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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...

The Obama Administration has been Woodwarded again, this time with a major scoop: Bob Woodward has a major front-page story that is more or less a summary precis of General McChrystal’s confidential Initial Assessment of the Afghan situation...I have a few initial assessments of my own: 1. It is not good to have a document like this leaked into the public debate before the President has made his decision...I assume the Obama team is very angry about this, and I think they have every right to be... 4. The leak makes it harder for President Obama to reject a McChrystal...

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...

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum." Of the dead, nothing but good. So said Dean Acheson of Sen. Joe McCarthy on his death in 1957. "Tailgunner Joe" had bedeviled the secretary of state for his lassitude toward communist penetration of State in President Truman's time. But the passing of Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI in the later Nixon years, lately exposed as "Deep Throat," the source for the Woodward-Bernstein stories, calls forth some rebuttal to the tributes lavished upon Felt as the honest lawman who saved our republic. When the Watergate break-in was traced to the Committee to Reelect...

Watergate 'Deep Throat' W. Mark Felt Dies at 95 SAN FRANCISCO — W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who revealed himself as "Deep Throat" 30 years after he tipped off reporters to the Watergate scandal that toppled a president, has died. He was 95. Felt died Thursday in Santa Rosa after suffering from congestive heart failure for several months, said family friend John D. O'Connor, who wrote the 2005 Vanity Fair article uncovering Felt's secret. The shadowy central figure in one of the most gripping political dramas of the 20th century, Felt insisted his alter ego be kept secret...

Mark Felt, the FBI official who as the anonymous journalistic source "Deep Throat" helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Rosa, Calif. He was 95. Felt suffered from congestive heart failure but the immediate cause of death was not known on Thursday night. "He was an important person for the history of our nation, but also such a gem and such a treasure to our family," said his grandson Nick Jones, who confirmed the death. "He was a great man." Jones said the family would issue a formal statement on Friday. In...

Friday, The Times' Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes reported that the United States has escalated its war against Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies by "deploying Predator aircraft equipped with sophisticated new surveillance systems that were instrumental in crippling the insurgency in Iraq." It's a story whose significance may extend well beyond the benighted hills and valleys of Pakistan's violent Pashtun hinterlands and onto the hustings of our current presidential campaign. Coupled with Thursday's report in the New York Times that President Bush has signed a secret order permitting Afghanistan-based U.S. special operations forces to cross into Pakistan without...

Bush's Lonely Decision September 15, 2008 Now that even Barack Obama has acknowledged that President Bush's surge in Iraq has "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams," maybe it's time the Democratic nominee gives some thought to how that success actually came about -- not just in Ramadi and Baghdad, but in the bureaucratic Beltway infighting out of which the decision to surge emerged. excerpt Consider what confronted Mr. Bush in 2006. Following a February attack on a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, Iraq's sectarian violence began a steep upward spiral. excerpt The "Sunni Awakening" of tribal sheiks against al...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The dramatic drop in violence in Iraq is due in large part to a secret program the U.S. military has used to kill terrorists, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward. Bob Woodward on Larry King Live Bob Woodward's book, "The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008," came out Monday. The program -- which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb -- must remain secret for now or it would "get people killed," Woodward said Monday on CNN's Larry King Live. "It is a...

WSJ Book Review - "The War Within," by Bob Woodward -- During a videoconference with Baghdad, the president said, "George, we're not playing for a tie. I want to make sure we all understand this." Gen. Casey, Mr. Woodward writes, took this as "an affront to his dignity that he would long remember." ... Gen. Casey, after all, was the commander who all along maintained that the solution in Iraq was for America to draw down its forces -- even after the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. He was the commander who later that year was given his...

Journalist Bob Woodward discusses "secret operational capabilities" against militia and insurgent leaders in Iraq, and spying on Iraq's prime minister.

WASHINGTON — Bob Woodward, who wrote two books praising President Bush and then a third harshly criticizing him, is out with a fourth tome that renders a mixed verdict on Bush, lauding the president’s surge of troops into Iraq, but saying "too often he failed to lead." At 487 pages, "The War Within" is the fourth installment in Woodward’s series of books on the president. Its release is embargoed until Monday, although an advance copy was obtained exclusively by FOX News. The new book is less critical than Woodward’s last tome, "State of Denial," which savaged Bush for his execution...

