WOODWARD STRIKES AGAIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807540056-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: September 1, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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AKA
September 1987
WOODWARD
STRIKES
AGAIN
Fifteen Years After Driving
Richard Nixon Out of the White
House, Bob Woodward Is Ready
to Blow the Lid Off the CIA. How
Did a Small-Town Midwestern
Boy Become Washington's Most
Feared Reporter? Does He
Expose Too Many of America's
Secrets? Has Success Gone to
His Head? To Find Out, Step into
Bob Woodward's Private World.
By Barbara Matusow
Super Sleuth meets Master Spy-that's
the heart of Bob Woodward's latest
boo , a c c le of William Casey's
reign as director of Central intelligence.
Given the subject and the author-
Woodward's four previous books were
all number-one best-sellers-this one
had the making of a blockbuster from the
start. Then, last November, the Iran-
contra scandal broke.
Daily, evidence of Casey's pivotal
role in deceiving Congress-and -possi-
b the President-mounted. CaseyTs
brain seizure inDcembeer, t to day -be _ position to snoop on Casey ause do
fore he was supposed to testify on Capi- director of Central Inte1L encce is uard-
tol Hill, and his death live months later ed ihei a CIA's own security orce. ur-
only intensified interest in hii activities.-- thermore, the long-standing rivalry be-
"People say Casey's secrets chied with tween a two agencies would inhibit-
him." Woodward direct inquiries. Because e i n t feel it
the didn't." would be proper to ask Woodward Sa-
hook may not provide the ultimate fire telephoned Casey to find out i the
explanation of Iran-amuck; the story ends
the day t . ut lodging From t}k
super-secret intelligence operations that
Woodward h_ as already revealed_ in the
Washington Post, he could - e getting
ready to blow the CIA wide opeen__.
The publishing world thinks so. Si-
mon & Schuster has set the first printing
at 500,000, a staggering figure for a
serious work of nonfiction. The Post is
running six installments, beginning Sun.
day, September 27. Mike Wallace is
doing a segment on 60 Minutes that
night. Newsweek is printing excerpts.
Government officials are bracing
themselves. The feeling in intelligence
circles is that there is no secret Bob
Woodward won't print, regardless of
how it affects the national interest. So,
while the Casey book doubtless will Aur
nib the
greatest investigative journalist of our_
era, it is bound to fan the controversy .-
over tTie hind of reporting he epitomizes.
Accordin'to rumors making the
rounds at Langley, home of the 4~,
war is;om to expose as many as
a dozen previously secret operations,
with devastating effects on Us Fore-in
hard to handle"sa s~focmeCIA`direc-
for WiIfiam Colby, who acknowleedga
having talked to Woodward.
William Casey talked to Woodward,
too-more than our dozen tines, ac-
cor ing to t e aut or. me i eence
sources say Mad-Casey was eager to co-
operate nafly. ood-war as so man-
aged to ingratiate Fiimse wi Casey's
wife, Sophia, and the reporter was a
frequent guestfor_dinder it their home in
McLean. As WooawaraBegan breaking
one intelligence bom6shielFaher another
in 1985 and 1 , re orters and even
government o ici s began to wonder if
Casey wasp 'tills main source.
Last May, when Casey began to crack
down on the press t r secrecyyiolations,
threatening to take NBC, the Washing-
ton Post, and severalothec news organi-
zations to court, New Yirk Mies colum-
nist William Safire got a call-from a
friend in the FBI, f shing for informa-
tion. Safire says the FBI man told him,
"I'm reading that Bill Casey says all
these leaks are beiqg~caused by an unpa-
triotic press. What we'd like to know is,
if he is so worried about leaks, why is be:
seeing-Bob Wgodwatd privately?"
