A Star With Multiple Roles Now Faces Questions of Conflict Among Them

[leftchick]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/national/17woodward.html

<snip>

In this case, Mr. Woodward appeared on television discussing the C.I.A. leak investigation - and minimizing its importance - without his editors, his readers or his television viewers knowing he was privy to information for which other reporters had been subpoenaed.

Even as the role of reporters, including Judith Miller of The New York Times, became central to the case, Mr. Woodward concealed his own involvement, hindering his paper's ability to report fully on the leak investigation.

It was the second time this year that Mr. Woodward's loyalties to a book seemed to cross with his duty to his newspaper. In June, W. Mark Felt, a former F.B.I. official, revealed himself to be Mr. Woodward's legendary Watergate source, Deep Throat. Mr. Woodward, who was writing a book in which he planned to reveal Deep Throat's identity, reluctantly acknowledged that Mr. Felt was his source only after Vanity Fair revealed his identity and Mr. Felt stepped forward.

That incident had created some tension between Mr. Woodward and Mr. Downie and served as a backdrop for a breakfast meeting between the two yesterday to discuss Mr. Woodward's involvement in the C.I.A. leak case.

[panader0]

1. What's up with Woodward?

He makes me nervous. Maybe it's that slow deliberate way he talks.

[Stanchetalarooni]

3. Perhaps he has been a back-channel pimp all along.

Watergate was chump change. Nixon mass murdered but the hub was about obstruction of justice. He is a 21st century journalist, ie. a shill for the real powers-that-be. $$$$$$

[Media_Lies_Daily]

5. "What's up with Woodward"? How about this....

...Ol' Bobby has a resume that looks like this:

College: Yale

****Member of secret society
****Member of Naval ROTC

Military Service: US Navy

****Officer assigned to highly classified communications positions
****Assigned to the Pentagon as a briefing officer
****Duties indicate that he was on a promotion fast-track

Journalistic Career:

****1st Job,1 yr: small journal newspaper outside Washington, DC
****2nd Job: Washington Post, begins "breaking" the Watergate story within his first 6 months on the job

Is there anything in the above that would cause anyone to think that Woodward is a long-term intelligence operative? Comments and questions:

1. Yale was a prime recruiting ground for U. S. intelligence, and Woodward had the kind of experiences that intelligence used as a recruiting profile...member of both a secret society and Naval ROTC.

2. The jobs he held in the military combined with his college "experience" practically scream out "intelligence operative".

3. Why would an officer with his record in the military choose to leave a promising career? Or is it possible that Woodward never left the Navy, and chose a career path in Naval Intelligence (ONI) under the cover of ONI's version of Operation Mockingbird?

4. How did a person with a year-and-a-half of journalism experience develop the contacts necessary to have broken the Watergate case?

5. Woodward has a long history of lying, both in personal interviews and in print. Closely study his accounts of Watergate, his interview with William Casey when such an event was not physically possible, and his account of the alleged "slam dunk" comment he attributed to George Tenet when only known NeoCon liars were supposedly his sources...I think you'll get the picture.

[dkofos]

6. Careful, you may be outing a CIA NOC

[UpInArms]

2. Woodward outed as being *Co "stenographer"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/11/17/BL2005111700293_pf.html

excerpt:

"It just looks really bad," said Eric Boehlert, a Rolling Stone contributing editor and author of a forthcoming book on the administration and the press. "It looks like what people have been saying about Bob Woodward for the past five years, that he's become a stenographer for the Bush White House."

<snip>

"And, to bottom it out, doing the TV and radio rounds, minimizing the scandal as 'laughable,' 'an accident', 'nothing to it' and denigrating Fitzgerald as 'disgraceful' and 'a junkyard dog' without ever once divulging that he was not just an observer of the CIA leak case but a recipient -- perhaps the first -- of the leak.

"Hear that hissing noise? That's the sound of the air being let out of Woodward's reputation. Especially now that he's decided to challenge Pincus to a round of credibility one-on-one. My money's on Pincus, who was appropriately skeptical about the administration's WMD claims while Woodward was writing hagiography about the brave president and his fearless aides."

...more...

[SoFlaJet]

7. Wow Kurtz

actually pretending to be doing some un-biased reporting.For a change

[DeepModem Mom]

4. K&R!

[ninkasi]

8. This is a good quote

from the article...

"Woodward's metamorphosis over the past several decades from a tough investigative reporter to a soft courtier to the powerful" has been discouraging, said Rory O'Connor, a former CBS News producer and Frontline director who runs the Web site MediaChannel.org.

Ah, yes, "soft courtier to the powerful". Woodward, like Judith Miller, is part of the whole political establishment. They write to please those in power.

[maddezmom]

9. very good read

thanks for posting :hi: