Bob Woodward probably hoped that the long holiday weekend would break
the momentum of an uproar that suddenly confronted him midway through
November. But three days after Thanksgiving, on NBC’s “Meet the
Press,” a question about the famed Washington Post reporter provoked
anything but the customary adulation.
“I think none of us can really understand Bob’s silence for two years
about his own role in the case,” longtime Post journalist David
Broder told viewers. “He’s explained it by saying he did not want to
become involved and did not want to face a subpoena, but he left his
editor, our editor, blind-sided for two years and he went out and
talked disparagingly about the significance of the investigation
without disclosing his role in it. Those are hard things to
reconcile.”
An icon of the media establishment, Broder is accustomed to making
excuses for deceptive machinations by the White House and other
centers of power in Washington. His televised rebuke of Woodward on
Nov. 27 does not augur well for current efforts to salvage Woodward’s
reputation as a trustworthy journalist.
The Woodward saga is a story of a reporter who, as half of the Post
duo that broke open Watergate, challenged powerful insiders -- and
then, as years went by, became one of them. He used confidential
sources to expose wrongdoing at the top levels of the U.S. government
-- and then, gradually, became cozy with high-placed sources who
effectively used him.
Now, Woodward is scrambling to explain why, for more than two years,
he didn’t disclose that a government official told him the wife of
Bush war-policy critic Joe Wilson was undercover CIA employee Valerie
Plame. Even after the Plame leaks turned into a big scandal rocking
the Bush administration, Woodward failed to tell any Post editor
about his own involvement -- though he may have been the first
journalist to receive one of those leaks. And, in media appearances,
he disparaged the investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald
without so much as hinting at his own stake in disparaging it.
Interviewed several months ago on NPR’s “Fresh Air” program, Woodward
portrayed the investigation as little more than a tempest in a
teapot. “The issues don’t really involve national security or
people’s lives or jeopardy,” he commented, adding that “I think in
the end, we will find there’s not really corruption here.”
Woodward also told the national radio audience: “The woman who was
the CIA undercover operative was working in CIA headquarters. There
was no national security threat, there was no jeopardy to her life,
there was no nothing. When I think all of the facts come out in this
case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not
that great.”
But there was never anything laughable about Fitzgerald’s
investigation into the Plame scandal. And Woodward had learned to
take it a lot more seriously by the time he appeared as the only
guest on CNN’s hour-long “Larry King Live” the night of Nov. 21.
After days of bad publicity, Woodward was in a spinning mood. He
seemed eager to run out the clock as he filled time with digressions
and minor details. When in a corner, he often brought up Watergate,
as though his days of indisputable glory could draw light away from
his recent indefensible behavior.
Larry King is rarely a vigorous interviewer; his customary mode of
questioning is much closer to Oprah than “60 Minutes.” But King, who
has featured Woodward on his show many times over the years, seemed
agitated during the latest interview. And that’s understandable.
After all, Woodward had previously gone on the show and dismissed the
importance of the Plamegate scandal while withholding relevant
firsthand information.
Woodward has written best-selling books heavily reliant on interviews
granted by top administration officials. During the Nov. 21
interview, the unusually engaged King zeroed in on a dynamic that
often pollutes the work of big-name journalists in Washington: They
get and retain access to the powerful because they don’t go out of
bounds.
Noting that Woodward was able to avail himself of lengthy interviews
with President Bush for a recent book, King said: “He’s given you
three hours. He’ll help you with the next book. Doesn’t that give him
an edge with you?” And, King pointed out, the benefits of such
arrangements run in both directions, for author and president alike:
“He’s not going to come out looking terrible because you want him for
your next book and you’d like to have that in.”
Bob Woodward wasn’t grilled by Larry King. But the questions were
vigorous enough to make America’s most renowned reporter seem evasive
and self-absorbed.
During the long interview, Woodward gave various explanations for his
careful silence that misled Post editors and the public. He did not
want to get dragged into the Plame-leak investigation with a
subpoena, and anyway he was preoccupied with gathering information
that would be revealed later in a book.
Overall, Bob Woodward’s priorities seemed to center on Bob Woodward.
Yet near the end of the interview, he offered this platitude with a
straight face and without a hint of self-reproach: “I think the
biggest mistake you can make in this sort of situation as a reporter
is to worry about yourself.”
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Norman Solomon is the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits
Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information and excerpts from the book, go
to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com