Yep.  That's what we want in a hardboiled investigative reporter, a naive, incurious, trusting soul who is easily misled.  How did he ever get to the heart of the Watergate scandal?

I don't believe Bob Woodward was ever a "take no prisoners investigative journalist". Seriously, do you?

There's no question in my mind that Woodward is carrying water for the bush administration. I found his performance on Larry King to be nausea inducing.
But I've been wondering, just how likely is it that the CIA  has done no damage assessment (as per the WAPO story). That makes no sense to me at all. What's really going on here?
It's always been my understanding that a damage assessment is highly classified. I'm assuming Woodward was just spreading bushco talking points in advance of the expected indictments. Am I wrong? 

Woodward hasn't been a dangerous investigative reporter for a long time. He is good at cozying up to the powers that be to get information that in the end is of no harm to them. And he is good at riding the watergate legend for all it is worth. Was Bernstein the real investigative talent in watergate and Woodward's main contribution was Deep Throat?

Yeah Larry I watched that in shock. He has always been a Republican, but this is the spiel of a total apologist propagandist. I can't believe it. Like you say it must be the access and the string of "objective" books.

I don't believe Bob Woodward was ever a "take no prisoners investigative journalist". Seriously, do you?

NO.  He is an inbred as one can be. I have not trusted his journalism since the Bellushi book. He is a co-incidental hero in the Nixon tragedy that had a destiny more inevitable than anything Woodward brought to it.

Oh, there's no question this reflects badly on his ability as a reporter either way. I mean, what he's spouting is not only wrong, it's wrong in such a vague, generalized way that he pretty clearly has no handle on the facts at all. As a seasoned reporter he should at least be alert to that and work to correct it.

"Isn't that special?  Is it possible that Scooter has been a source that helped Bob Woodward get his inside scoops?"

This is typical Woodward M.O. Read any post Watergate book he has written. He lavishes praise on sources who leaked to him especially those who leaked illegally and trashes those who did not talk to him.

Since Watergate Woodward has written one embarrassing book after another. Veil. Worshipful book about Powell which reads like it was ghost written by Powell. Fawning book about Quayle. Suck up book about Alan Greenspan. Hero worship book about Bush. They all use the same tempate. Reward access, punish those who shun Woodward.

Joan Didion in a review called Woodward's book "political pornography".

Woodward writes political pornography and makes a lot of money doing it.

Maybe Woodward has been a neocon embed for a long time....like Judy Miller.

THe neocons weren't always republicans. They were Democrats until the Regan administration.

Maybe there are picked reporters who have been handed scoops that build their rep?

The short answer is Bernstein, who I saw (and heard) at the opening of the Watergate papers at the University of Texas recently.
Bernstein hasn't swallowed the kool-aid I'm happy to say.

Woodward's version of investigative reporting seems to be to call up his buddies and print what they tell him. And he's such a big shot now that he probably doesn't have an editor looking over his shoulder making him triple source stuff.
It's pathetic. 

After his last book Woodward touched all the media bases portraying George Tenet as an overzealous hawk who led George Bush astray over the intel on Iraq. "It's a slam dunk", Tenet reportedly said about the evidence tying Iraq to WMD programs.

Bush and the Republicans have replayed the "blame it all on the CIA" soundbit over and over like a broken record. The overzealous approach of the CIA before the Iraq invasion was so extreme that the President and the Republican Congress had no choice but to implement a shake-up at Langley after the invasion.

But the Iraq/Niger story just doesn't fit with the "Blame it on the CIA" picture. After all, this senario has the CIA telling the WH that the evidence did not support WH claims about Iraq's WMD intentions.

No wonder Woodward isn't interested.

What is surprising is that the Republicans haven't yet figured out the implications of their Anti-Wilson and Anti-Fitzgerald talking points -> it was Libby and the WH, not the CIA, who overstated the evidence against Iraq.

Hopefully the Dems will figure it out before the Republicans decide to follow Woodward's "Nothing to see here; everyone please move along" approach.

For additional insights, go back to Josh's post of last July 10, entitled "Bob Woodward's Reporting Skills."

I own a tv -- no cable, just 2-3 network channels with highly variable reception out here in the country. I almost never turn it on, but I do watch some programming when visiting at other folks' satellite-tv enhanced homes.

I agree with you about not tuning in, but it also seems important to monitor the propaganda that's out there -- either by viewing it directly or following reviews/criticisms that appear in alternative media sources, including online.

I think it gets the message across: we've got a whole bunch of reporters and commentators who've 'gone native' in Washington - they identify more strongly with the tribe they're covering than they do with the public in general, or even with the free press as an institution.

I was just reading that review a couple of weeks ago in Didion's collection  "Political Fictions".  She was pretty savage in her criticism of him.  She pretty much characterized him as more of a stenographer than journalist.

Woodward was an insert/emplant to prevent the full picture over the amount of misappropriated spending being done. Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers were going to meet with the domestic spying programs, people were just about to connect the dots.          
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;     Nixon had to keep some kind of paranoid edge to his sense of security, a product of his own sordid ties to McCarthyism. It ate him up, the one kissup to his sense of having better men step aside or die from assassins so he could rise to power (in the person of Henry Kissinger) had him like putty to shape and control. Without Woodward we would of not had Cheney's peaceful coup takeover of the White House as Chief of Staff to Ford, when all was well afterwards. We just did not want to see the truth to what we made America into...

AWOL is fall more overblown. Coked out, shortcircuited dry drunk with a profile fitting his paranoid suspiscion of all those around him in Staff and Government because he recieves no satisfaction of merit from his post. Never worthy of the Highest Office. His personal misgivings about being set up as a punch clown by a Staff of craven greedy handlers and opportunists on 9-11 continues...

As a result he projects his inadequacies onto anyone who questions his decision making, the silver spoon in his nose and his track record of being bailed out belies the underlying premise. The reality based conclusion is that George Bush cannot save himself from himself.

A miserable failure, and he's taking America down with him. 

My recollection from reading some of the relatively recent retro pieces on the Felt situation was that the connection to Felt opened when Woodward was an opportunistic young naval officer looking post-career.  This suggests that Woodward was a careerist and no crusading idealist, and that when Watergate presented itself he grabbed that horse and ran with it, calling on Felt when needed to keep that horse running.  His writings about Greenspan, Clinton, and Bush post Nixon all point to a moderate republican guy happy to stay in the center of it all in DC. 

...that Joe Wilson's wife had worked at the CIA and helped him get this job going to Niger...