In her Sunday column this week, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell responds to charges of improper money-making from special-interest groups against two of the newspaper's stars, David Broder and Bob Woodward. The allegations were carried in the current issue of Harper's by Ken Silverstein, the magazine's Washington editor. Both Broder and Woodward recently took buyouts from the paper but remain as contract workers. The Post Stylebook's ethics and standards section says only: "We freelance for no one and accept no speaking engagements without permission from department heads." Howell observes: "Broder and Woodward did not check with editors on the appearances...

Click Video- Learn how DNA was able to sort out and match the DDS fragments

The buzz in the publishing world this week has been about the auction, currently underway, for the memoirs of former CIA director George Tenet. The bidding — which should end early next week — could bring in as much as $5 million for the Bush administration defector. Whatever publisher wins, there's at least one person who can't lose — Robert Barnett, the D.C.-based attorney who represents Tenet. A senior partner of the D.C. firm Williams & Connelly, Barnett — who insists that journalists call him an attorney, not an agent — has become the go-to-guy if you think you've got...

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...

Here's a fun contest: Can you our readers find any example of denunciations of Richard Armitage's leak of Valerie Plame's name by a) Democratic officeholders or b) MSM columnists or c) left-wing bloggers? I did some Google searching this evening and came up pretty much blank. So here's the paradox: We hear on the one hand that this leak represents a cloud over the vice presidency - a scandal - a threat to national security - possible grounds for impeachment. And then on the other hand: not one word of condemnation of the person who actually did the leaking! Here...

Breaking on MSNBC

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...

Listening to the full Woodward tape of Under Secretary of State Richard Armitage leaking the news about Plame must be giving Fitzgerald nightmares. CNN has posted the full tape played at the trial and it is astounding. The part that got me was when Armitage said “His wife named him”, and Woodward asks, “Why doesn’t this get out?”. Then Armitage says, on June 13th 2003, basically what Andrea Mitchell would say months later when she was talking off the cuff on CNBC. Armitage laughingly says “Everyone knows”. In the words of Mitchell. MURRAY And the second question is: Do we...

WASHINGTON - Three prominent journalists testified Monday that Bush administration officials volunteered leaks about a CIA operative, as I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's attorneys sought to suggest he was not responsible for exposing her. The jury in Libby's perjury trial heard a 66-second snippet of one of the deep background interviews given to Washington Post editor Bob Woodward for use in one of his books. They also saw a parade of Pulitzer-prize winning journalists discuss who did and did not leak the information that set off a scandal and ultimately brought Libby to trial. Woodward, who never wrote about Plame, and...

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...

In a 2004 interview, former President Ford said he wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq. Ford told Bob Woodward of The Washington Post that he "very strongly" disagreed with President Bush's reasoning. Ford asked that the interview be held until after his death. Ford was also critical of Vice President Cheney -- his White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who also served as Ford's chief of staff and later was his secretary of defense. The former president said the two "made a big mistake" in pushing weapons of mass destruction as a justification for...

All his usual formalities of perfidy were observed with scrupulous technique. -Winston Churchill on Hitler’s Invasion of Russia Washington offers numerous opportunities for high officials bent on undermining the Will of Congress, as well as the Chief Executive and his explicit, lawful directives. Richard Armitage, as we now know, ignored an express Presidential Directive in the Plame investigation when he failed to notify the White House that he was the source of the leak to Bob Novak.

Most of you experienced the "media storm" over Bob Woodward's new book-criticizing Rumsfeld and the administration,natch. When the Department of Defense issued a blistering rebuttal, it was as if a tree fell in a deserted forest. Read the rebuttal - and a few other interesting facts- right here.

For the last couple of years, Bob Woodward, the renowned Washington Post investigative journalist who became famous for breaking the Watergate scandal, has been in a bad mood. You see, when he attended those liberal cocktail parties on New York's Upper East side there were people who didn't think Woodward's liberal credentials were still in good standing after his two books on George W. Bush. Woodward presented Bush in what some say was a positive light and this kind of thing doesn't set well with the Manhattan crowd who sees the president as the incarnation of the anti-Christ. Well, perhaps...

