Revisiting All the President's Men

I watched this movie again tonight.  It may be the sixth time I've seen it.  I liked it so much I actually purchased it on iTunes.

As I watched it tonight, I became sharply aware of the similarities between the Watergate story and our present situation with the present president.

The lies
the secrecy
and especially... the money!!!

I was also painfully aware of the limitations under which those young Washington Post reporters labored: the technology that wasn't in existence in 1972.

The film of the book was made in 1975, so the portrayal of the technology was very accurate.

Here are the reporters listening in on a phone call to one of the three.

So much of their investigative reporting was done on the hoof. Here is one of the women interviewed over lunch on the roof of the Kennedy center.

Here are Woodward and Bernstein reading all the index card sized handwritten requests for books.
No online catalogue!  No  Google!

and the lovely way the camera pulls back to show a view from the ceiling of the Library of Congress.


The present investigators have it so much easier in some ways, and so much harder in others.

But the obfuscation and the coverup are still the same.

I am haunted by the worry of how this one will end.