Losing His Woody

ReddHedd at Firedoglake noticed something in the Novak story this morning that I missed. It says:

Woodward, a Washington Post editor, recently disclosed that he, too, had been told by an administration figure about Plame’s secret identity — probably, he said, by the same source who told Novak.

ReddHedd explains:

This passage was a little mystical for me, so I confirmed with Rob Christenson that, indeed, that was what was intended, and was told that “Novak made the comment in his speech — referring to earlier remarks by Woodward.”

I haven’t heard that before either. If that’s true, we can assume that the prosecutor had already spoken with Woodward’s source since it’s clear that Novak named his sources. And if that’s so then it’s clear that this source (who Novak described as “not a partisan gunslinger”) was not forthcoming with the prosecutor.

I have thought that it was possible that Woodward could have actually heard this as gossip if it came from Armitage at the end of a conversation. But if this source (whether Armitage or someone else) told more than one reporter, then that’s obviously ridiculous. Woodward and Novak have both simply refused to admit that they were spun like tops.

Woodward has behaved as if Fitzgerald was a Ken Starr zealot trying to frame innocent administration officials and dig willy nilly into reporters’ address books so they could charge whistleblowers with a crime. Now, I don’t know where he got that impression, but it certainly wasn’t from prosecution leaks. Other reporters had testified under the waivers and none of them had complained that the prosecutor was out of line in his questioning. Woodward was one of the very few, even among the press and the strong defenders of the reporter’s privilege in the Miller/Cooper case, who seemed to think that Fitzgerald personally was some sort of zealot.

Therefore, Woodward must have been talking to people who thought it was in their best interest to give that impression to good old Bob, the faithful transcriber. People who had something to gain by making Bob Woodward think that Fitzgerald was out of control. People who knew that Bob Woodward was writing the official history of the White house during this period.

And Bob dutifully believed those people. He believed they were just gossiping, not leaking. And he believed that Fitzgerald was a junkyard dog going way beyond his mandate seeking any reason he could to indict members of the administration and jailing reporters for refusing to spill every secret they hold.

Woodward now says that he was very surprised that the prosecutor wasn’t searching madly for any possible crime with which he could charge the administration. In fact, he was quite professional and respected the reporters’ privilege, keeping narrowly to the area of questions they’d agreed to discuss. One can only hope that Woodward has had his eyes opened a little bit about how he has been played for a fool by this administration (although I doubt it.)

Novak is just mad that the administration didn’t shut down this silly investigation. He knew what was going on from the get. Woodward actually seems to have thought his sources always tell him the truth.

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