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The False Promise of Bob Woodward

He’s always been known as an intrepid journalist. But critics in The Nation, throughout decades, identified ways he held important stories for his own gain.

The False Promise of Bob Woodward

He’s always been known as an intrepid journalist. But critics in “The Nation,” throughout decades, identified ways he held important stories for his own gain.

Bob Woodward arrives at Trump Tower for a meeting with Donald Trump.

“Sometimes people have a vision of themselves that just doesn’t fit with reality,” Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward writes in his new memoir, Secret. For example, he does not feel the public’s understanding of him as “‘all business’ and cold” is quite right. But the problem is deeper than that. Woodward has always presented himself as a fearless and committed truth-teller, intent on getting to “the center of what was really going on.” Repeatedly, however, Woodward’s books, purporting to bring readers into the inner operations of the US government, have obscured more than they revealed. 

Decades of reviews in The Nation of Woodward’s books show the consistent flaws and oversights that have marked the journalist’s work, not least a habitual reliance on the tropes and trivialities of inside-the-Beltway access-mongering. Jefferson Morley spotted the tendency early, reviewing Woodward’s 1987 book, Veil: The Secret Wars of the C.I.A., 1980-1987, which largely focused on Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey. “Woodward has not so much misreported his story as misinterpreted it,” Morley argued. Training his attention on minute “power struggles” between top officials, Woodward “tends to neglect the more fundamental and important news,” such as the Agency’s support for the contras in Nicaragua, which became international news while Woodward was reporting his book. Instead of telling readers about what the US government was actually up to—including the crimes that high officials were committing—the journalist focused on petty personal squabbles: “Because there was not much dispute among Woodward’s high-level sources about routine C.I.A. support for contra operations, he had no controversy to report on. No high-level controversy, no story.” 

The excerpt of Woodward’s new memoir that recently ran........

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