The lesson of Watergate (Woodward)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GK19Ak02.html

Middle East
Nov 19, 2005


The lesson of Watergate
By Tom Engelhardt
(This is an introduction to Libby's 'some other dude did it' defense, by Elizabeth de la Vega)

Two presiding deities - and lively ghosts they are - continue to hover over the present administration: Vietnam and Watergate. Though the competition between them is fierce, this week Watergate suddenly surged to the fore as the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, famed investigative reporter turned imperial "stenographer" for the Bush administration, crashed and burst into distinctly Judy-Miller-esque flames.

Judith Miller, who recently quit as a New York Times investigative reporter, spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify in a case involving the "outing" of covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Valerie Plame.

Woodward disclosed that he testified under oath on Monday to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that a senior Bush administration official had casually told him in mid-June 2003 about Plame's position at the CIA.

Even Woodward's blurry account of his testimony to Fitzgerald had a taste of Millerdom to it. It's interesting, by the way, that he thought to offer an "apology" to his Washington Post colleagues and boss, but not to the Post's readers, who might wonder why the supposed greatest reporter of our times swallowed the first Plame leak the way a cat might a canary and later went out on the hustings claiming there was little significance to the case.

-more