How the Mighty Have Fallen

During Watergate, Bob Woodward was the intrepid reporter that helped expose the truth about what was going on in the White House. During Plamegate, he's part of the investigation:

The details still seem sketchy and I suspect we're going to find out a lot more in the next few days. But it now seems that Woodward -- who has long been publicly critical of the Fitzgerald investigation -- has been part of it from the beginning. Literally, the beginning.

From the Post account it appears that Woodward was told of Valerie Plame's identity before any other journalist by an as-yet-unnamed senior administration official who is not Karl Rove or Scooter Libby.

More problematically for Woodward, he didn't tell his own Post editors about any of this until last month and then only after the unnamed senior administration official came forward to Fitzgerald and told him about it. That apparently led Fitzgerald to subpoena Woodward.

By the way, in the days leading up to the Libby indictment, Woodward was all over television pooh-poohing this story, saying that the story about Plame's identity was nothing more than Washington gossip and chatter. Well, apparently it sure was--he was first man on the gossip train. And if it was so innocent, why did he then withhold the information for over two years? Was he saving it for his next book?

Then there's his ridiculous attempt to weasel his way out of it:

Woodward did not share the information with Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. until last month, and the only Post reporter whom Woodward said he remembers telling in the summer of 2003 does not recall the conversation taking place.

Woodward's statement said he testified: "I told Walter Pincus, a reporter at The Post, without naming my source, that I understood Wilson's wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst."

Pincus said he does not recall Woodward telling him that. In an interview, Pincus said he cannot imagine he would have forgotten such a conversation around the same time he was writing about Wilson.

"Are you kidding?" Pincus said. "I certainly would have remembered that."

Um, why would he tell Walter Pincus and not his own editor? By the end of 2003, this was one of the major stories in politics, and he doesn't come forward with the information that he received the same kind of information as anyone else? He doesn't think that was relevant, that it spoke to a coordinated smear campaign? Are his journalistic skills so ossified that he can't distinguish between casual conversation and a premeditated attack? Doesn't the content of the information suggest, nay, ensure a premeditated attack?

Bob Woodward is a sham. These Beltway establishment buffoons are the real losers in this whole escapade. To think that they can simply decide "this isn't an underlying crime" when they're implicated in the very crime themselves. They can't see the truth anymore because they're so deeply embedded in the system: the cocktail parties, the hobnobbing, the walking around on bended knee in exchange for access. This investigation should shame them all into retirement. But it, ah, won't.

UPDATE: Via Atrios, here's the transcript from Bob Woodward's appearance on Larry King the night before the indictment:

ISIKOFF: No, look, this is the biggest mystery in Washington, has been really for two years and now as we come down to the deadline of tomorrow the city is awash with rumors. There's a new one every 15 minutes and nobody really knows what's going to happen tomorrow. Nobody knows what Fitzgerald's got.

I talked to a source at the White House late this afternoon who told me that Bob is going to have a bombshell in tomorrow's paper identifying the Mr. X source who is behind the whole thing. So, I don't know, maybe this is Bob's opportunity.

KING: Come clean.

WOODWARD: I wish I did have a bombshell. I don't even have a firecracker. I'm sorry. In fact, I mean this tells you something about the atmosphere here. I got a call from somebody in the CIA saying he got a call from the best "New York Times" reporter on this saying exactly that I supposedly had a bombshell.

You did. You talked to the first leaker. And you're playing dumb. Freaking Isikoff knew you had something. Everyone in that studio probably knew you were involved. This whole thing has been like a game of kabuki theater, where what is unsaid is the real story, not what is said. Unfuckingbelievable.

UPDATE 2: Jane links to Steve Clemons regarding who Woodward's Mr. X might be. Before the indictments, the talk was that it was Fred Fleitz.

a short while ago -- one of America's top journalists called me to ask what I knew about Fleitz. He said rumors were swirling everywhere and that a "really wild rumor" was that Bob Woodward had a piece appearing in tomorrow's Washington Post focusing on Fleitz. Realize -- NOTHING substantiated here.

Who's Fred Fleitz?

John Bolton's right-hand man.