incredible. What he did was subvert his own office.

[Q] Playboy: Nixon speculates in the Newsweek interview that "Deep Throat"--the celebrated key source for your Watergate stories--was actually a composite.

[A] Bernstein: He's wrong. Deep Throat is one person, exactly as described in All the President's Men--a source in the Executive branch who had access to information at the Committee to Re-elect as well as at the White House. If you think that Bradlee would have allowed us to start working with composite sources with the reputation of the paper on the line, Jesus Christ. Aside from which, it's nothing we would do. No, it's one person.

[Q] Playboy: It seems surprising, in a way, that the person has never been identified--or stepped forward.

[A] Bernstein: I'm not even going to shrug my shoulders at what you're saying. When we wrote All the President's Men, we went to all our sources and asked if we could use their names. Some said yes. Hugh Sloan, treasurer of the Nixon re-election committee, was one. A number of others are named in the book. Others, including Deep Throat, said no. We respected that.

[Q] Playboy: Does anyone besides Woodward and you know Deep Throat's identity?

[A] Bernstein: I think Bradlee knows, but I'm not sure. My recollection is that Ben was never told who it was, but I think he's got some pretty educated guesses.

[Q] Playboy: What about Nora?

[A] Bernstein: No. She used to ask me a lot, and I had the good sense not to tell her.

[Q] Playboy: Following Watergate--and the writing of All the President's Men--you turned immediately to The Final Days, a book about the last 100 days of the Nixon Administration. In some ways, that portrait--of a man coming apart, depressed, isolated, desperate, perhaps suicidal--was more devastating than the disclosures about Watergate itself.

[A] Bernstein: Actually, one of the reasons I've always felt quite proud of the book is that it's got a human dimension that the original Watergate reporting doesn't have. It is not unsympathetic to Richard Nixon. I think there is probably a lot more empathy in that book than in almost any other account you'll find of Nixon in office, because it's accurate.

When The Final Days came out, it was attacked by people like [columnist] Bill Safire, people around Henry Kissinger and, particularly, by some Republican pundits. They all got up and said, "It can't be true. How can you know this stuff? It's all based on anonymous sources." Well, that book has stood the test of time, and nobody has contradicted a single fact in it, really. Nobody believed at first that Nixon actually got down on his knees with Kissinger and prayed.

It's an amazing tale. And it taught me a lot about reporting--that you've got to go back and get to those people right away, before they can change their stories, before hindsight sets in. We got to those people right away. The day Nixon resigned, we went to work. And we did--I can't remember--I think it's 394 interviews.

[Q] Playboy: There were rumors around the time you were working on The Final Days that you weren't carrying your weight--that Woodward and another collaborator, Scott Armstrong, were doing most of the work. How true is that?

[A] Bernstein: Early in the reporting on The Final Days, there was, indeed, a period when I was not pulling my weight; I wasn't doing enough work. Bob rightly got pissed off, and we had a pretty good blowup about it. It was not the first time that it had happened. Then, as always seems to happen, I got the traction and did the best work I've ever done, both in terms of the reporting and in terms of the writing and editing of the book. All of The Final Days went through my typewriter.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any regrets about the book? For example, Nixon has said that he believes The Final Days is what caused his wife, Pat, to have a stroke.

[A] Bernstein: I'm not a doctor, and I don't know what happened with her stroke. I would think that the ordeal Mrs. Nixon went through during the last few years of her husband's Presidency might have been a little worse than reading our book.

[Q] Playboy: Does that mean you don't have any misgivings about what you wrote?

[A] Bernstein: I have some doubts about having written about the Nixons' sexual relationship. I'm not sure I'd do it again. The reason I thought it belonged in the book at the time was that family has always had so much to do with his thinking. The Nixon marriage seemed to me very much a part of the story we were telling, because it was not as it seemed on the surface.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you have second thoughts?

[A] Bernstein: I'm not sure that we had to treat the readers to the fact that the Nixons hadn't slept together for a long time. I don't know what it added to the book or our understanding of what happened.

[Q] Playboy: Might your second thoughts be partly a result of having the details of your own life written about during the past several years?

[A] Bernstein: No, they're not at all comparable. And your question is silly.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you hit rock bottom in your own personal life in the summer of 1983, shortly after Heartburn came out as a book and you were arrested in Washington for drunken driving?

[A] Bernstein: My blood-alcohol level was above the legal limit, but the charges were eventually dropped.

[Q] Playboy: But wasn't it pretty well known that you had a drinking problem?

[A] Bernstein: I think in the past few years, as I got into my late 30s, I certainly couldn't handle liquor in the way I could when I was younger. When I drank a lot, I would get terminally boring. I'm chemically sensitive. So finally I said, "Fuck it. Just don't drink anything." Basically, for two years, I haven't been a drinker.

[Q] Playboy: What about drugs?

[A] Bernstein: They're not for me.

[Q] Playboy: Nonetheless, after the drunk-driving arrest, you checked into a Washington hospital for a period of time.

[A] Bernstein: Four days.

[Q] Playboy: OK. What was going on?

[A] Bernstein: I was feeling awful. I was having terrible headaches and feeling depressed and exhausted, and I said, "I'd better find out what the fucks is the matter with me." And I went in and got a CAT scan. I'd had migraines in my 20s, and they were just awful. I was under such pressure that they were coming back.

[Q] Playboy: What was the pressure?

[A] Bernstein: If I look at it now, I was feeling some real depression about Heartburn's becoming a movie and the effect that was likely to have on all of us. And I think I was also feeling some real guilt about the breakup of the marriage, and I sort of said, "Well, it's time to stop feeling guilty, because whatever happened happened."

That's the point at which I said, "Enough already with this shit." In a way, you could say the hospital period wasn't my worst moment; it was a good moment. I decided not to sit around feeling powerless about this thing; I wanted to end this public spectacle.

