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April 9, 2006
Murray Waas is Our Woodward Now"Not only is Woodward not in the hunt, but he is slowly turning into the hunted. Part of what remains to be uncovered is how Woodward was played by the Bush team, and what they thought they were doing by leaking to him, as well as what he did with the dubious information he got."It should be obvious from the work who the Woodward of Now is. And if it isn’t obvious Greg Sargent can explain it to you over at the American Prospect. The guy’s name is Murray Waas; he’s an independent journalist who recently went to work as a staff writer for the National Journal and the Atlantic Media Company, which owns the Atlantic Monthly, the Journal, and other titles. Waas has been in the game since he was 18, when he started working for the columnist Jack Anderson. By Woodward Now I mean the reporter who is actually doing what Woodward has a reputation for doing: finding, tracking, breaking into reportable parts—and then publishing—the biggest story in town. He’s also putting those parts together for us. The Biggest Story in Town (almost a term of art in political Washington) is the one that would cause the biggest earthquake if the facts sealed inside it started coming out now. Today the biggest story in town is what really went down as the Bush team drove deceptively to war, and later tried to conceal how bad the deception—and decision-making—had been. We are still “in” that story today, as is the press (deeply in it) and so a lot rides on what comes out. Not only is Woodward not in the hunt, but he is slowly turning into the hunted. Part of what remains to be uncovered is how Woodward was played by the Bush team, and what they thought they were doing by leaking to him, as well as what he did with the dubious information he got— especially since, as the Washington Post reported on April 9, evidence leaked by Scooter Libby to Woodward on June 27, 2003 “had been disproved months before.” According to the account by David E. Sanger and David Barstow in the New York Times, same day: when Libby described the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to Woodward, other senior officials in Bush’s government were thinking about declassifying it through normal means, and did not know that Bush had done it himself so parts could be leaked. Cheney and Libby knew, and they went to Woodward before they went to others on their team— like, say, the national security adviser. Why? They went to Woodward to leak the portions of an intelligence estimate that tended to exonerate them. The information they were sharing had gone bad. And yet they felt they could do that to Bob Woodward, give him bad information, the credibility of which had collapsed even within their own shop. Why? You would think Woodward would be in a position to tell us. He was there, so to speak. But that’s just the trouble, isn’t it? Plus he’s already on record predicting (on Fresh Air July 7, 2005) that when “all of the facts come out in this case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great.” Romenesko front-paged David Broder’s statement Friday when he was asked about …it’s going to be laughable: “Subsequent events do not appear to be supporting that forecast.” That happened in a Q & A between Broder and Post readers. Why doesn’t Woodward start doing these things? There’s an official story about Woodward’s journalism, which now incorporates his nonfiction books. It goes like this. When Bob Woodward, the greatest reporter of his generation and our time, gets on to a story, he dominates it. He gets people to talk who wouldn’t before. (They know he’ll be fair.) He gets the documents others don’t. He remembers the details others miss. And so he gets the stories other reporters try to get but can’t. You can’t beat Woodward. His sourcing is too good, his instincts too sharp. And his track record over time shows that. That’s my version. “No reporter has more talent for getting Washington’s inside story and telling it cogently,” wrote William Powers of the National Journal, who began his career as a researcher for Woodward, explained in a column last year why the man is peerless in a city teeming with aggressive and talented journalists. (See my post, Grokking Woodward.) Imagine the agony of other hardworking Washington reporters. They’ll toil away for years on a big beat — the Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve, the White House, the CIA — and feel they’ve done a bang-up job. After all, they broke some news, scored big interviews, revealed the “inner workings” of government. Then Woodward comes along, spends a year on the same subject, and launches the news equivalent of an atomic bomb: a week’s worth of jaw-dropping headlines that obliterate everything the regulars have done. And that has happened. It might happen again. Woodward has a book on Bush’s second term due in 2006. A lot rides on it. For these days Woodward is the one being eclipsed by the determination, savvy, and multiple sourcing that Murray Waas has developed in and around the Fitzgerald investigation. Murray’s throats tell him stuff; he goes away, puts it together with other things he knows, then scoops the rest of the press. And it’s factual territory Woodward has been in before, to put it mildly. Dan Froomkin reads all the coverage (it’s his job) and wrote this on March 31: Slowly but surely, investigative reporter Murray Waas has been putting together a compelling narrative about how President Bush and his top aides contrived their bogus case for war in Iraq; how they succeeded in keeping charges of deception from becoming a major issue in the 2004 election; and how they continue to keep most of the press off the trail to this day. Key point: The biggest story in town is partly a story about the ways of the Washington press. On March 31 Waas emerged from his workshop and added a critical piece (“Insulating Bush”) to which other big pieces attach: Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush’s 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. This story said that “Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address — that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon — might not be true.” But then he went ahead anyway. Froomkin says the rest of the Washington press corps should wake up to what Waas is uncovering. “Waas’s fellow reporters at major news operations should either acknowledge and try to follow up his stories — or debunk them. It’s not okay to just leave them hanging out there. They’re too important.” (See also eriposte at the Left Coaster on Waas putting the pieces together.) In an appreciation of his mentor, Jack Anderson, who died in December, Waas told