Rice Says She Wasn't Woodward's Leak Source

[phk]

November 20, 2005
Rice Says She Wasn't Woodward's Leak Source
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is not the source who told Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in June 2003 that the wife of the former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV worked at the C.I.A., the State Department spokesman said on Saturday.

Ms. Rice, who was traveling in Asia with President Bush, said that she was not Mr. Woodward's source, the spokesman, Sean McCormack, said. Ms. Rice was responding to an article about the C.I.A. leak case in The New York Times on Saturday saying that she had been one of a handful of officials who had declined to comment on the case.

Earlier in the week, Mr. Woodward disclosed that a confidential source told him in June 2003 that Mr. Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency and that he had given sworn testimony on Monday to a grand jury investigating the leak. Afterward, more than a dozen top Bush administration officials directly or indirectly denied telling Mr. Woodward of Ms. Wilson's role.

The special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, last month indicted I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, on perjury and other charges related to the disclosure.

[Beet]

This gradual but unmistakable shift in the ethos of Washington journalism marked a hard-fought victory for conservatives who invested billions of dollars over the past three decades in building a media/political machine for gaining as much control as possible of the information flowing through the nation’s capital to the American people.

Journalists who bucked the trend confronted ugly attacks from right-wing media “watchdogs,” almost inevitable betrayal by news executives, and dashed careers. Journalists who played along were rewarded with fame, money and access.

Today, no journalist personifies this transformation more than Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who made his name unraveling Richard Nixon’s Watergate cover-up but now has been caught misleading the public while protecting the Bush administration’s cover-up of a scheme to smear an Iraq War critic.

As the leak investigation grew into a major story in summer and fall of 2005, Woodward not only concealed his early receipt of the Plame information but went on television to disparage the investigation and mislead the public about what he knew.

On CNN’s “Larry King Live” on Oct. 27, Woodward denied rumors then swirling around Washington that he had “bombshell” information about the outing of Plame.

“I wish I did have a bombshell,” Woodward said. “I don’t even have a firecracker. I’m sorry. In fact, I mean this tells you something about the atmosphere here. … This went around that I was going to do it tonight or in the paper. Finally, Len Downie, who is the editor of the Washington Post, called me and said, ‘I hear you have a bombshell. Would you let me in on it?’ And I said, ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you but I don’t.’”

A day later, on Oct. 28, Woodward confessed to Downie that his earlier denial wasn’t exactly truthful. As Nixon’s press secretary Ron Ziegler once said about a retreat on the Watergate cover-up, the old denial was “inoperative.”

According to a Post chronology, Woodward revised his story sometime before special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced the Oct. 28 indictment of Libby on charges of lying to FBI investigators, committing perjury before the grand jury and obstructing justice. Libby has pleaded not guilty.

But back on Oct. 27, while still denying the “bombshell,” Woodward dismissed Fitzgerald’s investigation as much ado about nothing.

“All this began not as somebody launching a smear campaign,” Woodward said about the leaking of Plame's identity. “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. And there’s a lot of innocent actions in all of this.”

It’s unclear why Woodward saw only “innocent actions in all of this.” Two years earlier, a senior White House official told another Washington Post writer that at least six reporters had been informed about Plame before Novak’s column appeared. The White House official said the disclosures about Plame were “purely and simply out of revenge.”

The outing of Plame, a covert officer working under what’s called “non-official cover,” destroyed her career as a counter-proliferation specialist, while also exposing her cover company – Brewster Jennings & Associates – and possibly agents whom she recruited.

Yet, on the eve of Libby’s indictment, Woodward was offering advice to Fitzgerald via CNN, that it would be best if the prosecutor left well enough alone.

“I don’t see an underlying crime here and the absence of the underlying crime may cause somebody who is a really thoughtful prosecutor to say, you know, maybe this is not one to go to the court with,” Woodward said.

Three decades after Woodward helped expose Richard Nixon’s corruption, the former Watergate hero sounded like a flack tossing out Republican spin points.

Though Woodward’s hostility to Fitzgerald’s investigation raised some eyebrows at the time, Woodward’s behavior looks far more self-interested now after his admission that he indeed did have “blockbuster” information about the Plame case.

In elaborating on the chronology later, Woodward said he contacted his source in late October for an article on the leak case and they discussed Woodward's notes showing the source mentioning Plame in June 2003. That prompted the source to go to Fitzgerald, which in turn forced Woodward’s hand.

Woodward said he received a waiver from the source to testify before Fitzgerald but not to identify the source publicly, ground rules that Woodward and the Post accepted.

On Nov. 14, Woodward gave a two-hour deposition to Fitzgerald and then issued a statement about his testimony that was carried in the Nov. 16 issue of the Washington Post. Woodward and the Post withheld the name of the source from the public.

Based on clues in Woodward’s statement and subsequent denials by various administration officials, the mystery source was not Libby or deputy White House staff director Karl Rove, who had joined Libby in spreading the word about Plame to journalists.

That meant a third official was involved, which, in turn, suggests a broader conspiracy to leak Plame's identity.

