OK, I decided to transcribe portions of Terry Gross's interview with
Bob Woodward on yesterday's Fresh Air for you all, in case anybody's interested.
It's not pretty.
Judy's in jail and Woodward's new Deepthroat book is on the shelves, so it's no suprise that the topic of conversation is... 'Anonymous Sources.'
As you would hope and expect, Woodward explains the importance of reporters being able to guarantee confidentiality, so that whistle blowers can, you know, blow their whistles and all. And here he has my complete agreement.
But, strangely, this argument seems peripheral for Woodward. Apparently if, you know, SOME KIND OF CRIME had been committed, well then things might be different. But this Plame fiddle-faddle just doesn't warrant such hard-assery.
"I think the judge and the special prosecutor made a big mistake, and they should not send her off to jail. There's not the kind of compelling evidence that there was some crime involved here."
I guess he's been talking to Tucker Carlson, because I can't imagine how else he would know what kind of evidence Fitzgerald does or doesn't have. To follow his logic, if a crime HAD been committed (in his estimation) it would be OK to compel her to reveal her source? Never, of course, does he acknowledge any distinction between a leaker blowing the whistle on wrong-doing, and this particular predicament, in which the leaking ITSELF is the crime (yes, crime) in question.
"The woman [Plame] 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. I think when all the facts come out in this case it's going to be laughable, because the consequences are not that great."
OK, am I missing something here? How does he know all this? Because last I checked what Plame was doing was CLASSIFIED. We certainly haven't heard a peep from her through this whole thing. Very few people know what's REALLY going on here. Fitzgerald happens to be one of them. Woodward, unless he's got another well placed Deepthroat somewhere, is not.
"The issues don't really involve National Security, or people's lives, or jeopardy, or... I think in the end, we'll find that there's not really corruption here."
Oh how comforting. No, there really isn't anything to see here... let's all move along.
But there's more!
"What's interesting here is, I think if you had the Bush administration people here on your show they would say they don't like this either. What they did is they appointed a special prosecutor who has total independence. This harkens back to the days of the independent councils going after Bill Clinton. Once you get one appointed they have a mandate to almost go anywhere. I think one of the independent council special prosecutors for Clinton is still working, now more that four years after the presidency has ended. So this special prosecutor in the Judy Miller case has all this authority and independence, and it's the peril of giving someone that kind of blank check."
Fitzgerald is just another Ken Starr! Remember how that guy got totally out of control? This is just like that. Because you see, BOTH sides go too far. Starr's case started as a look into a land deal, and ended up an expose of Bill's sex life. Fitzgerald's case started as a look into who leaked classified information, and has ended up, uh, trying to figure out who leaked that classified information. We should really just disregard the lot of it, don't you think?
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On the topic of the Downing Street Memo:
"As soon as that memo popped up I started looking behind it, trying to figure out what really happened. And I've seen no evidence at all that the president decided to go to war in July of 2002."
Uh, besides the Downing Street Memo that is? Because that's WHAT IT IS: Evidence that the President decided to go to war in July of 2002. Methinks Woody doesn't like that this piece of info contradicts his own telling of the run-up.
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OK, to be fair I'll include a GOOD Woodward quote...
Gross brings up Ben Stein's accusation that Woodward/Bernstein/Bradley/Felt made the Cambodian genocide possible, and Buchanan and Limbaugh's accusation that their work led to the fall of Vietnam. Here, thankfully, Woodward is able to put things back into perspective:
"[Nixon] was a criminal president. Go listen to the Nixon tapes. You've got me started on this, and I'm going to go through and rebut, with the record. That on the tapes Nixon regularly orders lying to law enforcement, to the grand jury, to use the FBI, the IRS, to 'screw,' as he puts it so eloquently, or he has another version of that verb, any of his opponents. Not only is this criminal, and abusive... That is the basic foundation of our government, it is a government that is answerable, and Nixon became unanswerable. He became a power onto himself. Wiretaps, break-ins... He had the Secret Service wiretap the telephone of his renegade brother. The list of things that went on that are horrifying doesn't stop.
[snip]
"But the idea that somehow by reporting and establishing the illegality of what Nixon did, that somehow that caused the fall of Vietnam, I mean Vietnam was heading off the cliff long before. And the idea that somehow what happened in Cambodia is attributable to this... I mean other columnists, conservative columnists, have written, "Well, Nixon was a serious president." He was somebody, and this is the tire iron around his neck which he will never get out of: those tapes just tell this story of somebody who just didn't belong in the presidency."
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So this is my first attempt at a diary!
Yay me!