Here’s a very nice essay by Will Bunch about Woodward and what he meant to a generation of reporters. I didn’t become a journalist like he did, but I became a political junkie, watching the Watergate hearings that summer so long ago. I too was a Watergate geek — and Woodstein were my heroes.
I haven’t revered Woodward in a long time. And I still mourn the loss of my youthful faith in what Woodstein stood for — that the truth will out. Woodmill (hat tip to my pal) has been the sad reality ever since.
I think it’s really great that Bob Woodward is such a stand up guy who refuses to divulge his sources no matter what the consequences. He has always shown excellent journalistic judgement in these things so we can trust him to know what is important and what isn’t.
For instance, in his examination of the presidency “Shadow : Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate” he discusses how dumb it was for Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton not to just tell what they knew right away and get it all over with:
After Watergate, I never expected another impeachment investigation in my lifetime, let alone an actual impeachment and a Senate trial. Nixon’s succesesors, I thought, would recognize the price of scandal and learn the two fundamental lessons of Watergate. First, if there is questionable activity, release the facts whatever they are, as early and completely as possible. Second, do not allow outside inquiries, whether conducted by prosecutors, congressmen or reporters, to harden into a permanent state of suspicion and warfare.
Good advice, I’m sure. Yet somehow this high minded cautionary tale devolved in the second half into a full-on insider tabloid expose of President Clinton’s dick. Literally:
“Bennett had tried … to obtain the details from the statement Jones had made about Clinton allegedly having ‘distinguishing characteristics’ in his genital area. It hadn’t worked, but Bennett wanted to make sure there were no such characteristics.
At first Bennett thought it might be a mole or birthmark. So he started asking longtime male Clinton friends who might have seen him in the shower at one point or another in his life. Had they seen anything? No one had.
Later, Bennett was in the Oval Office with Clinton, and the president had to go to the washroom. For a moment, Bennett thought of following the president into the Oval Office bathroom to see what he might see, but he decided against it. ‘We can’t have president of the United States’ penis on trial,’ Bennett finally said to Clinton directly. ‘There is an ugh factor in politics.’ ‘It’s an outrage,’ Clinton replied. ‘It’s totally not true. Go to all my doctors. It’s just false…[Bennett said]”The only step that was not taken was to ask the doctor to induce an erection to reduplicate the circumstances that Jones had alleged. That was unthinkable.”‘
That’s the good judgment I’m talking about. Woody’s very good at keeping secrets. He prides himself on it. But this particular bit of information was essential for the public to know. Apparently, he believed that if only Clinton had dropped his pants on national TV, he could have moved beyond his problems.
Frank Rich wrote a review of this book back in 1999 in which he excoriated Woodward for his insider bloviating, making the case that Woodward and the Quinn contingent were reflexive antagonists of every president. Little did he know that Woodward would take his criticism so to heart that he would become a mindless hagiographer for the most callow, vacuous leader this country would ever produce.
In his review he discusses at some length Woodward’s prudish judgmentalism toward the presidents:
Ford is chastised for bringing into the White House ”a Congressional lifestyle, which often included alcohol at lunch.” Woodward uncovers one scandalous occasion in Denver when the President ”skipped several dozen pages of his remarks because he had what his aides called a few ‘marts,’ for martinis, before speaking.” You’d think that Ford’s skipping several dozen pages of luncheon remarks would be a blessing for those in attendance, or at least something less than an indictable offense. But in ”Shadow,” it’s another cue for Woodward to seize the moral high ground and condemn a benighted President Who Did Not Escape the Shadow of Watergate.
Similarly, the Carter Administration becomes an excuse for Woodward to rehash ancient charges of cocaine possession against the White House aide Hamilton Jordan. Though Jordan was ultimately cleared, he was not ”totally innocent” after all — for he ”liked to drink beer and loved chasing women” and ”did go to places like . . . Studio 54,” where other patrons might have behaved naughtily, thereby making Jordan ”a magnet for allegations.” Jordan, it seems, is guilty by association with nightspots.
Under Woodward’s moral tutelage, Jordan recants his past in ”Shadow,” belatedly seeing the errors of his partying ways of two decades ago. But Jordan’s real problem back then, Woodward suggests without irony, may have been partying with noninsiders. ”Shadow” reports that Jordan ”stiffed the Washington establishment and its dinner-party circuit with particular relish” — apparently a hanging offense. The punishment, Woodward reports, was a long 1977 article in The Washington Post Style section ”about the strain between the Carterites and Washington.”
And then along came Clinton’s penis.
