All the President's Men by Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein Page A

could appear with his on the follow-up story—though Bernstein was still in Miami and had not worked on it. From then on, any Watergate story would carry both names. Their colleagues melded the two into one and gleefully named their byline Woodstein.
    Gradually, Bernstein’s and Woodward’s mutual distrust and suspicions diminished. They realized the advantages of working together, particularly because their temperaments were so dissimilar. Thebreadth of the story, the inherent risks and the need for caution all argued for at least two reporters working on it. By dividing the work and pooling their information, they increased their contacts.
    Each kept a separate master list of telephone numbers. The numbers were called at least twice a week. (Just the fact that a certain source wouldn’t come to the phone or return calls often signaled something important.) Eventually, the combined total of names on their lists swelled to several hundred, yet fewer than 50 were duplicated. Inevitably, they crossed each other’s tracks. “Don’t you guys work together?” a lawyer once asked Woodward. “I just this minute hung up on Carl.” On another occasion, a White House aide said, “We’ve been trying to figure out why some of us get calls from Bernstein and others seem to be on Woodward’s list.” There was no reason. The reporters wanted to avoid tripping over each other’s work as much as possible. In general, they preferred to keep their contacts divided because confidential sources would feel more comfortable that way: more time could be invested in developing a personal relationship.
    To those who sat nearby in the newsroom, it was obvious that Woodstein was not always a smoothly operating piece of journalistic machinery. The two fought, often openly. Sometimes they battled for fifteen minutes over a single word or sentence. Nuances were critically important; the emphasis had to be just right. The search for the journalistic mean was frequently conducted at full volume, and it was not uncommon to see one stalk away from the other’s desk. Sooner or later, however (usually later), the story was hammered out.
    Each developed his own filing system; oddly, it was Bernstein, by far the less organized of the two, who kept records neatly arranged in manila folders labeled with the names of virtually everyone they encountered. Subject files were kept as well. Woodward’s recordkeeping was more informal, but they both adhered to one inviolate rule: they threw nothing out and kept all their notes and the early drafts of stories. Soon they had filled four filing cabinets.
    Usually, Woodward, the faster writer, would do a first draft, then Bernstein would rewrite. Often, Bernstein would have time to rewrite only the first half of a story, leaving Woodward’s second half hanging like a shirttail. The process often consumed most of the night.
    As the number of leads and components in the Watergate story increased, the reporters became almost possessed by it. And, tentativelyat first, they became friends. Neither had many demands on his time. Woodward was divorced; Bernstein separated. They often remained in the newsroom until late at night, making checks, reading clippings, outlining their next steps, trading theories. Sometimes they were joined by Barry Sussman, who ultimately was detached from his regular duties as city editor and given prime responsibility for directing the Post’s Watergate coverage.
    Sussman was 38, gentle in his manner, slightly overweight, curly-haired, scholarly in demeanor. He had been a desk man on a small-town newspaper near the Virginia-Tennessee line, a speed-reading instructor at New York University, a society editor, and then suburban editor for the Post —a vagabond journalist who had left Brooklyn odd-jobbing his way to Washington.
    Sussman had the ability to seize facts and lock them in his memory, where they remained poised for instant recall. More than any other editor at the Post, or