Monday, June 17, 2013

The Scoop on Bob Woodward’s Big Scoop.

The Scoop on Bob Woodward’s Big Scoop.
Sources’ motives were “pretty pure” says Watergate reporter.
When ace investigative reporter Bob Woodward splashed the very candid, and very classified, commander’s assessment of how bad things really were in Afghanistan on the pages and website of The Washington Post this past September, many cynics speculated it was a calculated power play by the military to “box in” President Obama. (The idea being to force him to acquiesce to the military’s preferred strategy, by putting him in the uncomfortable, and politically perilous, position of publically overruling his generals.)
Woodward, speaking on-​​the-​​record to a small group of University of Maryland journalism students (including me) at the Post last Friday disputed that, insisting in his words, “The motive of the sources in this was pretty pure.” “And,” he added, “it’s factual. So if the president’s going to allow something factual to box him in then that’s his decision, and perhaps his weakness.”
Woodward related what the Post had previously revealed about the leak, namely that he obtained the 66-​​page report under the understanding it would be for his forthcoming book, which would not be published until long after the President had made his decision about sending reinforcements. He had been told, by the way, there really wasn’t much new in the document.
But when Woodward read it, he realized immediately the potentially explosive ramifications of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s grim characterization of an Afghanistan mission teetering on the brink of failure. So, back to his sources he went — insisting the report needed to be published right away, while the debate over escalation was ongoing.
(It’s interesting, by the way, that every time Woodward referenced his “sources” he referred to them in the plural. Not his source, his SOURCES. Hmmm…)
Did he strong-​​arm those sources? They had given him the report for his book, which would have protected them a lot more. Now he was going to whack the hornet’s nest with a high-​​profile story. (Predictably, President Obama, Defense Secretary Gates, and National Security Advisor Jim Jones, among others, were furious about the leak.)
But Woodward insists his sources readily agree that the report was “new and timely and informed the debate.” “The White House was very upset, but subsequently very senior people there have told me publication of this did them a favor, because a lot of them had read it, or really not read it, and had not absorbed what was being said,” Woodward said. “They looked at it and they were horrified, and then they realized you have to convert, as Rahm Emanuel says, every crisis into an opportunity, the opportunity to have serious airing of all of this.”
On Par with Pentagon Papers
Now to say Bob Woodward has had a lot of big scoops in his day is to run the risk of serious understatement, but the veteran reporter, whose Watergate reporting helped bring down President Nixon, clearly considered this one of his biggest triumphs, on par with the Pentagon Papers case in the 1970s.
“At my age of 66, doing this, it’s very encouraging the see the system works. That a newspaper can put something out that has as much of a policy impact as it did. I don’t think I’ve seen something have that dramatic an impact over an extended period of time,” Woodward said with obvious pride.
He also mentioned that in the 30 days after his scoop, the rival New York Times quoted from his exclusive 15 times, in reports or opinion pieces. Who was counting? Someone at the Post. Woodward saw it as validation, “Because of its specificity and because it was new, debate could center around something concrete.”
Woodward clearly had the landmark Pentagon Papers case on his mind when he and a Post editor were negotiating with the Pentagon over what information the Post would withhold. “If you look at the Pentagon Papers in Vietnam, they were published in 1971. Memos written in ’64, ’65, ’66. And if those had been published at the time, there may have been a much more informed public debate, in fact even within the government,” Woodward said.
Woodward says he had already decided without being asked to take out a page on future operations, because that, he said, “really could get someone killed.” But the Post held firm, resisting deletions unless the Pentagon could present a compelling argument the revelations would truly constitute a risk to national security. Only a few things were taken out.
Bob Woodward speaks to University of Maryland students at the Washington Post, Dec. 4, 2009 -- Photo by Jamie McIntyre
Bob Woodward speaks to University of Maryland students at the Washington Post, Dec. 4, 2009 — Photo by Jamie McIntyre
“We had the high pair here. Why? Legally what’s the rule?” Woodward asked the students. “No prior restraint. The Pentagon Papers* rule. So they could do all kinds of things afterward, but they could do nothing in advance to stop us, so we could publish the whole thing.”
The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War, after the Justice Department enjoined The New York Times from further publication in June of 1971. The resulting Supreme Court case resulted in the landmark ruling that the U.S. government has no authority to order “prior restraint,” which to a significant degree accounts for why there is greater press freedom in the United States than any other country on earth.
Pretty Pure Motives?
But how can Bob Woodward be sure he wasn’t used in a Machiavellian scheme to pressure the civilian commander-​​in-​​chief to escalate a war against his better judgment? Woodward doesn’t know. He can’t know. But he has no doubts about publishing the report. “Every source has a motive even if it’s the President giving his public speech at West Point. He’s trying to spin, and explain, and justify. So let’s not kid ourselves that people don’t have motives. They always do. The question is, is it true, and is it relevant, and is it fairly presented, and is it offered in a way that’s useful to the public? There’s the audience: the public. Not the White House, or the generals, or the military. Is the public informed? You betcha.”
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Kimberly Davis · 184 weeks ago
Nicely done, Mr. McIntyre. Nicely done.
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Yue · 184 weeks ago
Thought provoking!!
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BereavedMil · 183 weeks ago
:) You don't win......LOL
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BereavedMil · 183 weeks ago
Davis...why Davis, wasn't that Palin's advisor? Must be that captivity she was involved in that got her into the VP candidacy LOL
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Bill · 183 weeks ago
Being a former career military officer and a student of world history in its clearest form, I believe that both Woodward and the leakers of this document should be treated as criminals. I am not a republican and I am not a liberal but I do feel that very current Top Secret documents have no business being in the hands of reporters who think that they are the decisionmakers in this country. I personally feel that this betrays the country more than if someone mass murders Americans with a weapon. If processes are not allowed to work the way they are intended due to freedom of the press, then the government of the people, by the people and for the people does not exist the way that the framers of the constitution intended it to. I feel that President Obama should pursue this leak to the culprits (criminals) who leaked it and thos who printed it and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Anything less just condones it and further jeopardizes our nation's security.
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old commander · 183 weeks ago
where's a copy of the report, we can judge it for ourselves!
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Bill · 183 weeks ago
Judge it for yourself? Yeah, right.

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