What to make of the involvement of Bob Woodward’s involvement in the CIA leak case? Already the New York Times and others think this vindicates their longstanding suspicions that Woodward was too close to the Bush administration. They think, as they did with Judy Miller, that he maintained his silence to protect somebody in the White House.
My problem with Woodward is different. The fact that he knew about Wilson’s wife before Libby started talking to reporters helps Libby’s case. He should have come forward much sooner. Moreover, even though I thought some of his performances on Larry King were right on, such as when he reminded the panel that Joe Wilson was a liar who deserved to be exposed as a CIA plant, he has now undercut his own credibility — those statements now look motivated by Woodward’s interest in having the case dismissed as quickly as possible so that he would not get dragged into it.
That’s too bad, because someone with his stature needed to say that the prosecutor was going in the wrong direction here. If he had just been forthright about his involvement, he could have said all those things and backed it up with his own account of how Wilson’s wife’s identity was being circulated among reporters in Washington before Libby ever “outed” her.