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Bob Woodward

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This article is about the journalist. For the Nobel Prize-winning chemist, see [[:Robert Woodward]].

For the state highway in Michigan, Woodward Avenue, see Michigan State Highway 1.

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Bob Woodward

Robert Upshur "Bob" Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is one of the best-known journalists in the United States, thanks largely to his work in helping uncover the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation, in a historical journalistic partnership with Carl Bernstein, while working as a reporter for The Washington Post. He has written twelve best-selling nonfiction books and shared in two Pulitzer Prizes.

Career

Early Career

Woodward was born in Geneva, Illinois, the son of Alfred E. Woodward, a judge. He attended Yale University on a Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship, joining Book and Snake and graduating in 1965. Woodward served for five years as a communications officer in the United States Navy, his last year in Washington, D.C. including volunteer work for John Erlenborn, the Republican Congressman from the district in Wheaton, Illinois where he had been raised.

Woodward was discharged from the Navy in August 1970. He had applied to several law schools, but had also applied for a job as a reporter for the Washington Post. Harry Rosenfeld, the paper's metropolitan editor, hired him on a two-week trial basis, a tryout which failed due to his complete lack of experience as a journalist. Still interested in becoming a reporter, he got a job with the Montgomery Sentinel. A year after his on-the-job training at the Sentinel, he left that paper and joined The Washington Post in August 1971.

Watergate

He and Carl Bernstein were assigned to investigate the June 17, 1972 burglary of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in a Washington, D.C. office building called Watergate. Their work, under editor Ben Bradlee, led to uncovering a large number of political "dirty tricks" used by the Nixon re-election committee during his campaign for reelection. Their book about the scandal, All the President's Men became a #1 best-seller and was later turned into a movie. The 1976 film, starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, transformed the reporters into celebrities and inspired a wave of interest in investigative journalism.

The book and movie also led to one of Washington D.C.'s most famous mysteries: the identity of Woodward's secret Watergate informant known as Deep Throat, a reference to the title of a popular pornographic movie at the time. Woodward said he would protect Deep Throat's identity until the man died or allowed his name to be revealed. For over 30 years, only Woodward, Bernstein, and Bradlee knew the informant's identity until he revealed himself to Vanity Fair magazine as former FBI Associate Director W. Mark Felt in May 2005. Woodward has confirmed his identity and published a book, titled The Secret Man, which detailed his relationship with Felt.

George W. Bush Administration

Woodward has spent the most time of any journalist with President George W. Bush, interviewing him four times for more than seven hours total. Woodward's most recent two books, Bush at War (2002) and Plan of Attack (2004), are detailed accounts of the Bush presidency, including the response to the September 11 terrorist attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Woodward is at work on another book about Bush's second administration.

In a series of articles published in January 2002, he and Dan Balz described the events at Camp David in the aftermath of September 11. In these articles, they mention the Worldwide Attack Matrix.

Involvement in the Plame Scandal

On November 14, 2005 Woodward gave a two-hour deposition to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald regarding the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. The deposition was reported in the Washington Post's November 16th issue, in which it was stated that an unnamed senior official in the Bush administration told Woodward that Plame was a CIA analyst in June 2003, prior to any other known disclosure of the information by a government official, making the initial revelation to Woodward the seminal event in the affair. Prior to the November 16 article, Woodward did not publicly reveal that he had any special knowledge about the scandal, and even denied it on an episode of Larry King's television show. In several media appearances, he commented on the case, criticizing the special prosecutor as "disgraceful" and the investigation as "laughable." He described Special Counsel Fitzgerald as a "junkyard dog prosecutor" [1]. Woodward alleges that he kept the information he received secret because he did not want to get a subpoena.

Woodward was forced to make a public apology to the Washington Post, the paper's editor and readers for his conscious concealment of crucial information about a major federal scandal. [2] Woodward has increasingly been criticized for becoming a Bush administration insider, and for being personally involved in a White House scandal, which stands in stark contrast to his investigative role in Watergate. Woodward has been publicly at odds with his erstwhile partner Carl Bernstein over their deeply contrasting views of the Bush administration. In pejorative internal emails at the Washington Post, Woodward has been described in insulting terms as the "800-pound elephant among us," a thinly veiled reference to his membership in the Republican Party. [3]

Other Professional Activities

Woodward has continued to write books and report stories for The Washington Post, and serves as an assistant managing editor[4] at the paper. He focuses on the presidency, intelligence, and Washington institutions such as the U.S. Supreme Court, The Pentagon, and the Federal Reserve. He has also written Wired, about the Hollywood drug culture and the death of comic John Belushi.