Woodward, like Broder and Sally and Richard Cohen and Cokie and the rest of the moribund DC establishment, are obsessed with the social and personal activities of their King (and their own relationships to him) and have absolutely no interest or insight into the corrupt, depraved, malevolent political force the Republican Washington establishment has become. (It’s hardball politics!) As long as they are getting their due deference and nobody’s slip is showing, they are more than happy to keep any behavior that the unwashed masses might find unpalatable under wraps — things like war or institutionalized character assassination. The only scandals worth reporting are “too many marts” and “trashing the place” — behaviors that imply the courtier’s social mores are unimportant. Tsk tsk tsk.
I’m reluctant to take the focus off Woodward’s incredible behavior – and for the record, I think Digby is absolutely right regarding his suspicions as to where Woody learned Plame’s name – but I want to urge folks to be on the lookout for the latest issue of Harper’s on the newsstand. They usually don’t post the articles online so you’re gonna have to buy it (or got to a library) but it’s worth it.
Lewis Lapham has a rant against the Bush Cheney administration’s corruption in the Katrina reconstruction that is so blisteringly furious it makes The Rude Pundit appear like that Gautama Buddha. Lapham collects in one place all the sickening details. The corruption is endemic, and the absence of simple human decency so profound, it’s enough to make a grown man weep.
In addition, Stanley Fish gives the clearest exposition I’ve come across of the intellectual and rhetorical hijinks behind the marketing of “intelligent design” creationism. He makes the point many of us have made, that there’s a cynical hijacking (and distortion) of postmodern arguments by the rightwing, but he is able to provide far more information on how this is accomplished than I’ve seen before. The article is probably similar to this lecture Fish has been giving entitled “Three on a Match: Intelligent Design, Holocaust Denial, Postmodernism.”
As I’ve discussed numerous times, the marketing techniques on display in the “intelligent design” wars are the template for numerous other far right cultural battles. Really, you shouldn’t miss what Fish has to say.
Dick Stauber, Matt Coopers lawyer, just made a very good point on Hardball.
Woodward’s souce apparently came forward and told the prosecutor about their conversation. Yet Woodward still says that he is under a confidentiality agreement and needs special permission to reveal what he knows. Stauber asks, “if coming forward and admitting something to a US Attorney isn’t waiving confidentiality, then what is?”
Truly, Woody no longer has to worry about crawling up on that cross with Saint Judy. His source spilled the beans to the law. Whatever jeopardy he would be in by revealing his name (and certainly the contents of the conversation) legally or professionally, no longer applies. This means that nothing other than perhaps public embarrassment or some sort of backroom deal between Woodward and the Bush administration are at stake. That is not good enough. There is no reason for Woodward not to report this story.
Matthews and everybody else seems to think that Woodward is protecting Cheney. Jane thinks it’s Fleitz. Jeralynn thinks it’s Wurmser. I’m intrigued by the idea that Fitz was seen visiting Bush’s lawyer during this period. Among all the beltway courtiers, Woodward is the one who has the most direct access to the president. And Junior trusts him.
In his most recent book, Bush at War, Bob Woodward brags that he was given access to the deeply classified minutes of National Security Council meetings. He also noted, not long ago, that the President sat for lengthy interviews, often speaking candidly about classified information. This surprised even Woodward, who observed, “Certainly Richard Nixon would not have allowed reporters to question him like that. Bush’s father wouldn’t allow it. Clinton wouldn’t allow it.”
Woodward, who has had lengthy interviews with President Bush for his last two books, dismissed criticism that he has grown too close to White House officials. He said he prods them into providing a fuller picture of the administration’s workings because of the time he devotes to the books.
“The net to readers,” Woodward said, “is a voluminous amount of quality, balanced information that explains the hardest target in Washington,” the Bush administration.
Here’s some of that quality, balanced information from “Plan of Attack”:
Rove said he wanted the president to start that February or March and begin raising the money, probably $200 million. He had a schedule. In February, March and April 2003, there would be between 12 and 16 fundraisers.
“We got a war coming,” the president told Rove flatly, “and you’re just going to have to wait.” He had decided. “The moment is coming.” The president did not give a date, but he left the impression with Rove that it would be January or February or March at the latest.
“Remember the problem with your dad’s campaign,” Rove replied. “A lot of people said he got started too late.”
“I understand,” Bush said. “I’ll tell you when I’m comfortable with you starting.”
And then his codpiece exploded all over the living room.
I’ve been hearing all the television gasbags try to explain what impact this “bombshell” is going to have on Fitzgerald’s case. Victoria Toensing is on CNN pushing the Libby line that Fitzgerald is inept because he didn’t know about this Woodward conversation. (She’s making very little sense because she doiesn’t know what to make of this revelation and can’t figure out quite how to play it.) But one thing seems obvious to me that nobody is mentioning. We know Libby leaked about Plame to reporters. We know Rove leaked about Plame to reporters. We now know that some other administration figure leaked to Woodward and another one (perhaps the same one) leaked to Novak. What is it going to take for the media to start calling this what it was — a conspiracy?
