Redford to make new Watergate documentary

Hollywood star Robert Redford is returning to Watergate with a documentary on the 1970s scandal that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency, the New York Times reported.

What’s the legacy of Watergate? What do we understand?

All The President’s Men Revisited, a two-hour look back on Watergate and its enduring legacy on American politics and media, is to air on Discovery Channel television in 2013, the newspaper reported.

The documentary marks the start of Sundance Productions, recently launched by Mr Redford to create programming for television broadcasters and the internet, it added.

A spokesman for Discovery Channel, confirmed the project.

The documentary takes its name from All The President’s Men, the 1976 film by Alan Pakula in which Mr Redford and Dustin Hoffman portrayed Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who exposed the Watergate affair.

The New York Times said Mr Woodward, Mr Bernstein, former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and Mr Redford gathered in Mr Woodward’s living room in March and discussed the project.

“What’s the legacy of Watergate? What do we understand? What are some of the lessons? It’s been a long time,” Mr Woodward, the author of several best-selling political books, told the newspaper.

Nixon, who died in 1994, resigned in 1974 when he was implicated in a plot to cover up a break-in by Republican operatives two years earlier at the Democratic party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex.

Mr Woodward said the documentary would touch upon the role of Mark Felt, a former associate director of the FBI who in 2005 revealed himself to be Deep Throat, the long-anonymous Watergate whistleblower.