Awards and Recognitions

Woodward has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes during his 32 year career. In 1973, The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his and Bernstein's reporting on Watergate. In addition, Woodward was the lead reporter for the Post's articles on the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks that won the National Reporting Pulitzer in 2002. He also was awarded the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency in 2003.

Woodward is widely regarded as one of the top reporters of the last half-century, and has earned trust and accolades from government officials and journalists of all political persuasions. In 2003, Al Hunt of The Wall Street Journal called Woodward "the most celebrated journalist of our age." The Weekly Standard called him "the best pure reporter of his generation, perhaps ever." In 2004, Bob Schieffer of CBS News said "Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time."

Style and Commentary

In writing his books, Woodward collects detailed records, including interviews, documents, transcripts, and recordings. He then uses them to describe events as a story with an omniscient narrator, present tense and dialogue. His books read somewhat like fiction, and are often very visually descriptive.

While this style may have earned Woodward commercial success, many literary critics consider his prose awkward and his approach inappropriate for his subject matter. Nicholas von Hoffman complained that "the arrestingly irrelevant detail is [often] used"[5] while Michael Massing thinks the books are "filled with long, at times tedious passages with no evident direction." [6] Joan Didion said Woodward finds "[nothing] too insignificant for inclusion," including such details as shirts worn and food eaten in unimportant situations. [7]

The narrative, reporting-driven style of Woodward's books also draws criticism for rarely making conclusions or passing judgment on the characters and actions that he recounts in such detail. Didion concluded that Woodward writes "books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent," and finds the books marked by "a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured." [8]

Some of Woodward's critics accuse him of abandoning critical inquiry to maintain his access to high-profile political actors. Anthony Lewis called the style "a trade in which the great grant access in return for glory." [9] and Christopher Hitchens has accused both Woodward and George F. Will of acting as "stenographer[s] to the rich and powerful." [10]

Woodward has said that his books "really are self portraits, because I go to people and I say — I check them and I double check them but — but who are you? What are you doing? Where do you fit in? What did you say? What did you feel?" [11] Critics complain that this style allows the biases and beliefs of his sources to steer the narrative and that those who talk to Woodward are painted more favorably than those who don't. The Brethren, for example, painted a picture of the Supreme Court based on the comments of its clerks; some believe that, as a result, the book suggests that the Supreme Court Justices do little of the actual work. Brad DeLong says that accounts of the evolution of Clinton's economic policy in Woodward's books The Agenda (presented from Clinton's point of view) and Maestro (presented from Alan Greenspan's) is so inconsistent that the reader will "collapse to the floor in helpless laughter".[12]

Woodward's dual role as journalist and author has opened him up to occasional criticism for sitting on information for publication in a book, rather than presenting it sooner when it might affect the events at hand. In The Commanders (1991), for instance, he indicated that Colin Powell had opposed Operation Desert Storm, yet Woodward did not publish this information before Congress voted on a war resolution, when it may have made a difference. And in Veil, he indicates that former CIA Director William Casey personally knew of arms sales to the Contras, but he did not reveal this until after the Congressional investigation.

Woodward has also been accused of exaggeration and fabrication by other journalists, most notably regarding Deep Throat, his famous Watergate informant. Before he was revealed to be W. Mark Felt, some contended that Deep Throat was a composite character based on more than one Watergate source. Martin Dardis, the chief investigator for the Dade County State Attorney, who in 1972 discovered that the money found on the Watergate burglars came from the Committee to Re-elect the President, has complained that Al;l the President's Men misrepresented him. Woodward was also accused of fabricating his deathbed interview with Casey, as described in Veil; critics say the interview simply could not have taken place as written in the book. Finally, an investigation by the New York Review of Books found that Woodward fabricated a sensational story about Justice William J. Brennan in The Brethren, among other issues. [13]

Despite these criticisms and challenges, Woodward is widely praised as an authoritative and balanced journalist. The New York Times Book Review said in 2004 that "No reporter has more talent for getting Washington’s inside story and telling it cogently." The publication of a Woodward book, perhaps more than any other contemporary author's, is treated as a major political event that dominates national news for days.

Family

Woodward lives in the Georgetown section of Washington. He is married to Elsa Walsh, a writer for The New Yorker, and has two daughters.

Books

Woodward has co-authored or authored ten #1 national best-selling non-fiction books, more than any other contemporary American writer. They are:

Other books, which have also been best-sellers but not #1, are:

  • The Choice (1996) about Clinton's re-election bid
  • Maestro (2000) about Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan
  • The Secret Man (2005) about Mark Felt's disclosure, after more than thirty years, that he was Deep Throat. The book was written in only 10 days, to capitalize on the unexpected admission by Felt, as Deep Throat.

Newsweek has excerpted five of Woodward's books in cover stories; 60 Minutes has done segments on five; and three have been made into movies.


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