I have always been somewhat suspicious about Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame. Recent events, from his obsequious books about the Bush White House to his latest revelations regarding the CIA leak scandal regarding Valerie Plame, are presented by many as if there is something inexplicable in the deterioration of this otherwise laudable character. But I wonder if he ever completely deserved the accolades he got for being a reporter who stumbled across the Watergate story (with Carl Bernstein), and then pursuing it doggedly to its bitter end.
Everyone remembers the Robert Redford portrayal in the movie "All the President's Men." But we really learn very little about Bob Woodward there, and there is much that is interesting. Very interesting. Only a little research shows that Woodward, in the early 1970s, was not your average cub reporter. My suspicions began when I learned that his previous occupation was in Naval Intelligence. How many Vietnam era members of Naval Intelligence -- a lieutenant, even -- suddenly changed careers and went into journalism, getting hired at the Washington Post, no less?
Intrigued, then read on...
According to
Wikipedia's article on Bob Woodward, he is now 62 years old, the son of a judge, who attended Yale on a Naval ROTC scholarship. He spent five years as a Naval communications officer, although Wikipedia leaves out that he was working for Naval Intelligence (something Woodward has openly written about), and was assigned to Admiral Thomas Moorer. then chief of naval operations.
Admiral Moorer, by the way, soon became the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff during the Watergate years, leaving his office only two months before Nixon resigned. -- Given that Woodward personally knew the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Watergate makes him already more than a typical reporter.
The further career of Adm. Moorer is of more than ancillary interest: according to George Bush: An Unauthorized Biography, by Tarpley and Chaikin, Adm. Moorer later went on to be a member of one of William Casey's "October Surprise" teams at the end of the Carter presidency, monitoring "the Carter White House, the Washington bureaucracy, and diplomatic and intelligence posts overseas."
In 2000, Adm. Moorer, who is now deceased, wrote an article supporting George W. Bush for President. A few snippets from Woodward's old boss:
The election of George W. Bush is of vital importance to the security of the United States....
Under the Clinton-Gore administration, we the American people have witnessed the most serious erosion of our culture....
On matters of national security and America's military preparedness, Bush's views mirror my own.
I have served under every president from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon. I met with George W. Bush and endorsed him during the Republican primaries. I am confident this man will not be merely a capable president, but will do a fine job. [The article goes on to make a long rant against putting women on submarines and combat ships.]
Now, any decent Daily Kos reader will figure I've made too much of this Admiral Moorer connection by this point. But there's one other aspect of Moorer's career that I believe is very important. Watergate was, as Woodward put it in his Felt article, a "many-headed monster". One of its lesser known but significant scandals is known as the Radford-Moorer Affair. I'll give you the a quote from a major James Rosen/Atlantic Monthly article from April 2002. It describes a major intelligence operation by the military against the civilian leadership of the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Its significance is rarely mentioned in histories of the period.
Yeoman Charles E. Radford, a young Navy stenographer who had been working with Kissinger and his staff, had confessed to a Department of Defense interrogator that for more than a year he had been passing thousands of top-secret Nixon-Kissinger documents to his superiors at the Pentagon. Radford had obtained the documents by systematically rifling through burn bags, interoffice envelopes, and even the briefcases of Kissinger and Kissinger's then-deputy, Brigadier General Alexander Haig. According to Radford, his supervisors -- first Rear Admiral Rembrandt C. Robinson and then Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander -- had routinely passed the ill-gotten documents to Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and sometimes to Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the chief of naval operations. It was, in short, an unprecedented case of espionage that pitted the nation's top military commanders against their civilian commander in chief during wartime. [Emphases mine.]
I wonder what Woodward has to say about this scandal? He is reported by some to have worked in the code office of Naval Intelligence, and been a briefer to Alexander Haig. -- By this point, I think Woodward's connection to the secret world begins to call for greater clarification. Here's Woodward's description of how he met Mark Felt.
One evening I was dispatched with a package to the lower level of the West Wing of the White House, where there was a little waiting area near the Situation Room.....After several minutes, I introduced myself. "Lieutenant Bob Woodward," I said, carefully appending a deferential "sir."
"Mark Felt," he said.
I began telling him about myself, that this was my last year in the Navy and I was bringing documents from Adm. Moorer's office.... [Note: would someone carrying such documents really tell a stranger, even someone in another branch of gov't, what he was carrying?? I never worked in DC, so maybe others know. -- JK]
Here was someone at the center of the secret world I was only glimpsing in my Navy assignment, so I peppered him with questions about his job and his world. [Note his interest in knowing more about this "secret world" -- JK] As I think back on this accidental but crucial encounter -- one of the most important in my life -- I see that my patter probably verged on the adolescent. Since he wasn't saying much about himself, I turned it into a career-counseling session...." [Emphasis mine.]
