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November 16, 2005
Did Cheney Leak Plame Name to Bob Woodward?
On Monday, Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward testified under oath before Patrick Fitzgerald that "a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed."
"Citing a confidentiality agreement in which the source freed Woodward to testify but would not allow him to discuss their conversations publicly, Woodward and Post editors refused to disclose the official's name or provide crucial details about the testimony."
If true, the big news is that Woodward, is now writing his third book on the Bush administration, had conversations about Plame with three Bush administration officials but none of them was Libby nor Rove. "Woodward and editors at the Post refused to identify the official to reporters other than to say it was not Libby," writes the AP. It wasn't Rove either, at least according to Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Karl Rove's legal team.
Let's assume this is true. Who's left?
More to the point, what key members of the Bush administration has Bob Woodward had incredible access to?
Well, Bush and Cheney themselves, for one thing.
Let's take a quick journey back to an article written just over two years ago by The Nation's Eric Alterman:
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.'' But George W. Bush does it--breaking the law in the process--and nobody seems to care. Why? Because Woodward plays ball--he reports Bush & Co.'s actions in the same heroic, comic-book cadences they use themselves. Moreover, he doesn't bother weighing any competing claims or seeking to determine whether anything he is spoon-fed might actually be true.
Woodward one of "The President's Men?"
Until recently, I was only mildly skeptical of Woodward's character and integrity (probably thanks to Robert Redford), but I had been surprised at how much slack he seemed to give the Bush administration.
But now I think it's time to kick it up a notch and put him in the same pile as Judy Miller (because, like her, he withheld information on this case for "journalistic integrity"), and GOP shills Robert Novak and William Kristol (the latter, especially, because I am sometimes convinced that Woodward and Kristol may have been separated at birth).
Woodward has verbally downplayed the Plame investigation in numerous interviews over the past year or so, and some have called him an ass-kissing apologist for the Bush administration. Others have gone so far as to call him an
Woodward Quotes on the Plame Leak:"First of all this began not as somebody launching a smear campaign that it actually -- when the story comes out I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter and that somebody learned that Joe Wilson's wife had worked at the CIA and helped him get this job going to Niger to see if there was an Iraq/Niger uranium deal."
"When the story comes out, I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter."
"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."
Other Links:
Bob Woodward, Lost in Cronyism? (Oct. 30, 2005)
The Mixed-Up Files of Mr. Bob Woodward Yahoo News Nov. 16, 2005)
Posted by MJuhre at November 16, 2005 04:16 PM