Washington Post's
Woodward Apologizes
for Lapse on Leak
By MARIA NEWMAN,
NYTimes on the Web, November 16, 2005
Washington -- Bob Woodward,
assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, today apologized to his
newspaper's executive editor for waiting two years to tell him that a senior
Bush administration official had told him about the C.I.A. operative Valerie
Wilson.
 |
|
|
Bob Woodward is not naming his government source,
citing confidentiality.
(Brad Barket - Getty Images) |
|
The Post reported in today's edition
that Mr. Woodward testified under oath on Monday about his conversation in June
2003 with a senior administration official about Ms. Wilson and her position at
the agency, nearly a month before her identity was disclosed. The
disclosure makes Mr. Woodward, who broke the news of the Watergate break-in that
helped bring down President Nixon and has written several insider books about
Washington, the first known reporter to learn about Ms. Wilson from a top
administration official.
Today's Post article also said that Mr. Woodward waited until last month to tell
his supervisors about those conversations, even as the investigation into the
matter began consuming official Washington.
Last month, I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick
Cheney, was indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making
false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Prosecutors said
he misled a grand jury and investigators about his conversations with
journalists about Ms. Wilson, who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie
Plame.
In his apology, which appeared in an article on the Post's online edition this
afternoon, Mr. Woodward said he told Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor,
that he held back the information because he was worried about being subpoenaed
by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
"I apologized because I should have told him about this much sooner," Mr.
Woodward said in an interview with Howard Kurtz, a Post media writer. "I
explained in detail that I was trying to protect my sources. That's Job
No. 1 in a case like this. . . .
"I hunkered down. I'm in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn't want
anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed."
Mr. Downie, in an interview with Mr. Kurtz, said that Mr. Woodward had "made a
mistake."
Despite his concerns about his confidential sources, Mr. Downie said, Mr.
Woodward "still should have come forward, which he now admits. We should
have had that conversation ... I'm concerned that people will get a
misimpression about Bob's value to the newspaper and our readers because of this
one instance in which he should have told us sooner."
In the indictment of Mr. Libby, prosecutors cite a June 23, 2003, conversation
Mr. Libby had with Judith Miller of The New York Times, in which Mr. Libby told
her that the wife of Joseph Wilson might work at the C.I.A. Mr. Fitzgerald, at
the Oct. 28 news conference in which he discussed the indictment, said that "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."
Ms. Wilson is the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who became an
outspoken critic of the Bush administration's use of intelligence on Iraq's
weapons capability after he was sent to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq
had sought to buy uranium there.
In a statement in today's Post that accompanied the news article, Mr. Woodward
said he testified to the special prosecutor about confidential interviews he had
with three current or former administration officials "that relate to the
investigation of the public disclosure of the identity of undercover CIA officer
Valerie Plame."
He said that the first interview was in mid-June, with an official he would not
name, who "told me Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. on weapons of mass
destruction as a WMD analyst."
The Post article this morning said that Mr. Woodward said a confidentiality
agreement with his source from mid-June allowed him to testify about their
conversations, but not to disclose the source's identity publicly.
The Post's front page article also said Mr. Woodward spent more than two hours
Monday giving a deposition in the case. The article said the prosecutor
was alerted to the previously undisclosed conversation in mid-June by the
administration official on Nov. 3.
In his statement, Mr. Woodward said he told the prosecutor that the
administration official had casually talked about Ms. Wilson in June 2003 and
that Mr. Woodward did not believe that the information was sensitive or
classified.
The investigation, which has created an air of political crisis at the White
House, has placed a spotlight on how administration officials deals with their
critics, and also on their relationships with reporters who talk with them on an
ongoing basis.
The matter had its origins in a July 6, 2003, Op-Ed article in The New York
Times, in which Mr. Wilson asserted that the White House "twisted" the
intelligence about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material.
Not long afterward, a column by Robert D. Novak revealed that Mr. Wilson's wife,
"Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction,"
prompting an investigation into whether government officials disclosed her
identity.
Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation into whether anyone had broken a law by
disclosing her name to reporters, has drawn in several journalists, including
Tim Russert of NBC News, Matt Cooper of Time Magazine and Ms. Miller, who spent
85 days in jail this summer for refusing to reveal her source to the special
prosecutor. She has since left The New York Times.
Mr. Woodward's disclosure also calls new attention to his unique relationship
with the Post. As an editor, he still writes the occasional news article
for the newspaper, but spends much of his time researching books about
Washington politics and policy, often granting sources offers of confidentiality
and agreements not to use their information immediately.
In the last few months, Mr. Woodward has appeared on several television and
radio shows to discuss the ongoing investigation about Ms. Wilson.
On Oct. 27, the day before Mr. Libby was indicted, he said on CNN's Larry King
Live that "I don't see an underlying crime here."
He said on the same show that he did not believe the conversations between
administration officials and reporters about Ms. Wilson were part of "somebody
launching a smear campaign."
"I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip,
as chatter, and that somebody learned that Joe Wilson's wife had worked at the
CIA and helped him get this job going to Niger to see if there was an Iraq/Niger
uranium deal," he said. "There's a lot of innocent actions in all of
this."
He also told Larry King that Mr. Downie had called to tell him he had heard
rumors that he would be reporting on his involvement in the investigation.
"I hear you have a bombshell. Would you let me in on it," Mr. Woodward
said his supervisor said.
"And I said I'm sorry to disappoint you but I don't," Mr. Woodward said he told
him.
|