[SNIP] Mr. Woodward has been that amazing thing, the boring fabulist. The Bush White House has spent the past five years thinking they could manage him. Talk about a state of denial. Now he has thwarted me. I bought "State of Denial" thinking I might have a merry time bashing it and a satisfying time defending the innocent injured. But it is a good book. It may be a great one. It is serious, densely, even exhaustively, reported, and a real contribution to history in that it gives history what it most requires, first-person testimony.

The Yin Yang symbol from Chinese Philosophy represents opposing natural forces. Yang, literally translated, means the sun or sunny. Yin, being the natural opposition is thought to be the moon, darkness or shade. Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion: - To every action there is an equal but opposite reaction - is an extremely pure definition of the Yin Yang symbol. While natural balance, God’s fulcrum if you will, is accepted by the mortal mind even when the opposing forces have complex dependencies like “morality” and are thusly, vague. Chinese philosophers commonly apply Yin Yang symbolism vaguely, including, among...

One of the favorite topics of discussion in the media and among Iraq war critics is whether or not the Bush administration has properly prosecuted the war, but the topic I have yet to hear discussed is whether or not the anti-war left Continues... =============================================================== Woodward: Blame the black chick for 9/11 and Jew advising Bush for starting wars You know things are going swimmingly for Democrats in the home stretch when Exhibit A in their case that their party's really tough on terror is that a WAPO reporter -- Bob Woodward -- doesn't like Rummy. Unlike his first two...

John Kerry Presses for Foreign Relations Committee Hearings on Iraq Revelations in “State of Denial” Washington -- In light of recent revelations about the Bush Administration’s conduct of the Iraq War revealed in journalist Bob Woodward’s book State of Denial, Senator John Kerry today asked Senator Richard Lugar, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to hold hearings as soon as possible on the Administration’s decision-making and responses to key intelligence. Kerry specifically asked Lugar to investigate misleading Administration statements about the current state of sectarian violence, false statements about projected levels of violence in the future, ignoring requests for...

Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial” got scooped on what was presented on national TV as the book’s most sensational revelation—that enemy attacks in Iraq have been escalating. The Government Accountability Office and the Department of Defense beat Woodward to reporting this information, and reported it in greater detail. The government’s open reporting on the increasing number of enemy attacks also refutes the charge Woodward made in collaboration with Mike Wallace on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday that the administration kept this “trend” secret to deceive people about how bad the war is going. Woodward writes about a May 24, 2006...

The attacks of 9/11, and especially the post-Saddam Iraqi insurgencies, could have been avoided - if only that pig-headed, disengaged, overly optimistic President Bush would have listened to . . . (fill in name here). That's the message of any number of critics and new books seeking to skewer the Republican White House, just as the mid-term elections draw near. The latest salvo: "State of Denial," by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post. In it, Woodward depicts an administration locked in a virtual civil war, with Bush either out to lunch, or stubbornly in "denial" about the realities he faces....

The Powell What-Ifs By Dan FroomkinSpecial to washingtonpost.comTuesday, October 3, 2006; 1:14 PM That Colin Powell was unceremoniously dumped from his post as secretary of state after the 2004 election has been definitively established in the past few days not just by Bob Woodward, but by Karen DeYoung -- also a senior editor at The Washington Post, and also out with a new book.Judging from the excerpt which ran in The Washington Post Magazine over the weekend, DeYoung's book, "Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell," raises a host of what-if questions.What if Powell hadn't been such a "good soldier"? What...

Here's an interesting scene from Bob Woodward's new book. It's the summer of 2004 and George Tenet has resigned as CIA chief: [White House chief of staff] Andy Card called [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage to see if he was interested in taking over the CIA. No, Armitage replied emphatically. "Can I ask the reason? We're disappointed." Armitage replied that he could give the reason but he would prefer not to because it might hurt Cards feelings. Card knew the problem for Armitage was Cheney and Rumsfeld. He nonetheless asked Powell if there was a way to persuade Armitage....

"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...

Democrats and their press: lying about the war - Monday, October 02, 2006 11:32 AM Watching MSNBC "reporting" on Woodward's book this morning. The anchorwoman was describing Powell's speech at the UN as the Administration's case for going to war. In fact, the Administration's case for going to war is contained in the 2002 White Paper, the congressional authorization for the use of force (November 2002), in the State of the Union message of January 20, 2003 and in its statement calling for the enforcement of UN Resolution 1441, a war ultimatum whose deadline passed on December 7, 2002. Powell's...

