Woodward on Tenet
In the Washington Post,
Bob Woodward's review of George Tenet's book is weirdly fascinating, and not just because it's pretty rough on Tenet. The problem is that Woodward is so much a part of this story—he's written about Tenet, Tenet's written about him, and Tenet has obviously been a source for Woodward—it's hard to sort out all the competing agendas.
And then there's this paragraph:
Full disclosure: In discussions with Tenet as a reporter for this paper, I many times urged him to write his memoir, and, after he resigned from the CIA, I even spent a day with him and his co-writer, Bill Harlow, in late 2005 to suggest questions he should try to address. Foremost, I hoped that he would provide intimate portraits of the two presidents he had served as CIA director -- George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Instead, he has adhered to the rule of CIA directors: protect the president at all costs.
You could throw up your hands and ask why a reporter is spending a day helping George Tenet write his memoir, but I suppose one can understand how such a situation might arise: Woodward and Tenet obviously know each other pretty well, and reporter-source relationships can sometimes be two-way streets. And complaining that the rules are different for Bob Woodward is like complaining about the post office: You can do it all you want, but nothing's going to change.
Still, it's a bit surreal to find Woodward reviewing a book that he actually helped to write...