Woodward justified his misleading behavior as necessary “to protect my sources.” After apologizing to Downie, though not to the broader public, Woodward said, “I hunkered down. I’m in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn’t want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed.” [Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2005]

But the larger significance of Woodward’s predicament is twofold:

First, the fact that three officials were peddling the identity of Plame to journalists makes it harder to believe that some White House principal – either Vice President Cheney or President Bush or both – wasn’t involved at least in encouraging a counterattack against Wilson that ultimately led to the exposure of his CIA wife.

Second, the coziness of Woodward – and Miller – with White House officials shows how the Washington news media lost its way in recent years. From its earlier role as the public’s eyes and ears, the press often became this administration’s mouthpiece.

Miller’s gullibility in accepting the administration’s WMD allegations and putting those charges on the front page of the New York Times helped pave the way for the Iraq War. She, at least, has paid for her costly misjudgments with her job.

Woodward is a somewhat different story. He has written two largely flattering books on the Bush presidency, Bush at War and Plan of Attack, which benefited immensely from Bush’s personal cooperation and his edict to staff that they also speak to Woodward.

In effect, Woodward became a kind of authorized biographer of George W. Bush, making the full transformation from scrappy outsider of Watergate fame to co-opted insider of the Iraq War.

Yet if that only were true of Woodward, the damage to the nation would have been much less. Instead, Woodward and Miller epitomized what it took for journalists to excel during Bush’s hyper-patriotic administration.

Like many of their colleagues, Woodward and Miller traded skepticism for access. The end result has been a national news media that largely failed to do its job in vetting the administration’s case for war.

[J. J.]

This gradual but unmistakable shift in the ethos of Washington journalism marked a hard-fought victory for conservatives who invested billions of dollars over the past three decades in building a media/political machine for gaining as much control as possible of the information flowing through the nation’s capital to the American people.

It would be nearly impossible to convince me that Woodward is a "victory for the conservatives," or a cog in a "media/political machine for gaining as much control as possible of the information flowing through the nation’s capital to the American people."  This guy does not exactly have solid GOP record.

[Beet]

"In writing his books, Woodward collects detailed records including interviews, documents, transcripts, and recordings and uses them to describe events as a story with an omniscient narrator, present tense and dialogue. His books read somewhat like fiction and are often very visually descriptive.

While this style may have earned Woodward commercial success, many literary critics consider his prose awkward and his approach inappropriate for his subject matter. Nicholas von Hoffman complained "the arrestingly irrelevant detail is [often] used"[3] while Michael Massing thinks the books are "filled with long, at times tedious passages with no evident direction." [4] Joan Didion thinks Woodward finds "[nothing] too insignificant for inclusion", including such details as shirts worn and food eaten in unimportant situations. [5]

The narrative, reporting-driven style of Woodward's books also draws criticism for rarely making conclusions or passing judgment on the characters and actions that he recounts in such detail. Joan Didion concluded that Woodward writes "books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent" and finds the books marked by "a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured." [6]

Some of Woodward's critics accuse him of abandoning critical inquiry to maintain his access to high-profile political actors. Anthony Lewis called the style "a trade in which the great grant access in return for glory." [7] and Christopher Hitchens has accused both Woodward and George F. Will of acting as "stenographer(s) to the rich and powerful." [8]

Woodward has said that his books "really are self portraits, because I go to people and I say--I check them and I double check them but-—but who are you? What are you doing? Where do you fit in? What did you say? What did you feel?" [9] Critics complain that this style allows the biases and beliefs of his sources to steer the narrative and that those who talk to Woodward are painted more favorably than those who don't. The Brethren, for example, painted a picture of the Supreme Court based on the comments of its clerks and some believe that, as a result, the book offers a clerks-eye view of things where the Supreme Court Justices do little of the work. Brad DeLong claims that the accounts of the making of Clinton economic policy in Woodward's books The Agenda (from Clinton's view) and Maestro (from Alan Greenspan's) is so inconsistent that the reader will "collapse to the floor in helpless laughter".[10]

Despite these criticisms and challenges, Woodward is praised as an authoritative and balanced journalist in the establishment press. The New York Times Book Review said in 2004 that "No reporter has more talent for getting Washington’s inside story and telling it cogently." The publication of a Woodward book, perhaps more than any other contemporary author's, is treated as a major political event that dominates national news for days, though not with the same credibility he once had.

...

Woodward has spent the most time of any journalist with President George W. Bush while in office, interviewing him four times for more than seven hours total. Woodward's most recent two books, Bush at War (2002) and Plan of Attack (2004), are detailed accounts of the Bush presidency, including the response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Woodward has just released a book, The Secret Man written to be released when Deep Throat revealed his identity, which is about his relationship with Mark Felt. Woodward is at work on another book about the second administration of George W. Bush."

-- Wikipedia

[Beet]

By the way, it is true that if you think the point is that Woodward has a GOP record you are missing the point, but it would actually be much better if that was true. Then he would be just another GOP hack-- God knows there are plenty of those out there.

No, the sad thing is that Woodward is just another journalist-- perhaps the most successful of them all. He is not a partisan hack at all but a creation of the system. That is the truly sad thing.

[MODU]

This just in:  I'm not Woodward's leak source either.  Nor is the cook within the White House. 

Anyone else the press can ask?

[Democratic Hawk]

Did any one ever suspect that she was?

Dave

[MODU]

Did any one ever suspect that she was?

Dave

No, but that doesn't stop reporters from asking such questions.