What a spectacle America at war presents to the world. A former president, red-faced, bawls his rage at Fox News' Chris Wallace, who had asked why he had not shut down bin Laden and Co. in the seven years he had to do it. The president of the United States declaims to a partisan audience in Alabama, "The Party of FDR and Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run." Is this how the great republic fights and wins its wars? America has taken on the aspect of France's Fourth Republic after the fall of Dien Bien Phu...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning. One...

<p>WASHINGTON -- While leading the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the summer of 2003, David Kay received a phone call from ``Scooter'' Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, who wanted a particular place searched: ``The vice president wants to know if you've looked at this area. We have indications -- and here are the geocoordinates -- that something's buried there.'' Kay and his experts located the area on the map. It was in the middle of Lebanon.</p>

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."

by Mark Finkelstein October 2, 2006 - 07:54 If Matt Lauer ever decides to leave 'Today,' he has a promising career ahead of him interpreting for the hearing-impaired at meetings of Moveon.org and like-minded groups. Interviewing Bob Woodward on this morning's 'Today' on his Bush-bashing State of Denial, Lauer served as a cheerleader worthy of Katie at her perkiest. At one point, Lauer summarized matters thusly: "You paint a picture of a White House and administration that is not tone deaf in some cases but that literally in some cases puts their hands over their ears and said we don't...

The political fallout over claims that the Bush administration was riven by infighting over the Iraq war deepened yesterday when the president's former chief of staff confirmed that he twice sought to sack Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary.Andrew Card said George W Bush rebuffed his and others' demands to sideline Mr Rumsfeld, who had been accused of mishandling post-war security. The confirmation yesterday triggered talk in Washington that alternative candidates were being sounded out to lead the Pentagon. The latest bout of speculation began with claims in a new book, State of Denial, by the Watergate journalist Bob Woodward. Mr...

On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White...

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...

On May 22, 2006, President Bush spoke in Chicago and gave a characteristically upbeat forecast: "Years from now, people will look back on the formation of a unity government in Iraq as a decisive moment in the story of liberty, a moment when freedom gained a firm foothold in the Middle East and the forces of terror began their long retreat." Two days later, the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence assessment to the White House that contradicted the president's forecast. Instead of a "long retreat," the report forecast a more violent 2007: "Insurgents...

Former White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. "Andy” Card, Jr. has denied Bob Woodward’s claim that he and first lady Laura Bush tried to get Donald Rumsfeld fired as defense secretary. Card told NewsMax’s chief Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler that the assertion in Woodward’s book "State of Denial" that he thought Rumsfeld should have been the one to leave the administration instead of himself was also "not true.” Card left as chief of staff in April. According to an excerpt to be published in the Washington Post on Sunday, "State of Denial" says, "He [Card] was leaving. And the...

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...

In May, President Bush spoke in Chicago and gave a characteristically upbeat forecast: "Years from now, people will look back on the formation of a unity government in Iraq as a decisive moment in the story of liberty, a moment when freedom gained a firm foothold in the Middle East and the forces of terror began their long retreat." Two days later, the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence assessment to the White House that contradicted the president's forecast. Instead of a "long retreat," the report predicted a more violent 2007: "Insurgents and terrorists...

'State of Denial' Lands Early And Hits Harder By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 30, 2006 The impassioned debate that seems to surround each new book by Bob Woodward burst into public view yesterday, two days ahead of schedule. The unveiling of "State of Denial," Woodward's latest take on the Bush administration's struggle with the conflict in Iraq, scrambled the usual media alliances. The New York Times ran a front-page exclusive on a book by a journalist for The Washington Post -- which begins running excerpts tomorrow -- and Brian Williams led "NBC Nightly News" with a...

NEW YORK -- Henry Kissinger has been advising President Bush and Vice President Cheney about Iraq, telling them that "victory is the only meaningful exit strategy," author and journalist Bob Woodward said. The Washington Post editor's third book on the Bush administration, "State of Denial," comes out next week. In an interview airing Sunday night on CBS-TV's "60 Minutes," Woodward said that U.S. troops and their allies are being attacked, on average, every 15 minutes. "The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the...