us something about his own approach. “The public has pushed back against insider, access journalism— whether practiced by Bob Woodward, Judith Miller, or Robert Novak,” he wrote. “Anderson always understood it was his role to be an outsider, not just in regard to the politicians he covered, but also vis-a-vis the established order of journalism.” And Waas is that outsider, as Woodward was 34 years ago when he began investigating a burglary at the Watergate. It is worth noting too that the runners-up to Waas in the Woodward of Now competition would be the reporters at the Knight-Ridder Washington bureau, especially Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and Ron Hutcheson. Strobel and Hutcheson wrote last week about “a pattern of selective leaks of secret intelligence to further the administration’s political agenda.” (Pattern recognition being critical to the story.) “Much of the information that the administration leaked or declassified, however, has proved to be incomplete, exaggerated, incorrect or fabricated,” they added. Notice how they say this on their own authority, stating it as a fact because they have done the reporting that confirms it. And to close the circle, in Waas’s latest (“Libby Says Bush Authorized Leaks”) there is a juicy part about Woodward. It tells how badly Bush wanted his people to talk to the greatest reporter of his generation: Other former senior government officials said that Bush directed people to assist Woodward in the book’s preparation: “There were people on the Seventh Floor [of the CIA] who were told by Tenet to cooperate because the President wanted it done. There were calls to people to by [White House communication director] Dan Bartlett that the President wanted it done, if you were not co-operating. And sometimes the President himself told people that they should co-operate,” said one former government official. Why? We don’t know. But we’re going to know from Murray Waas much sooner than from Woodward, who was there but somehow missed it. After Matter: Notes, reactions and links… Howard Kurtz in his Media Notes column, April 17: After a quarter-century in the journalistic shadows, Murray Waas is getting his day in the sun. In fact, I’ve never seen Waas on television. Murray Waas strikes again, Cheney Authorized Leak Of CIA Report, Libby Says. (National Journal, April 14.) Steve Lovelady of CJR Daily in the comments: “He’s like a guy trying to pound a tent peg into very hard ground. The peg doesn’t move much, but he just keeps whaling away with discrete fact after discrete fact until, finally, he sinks the sucker.” Amy Goodman interviews Waas (April 7, 2006). CJR Daily notes that Josh Gerstein in the New York Sun and Waas in the National Journal were first with the news about Bush authorizing leaks. “Given that the story drew on a publicly available court filing made by Fitzgerald and given the political stakes — now raised even higher — the big guys don’t have much of an excuse for coming in second on this one,” writes Edward B. Colby. Over at American Thinker, Rick Moran of Rightwing Nuthouse says I am wrong to lionize Murray Waas, and wrong about the biggest story in town. See his Missing the Big Story: The CIA’s War with the White House: Waas has missed the knife sticking out of the back of the Bush Administration; a knife planted by a group of leakers – organized or not – at the CIA who, unelected though they were, took it upon themselves to first try and prevent the execution of United States policy they were sworn to carry out, and failing that, trying to destroy in the most blatantly partisan manner an Administration with which they had a policy disagreement. Moran also argues that in 2004 there was “an attempted coup by the very same faction at the CIA who had been fighting the Administration in the lead up to the war,” and that this “missing context” explains a lot. Read his piece. And this rebuttal to it at MetaFilter. Joe Gandleman comments on this post: “Woodward is no longer perceived as a tireless reporter to be necessarily feared; he is now perceived as a tireless reporter to be cultivated.” I repeat in wonderment: Cheney and Libby thought they could feed Woodward bum information, claims that were not believed among people they knew Woodward had talked to, or would talk to. Why? At Tapped, Greg Sargent points out that Waas’s reporting in the The National Journal is finally starting to make its way into the elite papers. Josh Marshall on what he can add to Waas’s account: Rove thought the 2004 election was at stake if the Iraq-sought-nuclear-materials story collapsed outright. We saw this and the cover-up it spawned first hand. While I and reporters from CBS were working on this story through 2004 it was clear that folks on the Hill would agree to talk and then suddenly un-agree when they got the call from the White House. The White House worked doggedly at almost every turn to get the story killed or delayed beyond the election, which they of course did. Here’s what Waas wrote: The pre-election damage-control effort in response to Wilson’s allegations and the broader issue of whether the Bush administration might have misrepresented intelligence information to make the case for war had three major components, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials: All three involved the press, implicated the press or required the cooperation of the press. Dan Froomkin’s Monday column, Some Explaining To Do, is a taught round-up of leaker-in-chief news. I recommend especially his section: McClellan’s Feeble Shield. All I can sat about this is: wow. That first sentence is a doozy. Tom Maguire has the same reaction: wow. You can sample the other wows at Memeorandum. Feels like this one is going to make a very loud noise in the blogosphere. Dumb editorial. Make that willfully dumb. Jane Hamsher has a lot on this. I liked Josh Marshall’s cooly angry post: “Legitimate opinion journalism is constrained by facts, as nearly as we can know them.” And there’s another angry comment storm at post.blog, overwhelming an unrelated entry on a new search tool at the site. The more musical among PressThink users might know better, but I say the songwriting team of Strobel and Hutcheson have a feel. Consider their lines: Incomplete, exaggerated, incorrect or fabricated.. Bouncy tune if you say it out loud. David Corn of The Nation and Bob Woodward have a frank exchange of views. See Corn, Woodward and Reality; and Bob Woodward Replies. Here’s Fishbowl DC’s list of Jack Anderson alumni who have gone on to great things. It doesn’t mention Waas. Now why do you think that is? Ron Brynaert at Raw Story has the scoop: “This time around the Washington Post plans to hire two bloggers for its Web