134^th in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. As July opens, the grand jury investigation in the CIA leak matter continues, putting some pressure on national media figures who accommodated the administration. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post gives a series of interviews in July, downplaying the significance of the leak—actually a plant—and concealing the fact that he himself was one of the recipients of the planted information about Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame.
July, 2005:

July 6, 2005 – Judith Miller is jailed for refusing to comply with the grand jury subpoena.

July 7, 2005 – Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward is interviewed on the National Public Radio show Fresh Air:

“Mr. BOB WOODWARD (Journalist): I think the judge and the special prosecutor made a big mistake, and they should not send her off to jail. There is not the kind of compelling evidence that there was some crime involved here, and my reaction is we ought to wake up and make sure that reporters have access to what's really going on in the government, particularly now given these terrorist attacks in London. That is when the press has to watch what the government is doing and do the kind of accountability reporting that is essential. You can't do it unless you have confidential sources. The high-profile case--it will freeze people up. They will be very reluctant to help people, like myself, who are trying to find out what's going on in the investigative, national security, counterterrorist world.

GROSS: Well, do you think that a terrorist attack like the one in London today--do you think living in times of terrorism is an argument for more reliance on confidentiality by reporters or is it an argument that the government should have more power to insist the journalists reveal who their confidential sources are for the greater good?

Mr. WOODWARD: It would depend on the case, but in this case involving Judy Miller, the woman who was the CIA undercover operative was working in CIA headquarters. There was no national security threat. There was no jeopardy to her life. There was no nothing. When I think all of the facts come out in this case, it's going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great . . .”

When all the facts come out, of course, one fact is that Woodward himself was among recipients of the faux confidence that Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger was arranged by Wilson’s wife—and that she worked in CIA. Woodward received this item from Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State.

In a major black eye for the Washington Post, Woodward says nothing from which one could glean his own part in the story in the interview above or in Woodward’s subsequent interviews with other media outlets, see below.

 
July 11, 2005 – Woodward is interviewed on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports:

       “BLITZER: The leak remains the focus of a federal criminal investigation . . .       Joining us now are two journalists whose careers were launched, in part, by their source, known for three decades only as Deep Throat and the information he gave them that contributed significantly to their coverage of the Watergate scandal and the eventual downfall of President Nixon.        

       "Washington Post" reporter Bob Woodward is in our Washington studio. He's the author of a new book, "The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat." And in New York, Woodward's former "Washington Post" colleague, Carl Bernstein.        

       Thanks, guys, very much for joining us. And Bob, I'll start with you.      

What do you make of this latest development involving Karl Rove?

BOB WOODWARD, AUTHOR, "THE SECRET MAN": I -- I think it's inconclusive at this point. You obviously can't tell, but I think what it highlights and what we're trying to do in this book about Deep Throat, it's kind of a case study about the importance of confidential sources.      

       And Carl points out in Watergate, like anyone covering this CIA story or any story in Washington, you have many, many sources. And you need to have relationships of trust so they can feel they're safe and protected. This investigation that's been going on for two years is just running like a chain saw right through the lifeline that reporters have to sources who will tell you the truth, what's really going on.”

As other observers have noted, Woodward followed his silence on the CIA leak matter in 2003 and 2004 by downplaying its significance in 2005. He had a constitutional right to do so; however, he also had a journalistic obligation to disclose to the public his own part in the CIA leak case. At this point, Woodward has known for two years—including this period in which he appears in a series of interviews on protecting sources and the CIA leak case, etc.--that he himself, like Judith Miller, was on the receiving end of the item about Mrs. Wilson.

July 12, 2005 – Bob Woodward is interviewed on CBS’ The Early Show:

“HARRY SMITH, co-host:

And can we just talk about the headlines of the days and leaking for a second here. This is talk about the elephant in the room. The White House said they would fire anybody who helped name names here in this outing of Valerie Plame. Do you think the current upheaval that's going on in Washington right now is going to result in somebody losing their job, maybe somebody of a very high profile?

Mr. WOODWARD: It's very hard to tell. This investigation's been going on for two years by the special prosecutor, Fitzgerald. If you go back to Watergate, year-end Watergate, people had been fired and there were all kinds of investigations. People had pled guilty and so forth. So I don't know whether this is going anyplace, perhaps off a cliff. I'm a little bit familiar with the case, and I haven't seen any evidence yet--now maybe there will be--that a real crime was committed by anyone, let alone somebody in the White House.”

Given that Woodward had been informed early by Richard Armitage that Valerie Plame was Joseph Wilson’s wife, it might be argued that Woodward is more than a little bit familiar with the case. What is certain is that Woodward engages in numerous media discussions, on air, about leaks and confidential sources and the CIA-Judith Miller case–without ever mentioning that the item about the Wilsons was planted with him even before it was leaked to Bob Novak. At a minimum, the public could have been informed about the lengths to which administration officials had gone, to spin Wilson’s Niger trip.

July 17, 2005 – Bob Woodward is interviewed on CNN’s Reliable Sources:

“KURTZ: Welcome back to this one-hour edition of RELIABLE SOURCES. With Judith Miller in jail and Washington in an uproar over journalists protecting Karl Rove and other high-level administration sources in the Valerie Plame investigation, who better to check in with than Bob Woodward, the author most recently of "The Secret Man," a new book about his relationship with the famous Watergate source, Deep Throat? Here is my conversation with "The Washington Post" assistant managing editor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ: Judith Miller in jail for protecting her sources, an act of conscience, paying a heavy price, but isn't there a minimal public sympathy for her because these sources were not exposing wrongdoing as Deep Throat did, but were outing a CIA operative?

BOB WOODWARD, "WASHINGTON POST": Yeah. Apparently. Again, I'm not sure there's any crime in all of this. The special prosecutor has been working 18 months. Eighteen months into Watergate we knew about the tapes. People were in jail. People had pled guilty. In other words, there was a solid evidentiary trail. I don't see it here.

KURTZ: Well, crime or not, it looks like a bit of political dirty work.

WOODWARD: Well, it may just be politics as usually. I mean, Rove's defenders say, look, the evidence is, and the evidence is, that he was saying Joe Wilson, who was criticizing the administration on weapons of mass destruction really had an ax to grind and got his job because his wife had worked at the CIA and recommended him so there's fuzziness to this.         

       Now it may turn out to be worse than Watergate, but it doesn't look that way now.”

As observers point out, Howard Kurtz, also the Washington Post media critic, generally adopts the neocon line on topical and major issues; Kurtz typically downplays the CIA leak in his print columns. In this interview he gives ample time to Woodward, drawing out Woodward’s repeated efforts to dismiss or to downplay the CIA leak. Here Woodward seems to have adopted the explanation given him by Armitage, that Wilson’s trip was lined up by Wilson’s wife. This explanation becomes a talking point for neoconservatives and Libby defenders.

July - August 2005 – A list of the top 100 defense contractors for fiscal year 2004 shows Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon again the top five, with a total of $68 billion in contracts for the year. They are joined by sixth-ranked contractor Halliburton, Vice President Cheney’s former company, with $7.9 billion in contracts for the year.