Woodward, who met Mark Felt in 1970, says, in his article for the Washington Post on Mark Felt that his military service had been involuntarily extended that year "because of the Vietnam War". He was about 27 years old. He describes the year as one of "considerable anxiety, even consternation" about his future. He thought of going to law school. On what seems like a lark, he applied to be a reporter at the Post. Let's let Woodward describe it, and ask yourself if you can believe this account:
In August 1970, I was formally discharged from the Navy. I had subscribed to The Washington Post, which I knew was led by a colorful, hard-charging editor named Ben Bradlee.... Maybe reporting was something I could do.
"Maybe reporting was something I could do"??? This seems either incredibly naive, or is nothing more than the fairy tale I suspect it is. Note how Woodward gets his job, in quote below (and yes, I know he lost it 2 weeks later and had to spend a year at a small suburban paper learning his craft). -- "Colorful, hard-charging" Ben Bradlee, by the way, had his own connections with U.S. intelligence, having worked for U.S. information agencies supplying propaganda for CIA use in Europe in the 1950s, and even working with later-to-be Watergate figure, E. Howard Hunt -- see Wikipedia article.
During my scramble and search for a future, I had sent a letter to The Post asking for a job as a reporter. Somehow -- I don't remember exactly how -- Harry Rosenfeld, the metropolitan editor, agreed to see me.... Why, he wondered, would I want to be a reporter? I had zero -- zero! -- experience. Why, he said, would The Washington Post want to hire someone with no experience? But this is just crazy enough, Rosenfeld finally said, that we ought to try it. [Emphases mine.]
Ok, you ask, where is this all heading?
This diary is too long already, and I do not want to pretend that I know enough to make any kind of helpful analysis about what Woodward's discussion with a "Senior Administration Official" really portends. But I think that this article begins the process of deep background on someone who, I have tried to prove, is more than a mere journalist. Consider the following facts:
Woodward has been given access to an immense amount of classified material and detailed interviews by top members of the Bush White House, including GW himself. How many opponents of the Nixon regime have been offered such access, and treated so deferentially?
Exposes of the use of reporters for U.S. intelligence purposes has been a source of various exposes over the years. This was investigated by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the mid-1970s. One article on this subject maintains: "The CIA went to great lengths to curtail this part of the committee's investigation.... Colby and his successor, George Bush... were able to convince the Senate that a full inquiry would cripple their intelligence-gathering capabilities and would unleash a 'witch-hunt' on the nation's reporters, editors and publishers." -- Carl Bernstein, himself, wrote a famous article on this subject for Rolling Stone magazine in 1977.
Now, I want to make clear, I am not accusing Bob Woodward of being an undercover intelligence agent in the pay of some intelligence agency, CIA or military intelligence. However, the guy plainly has many connections that are not explained. He has had unexampled access for a reporter, and has proven, in recent years, to be a shill for the White House. There is a lot of 'splaining for Woodward to do.
I think I would have to agree with David Cogswell's conclusion regarding Woodward's politics:
In my opinion, this is intelligence community veteran Bob Woodward doing a PR job for his buddy George Bush, the son of the other George Bush, who is the Big Man on Campus in the intelligence community....
It is Woodward's job, like most of the establishment press, to bolster the illusion that George W. Bush is a brilliant leader....
If one takes for a moment Woodward's background in Naval Intelligence as an indicator of where his true loyalties might lie, his writing career makes sense. Forget for a second that he was considered to be liberal just because his and Carl Bernstein's reporting on Watergate were instrumental in bringing down the Republican Nixon.
Actually Nixon's removal from office was nothing to do with his being a Republican or Democrat, it was because of crimes, and abuses of power. And seen in perspective of his entire career, it is very doubtful that Woodward's motivations, his loyalties and his sources were quite those of a disinterested reporter concerned only with reporting the truth about abuses of power....
Woodward's career since Watergate clearly does not follow the trajectory of the kind of character portrayed by the legend. His books since that period all glorify and support the agenda of the establishment that the Bushes are a principle part of.
In conclusion, and my point in writing this diary, is that the question of Woodward's intelligence connections should be taken into account when analyzing his behaviors and statements around the Plame case.