The Washington Post city news editor who broke the story twenty years ago reconstructs the Watergate scandal from the failed break-in at the Democratic headquarters to President Nixon's resignation. Reprint.
Barry Sussman is an American editor, author, and opinion analyst who deals primarily with public policy issues.
He was city news editor at The Washington Post at the time of the Watergate break-in and was detached to spend full time directing the coverage that led to the Post's Pulitzer prize for public service in 1973. His book, "The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate," now in its fourth edition, was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times and Washington Post when it first came out.
Among other awards, Sussman was named editor of the year by the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild for his work on Watergate, and he has lectured and written widely on the subject over the years.
He is also the author of "What Americans Really Think," published by Pantheon in 1988, based on columns he wrote while pollster and public opinion analyst at the Washington Post, and "Maverick, A Life in Politics," written with and about the former U.S. Senator and governor of Connecticut, Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., published in 1995 by Little, Brown.
Sussman is currently (since 2003) editor of the Watchdog Project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, and runs a website, www.niemanwatchdog.org, which is aimed at encouraging better, tougher news reporting on public policy issues.
Sussman started out in 1960 as a reporter at the Bristol (Va.-Tenn.) Herald Courier, a daily with a circulation of about 25,000. He left after 16 months but soon returned as managing editor before going to the Washington Post in 1965. There he was a state-suburban editor, then DC editor, with a staff of 40 to 45 reporters. After Watergate he founded the Washington Post poll, designing and conducting opinion surveys and reporting on the results. In 1981 he was in charge for the Post in setting up and running the Washington Post/ABC News poll, again designing surveys and doing most of the reporting on the findings.
He left the Post in 1987 to become managing editor for national news at United Press International, in charge of 800 reporters and editors across the U.S. and 40 more in UPI's Washington Bureau. He left UPI after less than one year, however, and set up shop as an independent pollster, continuing to focus on public policy issues. Clients included trade associations, the AFL-CIO, and other interest groups.
In the 1990s he became active as an international news media consultant, with assignments at newspapers in Spain, Portugal and seven Latin American countries.
Sussman is married to Peggy Earhart Sussman of Bristol, TN. They live in Potomac, MD, and have two daughters, Seena Sussman and Shari Golob, and four grandchildren, each of whom is their favorite.