site.” The paper’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, has informed RAW STORY that Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, is looking for a liberal blogger, along with a conservative one, to replace Ben Domenech who resigned after only three days of blogging, when his earlier writings were discovered by mostly liberal bloggers to be racially insensitive and – in multiple cases – plagiarized. Ron reveals that Ben Domenech had a history of appearing in the Post and seems to have been… connected. My recommendation was three bloggers: left, right and neither-nor. See PressThink, Red America, RIP… and the Great Blogger Bake Off. Now here’s a curious lapse in blogosphere etiquette. John Avarosis and Atrios and Matt Stoller all comment on the Washington Post looking for a liberal blogger, and none links to—or even mentions—Brynaert’s story at Raw, which is how they know about it because he broke the news. Weird. Is that informing your readers? His piece has new information about Domenech and the resolution of the debacle he became for the Post. Not to link to the originating report when you easily can is giving poor service, and these blogs normally give good service, so what’s up with that? (UPDATE, April 11: Matt Stoller added a hat tip to Raw Story, which is cool.) How about this announcement, transparency fans and critics of…? Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, will answer questions in this space about the newspaper and the news. Questions will be selected from e-mails sent to asktheeditors@nytimes.com, and Mr. Keller will answer as many this week as time permits. Afterward, these discussions will continue with other Times editors.
Posted by Jay Rosen at April 9, 2006 11:17 AM
Comments
First they went to Woodward, then they went to Judy. Niether wrote a story. Both stood by and did nothing to inform the public of the truth. In fact, Woodward actively helped the cover-up effort by down-playing the Plame affair as much ado about nothing on national TV. And he conveniently failed to disclose his own involvement in the matter as he scoffed at its significance and downplayed its seriousness. More significantly, both Miller and Woodward had to have known what was going down. The WH was trying to cover up the fact that it had fabricated the central reasons offered for rushing into war. And they were doing so in order to ensure re-election in the fall. These reporters were aiding and abetting a criminal conspiracy, one which would likely have the effect of subverting democracy. For as Waas has reported, in Rove's estimation, if the truth came out, Bush's re-election was in grave danger. Yet both kept quiet, until later forced to testify, long after the election was safely won. They could have written the stories Waas is writing now, and won recognition for that, but they chose not to. Why? Was it because they agreed to accept rules of the game that rendered them tools of the administration in exchange for super-duper-access (necessary for sustaining star power) not granted to others? In practice, the rules meant essentially that they could not write about certain things that were politically harmfult to the WH, even if true, but would get access to write about things that were helpful, which would be published even if they were clearly not true. That's why they went to Woodward and Judy first, they were willing to play by the rules. The rules are a fig leaf, though, covering up personal corruption. Ultimately, these reporters traded their integrity and that of their papers, for access, career advancement and personal gain. Waas is a hero for doing his job and doing it well. I guess it's a lot harder to do that when subjected to the corrupting influences of being a big shot, or wanting to be a big shot, working at the NYT or the Post. The NYT dumped miller. Why isn't the Post dumping Woodward? Shouldn't he be spending more time with his mirror? Posted by: steve schwenk at April 9, 2006 12:35 PM | Permalink Was Woodward ever an outsider? Or more precisely, was he ever not struggling furiously to become an insider? His Watergate coverage hinged on an insider connection to fellow Navy man and old-guard conservative Mark Felt, and he's been working his way up the ladder ever since. By the way, Woodward offers a testy defense of his insiderism here. Posted by: Sven at April 9, 2006 12:40 PM | Permalink Just to be fair, here's how his paper reported it: Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago November 16, 1995 Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case 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 . . . Woodward and Post editors refused to disclose the official's name or provide crucial details about the testimony. Woodward did not share the information with Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. until last month, and the only Post reporter whom Woodward said he remembers telling in the summer of 2003 does not recall the conversation taking place . . . And here's a powerful and very effective visual depiction Billmon posted to convey his take on what it all means. Posted by: steve schwenk at April 9, 2006 2:07 PM | Permalink Sven: Your question is a good one. Was Woodward ever an outsider? Woodward was an "outsider" at the time of the Watergate break-in only in one sense. At the time, he was on the metro desk at the Post. He had covered the suburbs in Virgina. He was unproven and unknown, just beginning to make his way, and then he caught hold of what became the Biggest Story in Washington... Ever. As we know now it took him directly into the heart of the White House beat, and pierced the Oval Office. But he wasn't an insider to that beat. He had no investments, no sources among the president's men, no reputation to lose. In all these ways he was the outsider, and all of them helped big time when he and Bernstein started to investigate Nixon. Waas isn't on the White House beat; he's on the "this is a big story, and I'm staying on it" beat. In every other way, Woodward was an outsider in 1972 only in the sense of not having yet become the Washington insider he is now. Certainly that seems to have been a goal from the start. Jay - just a heads up - you might want to look at WaPo blog tonight and note the dissonance between today's WaPo editorial and the front page coverage of the same story. Oh my! Posted by: siun at April 9, 2006 11:15 PM | Permalink Pop Quiz to your Heads Up, siun: can you find the place in my post where I address the editorial in question? nodding - and noted the somewhat dismissive "loud noise in the blogosphere." More interesting to me than a "dumb editorial" (since they are not so rare) is the complete disconnect within the same issue