Free Republic

EXCERPT Describing an event where he was paired up next to the monotone-talking ex-vice president, Woodward said, “Now, sitting next to Gore is taxing.” After some laughs from the crowd, Woodward continued, “In fact, it’s unpleasant.” Woodward offered up another tidbit from the conversation with his dinner companion. The investigative reporter asked the politician, more than five years after leaving office, how much the public knows about what went on during the Clinton administration. Gore replied, “One percent.” Woodward admitted that revelation made him feel a bit icky, saying, “I kind of died inside and have to confess to having...

On Wednesday evening The Daily Caller spoke to Washington Post Executive Editor Bob Woodward, and Washington Post vice president and former executive editor Ben Bradlee, about Chris Matthews’ new book “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero” — and about the sexual harassment allegations facing GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. Video at link

It seemed an innocuous, catch-up phone call. Last year Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the pseudonym for a Pakistani known to U.S. intelligence as the main courier for Osama bin Laden, took a call from an old friend. Where have you been? inquired the friend. We’ve missed you. What’s going on in your life? And what are you doing now?

BILL O'REILLY, FOX NEWS HOST: Who wouldn't want out of that mess? I mean we're spending billions of dollars over there and we're getting our people killed. Who wouldn't? But, here's the deal. Once you fight, you have to fight to win. You have to fight to win. And, a lot of Americans, including me, are not sure he has the heart for the fight. BOB WOODWARD: It's a fair question. When you look at the record here that's presented in this book, the "X" factor that never comes out, he never -- when I asked him, I said, "Well,...

With the departure of General Jones from the White House, America is losing fine public servant and excellent military man. One of the few in Washington who eschewed the limelight, Jones did his job fairly competently and with a minimum of self promotion. Will we get that lucky with his replacement? The man picked to be President Obama's next national security advisor was sharply criticized by top officials in the administration, with the Secretary of Defense saying he would be a "disaster" in the job. According to the new book about the Obama administration's handling of Iraq and Afghanistan by...

Bob Woodward's searing critique of the Democrats' war strategy comes as key advisers are leaving and voters lose patience with Barack Obama's promise to deliver 'hope and change'. Alex Spillius reports on an increasingly isolated President. When Barack Obama took office 20 months ago – and what a long 20 months it seems – there was a lot of talk about the great "Team of Rivals" he was appointing around him. Parallels were drawn with the cabinet of substantial talents and big personalities assembled by Abraham Lincoln to rebuild the nation after the civil war. Now, in a new book,...

Caller wants to know if he's Democrat or Republican and who he voted for in '68 and '72 (Video)

If the economy’s as flat next winter as it is now, isn’t it a damn near certainty? Obama’s approval rating will be deep in the toilet and Republican candidates will be energized to take on a weak incumbent. His only option will be to jolt the electorate and convince them that term two would be different from term one by welcoming the Clintons aboard. Electing the first woman VP — and anointing her as the likely nominee in 2016 — would help bring home women voters who’d grown tired of Hopenchange and would give Hillary Democrats a reason to turn...

WASHINGTON: The United States has a secret "retribution" plan to bomb more than 150 terror camps in Pakistan in the event of another major terrorist attack originating from that country. This startling disclosure about Washington's "all bets off" policy towards an ostensibly dubious ally in the war on terror is contained in Bob Woodward's opus " Obama's War," which details an evolving US approach in the region. The plan pre-dates the Obama presidency, going back to the Bush White House, but elements of policy, aimed at wiping out terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan, is evident in the current administration's ruthless bombing...

President Obama dispatched his national security adviser, retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, and CIA Director Leon Panetta to Pakistan for a series of urgent, secret meetings on May 19, 2010. Less than three weeks earlier, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen born in Pakistan had tried to blow up an SUV in New York City's Times Square. The crude bomb - which a Pakistan-based terrorist group had taught him to make - smoked but did not explode. Only luck had prevented a catastrophe. "We're living on borrowed time," Jones told Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari at their meeting in Islamabad. "We...

Washington, Sept 23 (ANI): An Afghan paramilitary force with a strength of 3000 well-armed troops, collectively known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams, has been trained and deployed in Afghanistan not only for surveillance, raids and combat operations in Afghanistan, but also for the United States’ secret war in Pakistan against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, according to current and former US officials. While the existence of these teams is disclosed in ‘Obama’s Wars,’ a forthcoming book by famed journalist Bob Woodward, interviews with sources familiar with the CIA’s operations, as well as a review of the database of 76,000 classified U.S. military...

In an interview broadcast on Monday's ABC News' World News Tonight With Diane Sawyer, Bob Woodward, author of the new book, Obama's War, told Sawyer he was unable to 'crack the code' of silence surrounding First Lady Michelle Obama.It was a startling admission from the man who made himself famous with Watergate and later claimed to have sneaked past CIA guards to obtain a deathbed confession from Reagan CIA Director William Casey.It is also a testament to the fear of Michelle Obama that while classified documents are routinely passed to Woodward, no one dared say a word, kind or unkind,...

“On the Record” host Greta Van Susteren just posted to GretaWire, saying that she canceled an interview with veteran journalist Bob Woodward, who was scheduled to speak about his new book, Obama’s Wars. Why? I just cancelled a Bob Woodward new book interview because the publisher won’t get me a copy to READ BEFORE I do the interview. ON THE RECORD at ten is not the Home Shopping Channel – I actually read the books before I do the interview out of respect for the viewers Her decision is understandable, with many television hosts wanting to be informed about a...

Bob Woodward’s Monday-morning exclusive on a 66-page report from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to President Barack Obama about Afghanistan policy was a rite of passage for the new administration: the first major national security leak and a sure sign that the celebrated Washington Post reporter has penetrated yet another administration. White House officials greeted the leak with a grimace, but none suggested they’d begin a witch hunt for the leaker. Woodward is famous for his access to the principals themselves — he recently traveled to Afghanistan with National Security Adviser James Jones — and leak hunters couldn’t expect with confidence that...

Today on NBC’s Chris Matthews’ show, Bob Woodward was one of the guests on the panel, and during the standard Q&A between Chris and the panelists, a couple of curious things came out of Woodward’s mouth. The first thing that caught my attention was when Chris played a segment of the inauguration where Obama said we “must begin again the work of remaking America.” Woodward began his comments by reminding us of the “if you will unclench the fist, we will extend the hand.” He says it’s obvious the big difference between Obama and Bush & Cheney is that Obama...

President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward. ... According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives. "This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid...

NEW YORK (AP) - A Bob Woodward book on the Obama administration is coming out in September.

The publisher's catalog says Bob Woodward's upcoming book on the Obama administration will portray the president struggling for control of his domestic agenda. Simon & Schuster will release the book, currently untitled, this fall.

A senior administration official who read the book says "the President comes across in the review and throughout the decision-making process as a Commander in Chief who is analytical, strategic, and decisive, with a broad view of history, national security, and his role." The official says of the descriptions of the infighting in the book that "the debates in the book are well known because the policy review process was covered so exhaustively." White House officials are still matching New York Times excerpts with anecdotes in the book but one says not all the quoting is fair, especially Vice President...

Frustrated that his top military advisers failed to provide him an exit plan for Afghanistan, President Obama crafted his own strategy, according to a new book by Bob Woodward. In "Obama's War" -- Woodward's meeting-by-meeting account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review -- the president stressed that the plan to add 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation "needs to be . . . about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan. Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in...

Early in Barack Obama’s term, he and his aides faced a rite of passage familiar to every White House for the past 40 years: What to do about Woodward? In Obama’s case, the answer came quickly: The White House doors swung wide for the world’s most successful non-fiction writer. Once inside, the author was treated to a buffet of access to bold-faced names—Biden, Clinton, Gates, Panetta—topped off with a sit-down with Obama himself. “Obama’s Wars,” Bob Woodward’s 16th book—the previous 15 have all been best-sellers and often dominated the news upon release—comes out Monday. Administration officials believe, but so far...

President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward. Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in "Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday. According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy...

Wow, this is worse than I imagined. Bob Woodward, in his classic way of infiltrating a White House, has done so in his most recent book, Obama's Wars. The chaos from this book is frightening. There is no goal in mind. There is no end game. There is simply academic discussions that are never ending.

White House: New Woodward book shows 'decisive' president


 By Sam Youngman - 09/22/10 10:23 AM ET The White House says the new book by famed Washington journalist Bob Woodward, "Obama's Wars," paints a picture of an "analytical, strategic and decisive" wartime president and "does not reveal anything new" about the administration's war strategy. After excerpts of Woodward's book containing explosive revelations appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post late Tuesday night, a senior administration official responded that the full picture is one of a president asking hard questions to make difficult decisions about Afghanistan — not simply...

Woodward's book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger."

The new Bob Woodward book portrays President Obama as hard-nosed and demanding in the process of drafting a new U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan last year. And senior White House officials seem pleased by the portrait. "I think the book portrays a thoughtful, vigorous policy process that led us to a strategy to get us the best chance of achieving our objectives and goals in Afghanistan," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. In an exchange with reporters on Air Force One as Mr. Obama flew to New York for two-and-a-half days of diplomacy at the United Nations, Gibbs said he...

Some of the critical players in President Obama’s national security team doubt his strategy in Afghanistan will succeed and have spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf, according to a new book.

Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, said the remark "suggests an alarming fatalism on the part of President Obama and his administration." Here's the full statement: "Americans expect our President to do everything possible to defend the nation from attack. We expect him to use every tool at his disposal to find, defeat, capture and kill terrorists. We expect him to deter attacks by making clear to our adversaries that an attack on the United States will carry devastating consequences. Instead, President Obama is reported to have said, 'We can absorb a terrorist attack.' This comment suggests an...

Bob Woodward’s new book Obama’s Wars includes a new revelation about the president’s outlook on domestic terrorism — and some aren’t too happy about it. As the Washington Post reports today, the president sat down with Woodward in July and discussed his views on another terrorist attack in the U.S.: Woodward’s book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said: “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can...

To Bob Woodward, it was the modern-day equivalent of the Pentagon Papers. But to Obama administration officials, the classified assessment of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan represented, if published by The Washington Post, a potential threat to the safety of U.S. troops. The result was that The Post agreed to a one-day delay in publishing the report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, and that the paper's top editor engaged in a lengthy discussion Sunday with three top Defense Department officials in a meeting at the Pentagon... Woodward said in an interview Tuesday...

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert...

In early May, White House Counsel Greg Craig circulated a memo inside the West Wing. Part of a series of memos on protocol, it explained how to deal with writers researching books and articles on the White House. (Craig's unsurprising instructions: Clear interview requests with the press office.) While the memo didn't mention any journalists by name--and while there are currently no fewer than half a dozen major reporters under contract to write books about the nascent Obama presidency and the 2008 campaign, any of whom could conceivably end up embarrassing the administration--there is one person in particular the White...

There's actually a lot that President-elect Barack Obama can learn from the troubled presidency of George W. Bush. Over the past eight years, I have interviewed President Bush for nearly 11 hours, spent hundreds of hours with his administration's key players and reviewed thousands of pages of documents and notes. That produced four books, totaling 1,727 pages, that amount to a very long case study in presidential decision-making, and there are plenty of morals to the story. Presidents live in the unfinished business of their predecessors, and Bush casts a giant shadow on the Obama presidency: two incomplete wars and...

Bob Woodward is leaving the regular payroll of the Washington Post, along with about 100 other Posties who are accepting the paper’s generous early retirement package. For the Post’s legendary investigative reporter, however, the buyout may not exactly yield a windfall, largely because he has been drawing a salary of $10,000 for the past couple of years. The buyout gives the most senior Post staffers an exit payment of two times their final salary. On that basis, Woodward would get a check for $20,000, or enough for a 2008 Chrysler Sebring. He is 65 and started at the Post in...

By Bob Woodward Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 17, 2007; A03 Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Greenspan, who was the country's top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that "the Iraq...

<p>CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Al-Qaida's No. 2 has issued a new video tape calling on Muslims to unite in jihad, or holy war, and support the Islamist movement in Iraq, a U.S.-based intelligence monitoring group said Wednesday.</p> <p>Ayman al-Zawahri is seen in the one-hour and 35 minutes tape dressed in white and addressing topics from Iraq to Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian territories and Egypt, said the U.S.-based SITE intelligence group, which monitors al-Qaida messages.</p>

NEW YORK Denis Collins, the juror in the Libby/CIA leak case who delivered a post-verdict commentary for the press, spent about a decade at The Washington Post. Today, after a night on cable TV shows, he re-appears with a massive recounting of his experience at the Huffington Post blog. His story is billed as "INSIDE THE JURY ROOM: WHAT THE JURY THOUGHT, DAY BY DAY, WITNESS BY WITNESS, AT THE SCOOTER LIBBY TRIAL" by Denis Collins, Juror #9. It calls it "unedited" impressions, memories and facts. Other jurors' names are changed. The New York Times today reports that he is...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer leaked the identity of a CIA operative to Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus during a 2003 phone call, Pincus testified Monday as the first defense witness in the CIA leak trial. Pincus was one of the first reporters to learn the identity of Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and prominent Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson. Pincus said he learned her identity July 12, 2003 but did not immediately write about it. Plame was outed by syndicated columnist Robert Novak two days later. Pincus testified on behalf of Vice...

Reporter Bob Woodward said today he would soon allow his Washington Post editors to publish a secret interview he did in 2005 with former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in which the dictator questioned U.S. President George Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq. Mr. Woodward, who recently permitted his employer to publish a similar covert interview with the late former President Gerald Ford, said Mr. Hussein agreed to the no-holds-barred chat on the condition that the transcript be embargoed until after he “retired from public life,” which he did earlier today. “I have always thought that President Bush did the right thing...

You've got to hand it to Mortuary Bob. Nobody interviews the newly dead like he does. He doesn't always interview his subjects after they die. Sometimes, like the late Bill Casey, they're merely in a coma. John Belushi was somewhere between La-La Land and oblivion. Mortuary Bob's shovel is always showing up in unexpected places, and sometimes the mud on his boots leaves marks on the carpet. Nevertheless, he has grown sleek and rich dispensing nuggets -- little muddy clods, actually -- from the great beyond. He can coax usually inarticulate subjects to speak in whole sentences, arranged in neat...

Last lunch with a legend Speaks candidly about the WMDs and war in Iraq BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF Thomas DeFrank, the Washington bureau chief for the Daily News, is seen in this 1996 photo talking to Gerald Ford. The men struck up a friendship that lasted three decades. Below, the two chat on Air Force One. Daily News Washington Bureau Chief Thomas M. DeFrank interviewed Gerald Ford more than three dozen times during the late President's retirement years. He saw Ford in November at his California home and spent more than two hours with him...

WASHINGTON -- Over the past several years, Bob Woodward has been secretly interviewing Gerald R. Ford for a book to be published after the former president's death. Woodward confirmed to NewsMax that he spent "many hours" interviewing Ford on condition that his comments appear after his death. In some cases, when Woodward interviewed key government figures for his latest book, "State of Denial," he asked about Ford as well. Ford died Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., where Woodward conducted most of the interviews. Woodward said today that excerpts from his interviews with Ford will begin running in...

In all the many media interviews with Bob Woodward about his book, State of Denial, they were almost exclusively focused on the supposed mistakes of the Bush administration. The pundits almost unanimously concluded that Woodward's book would therefore be harmful to the Republicans going into this November's elections. However, overlooked by them is a section of the Woodward book that is now causing a firestorm in the Leftwing blogosphere against perhaps the most important Democrat political operative of them all, James Carville. M.J. Rosenberg in "The Coffeehouse" blog asks, "Did Carville Tip Bush Off to Kerry Strategy (Woodward)"? I...

by Mark Finkelstein October 6, 2006 - 21:36 In State of Denial, Bob Woodward claims Marine Gen. James L. Jones, the U.S. commander for Europe, said that the Iraq war is a "debacle" and that "the Joint Chiefs have been systematically emasculated by Rumsfeld." Two reporters from two publications followed up on the story. They couldn't have reached more diametrically opposed conclusions as to whether Woodward quoted Jones accurately. How's this for dueling headlines? "U.S. European Commander Confirms Quotes in Book" "NATO Chief Denies Quotes in Woodward Book" When it comes to contradictions, it doesn't get more stark and point-blank...

"HH: But my question is, is Woodwardism good for journalism, Tom Edsall? TE: I think that the problems Woodward poses as a journalist are significant. I think, though, that his contributions... HH: What are those problems. TE: ...have also been significant. It's a mixed bag. snip TE: One is what you sight, credibility. I think a much more serious problem is his dependence on sources, which makes him, to a certain extent, a sucker for those who talk to him, and a hostile adversary to those who do not talk to him." (snip) "TE: I think the problem is that...

Mortuary Bob is back, and that looks like fresh mud on his boots. Has he been hanging out at Memory Garden Acres again? A television interviewer yesterday accused Mortuary Bob Woodward, the most important reporter in town, of deliberately withholding publication of his new book, "State of Denial," with accusations of perfidy, lies and deceptions by George W. Bush, Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, all to coordinate it with the November congressional elections.

EXCERPT from link:"In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term."

Bush 'kept Blair in the dark over Iraq' by SHARON CHURCHER Last updated at 22:00pm on 30th September 2006 An explosive new book claims that Tony Blair pleaded in vain with George Bush to share vital combat intelligence about the Iraq war. The author, Watergate journalist Bob Woodward, paints a devastating portrait of Bush as an incompetent pawn of his chief advisers and the Pentagon's war planners. He says that, with Bush locked in a desperate battle to win re-election in 2004, they were more interested in hiding the truth about the failures to thwart the September 11 attacks and...

After two books that made President Bush look pretty good, Bob Woodward is out with a new one that comes awfully close to calling the president a liar. I can't imagine Woodward himself ever using the word -- it's much too shrill for the poster boy for the mainstream media. But is there any other way to describe what seems like the central theme of his new book, tartly titled "State of Denial"? Woodward is an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, which is scheduled to run excerpts of the book in its Sunday and Monday editions. But the...

(CBS) Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward writes in his new book of fierce efforts inside the White House to get rid of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a revelation that has caused a tremendous amount of concern at the White House. In Mike Wallace’s interview with Woodward, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes this Sunday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. ET/PT, the reporter also claims that Henry Kissinger is among those advising Mr. Bush. Woodward writes that several people inside the White House have pushed to oust Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The ranks of those calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation included the...