Veteran journalist Bob Woodward of Watergate fame revealed Monday night that the secret to getting sources to disclose information is to be invited into their private residences.
“You want to listen to everyone, you want to be patient, and then you want to go back, and then you want to get into their home,” Woodward said during an interview with Stephen Colbert on CBS’s “The Late Show” to laughs from the audience.
Woodward’s book, Fear: Trump in the White House, was released Tuesday. In it, Woodward details a chaotic presidency on the brink of a “nervous breakdown.”
Woodward on Monday recalled once knocking on the front door of “a general” without an appointment in the hope of getting him to talk.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Are you still doing this shit?’ Woodward remembered. “And so I just did poker face. And in the CIA they teach people let the silence suck out the truth, and so just be quiet and people want to talk. And he said, ‘Come on in.'”
Woodward also countered criticism that he had relied on sources for the book who may be disgruntled with Trump. For example, former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who left the administration after his two ex-wives publicly accused him of domestic violence. The allegations had prevented Porter from obtaining a permanent security clearance.
[More: Trump pissed at Gary Cohn, Rob Porter for their roles in Bob Woodward’s book: Report]
“No, because what you do is you take information and you check with other people you know,” Woodward explained. “This is a little beehive, the White House, and somebody will say something and somebody else will have a document, ‘Oh yes, I remember that.’ And you can put it together with often microscopic detail.”
Woodward covered the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein in the 1970s while the duo were both working for the Washington Post. Their reporting contributed to the eventual resignation of former President Richard Nixon amid the controversy.