between A1 and the editorial. That said, the blogosphere response is visible at the WaPo blog once again. Posted by: siun at April 10, 2006 1:24 AM | Permalink I'm glad to seeing Waas getting the attention and praise he deserves for working so hard on this story. Posted by: Scott Butki at April 10, 2006 8:27 AM | Permalink gosh, I take a day off from keeping up with the blogosphere and all hell breaks loose at the Post. What most of the critics of the Post seem to be missing is the key fact that, 10 days prior to "Bush authorized" leak from Libby to Miller, Lewis Libby told Bob Woodward that, according to the NIE, Iraq had begun to "vigorously trying to procure" yellowcake from Niger. This was presented as a conclusion to Woodward, when in fact it was simply mentioned in passing that there had been "reports" --- and that elsewhere in the NIE it could be found that those "reports" had been contradicted. The Post's perception of a "Good Leak" appears to be based not on whether the leak is an accurate reflection of the truth, but on whether Bob Woodward gets access to it for his book. ***************** on another note: Score one for Jay Rosen. Talk to the Newsroom Piddling details. For anyone who has been paying attention since oh, around 2000, it was clear what kind of President Bush would be. He still hasn't really been called on it. I saw Kerry on MTP yesterday finally admit his Iraq vote had been a mistake. He probably did that so he could stop having to explain a fine distinction: it was RIGHT to tell the world the American people stand behind their President. What was WRONG was everything the President did thereafter. Right policy, wrong President. Posted by: FeingoldObama at April 10, 2006 9:12 AM | Permalink unmitigated gall is divided into three parts: greed, stupidity and cruelty. See: www.coolstretchofhighway.com Paul: Thanks for that heads up on the Keller Q and A. But I wouldn't score one for me. I bet it has to do with the Times getting a new site and building in the software to do the online Q and A's live. From Rick Moran at the American Thinker: The fact is that Wilson, the lefty blogs, and especially Jay Rosen have missed the biggest story of the young century in their efforts to uncover the minutia, the nuggets of selected, disjointed information that writers have leapt upon like ravenous beasts, devouring, regurgitating as “proof” of their conspiracy theories, the evil machinations of evil men who “fabricated” intelligence on our way to war. Interesting that Moran just assumes I am a Wilson lionizer. To me Wilson is a bit player with a gigantic ego who's said some dumb things as well as a lot of true things, and what happened to him has triggered a huge story, but he's not the story. Bush, Cheney, and their machinations which involve the press are. I think the White House wasn't leaking TO Mr Woodward but, more clearly, leaking ON him. Until he cleans his suit, he's not fit to be in the same room as Mr Waas. Posted by: steve gall at April 10, 2006 12:17 PM | Permalink From Mr. Moran's piece: Regardless of who pushed his name forward or even what he discovered while in Niger (which to this day is a matter of fierce dispute), Actually, there is no dispute. Not among the reality-based, anyway. Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents - which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger - are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded. I agree that Murray Waas is the ace, but we shouldn't overlook others with their noses in places they need to be to get the truth out. Although he is relatively quiet about it, hasn't Jason Leopold over at TruthOut.org been chipping away, as well? Posted by: Canuck Stuck in Muck at April 10, 2006 12:23 PM | Permalink Bob Woodward is "the greatest reporter of our time" in the smae way that Helen Hayes was "The First Lady of the American theater." It's his pr packaging. Waas is simply doing actual reportorial work -- and has been for years. Where the rubber meets the road with his latest bombshell is the fact that the rest of the press sees fit to comment on it only because Dubbya's numbers are through the floor and dropping. Posted by: David Ehrenstein at April 10, 2006 12:56 PM | Permalink Speaking of Jason Leopold, he just posted another piece on Plame. Mostly anonymous soruces, but bombshell assertions of fact. If these facts pan out, Bush is in deep doodoo with the public. Look for the pardons to be issued as the Aspens turn. Woodward makes an appearance in the article, too. He supposedly turned libby down on the article, but promised to use the NIE in his book. How thoughtful of him. (But i thought it was someone other than scooter, like big dick, who contacted Bob.) Here's the lede: In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson's undercover status to the media. Posted by: steve schwenk at April 10, 2006 1:21 PM | Permalink Jay Rosen (above) Quotes Rick Moran at the American Thinker: 'as if one more self-important, insufferably arrogant practitioner of “gotchya” journalism were necessary in Washington. ' We'll put up with the self-important and arrogant, as many as necessary if that's what it takes. We should have no problem with big egos among honest hard-working people. Jay Rosen (above) also notes in passing: Interesting that Moran just assumes I am a Wilson lionizer. To me Wilson is a bit player with a gigantic ego who's said some dumb things as well as a lot of true things, and what happened to him has triggered a huge story, but he's not the story. Bush, Cheney, and their machinations which involve the press are. This is more than an 'interesting' assumption of Moran. Moran's confusion is the moral of the story. Moran is just one of many who have bought into the Rovian BIG LIE that 'somebody else' is the story. His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it. -- in an OSS report report prepared during the war [...] describing Hitler's psychological profile. Why is anyone still surprised at this? Wilson may be equipped with a large ego, but Wilson himself repeated from Day 1 and ad nauseum that this story is 'not about me' or Plame. "This is not about me and less so about my wife. It has always been about the facts underpinning the President's statement in the state of the union speech." This IS about the deception of the Bush Administration. Repeat that out loud three times before filing any story. Posted by: TimeTogether at April 10, 2006 2:38 PM | Permalink Kurtz on April 9 editorial: Fairfax, Va.: You are probably getting a lot of questions about the weird editorial from April 9 in which The Washington Post defended the leaking of (and thoroughly debunked) classified information. What I would like to know is what do journalists in the newsroom do when an editorial is so off-base? Do they just shrug their shoulders and carry on? What is their responsibility to the public? Also, should the editorial board be so disconnected from the news portion of the paper? I think this episode is another in a long line of incidences that highlights the lack of journalistic integrity there is out there today. It tarnishes everyone in the media whether fair or not. it's stunning that the WH is still able to get a favorable editorial in the Post on this case. Posted by: bush's jaw at April 10, 2006 2:53 PM | Permalink In the famous SOTU, Bush said the Brits thought Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa. It's about as simple as it gets. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at April 10, 2006 3:37 PM | Permalink I wouldn't say Murray Waas was "our" Woodward now, I'd say he's our Mary Mapes now. Poor Mary spent the better part of 5 years dogging the Bush AWOL story, affecting the '04 election in ways she never dreamed, only to be fired for her efforts. Waas is a partisan muckraker in the vein of his mentor Jack Anderson but so what? There is obviously a market for someone who writes the story first then fixes the facts around his story. You go, Murray! Posted by: nu2u at April 10, 2006 3:43 PM | Permalink Bush was AWOL from national Guard duty, but thanks to faithful slaves like "nu2u" the truth was buried by a lapdog press -- and Mary Mapes along with it. Posted by: David Ehrenstein at April 10, 2006 4:05 PM | Permalink David E. I'm not a journalist, so I may be on thin ice, here. Is that true? Posted by: Richard Aubrey at April 10, 2006 4:07 PM | Permalink Give it up Aubrey. These people are so invested in the "Joe Wilson, Truthteller" meme they will allow no other facts. You can link your brains out by adding the Butler Report, the Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report, and a bazillion other sources, all showing Joe Wilson was the liar and not GWB---they'll never believe it. They are the Parallel-Reality Based Community---they won't believe anything that isn't served up by an anonymous source. It's all they've got. Posted by: abigail beecher at April 10, 2006 4:09 PM | Permalink There's your answer, Aubrey. We're all obliged to drink the Kool-Aide no matter what. Isn't that right, Jay? Posted by: David Ehrenstein at April 10, 2006 4:29 PM | Permalink Abigail. I'm nicer than you are. I don't think they're that stupid. That makes me nicer than you. I think they know exactly what the truth is. Just as you do. I just want to remind them, from time to time, that nobody actually buys their schtick. It's kind of fun. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at April 10, 2006 4:41 PM | Permalink Only 38% buys your schtick, Aubrey. It's kind of fun. Posted by: David Ehrenstein at April 10, 2006 4:48 PM | Permalink Source, David? Posted by: Richard Aubrey at April 10, 2006 4:55 PM | Permalink They are the Parallel-Reality Based Community---they won't believe anything that isn't served up by an anonymous source. It's all they've got. Speaking of parallel realites -- nice to hear from you Kilgore. Welcome back ! Posted by: Steve Lovelady at April 10, 2006 5:09 PM | Permalink When Jane Hamsher called the WaPo editorial the "bullshittiness of the highest fucking bullshit order", who could dispute this cogent and penetrating analysis? Posted by: nu2u at April 10, 2006 5:13 PM | Permalink Hey Lovelady, quit stalking me, or I'm gonna call the cyber police! Posted by: abigail beecher at April 10, 2006 5:16 PM | Permalink "When Jane Hamsher called the WaPo editorial the "bullshittiness of the highest fucking bullshit order", who could dispute this cogent and penetrating analysis?" Certainly not I. Posted by: David Ehrenstein at April 10, 2006 5:30 PM | Permalink So getting back to Jay's post, he aksed why they went to Woodward first. Well, clearly they liked him. Bush liked him. Karl liked him. He was their insider. But there's more to it than that. Judy was an insider, too. She was the second one they went to. And like Bob, she kept her mouth shut...until she began to lose support from the Times. Then she testified. And she went further and wrote up an account of her testimony. She did this to try to save her own reputation, though, in my opinion. Cooper also wrote an account of his testimony even though he all but went to jail to avoid testifying. But Bob Woodward has refused to say a word. Not one peep. Why? Were their rules in place? He claims there were. From the post article : 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. Apparently, no other reporter agreed to these terms. And that, in my view, is one reason why they went to Woodward first, because he would agree to such limitations. In practice, the agreement allowed him to be a tool, but prohibited him from being a journalist. And his alleged credibility was obviously a factor as well. If they could get Woodward to print it, people would believe it. It would throw the rest of the press off the trail. Posted by: steve schwenk at April 10, 2006 5:36 PM | Permalink "If they could get Woodward to print it, people would believe it. It would throw the rest of the press off the trail." That was then. Now no one believes Woodward, save for useful idiots like abigail beecher and "nu2u." Posted by: David Ehrenstein at April 10, 2006 5:57 PM | Permalink I repeat in wonderment: Cheney and Libby thought they could feed Woodward bum information, claims that were not believed among people they knew Woodward had talked to, or would talk to. Why? That is supposed to be fatal when you are dealing with Woodward, whose reputation is: he has ways to check, so watch it…. Jay, what bum information did Woodward run with? Are there specific false information in Plan of Attack? Or just errors of omission, that he didn't get the full story on certain meetings? This is from last fall with Larry King: KING: OK. Your source, did the source indicate whether Mrs. Plame was an undercover agent or a desk analyst? WOODWARD: Good question. And specifically said that -- the source did -- that she was a WMD, weapons of mass destruction, analyst. Now, I've been covering the CIA for over three decades, and analysts, except -- in fact, I don't even know of a case. Maybe there are cases. But they're not undercover. They are people who take other information and analyze it. And so -- and if you were there at this moment in mid-June when this was said, there was no suggestion that it was sensitive, that it was secret. We don't know the extent of the damage done to Plame's old network. The CIA has not done a damage assessment? I don't think they will reveal the damage. Posted by: bush's jaw at April 10, 