"Really, I'm Stupid," says the ultimate insider

I couldn't bring myself to watch it, but I am reading the transcript of Bob Woodward's appearance on Larry King Live tonight. Of course, Larry King is the last refuge of the true scoundrel, the place where you know you can be safe, where the questions are as soft as a bedsheet fresh out of the dryer. Despite this, Woodward couldn't help but make a complete ass out of himself, right from the very first question:

 KING: OK, Robert, what were you not telling us that night? (about denying "having a bombshell" to report on the Plame case -ed.)

WOODWARD: Well, first of all, I was telling you the exact truth, that I did not have a bombshell or any story for the next day's paper.
I did know that, back over two years ago, at the end of a very long interview, substantive interview, for my book, "Plan of Attack," a
source had, when I asked about Joe Wilson, told me that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst.

At that point, and on your show, I didn't know what that meant at all, because it was such a casual, off-hand remark.

We're actually supposed to believe that (a) the disclosure of Wilson's wife was an off-hand remark, yet Woodward remembers exactly what was said to him, (b) he DIDN'T KNOW what that disclosure meant, right up until "your show" on October 2005, despite the fact that by that time this was the biggest story in Washington for two years. Everyone's trying to figure out who leaked Plame's name to the press, someone told Woodward, he remembers it, and he DOESN'T KNOW what that meant?

Isn't that grounds to revoke his press pass? I mean, are you kidding me? In the pantheon of lame excuses, that ranks just below "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

In the very next sentence, there's this:

  KING: But should you -- you later apologized. Should you have told your editor?

WOODWARD: Yes. I have a great relationship with Len Downie, the editor of the "Post," and I was trying to avoid being subpoenaed.

Yet he claimed initially to have told Walter Pincus, a writer at the Post, about the "off-handed, casual" remark. If you're trying to avoid being subpoenaed, why would you mention it to Pincus?

This was an hourlong show, if I continued to do this line-by-line we'd have a Rime of the Ancient Mariner-length blog post. Suffice to say that Bob Woodward is full of shit. If anything else leaps out at me I'll post it.