All the President's Men is a 1976 political thriller based on the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about their experience reporting on the Watergate scandal.

The Reporters

Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman)

Bob Woodward (Robert Redford)

The Editors

Harry Rosenfield (Jack Warden)

Howard Simons (Martin Balsam)

Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards)

(Not in the movie: editor Barry Sussman & Washington Post owner Katharine Graham)

Some Sources

The Bookkeeper (Jane Alexander)

Hugh Sloan (Stephen Collins)

Donald Segretti (Robert Walden)

Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook)

Plot

In the early morning of June 17, 1972, security guard Frank Willis (playing himself!) notices tape left on the door bolt on one of the doors at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. Suspecting something amiss, he calls the police, and five suited burglars are caught.

The Washington Post catches wind of the break-in and sends their overachieving new guy (Bob Woodward) to go take notes at the courthouse where the burglars are questioned. So they send Bob over there and we get scenes of Bob being a good journalist and asking around the courthouse, getting names, before he hears during the questioning that the leader of the five burglars admits to working for the CIA.

Bob reports back to the Post and, with the reluctant support of his editors, continues to make phone calls about the names connected to the case.

Carl Bernstein, an annoying little whipper-snapper, is interested in the story and takes Bob's stories off the copy desk and types up his own polished version. Bob catches and confronts him, but admits that Carl's story is written better after looking at it. Their editor, Harry Rosenfeld, assigns both Bob and Carl to the story.
The rest of the movie is Bob and Carl (with the backing of their editors and Ben Bradlee) starting to get their foot under the case by knocking on people's doors at night, making phone calls, and checking their clues with Deep Throat, Bob's anonymous source who he talks to in a dark, scary parking garage. Through odd pieces of evidence, Bob & Carl slowly learn how large the scope of this case is.

Other people Bob and Carl interview...: - The unnamed bookkeeper for the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP); Carl snakes his way into her house and by talking to her, gets a sense of the weirdness at CREEP; - Hugh Sloan, the former treasurer for CREEP, who left for moral reasons; - Donald Segretti, a young lawyer hired by the Nixon Administration for dirty tricks