2006 6:07 PM | Permalink Jay writes , in all apparent seriousness: "Today the biggest story in town is what really went down as the Bush team drove deceptively to war, and later tried to conceal how bad the deception—and decision-making—had been." Dude, despite your protests to the contrary, you are clearly both in and of the Culture War. And it has made you stupid. Posted by: Ralph phelan at April 10, 2006 6:24 PM | Permalink Jay, what bum information did Woodward run with? Are there specific false information in Plan of Attack? Or just errors of omission, that he didn't get the full story on certain meetings? A citizen has a duty to report a crime in progress. Obligations to sources are trivial by comparison. As our good friend David E. suggests, no one believes Woodward anymore. Indeed, this story has done incalculable damage to the press, because it shows them collaborating in a crime. Not in a way that is actionable, but certainly in a way that leaves their remaining readers and viewers feeling betrayed. Clearly that aspect of the matter has yet to be understood. Posted by: Alice Marshall at April 10, 2006 7:03 PM | Permalink Alice, By your argument, then Woodward should not only have not printed his classified information from Deep Throat. But he should have outed Felt. Posted by: bush's jaw at April 10, 2006 7:19 PM | Permalink Hey Lovelady, quit stalking me, or I'm gonna call the cyber police! It's a simple matter of text analysis, Kilgore. Same process by which any editor worth his salt can figure out who wrote the story on his desk before he even checks the byline. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at April 10, 2006 7:54 PM | Permalink Kurtz is the Baghdad Bob of the Washington Post. He has lived off the one-sigma crowd all his life and he is not going to give it up now. Posted by: village idiot at April 10, 2006 8:38 PM | Permalink Between Mark Felt advising Woodward on the cover up of a crime by Nixon and Bush & Co blowing an intelligence operation as part of political pay back there is a wide and substantial difference. Those unable to draw the distinction have no business in journalism. And the idea that merely not printing her name was sufficient is ridiculous. Guess what, every nation in the world has some sort of intelligence operation going in DC. That isn't conspiracy theory, that is just a simply fact of Federal City life. You would have to be truly idiotic not to understand that if Karl Rove is calling up reporters and blasting the name of a case officer that hostile intelligence agents would not get wind of that. Woodward and the rest of them had an obligation to run a story then and there that Karl Rove and Scooter Libbey were jeopardizing an intelligence operation as part of an effort to silence criticism of the President's policies. They could have done this without mentioning Wilson's name or which intelligence operation, but Woodward and the rest had a moral obligation to notify the nation that a crime was in progress. Our nation is at risk because they failed to understand their duty. Posted by: Alice Marshall at April 10, 2006 8:52 PM | Permalink A citizen has a duty to report a crime in progress. Obligations to sources are trivial by comparison. An attorney can't rat out his client, it's unethical, and for good reason. But he can go to jail for participating in or facilitating his client's crimes. A reporter should likewise not have an affirmative duty to rat out a source for criminal conduct, but it seems it should be unethical for a reporter to agree to rules that permit the reporter to be used as a conduit for misinformation, or which have the effect of buying the reporter's silence on important (or criminal) matters having nothing to do with the source's identity. And confidentiality should be deemed waived if it is used as a cloak for transmitting misinformation. Woodward of course did come forward...over two years after the fact, and only after Scooter was indicted, and only because Fitz had stated publicly and erroneously that scooter was the first leaker. (Woodward knew someone higher up - Card, Cheney or Bush - was, and to him.) He had little choice by then. Had he held out in the face of Fitz' error and scooter's indictment, he would have looked more like a participant in a conspiracy to obstruct justice than a disinterested witness. Posted by: steve schwenk at April 10, 2006 9:01 PM | Permalink Alice, turn diplomats into spies. or better yet, just tap the phones of all Washington newsrooms and intercept secrets from the WH and Congress leaking to reporters. this is the polar opposite of the right-wing argument before Libby's indictment. everyone knew Plame was a covert op because it's an open secret in the D.C. cocktail circuit. or just plant a spy as a reporter for Reuters and Time like the Vietnamese did. i wish i can link to the New Yorker story. The Vietnamese considered sending An to the US. His family moved to D.C. in 1975 without him, and was brought back a year later.
there are costs to access, and there was good information in Plan of Attack. Woodward described in detail that Bush decided well in advance of the Jan. 31, 2003, meeting that he was going to war. Posted by: bush's jaw at April 10, 2006 9:37 PM | Permalink I wanted to reccommend a video done by some college students called Loose Change 911 you can view it on Google video for free, but wanted to get your opinons on the movie, since it has to do with this article, thought it was a great piece just wanted to add some light on the subject. .... there are costs to access, and there was good information in Plan of Attack. .... If a CIA agent discovered a Soviet secret through sleuthing, it is probably good information; On the other hand, if Brezhnev called in the CIA attache from the Moscow embassy and volunteered the story, the null hypothesis should be that it is compromised. A good reporter should be able to figure out who the actors are and what their mativations might be. Mr. Woodward, on several occasions, not only did not attempt to exercise this judgement, but also recklessly allowed himself to be enmeshed into the story he was covering. I say reckless, but who knows .... Posted by: village idiot at April 10, 2006 10:30 PM | Permalink I received this via e-mail from Bill Watson of the Pocono Record, a regular PressThink reader. Just wanted to mention that a truly purposeful media would be reporting not what actually happened four or five years ago, which can pretty much be definitively identified and categorized by its results anyway. i'm not saying Woodward is at the top of his game now (or in the same game), especially after 30 years in D.C. when you cut your teeth with Watergate, it's hard to top