One of the nation’s most celebrated journalists, Carl Bernstein, will deliver the Elliot Stein Lecture in Ethics at 4 p.m. Oct. 23 in Graham Chapel.
The lecture, “Public Ethics: The Responsibilities of Elected Officials,” is free and open to the public and is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values in Arts & Sciences.
As a cub reporter for the Washington Post, Bernstein was in the right place at the right time to become part of the story that became the Watergate scandal.
A break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972, got some media attention at first but was dismissed as a trivial matter.
But Bernstein and fellow reporter Bob Woodward did not give up.
They hunted down hundreds of leads despite intense criticism and found links between the burglars and the Committee for the Re-election of President Richard Nixon.
With the help of a source known as “Deep Throat,” the reporters were able to find a link to Nixon, and, in an Oct. 10, 1972, story in the Post, disclosed that the Watergate break-in was part of a larger effort to sabotage Nixon’s political opponents.
Bernstein left the Post in 1976 but continued to write, analyze and comment on aspects of American culture.
In addition to two books he co-wrote with Woodward about Watergate and the Nixon era, Bernstein has authored three books, including his most recent, “A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
For more information on these and other Assembly Series programs, please visit the Web site at assemblyseries.wustl.edu or call 935-4620.