I don’t know if Fitz can prove such a thing. But common sense says that if a bunch of different White House sources are talking to the most powerful journalists in Washington about the same subject, it isn’t just idle gossip. Woodward knew that. So did every other top reporter in town. They just preferred to pretend otherwise.
At the next blogger ethics panel we should call upon some of these great sages of journalism and ask them why it took a special prosecutor to back up Wilson’s story that that the White House had engaged in a coordinated smear campaign. What other kinds of sleazy behavior are they covering up for their masters … er, sources?
I do not buy the fact that Woodward didn’t have an obligation to come forward publicly. He’s a reporter. His job is to tell the public what he knows. With all of his great sources, you’d think that he of all people could have done some actual reporting and gotten to the bottom of the story two years ago.
It’s my fervent belief that when the government is spinning the press, whether it’s Ken Starr selectively leaking like a sieve or Scooter and his grubby little friends smearing Joe Wilson, it is the duty of journalists to report what they are doing. If their ever so valuable sources dry up because of that, then all the better. The sources are using them for a political agenda, not to get important information out to the public. These are not whistleblowers — they are flaks and what they are doing is fundamentally dishonest.
If all the administration wanted to do was shed light on Wilson’s alleged lack of credibility they could have called a fucking press conference and offered their evidence. It’s not like they can’t get anybody’s attention. The very fact that they were dropping this into the ether like it was idle gossip is the reason that Bob Woodward, Judy Miller and all the rest should have written front page stories about it. It’s not difficult. They could do what Matt Cooper did. He wrote that the White House was engaging in an underground war on Wilson. That is and was the story.
This crap about protecting anonymous sources is simply cover for the fact that these people are protecting their access to official lies. It’s bullshit and it’s why they are in trouble today.
Update: I just watched Wolf Blitzer try to pin Len Downie down on the fact that Woodward never bothered to write that he knew of another source. Blitzer asked him why, after Woodward revealed his information to Downie on October 28th that the paper didn’t write about it then — without revealing the source. Downie dance around, saying that the prosecutor got involved and then they couldn’t talk. Blitzer pressed and said that they had several days before this “source” inexplicably (and we are apparently supposed to believe coincidentally) went to the prosecutor with the news that he had spoken to Woodward. Downie had no good answer for that and just hemmed and hawed his way through it, ending with his story that they must protect their sources.
Protecting sources in Washington apparently means not only protecting their identities, it’s also means not revealing information they impart. I have to ask then — what’s the fucking point? Apparently the reporter’s privilege is like a priest’s or a shrink’s. It’s not the identity that’s sacrosanct, which is what I always assumed. It’s the information. And there is evidently no obligation to do more investigation so that you can get the story out.
At least until you get a big fat seven figure advance — at which time it’s ok to let the world know what you know, even as you protect your sources.
Deep Throat was misnamed. It’s Bob himself who specializes in that particular act.
Woodward said today:
“I hunkered down. I’m in the habit of keeping secrets.”
Funny, here I thought that reporters were supposed to be in the habit of revealing secrets.
I can’t tell you how impressed I continue to be with the elite journalists in this country. After finding out that top reporters from The NY Times, The Washington Post and NBC all withheld information from the public about their leaders, I can only wonder what else they may be keeping back because of their cozy relationships, book deals, or political sympathies. This is a crisis in journalism.
Matt Cooper was leaked to by Karl Rove in the summer of 2003 and he fought to keep from revealing his source. But he fulfilled his responsibility as a journalist by writing a story and it was the real story about what was going on. Here’s the first paragraph of Cooper’s first article on the subject back in 2003:
Has the Bush Administration declared war on a former ambassador who conducted a fact-finding mission to probe possible Iraqi interest in African uranium? Perhaps.
I don’t know why all the other reporters who were being leaked this nasty bit of business didn’t write articles with that lead, but they should have. As we all know, that was the story then and it’s the story now. Instead it’s only after the long arm of the law reaches into the newsrooms that we find out dozens of reporters, including some of the most famous and powerful, were involved in this little episode.
It turns out that Bob Woodward, who worked hand in glove with the administration to create the hagiography of the codpiece, has known for years that the White House was engaged in a coordinated smear campaign against Joe Wilson. Indeed, he was right in the middle of it. In the beginning he may have thought that it was idle gossip, but by the time he was on Larry King defending it as such he knew damned well that it had been leaked by Rove, Libby and his own source all within a short period of time. He’s been around Washington long enough to know a coordinated leak when he sees one.
