Bob Woodward: White House Acts Like It 'Wants to Be Nixonian'

The Benghazi scandal is not Watergate, says one of the reporters who broke that history-changing story, but he did invoke the name of the president who famously declared, "I am not a crook."

"This is not Watergate," the Washington Post's Bob Woodward said Sunday on "Meet the Press," "but there are people in the administration who have acted as if they want to be Nixonian."

In the initial Benghazi talking points, the CIA says explicitly that there were al-Qaida ties to the group that attacked the American diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, Woodward noted. The final talking points used by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on all five Sunday talk shows five days later made no such reference.

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"This is a business where you have to tell the truth, and that did not happen here," Woodward said.

On CNBC on Friday, however, Woodward seemed more comfortable using the word "Watergate."

"If you read through all these emails, you see that everyone in the government is saying, 'Oh, let's not tell the public that terrorists were involved, people connected to al-Qaida. Let's not tell the public that there were warnings,'" Woodward said on "Morning Joe."

"And I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts to the conversations, and he personally went through them and said, 'Oh, let's not tell this. Let's not show this.' I would not dismiss Benghazi. It's a very serious issue."