Two Woodwards

Image by Billmon
I always thought it was funny how insistantly Woodward came to the defense of Judith Miller and the sanctity of the client/whore source/journalist relatioinship. The Cunning Realist picked up on it too: "I've often wondered why Woodward so adamantly and so strangely dismissed the importance of Plamegate, and now we know."

Indeed, now the sorry tale is all too clear. It's always a pity when the twilight of a great career is marred. Keeping quiet about the fact that he was leaked to was bad enough. He actually had the gall to go around the media circuit, trading on his cred as the hero of Watergate, to try and minimize the gravity of the Plame situation without coming clean about his implication in it.

"When the story comes out, I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter," he told CNN's Larry King.

Woodward also said in interviews this summer and fall that the damage done by Plame's name being revealed in the media was "quite minimal."

"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," he told National Public Radio this summer.

Bob Woodward the hero spoke truth to power, and protected his source assiduously. Bob Woodward the hack sided with power to defame, and protected his source assiduously. The lesson of the Two Woodwards should teach us something about journalistic integrity -- it is not the slavish elevation of the source/journalist relationship.