All the President's Men is a 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two of the journalists who investigated the June 1972 break-in at the Watergate Office Building and the resultant political 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 Nixon Administration officials H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman in April 1973, and the revelation of the Oval Office Watergate tapes by Alexander Butterfield three months later. 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 hidden for over 30 years. Gene Roberts, the former executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and former managing editor of The New York Times, has called the work of Woodward and Bernstein "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time."
A film adaptation, produced by Robert Redford, 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 Richard Nixon's presidency, starting around the time their previous book ended.
Background
Woodward and Bernstein had considered the idea of writing a book about Watergate, but did not commit until actor Robert Redford 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 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 was made more explicitly a quarter-century earlier in Robert Penn Warren's 1946 novel All the King's Men, which describes the career of a fictional corrupt governor, loosely based on Huey Long.
Important individuals
The President
Richard Nixon
The President's Men
They are listed with their 1972 positions in either the president's executive staff or in his re-election committee, where applicable.
White House
Alexander Butterfield, Deputy Assistant to the President
Dwight Chapin, Deputy Assistant to the President
Ken W. Clawson, Deputy Director of Communications for the President
Charles Colson, Chief Counsel for the President
John Dean, White House Counsel
John 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 Kissinger, National Security Advisor Egil Krogh, 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 Ron 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 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 Mardian, CRP political coordinator John N. Mitchell, Attorney General, and CRP campaign director Robert Odle, Director of Administration ("office manager") for CRP Kenneth Parkinson, CRP counsel Herbert Porter, CRP organizer and former White House aide Donald Segretti, political operative for CRP Hugh W. Sloan Jr., CRP treasurer Judy Hoback Miller, CRP bookkeeper Maurice 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
Rest of the President's Men
Alfred C. Baldwin III
Jack Caulfield
L. Patrick Gray, acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Richard Kleindienst, Attorney General (succeeding John Mitchell) Fred LaRue, no rank, title, salary or even listing in the White House directory Powell A. Moore Kenneth Rietz DeVan L. Shumway
The Burglars
Bernard L. Barker
Virgilio R. Gonzalez
Eugenio R. Martinez
James W. McCord, Jr. Frank A. Sturgis