Another Robert Woodward book is out. I have not read it, so cannot comment other than to express a small wish after reading an excerpt in the Washington Post: Let us hope this time there are at least some direct citations, and no unnamed talking heads or conversations and thoughts of two or three in a room recorded verbatim without attribution. Let us hope that we don’t hear someone “thought”, and someone else “assumed”, and someone yet again “was sure,” the subtext being all those who talked to Mr. Woodward are more likely to be sensitive, circumspect–and usually right–and those who did not are more likely to be head-strong, mistaken, and obtuse.

Such a style is fine for an autobiography, memoir or extended literary or cultural essay, but for a precise historical study of controversial decision-making at a time of war, in the case of verbatim quotations we need to know exactly how one knows that x really said y.

The problem is not just that the reader has no way to verify the accuracy of both the quotations and insinuations, but the climate of research can become tainted: if a D.C. insider talks to Mr. Woodward, he or she risks spilling confidential conversations that were not meant by others to be publicly disclosed, and, human nature being what it is, will have a tendency to spotlight one’s own brilliance and downplay one’ own blemishes; but if the possible informant doesn’t talk, he or she knows from past best-sellers that their own record may well be slighted for the benefit of talkative others.

The result surely must a sort of climate of fear: in which rumor sweeps D.C. that a book is in the works and then various officials send out feelers that they are willing (off the record no doubt) to weigh in. When all this is done with prior published interviews or in formal on-the-record testimonies then of course the problem vanishes.