Chris Mullin: What do you regard as your biggest error?
Harold Wilson: That I underestimated the power of speculation to knock government policy aside.

Several days later, Cassidento called Woodward back. “Hey, Al needs some money. . . . Everyone is offering him money for his story. Just want to let you know in case you want to enter the bidding.” It was rumored that a major magazine had offered $5000 for Baldwin’s first-person account. Woodward explained that the Post never paid for news. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry you don’t care about the story,” said Cassidento. “We have other offers.” Woodward started to say that the Post cared very much about the story, but Cassidento had hung up. Woodward and Bernstein told the editors about the invitation to bid on Baldwin’s story. “I bid this . . .” Bradlee said, and raised the middle finger of his right hand.

We have Mr. Wright's allegation that a surveillance operation was mounted against Lord Wilson of Rievaulx when he was Prime Minister in the mid-1970s...Many criticisms can be made of Lord Wilson's stewardship—I have made some in the past and I have no doubt that I may make some more in future—but the view that he, with his too persistent record of maintaining Britain's imperial commitments across the world, with his over-loyal lieutenancy to Lyndon Johnson, with his fervent royalism, and with his light ideological luggage, was a likely candidate to be a Russian or Communist agent is one that can be entertained only by someone with a mind diseased by partisanship or unhinged by living for too long in an Alice-Through-the-Looking-glass world in which falsehood becomes truth, fact becomes fiction and fantasy becomes reality. The result of the allegation has been substantially to fortify the view that I expressed in a letter to The Times 18 months ago, which is that MI5 should now be pulled totally out of its political surveillance role.

Does the Prime Minister <nowiki>[then David Cameron]</nowiki> recall that at the time after he became Prime Minister under the coalition and at the time when he was dividing the nation between strivers and scroungers, I asked him a very important question about the windfall he received when he wrote off the mortgage of the premises in Notting Hill... I didn't receive a proper answer then. Maybe dodgy Dave will answer it now.

Now there are a lot of people about whom it behoves to be very cautious in accusing their political opponents of past or prospective U-turns. In acrobatics Harold Wilson, for all his nimbleness and skill, is simply no match for the breathtaking, thoroughgoing efficiency of the present Prime Minister [Heckler: "Judas!"] Judas was paid! Judas was paid! I am making a sacrifice!

I was really shocked by the statement of Mr Dacre the other day, that his editorial policy is driven by commercial interests. I think that is about the most unethical thing I've read for a long time and, what's more, from the most surprising source, as I have great respect for his abilities. Indeed, many years ago when he was editor of the Evening Standard, he agreed to leave then and come and edit the Times and I was extremely pleased and Associated quickly made him editor of the Daily Mail, I have no doubt at a vastly increased salary, where some friends of mine may disagree with this strongly, but I think he's been a great success. But I was shocked when he said that his policies now, the editorial policy of the Mail is driven by commercial interests. That's on a record here somewhere.

[On his promotion to editor of the News of the World] I got a call one day, asking me to see Rupert Murdoch in Miami. I suspected it must be something good, but I never expected this. I was flabbergasted.
Obviously, Kelvin [MacKenzie] had helped, but you have to realise I was filling the column five days a week, running it like a mini newspaper. I had a staff of four and my own budget. I had been offered promotion, as features editor of the Sun, but turned it down, feeling I wasn't ready yet to be a faceless executive.

We had some problems with the Howard newspaper strip, which led to problems with the Howard book, which ultimately led to the lawsuit. Marvel wouldn't pay the artist to draw it. Gene Colan and I were supposed to get a percentage of the syndicate's take for the strip. The problem was, the money came in 90 days, 120 days, six months — I don't remember how long exactly — after the strips were published. So, essentially, the artist was working for nothing up until that time, and no artist can afford to do that. [In comparison with Stan Lee and John Romita|'s Spider-Man comic strip,] Stan, as publisher of Marvel, had a regular salary coming in, and John Romita, I believe, was also on staff at the time. They didn't have quite the same problem.

Deep Throat seemed impressed by the groundwork they had done. Suddenly he walked to the front of one of the cars in the garage and, standing erect, placed his gloved hands authoritatively on the hood as if it were a rostrum. “From this podium, I’m prepared to denounce such questions about gentle Colson and noble Mitchell as innuendo, character assassination, hearsay and shoddy journalism. The questions themselves are fabrication and fiction and a pack of absurdities and cometh from the fountain of misinformation.” Woodward, who was very tired, started laughing and couldn’t stop. Deep Throat “Ziegler” continued the denunciation: “. . . that small Georgetown coterie of self-appointed guardians of public mistrust who seek the destruction of the people’s will —

I do not believe that the President was in any way directly involved in the leaking of her identity, but that was a very disillusioning moment for me when I found out when it initially hit the press, and I was in North Carolina, if I remember correctly, and a reporter shouted out to the President, "Is it true that you authorized the secret leaking of this classified information?" We walked onto Air Force One, and the Presidents asks, "What was the reporter asking?", and I said, "He asserted that you were the one who authorized Scooty Libby leaking this information," and he said, "Yeah, I did."

The liberty of the press is dear to England; the licentiousness of the press is odious to England: the liberty of it can never be so well protected as by beating down the licentiousness.

The invariable question, asked only half-mockingly of reporters by editors at the Post (and then up the hierarchical line of editors) was 'What have you done for me today?' Yesterday was for the history books, not newspapers. — Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward

Certainly no one could have predicted what has happened. Back then, after 121 others had turned this book down, one lone editor offered a standard $3,000 advance. He said the book forced him to decide what he was in publishing for, and added that although this was almost certainly the last payment, I shouldn't be discouraged. Money wasn't the point with a book like this.

When I met with Lord Hill Norton, in England — a five-star Admiral, "sea lord" and former MOD head... At one point, he asked me, "Why would they not tell me about this? I was head of the Ministry of Defense, and I was also head of MI-5 and MI-6.. I was head of the Military Committee for NATO! Yet I never knew about this... I only learned about it later, and I found out about it from people like Lord Mountbatten. Why wouldn't they tell me?" He was outraged that he was "out of the loop," just like Admiral Tom Wilson... head of Intelligence Joint Staff, and... CIA Director James Woolsey and on and on and on. I said, "Well, sir... What would you have done if you had found out that there was a transnational group that answered to no government in the world but had infiltrated almost every aspect of every government of any significance in the world; that had arrogated to itself, through a criminal enterprise and ruthless behavior ~ including murder and assassinations illegal control of the most important technologies ever discovered, including technologies capable of interstellar travel, technologies that could take the whole world off the need for fossil fuels, save the environment, and end poverty in the world; and that this group had utter contempt for the rule of law and for democracy and for the freedoms and welfare of the people, or even for the future of Earth?