Carl Bernstein, Back on the Beat

"At first blush, the book made me yawn," says Philippe Reines, reprising a comment made by the Clinton camp when the book was released. "But after reading every word, I was wrong because I really should have asked: Can I be quoted snoring?"

The old deflection-with-humor trick.

"Any time anybody writes anything of any length about Hillary Clinton that her team didn't have a hand in forming," Bernstein says, "they try to attack it, or eclipse it or make it go away. It's sad because they ought to do better than that."

"A Woman in Charge" was conceived well before talk about another Clinton in the White House. Knopf reportedly paid $750,000 for the rights and the original publication date was set for 2003. As recently as February last year, though, Bernstein said on "Larry King Live" that his book was half-finished. Eventually, he wrote 200,000 words in 12 months.

The delay in delivering the final draft can be explained, Bernstein says, by his gift for procrastinating and his fondness for listening to music and traveling. There was also the occasional magazine piece.

"I was living a full, wonderful life," he explains.

The full, wonderful life isn't cheap, however, and Bernstein has told friends that he long ago burned through the roughly $3 million he earned from Watergate-related books and movies. He was somewhat notorious for borrowing money from friends and not paying them back, a habit he developed as a kid. Occasionally, those who know him say, his spending has landed him in serious financial straits.

Those straits appear to be behind the announcement in 2003 that the papers of Woodward and Bernstein would be sold to the University of Texas for $5 million. Woodward had planned to donate his notes and rough drafts, gratis, to Yale, and shipping the lot to Austin for a gargantuan sum was not his style. In the days before Deep Throat was revealed, Woodward worried, too, about exposing him and every other source who had helped the pair break the Watergate story.

"I wasn't sure it was a good idea," says Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Post, on the phone. "So I asked [attorney and agent] Bob Barnett and he said, 'Don't do it.' "

But as Ben Bradlee, The Post's former executive editor, later put it in a speech the same year, "I think Carl needed the money." Woodward, switching to the passive voice, says, "I was convinced," and in the end he asked Barnett to draft a contract with elaborate protections to Watergate sources. He donated his cut to a foundation he had created with his wife.

Bernstein says it's unfair to characterize the papers transaction as a favor by one friend coming to the financial rescue of another, and he says he wasn't broke at the time of the sale. "What are you trying to say, that Woodward is richer than I am?" he snaps. "Everyone knows that."

The relationship between the two is complicated and has inspired plenty of speculation. "Way down, they hated each other," guessed Alan Pakula, the director of "All the President's Men," who spent hours interviewing both men to prepare for filming.