that. Bernstein took a different path ... Sy Hersh continues to crank, but he's never close to Woodward. Bartlett and Steele probably did better work, but they are not D.C. guys and perhaps not well known outside of journalism. (you can't find Bartlett and Steele nor Gene Roberts in Wikipedia.) this is what Hersh wrote about Woodward last year. I knew W. Mark Felt, identified last week as the critical Post source, as a senior F.B.I. official who, like others in the demoralized bureau, was talking to the press. In fact, at the time I thought that Felt was a source for a colleague of mine at the Times on at least one story. Felt was a first-rate contact, but Woodward and Bernstein had many excellent sources. Their stories were as accurate as any group of newspaper articles could be. I also suspected that they were talking to many of the same people I was. On one occasion, I visited someone I assumed was a secret source of my own and found a handwritten note saying “Kilroy Was Here” affixed to the outside office door—a token from Woodward. if Waas is the bomb, then a major daily soon will scoop him up, along with his excellent sources. there is something offbeat about a big-game hunter named Murray ... Posted by: bush's jaw at April 10, 2006 11:36 PM | Permalink one of the important parallels between Waas and Woodstein (not just Woodward) is that Waas is moving the story forward by examining and following up on information that is appearing in court records. Much of the story that Woodstein developed came out of the courtroom of Judge John Sirica -- just as much of the information that Waas is reporting on is coming out of the courtroom of Judge Watson. great investigative reporting isn't about cultivating sources -- its about digging into the records until you know the subject backwards and forwards, then going to the sources and asking informed questions. A good investigative reporter can glean as much information from what people don't tell him or her if they already know most of the answer to the questions they ask. That is what Woodstein did, and its what Waas is doing today. Posted by: p.lukasiak at April 11, 2006 12:51 AM | Permalink A truly useful media would be finding out what is going on right now within the Bush administration to create the next huge crisis, the one that will force us to back this president yet again, past the seemingly immutable “no third term” amendment. What is this man's position at the Pocono Record? Please tell me he is a columnist, not a reporter or editor. Posted by: MayBee at April 11, 2006 12:56 AM | Permalink definitely was a reporting and writing team Woodward & Bernstein for Watergate. it's just that people focus on Woodward now because of Plame and Bush and Berstein is sorta out of the picture. i didn't select the best of that Hersh stuff on Woodstein: The Nixon Administration, mired in a losing war in Vietnam, was also losing the battle against the truth at home. Throughout the two-year crisis, Watergate was perceived as a domestic issue, but its impact on foreign policy was profound. As memoirs by both Nixon and Kissinger show, neither man understood why the White House could not do what it wanted, at home or in Vietnam. The reason it couldn’t is, one hopes, just as valid today: they were operating in a democracy in which they were accountable to a Constitution and to a citizenry that held its leaders to a high standard of morality and integrity. That is the legacy of Watergate. Bill Watson is managing editor. Posted by: bush's jaw at April 11, 2006 1:30 AM | Permalink The idea that the Bush administration is busy laying out plans to create a crisis so that he can serve a third term seems a little 'out there' for a man that runs a non-advocacy news source to feel comfortable stating publicly. Or perhaps I should be refreshed that, if that is how he thinks, he states it rather than pretending to be objective. Do you think a Downie or Keller or even a Klein could get away with making a public statement like this? Posted by: MayBee at April 11, 2006 3:26 AM | Permalink Atrios links to the Huff Post version and says: Nice to see some Murray Waas get some kudos, but it's long overdue. Waas, Lyons, Conason, and Lars-Erik Nelson (deceased, sadly) were about the only people who bothered to really look into what was going on in the 90s. Tasty treats from Starr's OIC and punditry by Ann Coulter were all the rage then. I'm not linking to the item as a little protest after this... (from After Matter) Now here's a curious lapse in blogosphere etiquette. John Avarosis and Atrios and Matt Stoller all comment on the Washington Post looking for a liberal blogger, and none links to--or even mentions--Brynaert's story at Raw, which is how they know about it because he broke the news. Weird. Is that informing your readers? His piece has new information about Domenech and the resolution of the debacle he became for the Post. Not to link to the originating report when you easily can is giving poor service, and these blogs normally give good service, so what's up with that? Blogs that linked to this post include: Metafilter, Crooks & Liars, Kottke.org (first link from that site for PressThink) Left Coaster, Real Clear Politics, MyDD, USA Today's Deadline blog, Romenesko, Fishbowl DC, Moderate Voice, American Thinker. Do you think a Downie or Keller or even a Klein could get away with making a public statement like this? What, you didn't read the "Good Leak" editorial? Posted by: steve schwenk at April 11, 2006 10:10 AM | Permalink Cheney had been on the receiving end of birdshots, from Kurtz. Posted by: bush's jaw at April 11, 2006 12:42 PM | Permalink Does PressThink have a policy about when it publishes e-mails from its readers? Posted by: Daniel Conover at April 11, 2006 2:24 PM | Permalink It would be refreshing for journalists and their editors to slip the surly bonds of objectivity and say what they think. It was really unfortunate that the ABC guy was fired for his rude comments about George Bush and Maddy Albright. Interestingly, he was not fired until he insulted Maddy. And now that Meredith Viera has been named as Couric's replacement on The Today Show, everyone is telling her she should tamp down her opinions and not participate in any more anti-war marches. Imagine a world where journalists/editors could say "I hate George Bush" (or whatever POTUS we may have) and not fear job loss. Oh, sure, at first there would be hysteria, as every advocacy/special interest group would demand the return to PC, but after a while, we would all get confortable with journalists who are not plastic people and who have honest to gawd opinions/biases/prejudices. Yes people, I'm talking about the abolition of the View from Nowhere. In case you think I'm the only one advocating this position, Jeff Jarvis agrees with me and says "It's time for us (journalists) to get over the idea that we're objective and don't have opinions." Posted by: agnes english at April 11, 2006 2:46 PM | Permalink Daniel, Jay posted it for me because I was having trouble posting through the website. Technical problem at my end. MayBee, I certainly hope I'm wrong. I'd be delighted to be wrong. In addition to a variety of duties as managing editor, May Bee, one of my jobs here is backup editorial writer. The possibility that George W. Bush might not be the most positive force for the republic or its institutions has already been expressed editorially. Welcome to the world of small newspapers. Posted by: Bill Watson at April 11, 2006 3:09 PM | Permalink Yeah good work by Waas. The idea that Wilson was lying is total BS but I see wingerville is still stickin to that up-is-down meme. The CIA concurred with Wilson and said so to Bush. I guess the appeal of the ad ignoratiam is just too strong some to comprehend? Truth came knocking on the door and I said "go away I'm looking for the truth." An imaginary one based on nothing apparently. Posted by: George Boyle at April 11, 2006 3:27 PM | Permalink Daniel: I don't publish e-mails unless writers give their permission or they obviously meant it to be published because, for example, the subject line reads "Letter to the editor." I did make one exception in the case of Nick Coleman. Keller's Q&A is clean and polished and different from the Post's hour-long conversational format. Froomkin called Jay media blogger extraordinaire in yesterday's chat. Posted by: bush's jaw at April 11, 2006 4:35 PM | Permalink excellent, excellent post truly first rate if we don't expose all the connections between the White House and the media that made the war in Iraq possible, and then smeared Joseph Wilson for exposing it, and do it quickly . . . we are going to end up in a much worse war in Iran this post also answers a question raised by another of your recent posts: Why is the Guardian getting the most Internet hits among the major British dailies, while being towards the bottom of hard copy subscriptions? Answer? Americans who lost confidence in the Post and the Times. Posted by: Richard Estes at April 11, 2006 5:20 PM | Permalink It's true, the Guardian (and the soon to launch Al Jazeerah) is the Fox News of the left. Posted by: doodah at April 11, 2006 6:28 PM | Permalink Thanks, Richard... This is my most linked-to post of 2006. I don't know what to say about this, except maybe watch where you're aiming that thing. Woodward, Miller and some people at The Washington Times are likely latter day CIA Operation Monarch assets--with slavish devotion and service to the CIA's Bush family. Bush Sr. found Nixon no longer useful, so he recruited Woodward to kick Nixon out, not unlike the way Bush cronies groomed John Hinckley Jr. to push aside Ronald Reagan. Posted by: HeilMary at April 11, 2006 7:08 PM | Permalink Bill Watson- Surely you see there is a vast space between believing Bush "might not be the most positive force for the republic or its institutions" and believing a useful media would put its resources toward unearthing the certain conspiracy that Bush is creating "the next huge crisis, the one that will force us to back this president yet again, past the seemingly immutable 'no third term' amendment". It is the difference between ABC News and the Free Republic website. Posted by: MayBee at April 11, 2006 7:27 PM | Permalink May Bee, I just remembered: I don't respond to rhetorical flame bait from anonymous posters. whew. You almost had me. Posted by: Bill Watson at April 11, 2006 7:37 PM | Permalink I think this is a case where pluralism solves the problem. If you want more pluralism in the news media (like more conservatives, Christians, Hispanics) then are you willing to accept pluralism in the belief systems of journalists? Or do they all have to follow your model of pretending not to have a political life? Pluralism would say, well, some may want to do that--claim objectivity, and be a neutral arbiter--but since this isn't a situation where there is one best way we want room for other claims, other styles, other selves. I think some posters, if they thought about it, would say they believe in the pluralism model, but when it comes time to rip the press because it doesn't live up to The One Best Way ideal, they become One Best Wayers. Pluralism for me but not for thee isn't getting it done. Bill- Posted by: MayBee at April 11, 2006 8:05 PM | Permalink we don't know that Woodward didn't go on Fresh Air and Teletubbies and dissed the investigation just for show for his sources; while secretly having other Post reporters work on the War on Wilson stories. Actually, Woodward did not tell anyone at the WaPoo about the leak until shortly before he testified , over two yeras after it happened. He thinks he mentioned it to one reporter (blank memory here), but the reporter denies it. And Woodward does not really work at the Post as you describe it, does he? I thought he mostly stays at home and works on his books. I can see your point if he eventually wrote something informative or explosive (like Wass' stuff) while the events were still in play, but, like Miller, he didn't and he won't. Woodward did not win 'Media Whore of the Year' in 2002 at www.mediawhoresonline.com for nothing. He beat out some stiff competition, as I recall it. Posted by: steve schwenk at April 11, 2006 9:01 PM | Permalink I agree that journalists should admit their opinions and agendas color their reporting. Actually, the admission isn't going to surprise anyone. It's just about the honesty thing. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at April 11, 2006 9:35 PM | Permalink billmon does Neil Postman .... .... Posted by: village idiot at April 11, 2006 10:11 PM | Permalink Richard: Of course journalists have opinions. Who doesn't ? Do we really want journalists -- or cops, or plumbers, or cab drivers, or school teachers or accountants -- sailing blank-mindedly through life without opinions ? But "agendas" ? Please. The only "agenda" I ever met in 42 years in the news biz was "How does anyone get a raise in this chickenshit outfit?" Followed closely by "I need the afternoon off because (pick one) /my daughter is giving birth/ the babysitter called in sick/ someone has to be there when the plumber comes/ there's a horse in the fifth at Belmont that I really like." Truth be told, most of them consider "agendas" and those who hold them to be beneath contempt. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at April 11, 2006 10:30 PM | |
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