Bob Woodward Outed As A Neocon Shrill

Bob Woodward, who has long and loudly proclaimed that PlameGate is much ado about nothing, has just testified to the Fitzgerald enquiry that he was the first reporter to be told of Valerie Plame's identity and that he got the information from a "senior administration official" whom he still refuses to name, citing confidentiality.

Confidentiality be damned. This is a crime and a lie and Woodward is covering up for people who are destroying the USA, destroying the office of the US President and destroying many hundreds of thousands of people's lives. Confidentiality my ass! I hope Fitzgerald jails him until he reveals his source, just as happened to Judith Miller.

Here's Atrios:

Booby's story just doesn't make any sense. Why would you grant confidentiality to something which is "almost gossip" and told to you in an "offhand manner." What ethical issue prevented you from telling the world that an administration source had given you that information as you could do so without revealing the identity of the source? Why could you not tell the world about this when you felt free to share the information with Pincus (denied by him).

Walter Pincus, a fellow WaPo reporter whose stories have been key to understanding the case, says he believed as far back as 2003 that Bob Woodward had some involvement in the case but he did not pursue the information because Woodward asked him not to.

He asked me to keep him out of the reporting and I agreed to do that... Bob and I have an odd relationship because he is doing books and I am writing about the same subject.

For shame. Here we have a once-great reporter hiding the truth, either because he is complicit or so he can boost his book sales, and colleague on the same case who is covering up for him.

So who was Woodward's source? It sounds a lot like Cheney to me:

[WaPo editor Leonard] Downie said the paper eventually asked the source -- who Woodward later revealed was one of three people about whom he has now testified -- to lift the confidentiality agreement, but that person declined. Since then, Libby and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card have given permission for their identities as two of the sources to be disclosed, but the main source for Plame's identity has not.

It's past time someone asked Cheney and every other White House official to issue a blanket release, or explain why they won't do so. Didn't Bush order everyone to co-operate with the enquiry? Where is his (allegedly inspiring) leadership now?

WaPo story here: Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago.

Woodward's statement here: Testifying in the CIA Leak Case.

UPDATE: Arianna considers Woodward's amazing "career arc" and gets this quote from Woodward's former Watergate colleague, Carl Bernstein:

This investigation has cast a constant searchlight that the White House can’t turn off the way it has succeeded in turning off the press. So their methodology and their dishonesty and their disingenuousness -- particularly about how we went to war -- as well as their willingness to attack and rough up people who don’t agree with them are now there for all to see. They can’t turn off this searchlight, which is shining on a White House that runs a media apparatus so sophisticated in discrediting its critics it makes the Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Ziegler press shop look like a small-time operation.