[Q] Playboy: A few months later, your contract was up for renegotiation at ABC, and it wasn't renewed. Why not?

[A] Bernstein: If I stayed at ABC, I wanted a regular slot--the entire time I was at ABC, the big problem was fighting for air time. Also, I wanted to be in New York, so I could be with my children all the time--neither of which ABC wanted to do.

While I was negotiating my contract with ABC, Joan Didion, who was an old friend and with whom I'd talked about the book about my parents, came to Washington. While we were sitting in the Jockey Club, I said to her, "There's a piece of me that really wants to go back to the book. Why don't you take a read?" I gave her the first 50 pages. She called me the next morning and said, "You've got to finish the book now." Clearly, it's what I really wanted to do. It was just a question of getting the guts to do it.

[Q] Playboy: The book is about growing up in a left-wing family in Washington, right?

[A] Bernstein: Yes. I think that what happened during the first witch-hunts of the Cold War, during the Truman Administration and during the McCarthy period, was, in a way, the last undisturbed corner in a national nightmare. There is no comprehension today of what happened to the country or to people like my parents.

[Q] Playboy: It's interesting that, having grown up in such a politically active family, you don't seem to be very political.

[A] Bernstein: I'm not. The reason I'm a reporter is the experience of my childhood. As a child, I was around a lot of people who were true believers, religionists about political and ideological causes, and it scared the hell out of me.

I am uncomfortable around ideologues, particularly on the left. At the same time, I generally respect the values of those on the left a lot more. I do believe things about what governments ought to do and how they ought to care for people and about how income ought to be distributed, to some extent.

[Q] Playboy: And yet you've benefited handsomely from a capitalist economy--earning a lot and spending a lot.

[A] Bernstein: I'm a bourgeois person and I live in a bourgeois society, and I rather enjoy this society. I believe in a freemarket economy. That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see some changes in it. I wasn't born in poverty. I'm not a Marxist. I'm a reporter.

[Q] Playboy: But you were a rich reporter. Among other things, it's been estimated that, between All the President's Men, the book and the movie, and The Final Days, you earned upwards of $3,000,000. What happened to it?

[A] Bernstein: It got spent. First of all, Nora and I went through amazing amounts of money. We bought a house. We traveled a lot. Both of us are way up there as major spenders, particularly when we were together. And I'm not very prudent about money. I don't invest it wisely. I don't pay much attention to it. I never set out to make a lot of money, and it's never been a guiding force in my life. I've always sort of lived off what I had, or a little bit above my means, perhaps.

[Q] Playboy: At one points in our preparation for this interview, you suggested we read the description of you in David Halberstam's book The Powers That Be. He says a lot of good things about you. But he also quotes Dustin Hoffman as saying, "Carl is essentially a fuck-up and he has to fail, and Nixon is a fuck-up and has to fail, and so Carl could always understand Nixon." How do you react to that?

[A] Bernstein: Oh, I think that's Dustin looking for a good quote to give Halberstam. That's the craziest line I've ever heard.

[Q] Playboy: Halberstam also quotes your old boss Ben Bradlee as calling you a "winner determined to be a loser."

[A] Bernstein: I think the work speaks for itself, and I'm not going to quarrel with anybody and I'm not going to contradict anybody and I'm not going to make any assertions about myself. That doesn't require any great explanation. Do I believe that about myself? Obviously not.

[Q] Playboy: Well, then, to what extent do you have self-destructive tendencies?

[A] Bernstein: I know I've always been a person who pushes things, who lives on the edge. I'm aware that there are lots of risks in life, and I take some of them. Sometimes it's paid off; other times, it's caused some hurt. If you'd characterize those instances as self-destructive--it's not a word I would use--I'd understand it.

But in terms of being suicidal or anything like that, hell, no. I'm a real survivor. I think there have been periods in my life, particularly when I was younger, when I was capable of great self-deception about some of my weaknesses. As I get older, the scales fall away from my eyes, and I'm forced to confront certain things. I don't think I have much of a talent for selfdeception anymore.

[Q] Playboy: Do you believe your toughest times are behind you?

[A] Bernstein: Things have sort of smoothed out. You get to 40, and there's something very calming and reassuring. I love my life since I turned 40. In fact, I was thinking about it this morning.

I've never been a great morning person, but I was up early this morning because I took Jacob to school, and I was walking down Broadway. Somehow, it reminded me of how I used to go to work when I was a kid, when I started as a copy boy. I went to work when I was 16 years old and really learned the business in a way that nobody learns it anymore. Jack Kennedy had just become President and I went to all his press conferences because I was a copy boy, and I would run back and mimeograph the text. I took dictation from David Broder about Kennedy's being shot and misspelled hospital because my hands were shaking so badly. And then came the civil rights movement, which I covered, and the antiwar movement, and the counterculture. And then came Watergate, which is the most extraordinary experience in journalism that anybody has ever had in this country.

And now, to bring it all together and create something that's a synthesis of those experiences, as well as what you learn from being a father and what you learn from being a husband, is a pretty good place to be at.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds pretty good. But without raining on your parade, is it possible that some of this is a rationalization--your way of putting a good face even on some very difficult times?

[A] Bernstein: Clearly, the period I've just come out of has been one of great upheaval. But I wouldn't trade places with anyone. I feel terrific for having come out of this with my head screwed on, with great friends, wonderful children and a solidity about where my work is. I don't weigh the consequences of what I do on a scale. I'm not calculating. I go by my instincts. I live a certain way, and I've come to realize that I can't live my life to meet other people's wishes and expectations.

"Woodward and I are competitive, yet we love each other deeply. With, Watergate, we had an, experience I suspect nobody, else is ever going to have."