More on Woodward

I'm still intrigued by the Woodward story. He wasn't writing about the whole Joe Wilson angle when he was told about Wilson's wife's status in the CIA, so if the mention was off the cuff, as he claims, I can see him not thinking much about it one way or another. But once the Novak column came out, though, you'd expect him to sit up and pay attention. He claims he didn't let Post executive editor Len Downie know because he was protecting his source. But you don't protect your source from your own editor, so what was he up to instead? I don't think he had any responsibility to write about the information or to tell the public anything, and he didn't need to come forward to Fitzgerald, once that investigation got under way, so I don't think he's done anything wrong there. Where he has gone wrong, though, has been in coming out so publicly against the Fitzgerald investigation without telling us he was involved. Last week, Atrios very thoughtfully gave us a number of examples of Woodward's public punditry on the subject here, here, here, here, and here.

Somehow, despite Woodward's desperate attempts to keep his involvement on the down low and his name out of the investigation, the rumor that he knew something started to spread. The New York Times called Woodward to ask him about it, Michael Isikoff asked him point blank about it on Larry King Live, where Woodward denied it. Also on that show, he even denied that he told Downie when Downie himself had heard the rumors.

While I think Woodward deserves the criticism he's been getting, I wonder if it's not been laid on a little thick. I suspect that this is due to his high profile in general and his work on Watergate in particular. We can't know the details of everything that happened in Watergate or the intentions of Woodward and Bernstein when they reported it, but whether they deserved it or not, they became the poster boys for crusading journalists. I think that put Woodward on a pedestal from which he has a long way to fall. His biggest sin in this whole affair is that he's clearly no longer on the side of getting the full story out, of finding the truth wherever it may lead. He's now placed himself on the side of stonewalling, of innuendo, of standing by while his sources smear their enemies unchallenged. He's not the idealistic reporter we once thought he was. And that's unforgivable.