Bob Woodward: Apparently, He's On Crack
What was Bob Woodward thinking/smoking?
Yesterday he announced that he was made privy to Valerie Wilson's CIA identity a month before Bob Novak was. (Typical Woodward; he always has to be first.)
Yet for months, he has been disparaging the importance of Patrick Fitzgerald's leak investigation.
As Howie Kurtz reported today in WashPo, Woodward "said on MSNBC's 'Hardball' in June that in the end 'there is going to be nothing to it. And it is a shame. And the special prosecutor in that case, his behavior, in my view, has been disgraceful.' In a National Public Radio interview in July, Woodward said that Fitzgerald made 'a big mistake' in going after Miller and that 'there is not the kind of compelling evidence that there was some crime involved here.'"
This is not rocket science; this is journalism 101. If you have a conflict of interest in a matter, you must disclose it while writing or talking about it. Woodward's criticism of the investigation now looks like nothing more than protecting a source. And, for that matter, himself.
I don't think you could find another reporter, for example, who ever thought that Fitzgerald's behavior was "disgraceful." That's strong language—and it sounds much more like the White House than like an independent, non-partisan commentator.
Perhaps Woodward felt free to call Fitzgerald "disgraceful" because the independent counsel wouldn't talk to him....whereas everyone who does talk to Woodward gets the kid-glove treatment.
Woodward has humiliated his employer. By placing his own story and his own source above the interests of the Washington Post, Woodward shows that his true loyalty is not to the paper, but to himself. And yet, managing editor Len Downie does nothing but say that there was a miscommunication, and that everything is cleared up now.
I think it'd be a better move for Downie to say that he's going to reevaluate the nature of Woodward's relationship with the Washington Post—not to fire Woodward, but to create a clearer relationship so that the paper's priority is primary and this kind of embarrassing incident never happens again.
