Carl Bernstein

Carl Bernstein was born on February 14, 1944, in Washington, D.C., to Alfred David Bernstein and Sylvia Bernstein.⁠[1]

In 1960, at 16, after an interview arranged by his father, he joined Washington’s afternoon paper, the Evening Star (also known as the Washington Star), as a copyboy; he was promoted to dictationist and city desk clerk, helped the reporters covering John F. KennedyJohn F. KennedyJohn F. Kennedy (1917–1963) was an American politician who represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 to 1963. The youngest person elected president and the first Roman Catholic to hold the office, he was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963.Open the full entry’s inauguration in 1961, and was reporting for the paper by the age of 19.⁠[2][3][1]

From 1961 to 1964 he attended the University of Maryland but did not graduate. Because the Star required staff reporters to hold a college degree, he left the paper in 1965.⁠[1][4][3]

In 1965 he followed Coit Henley, an assistant city editor of the Washington Star, to the Elizabeth Daily Journal in Elizabeth, New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the eastern United States on the Atlantic Ocean, bordered by New York State, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, with the Hudson River forming its northeastern boundary and the Delaware River its western boundary; its capital is Trenton and its largest city is Newark. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 18, 1787, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 9,288,994.Open the full entry, where he worked as a reporter and columnist; his stories on teenage drinking and the 1965 blackout won first prizes from the New Jersey Press Association.⁠[4][1]

In 1966 The Washington Post hired him as a reporter on its metropolitan staff. Before Watergate he was assigned to roving coverage of VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry politics. In 1968 he served in the U.S. Army.⁠[4][5][6][1]

After the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, he and Bob Woodward were assigned to the story. On June 18 The Washington Post published the first report under the bylines of Alfred E. Lewis, Bernstein and Woodward. On October 10, 1972, a front-page article by the two described the break-in as part of a “massive campaign of political spying and sabotage” connected with Richard NixonRichard NixonRichard Nixon (1913–1994) was an American politician who represented California in the U.S. House and Senate, served as vice president from 1953 to 1961 and was the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to 1974. His administration opened relations with China, signed strategic arms limitation agreements with the Soviet Union and ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War; he resigned over the Watergate scandal on August 9, 1974, the only U.S. president to do so.Open the full entry’s re-election effort.⁠[5][4]

Over the next 26 months the two wrote hundreds of stories on abuses by the Nixon administration and its cover-up, drawing in part on an anonymous source known as “Deep Throat.” BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry credits editor Ben Bradlee with encouraging them to keep investigating and describes their reporting as linking the burglary to the White House and uncovering a conspiracy and cover-up.⁠[4][5][6]

The Washington Post received the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for this reporting, with the citation “For its investigation of the Watergate case.” His other awards for the Watergate reporting include the George Polk Award, the Drew Pearson Foundation Award, the Worth Bingham Prize, the Heywood Broun Award, the International Newspaper Guild Award, the Sidney Hillman Foundation Award and the Sigma Delta Chi Award.⁠[7][4][1]

All the President’s Men, written with Woodward, was published in 1974, and Richard Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9 of that year. In 1976 the book was adapted into a film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, and the two reporters’ second book, The Final Days, appeared the same year. He remained a reporter at The Washington Post until 1976 and wrote for the paper in 1976–1977.⁠[1][8][9]

In 1979 ABC News hired him as its Washington bureau chief, a post he held for about 16 months; in 1981 he became a senior correspondent in New York City, focusing on national security, and he left ABC in 1984.⁠[4]

In 1989 he published Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir, about his family’s experiences in the McCarthy era. In 1990 he became a writer for Time. In 1996 His Holiness, a biography of Pope John Paul II written with Marco Politi, was published.⁠[1][10][4]

In 2003 the University of Texas at Austin announced the Woodward-Bernstein Watergate Archive at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, holding the reporters’ Watergate working materials from 1972 to 1976, including interview notes, memos, story drafts, interview transcripts and tape recordings.⁠[9]

In 2005 a Vanity Fair article identified “Deep Throat” as W. Mark Felt, a former associate director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; he wrote the afterword to Woodward’s The Secret Man, published that year.⁠[11][4]

In 2007 he published A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, a biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton. In 2008 he worked as an analyst for CNNCNNCNN (Cable News Network) is an Atlanta-based news organization founded by Ted Turner on June 1, 1980, as the world’s first 24-hour television news channel. It has been owned in turn by Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner, AT&T and Warner Bros. Discovery, became part of Skydance Corporation along with Warner Bros. Discovery in October 2026, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry, and he has also been a contributing editor of Vanity Fair.⁠[1][4]

On January 11, 2022, Henry Holt and Co. published his memoir Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, an account of his early years in journalism at the Evening Star and elsewhere; the book became a New York Times bestseller.⁠[2][3][12]

He married the reporter Carol Ann Honsa on April 28, 1968; they later divorced. On April 14, 1976, he married the writer and editor Nora Ephron. His children include Jacob.⁠[1][6]

Carl Bernstein: Official website: https://carlbernstein.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]