The Long, Long Fall of Bob Woodward (the termite)

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/

It's been a devastating fall for what are conventionally regarded as the nation's two premier newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Times's travails and the downfall of its erstwhile star reporter, Judy Miller, have been newsprint's prime soap opera since late spring and now, just when we were taking a breather before the Libby trial, the Washington Post is writhing with embarrassment over the multiple conflicts of interest of its most famous staffer, Bob Woodward, best known to the world as Nixon's nemesis in the Watergate scandal.

On Monday of this week Woodward quietly made his way to the law office of Howard Shapiro, of the firm of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Doar, and gave a two-hour deposition to Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, a man he had denounced on tv the night before Scooter Libby's indictment as "a junkyard dog of a prosecutor".

Woodward's deposition had been occasioned by a call to Fitzgerald from a White House official on November 3, a week after Libby had been indicted. The official told Fitzgerald that the prosecutor had been mistaken in claiming in his press conference that Libby had been the first to disclose the fact that Joseph Wilson's wife was in the CIA. The official informed Fitzgerald that he himself had divulged Plame's job to Woodward in a mid-June interview, about a week before Libby told Miller the same thing.

Seeing his laborious constructed chronology collapse in ruins, weakening his perjury and obstruction case against Libby, Fitzgerald called Woodward that same day, November 3. Woodward, the Washington Post's assistant managing editor, no doubt found the call an unwelcome one, he had omitted to tell any of his colleegues at the Post that he'd been the first journalist to be on the receiving end of a leak from the White House about Plame. He'd kept his mouth shut while two of his colleagues, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler had been hauled before Fitzgerald. He only told Post editor Len Downie a few days before Libby was indicted.
-snip-
-------------------------------

the article ends with:

"So much for the fortune's wheel. From Nixon's nemesis to Cheney's savior."

[displacedtexan]

1. Oh, it's Alexander Cockburn. Warn me next time. I need a shower now.

Gag me. There are so many factual errors in that crap story, I don't even know where to start.

Here's the quote from Fitzgerald's transcript that blasts Cockburn to hell and back:

In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801340.html