The headline in last week's New York Observer summed it up. "You're back, Bob!" it blared. Quite so. Not since his Watergate heyday has America's most famous journalist dominated the headlines as much as last week.
Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack, chronicles the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in minute detail and with access to US President George W. Bush himself. Woodward has unearthed enough startling information for a week's worth of front-page stories. Across the US and then the world, news editors scratched their heads as to what to splash with first.
Should it be that Bush first planned the invasion in November, 2001? A deal with the Saudis to cut oil prices? A gaping split between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney? Or any of a dozen other newsworthy angles? Political junkies lapped it up and many breathed a sigh of relief. Woodward's previous book on Bush was slammed by some as a hagiography on Bush's reaction to Sept. 11. Some had feared Woodward was a busted flush. No longer.
But, in a slightly Woodwardian way, there is a story behind the story. While the Democrats have seized on the book's revelations, many Republicans are smiling too. Bush comes across well in the book.
He is decisive and firm. He also frequently cites God and his religious faith. Democrats quickly forget how well that plays in the battleground states of the Midwest.
It should not be forgotten that the Bush administration co-operated with Woodward's efforts. His book was not so much the achievement of "investigative journalism" but the "access journalism" that Woodward has come to personify. Woodward, in fact, is no outsider taking potshots at those in power. He is no gadfly scribe.
Woodward has become part of the establishment that he chronicles so thoroughly. He has moved beyond journalism and into the sunlit uplands of fame and fortune. Visitors to his mansion in Georgetown, which he shares with author wife Elsa Walsh, are always impressed by its opulence. It is a home more reminiscent of a diplomat or secretary of state than a journalist.
Robert Upshur Woodward was born in Geneva, Illinois, on March 26, 1943. He grew up in nearby Wheaton -- home town of future Woodward book subject, actor John Belushi -- a town being swallowed by the post-war suburban sprawl of nearby Chicago.
His father was a prominent local attorney and they were well off. But Woodward's childhood was not without its clouds. His parents divorced when he was 12 (Woodward would follow suit; Walsh is his third wife).
His life followed an establishment course from early on. He took a naval scholarship to Yale where he studied English literature and history. In 1965 he graduated and the Vietnam War began to roar.
Woodward took the decision to enlist for four years. He reasoned it was better than being drafted because enlistees had more control over where they were sent. The move paid off. Woodward spent the war at sea, including on a floating presidential headquarters vessel to be used in event of nuclear attack. He never saw combat.
But Woodward continued to develop a love of journalism, running an onboard newspaper. By 1970 he emerged ready to follow his father's longstanding desire that he, too, become a lawyer. Woodward got a place at Harvard Law School, but then ch anged his mind, ditching the offer in favor of a two-week try-out at the Washington Post.
Woodward's career began badly. His first two weeks ended with a scoreline of stories written: 17, stories published: 0. He was shunted off to a subsidiary newspaper, the Montgomery County Sentinel in Washington's Maryland suburbs. But it was there that he thrived. With his trademark workaholism, Woodward was the Sentinel's top reporter within a year. By September 1971, he was back at the Post working a late-night police beat.
His big break came on June 17, 1972. It was a moment that changed Woodward and America. Early that morning a Post city editor called Woodward into the newsroom (he was seen as one of the few reporters who would not complain at being called in on a Saturday) and said five men with cameras had been caught breaking into Democrat headquarters. The name of the office building was Watergate. Woodward was teamed up with the more experienced Carl Bernstein and the two began working on the biggest political story of the century.
What followed was two years of astonishing work, by the reporters themselves, and by the Post, which never backed off the story. With the help of their inside contact, "Deep Throat," Woodward and Bernstein became the driving force behind linking the scandal with US president Richard Nixon himself.
They were an odd pair. Woodward was a driven, Waspy Republican. Bernstein was the Jewish son of communists and had a reputation as a loose cannon. But they complemented each other. Bernstein was the better writer while Woodward was the real digger.
By August 1974, Nixon was ready to resign rather than face impeachment and conviction. By then "Woodward and Bernstein" was a household brand. First they wrote a bestselling book, All the President's Men. Then came the film (Robert Redford played Woodward, Dustin Hoffman was Bernstein). Stars had been born and American journalism had been changed. Suddenly journalism was glamorous and reporters were crusaders for truth, not flawed human beings like everyone else.
Even at the beginning it was a mixed blessing for the profession. For purists, mixing celebrity and being a newspaper reporter was bad news.
"I suspect their book has created a lot of young journalists with the right kind of ideals," former Post reporter Chuck Conconi said of his ex-colleagues. "It also created journalists who want to be rich and famous."
For Woodward is no longer a mere journalist. He is a power player himself. There is a key moment in Plan of Attack when -- perhaps inadvertently -- he reveals how he, too, has become part of the story.
It was December 2001, and two Washington Post reporters had worked up a tale on a possible dirty-bomb threat. A senior CIA official rang Woodward at home just hours before the story was printed to urge it be delayed. The administration was keen to get Pakistani help on anti-terrorism and feared the story would be seen by Islamabad as pressure via the media. Woodward put the CIA in touch with Len Downie, the Post's executive editor. The story was held.
For critics of Woodward, the incident shows how he acts as a "gatekeeper" on much of America's political journalism. The mere name Woodward (Bernstein's career plummeted amid drink problems and divorce) is now a by-word for access to the corridors of power. His steady output since Watergate (nine New York Times bestsellers) has chronicled in remarkable detail the powerful, the rich and, as with Belushi, sometimes just the plain famous of American life. His trademark has been the accumulation of facts and colorful background information.
It is an accumulation made easier by the "access journalism" that his position now grants him. His books on the behind-the-scenes dealings of his subjects are always laced with trivia: of gestures, jokes and asides. It generates a remarkable feeling of intimacy.
But he has his critics, too. One dubbed Woodward a "mindless Sir Edmund Hillary: He climbs for the detail because it is there, gettable by him, even if it tells us nothing."
He has also had his bad mo-ments, hints that this journalistic colossus might have feet of clay. In the late 1980s his reputation was stung by claims he faked or embellished a deathbed interview with William Casey, a director of the CIA. Casey's widow and doctors said it was medically imposs-ible. He also presided over a scandal at the Post when a reporter under his command was found to have won a Pulitzer with a fabricated story about an eight-year-old heroin addict.
It was the only time a Pulitzer had ever been returned.
In fact, Woodward, who exposed the biggest conspiracy of American politics, has become the center of a cottage conspiracy industry himself. Helping fuel the fire is his steadfast silence on who "Deep Throat" was, raising theories that the source was an amalgam of different people or did not exist. On the Internet, some suggest Woodward himself may have been recruited to the CIA at Yale -- he did join an elite secret student society -- or during his stint in the Navy, where he had a high security clearance.
But through it all Woodward has kept ploughing on, collecting the facts, noting the times, the dates and the places. His latest smash hit will do nothing but ensure more fame and influence. His access can only get better. Though some are troubled by his role and position, it is unlikely Woodward himself is. He would probably just want the facts to speak for themselves. If you can get the access to find out what they are.
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