Novak took the bait and dutifully regurgitated the information. Matt Cooper smelled a rat and wrote about it. It’s amazing how many other journalists heard the tale and dismissed the significance or went out of their way to “protect” sources by talking about the case on television every chance they got while pretending they were uninvolved. But none pooh-poohed the story and its significance in public with quite the same fervor as Bush’s friend Woody.
I had thought that Tim Russert and Andrea Mitchell were the Lawrence Olivier and Vivien Leigh of this story with their endless “speculation” about an investigation in which they had information that could clear up many of the questions they were fielding. Woody takes the cake. His has been an Oscar worthy performance to rival Meryl Streep. He chewed the scenery so many times on Larry King that he should be given a lifetime achievement award:
(Cue “Battle Hymn of the Republic”)
WOODWARD: If the judge would permit it, I would go serve some of her jail time, because I think the principle is that important, and it should be underscored. It’s not a casual idea that we have confidential sources. It is absolutely vital. And I’ll bet there are all kinds of reporters out there, if we could divvy up this four-month jail sentence — I suspect the judge would not permit that, but if he would, I’ll be first in line. It’s that important to our business.
I don’t think they could have made a cross big enough for the both of them.
Woodward and Miller have been willing tools of this administration from the get. Bob Novak was an open partisan on television, so everybody knew that they funneled information to him and he printed it for political purposes. These two (and their supporting players in television news) were the most important journalists in Washington working for the two most important papers in the country and the national news outlets. Among all the journalistic players in this, the only one who wrote the real story, in real time, was Matt Cooper. He’s the one who should be getting the journalism awards, not Judy Miller. He’s the only one who fulfilled his duty as a journalist and told his readers what their leaders were doing.
Perhaps this is the natural outcome of the press corps joining the entertainment industrial complex. It’s ironic that one of the men who kicked off this new celebrity journalism with Watergate should emerge as one of the major players in this era’s biggest “gate” scandal. I suspect that this time he’ll have it in his contract to play himself in the film. After all, he’s now bigger than Redford. And he’s proven over the last couple of years that he’s one of the best actors of his generation.
I agree with Marty Lederman at SCOTUS blog that this is surely a case for testimony from experts and a thorough discussion. Pushing through changes to the most fundamental underpinnings of our system of government in order to meet arbitrary deadlines is a very bad idea. The compromises seem to be better than what came before, but that really isn’t good enough. History shows that cutting deals on fundamental liberties is dangerous business.
It looks as though it’s going to happen, but it is probably still worthwhile to call your representatives and ask for a delay so that the congress can give this important legislation due consideration.
While agreeing with E.J. Dionne’s basic premise in his op-ed this morning — that the Cheney administration acted like a bunch of rabid dogs back in 2002, making it extremely difficult to even debate, much less vote against the decisions to go to war — Michael Crowley makes the point that I mentioned earlier, which is that the Democratic leadership, particularly the Presidential Hopeful Club, were fighting the last war:
The 2002 debate was filled with discussions about who got the Gulf War “right” and who was “wrong,” and how the anti-war folks–who predicted all sorts of disasters that never came to pass–could have miscalculated so badly. Back in ’91, anti-war votes killed the near-term presidential aspirations of some key Democratic senators, which may help to explain why ambitious people like John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and even Hillary Clinton all voted the way they did (pro-war) in 2002. Scare tactics or not, they may have felt they couldn’t afford, politically, to risk the sort of damage incurred by people like Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, who wound up on the “wrong” side of the 1991 vote and retired soon after instead of running for president as once expected.
Republicans had used the Gulf War I votes of various Senators as a cudgel to beat them over the head with throughout the 90’s adding significantly to the lore that Democrats are mincing cowards. Gulf War I was perceieved as an unalloyed success for the USA and people don’t like killjoys.
I wrote the other day that Democrats’ political instincts proved to be wrong both times, which may actually be at the root of the problem. My answer to this is that in the case of war, perhaps Democratic politicians should just vote their consciences and defend their decision on that basis. Deal making and bet hedging has not paid off for us anyway. Maybe we should simply do what we think is right in these matters and let the chips fall where they may. It’s possible that had we done this in 91 we would have ended up exactly where we did — on the Killjoy side of the equation. It’s hard to argue with a glorious victory. But had we done it in 2002, we would have ended up with credibility.
You can’t tell the future. When it comes to the big stuff, it’s best to do what you think is right and let the chips fall where they may. Democrats have shown that they aren’t partocularly good at playing politics with war anyway. If they simply do what they think is right at least they can sleep at night. And after all, if they’d voted against the Iraq war resolution, they would have been on the same side as pretty much everyone on the planet except the Republicna party.