{"id":5846,"date":"2005-11-16T09:11:07","date_gmt":"2005-11-16T14:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5846"},"modified":"2005-11-16T09:11:07","modified_gmt":"2005-11-16T14:11:07","slug":"woodward-has-some-explaining-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/woodward-has-some-explaining-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Woodward has some explaining to do"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward has consistently downplayed the significance of the Plame scandal. He’s said there were “reasonable grounds<\/a>” for the White House to go after Joseph Wilson; he’s dismissed the Plame leak as “gossip<\/a>“; and said he had no “bombshell<\/a>” to share.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, however, Woodward had a first-hand view of this story from the very beginning<\/a>. In fact, it appears he was the very first reporter to receive the leak.<\/p>\n

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.<\/p>\n

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To say this raises more questions than answers is a dramatic understatement. Unfortunately, Woodward is being pretty tight-lipped about the details — as the WaPo noted, Woodward “would not answer any questions, including those not governed by his confidentiality agreement with sources.” How terribly Miller-esque of him.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that there’s no news here; there is. Woodward reportedly received the Plame leak before Bob Novak from a still-unnamed White House source, though apparently neither Rove nor Libby told him. Woodward didn’t tell his editors or colleagues, though he claims to have mentioned it to reporter Walter Pincus at the time. Pincus denied this yesterday, saying, “Are you kidding? I certainly would have remembered that.”<\/p>\n

So, what does all of this mean? We’ll know more in the coming days, but here are a few points to keep in mind:<\/p>\n

* Woodward’s source recently told Patrick Fitzgerald about his or her role in the leak. Why?<\/p>\n

* Woodward needs to explain why he’s been discussing — and dismissing — publicly without disclosing to anyone (including his editors) that he knew far more than he was letting on.<\/p>\n

* And as Kevin noted<\/a>, the “Plame investigation is alive and well and continuing to make progress. Fasten your seatbelts.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward has consistently downplayed the significance of the Plame scandal. He’s said there were “reasonable grounds” for the White House to go after Joseph Wilson; he’s dismissed the Plame leak as “gossip“; and said he had no “bombshell” to share. As it turns out, however, Woodward had a first-hand view of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}