Safire knew the FBI was not in a good I
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story was true. "Very gruttiy he said he
hadn't talked to Woodward in eighteen
months," says_Safire, "which told me
he had been seeing Bob in connection
with his book and they were using the
press-me-to find out if the CIA direc-
tor was blaming the press wrongly. It
shows you that when Woodward is up to
something, the entire establishment gets
concerned "
It is 1 l o'clock on a Saturday morning in
May, and I show up at Woodward's
handsome, gray Victorian-era house on
Q Street in Georgetown for what is to be
our second meeting. A source on the
Casey book has already been to the
house and left. It's a light day for Wood-
ward. That afternoon he plans to pick up
his ten-year-old daughter, Tali, who
lives with her mother, and take her shop-
ping for camping gear.
During the week, Woodward normal-
ly gets up around 8, reads four papers by
9, and works until about 7:30 or 8 in the
evening, when he breaks for dinner.
Then he goes back upstairs and works
for a couple more hours.
Woodward greets me in a friendly but
wary manner. We've exchanged pleas-
antries in the past, but we don't know
each other very well. He is not enthu-
siastic about being profiled.
For someone who makes his living
prying information out of others, Wood-
ward is loath to volunteer much about
himself. If you unearth a fact independ-
ently, he'll confirm or deny it, but he
does not often embellish his answers.
This is not treatment reserved just for
interviewers. He is secretive about ev-
erything. Editors at the Post never know
what he's up to until his copy lands on
their desks. They often don't get it until
late in the afternoon, which means they
have to tear up the next day's paper to
make room for what is invariably a
front-page story.
Woodward certainly doesn't want to
say much about the new book. Even the
title is top-secret. "It's the code name for a
covert operation,'9 he says, "and I don't
want to alert people to its existence.-
One surprise, given the-circles Wood-
ward travels in, is his lack of social ease.
He shows me into the kitchen, offers me
a cup of coffee, and we try to make small
talk. Pym, a little Lhasa apso that be-
longs to Elsa Walsh, Woodward's girl-
friend, comes over and nestles on my
foot. "Oh, look," he says, "the dog
likes you." In a few minutes, Walsh
appears and we are introduced. "Look,
Elsa," he says. "The dog likes Barbara.
She has a cat and a dog, too. "
We all squirm.
"He tries to be your friend," says a
Post reporter who deals with him from
time to time. "He wants to be chatty, but
he's just not very personable."
I pull out my notebook and try to
extract a kernel or two about Wood-
ward's childhood, which apparently was
unhappy. (His parents were divorced
when he was twelve.) He answers me in
half-formed sentences or outright eva-
sions. I fall back on an interview he did
with a reporter for Rolling Stone. "You
told Lynn Hirschberg that you protected
Yourself as a kid by keeping busy with
schoolwork and activities, that you tried
not to have an emotional life," I say.
"Well, if that's what the article
says," he responds, "she quoted me
accurately. "
Actually, Woodward hadn't planned to
talk about his childhood. He invited me
to his house to show me how he and his
researcher assemble material. We go up-
stairs, where three rooms have been set
aside for work on his books. "The facto-
ry," his friends call it.
Woodward sits me down in a tiny
sitting room and starts hauling in card-
board cartons filled with material gath-
ered for tired: The Short Life and Fast
limes of John Belushi. Woodward sucks
up so much information in the course of
writing a book that he and his collabora-
tors had to develop a system. He calls it
the cut-and-paste method. A researcher
types up his interviews and Xeroxes
them. Later, they are cut into strips and
filed under headings such as "Educa-
tion," "Personality," "Documents,"
and soon.
Most of the boxes are filled with
painstakingly assembled chronologies.
From a large box labeled "Chronolo-
gies, 1982," he retrieves the folder for
March 5, the day Belushi died. It con-
tains 26 legal-sized pages of cut-and-
paste notes-interviews verbatim, an au-
topsy report, a bill for toast, coffee, and
jam charged to Belushi's hotel room.
Such hour-by-hour notes are used as the
basis for the first draft of his books,
which the sternly regimented author
churns out at the rate of ten pages a day.
Woodward wants to show me more
chronologies. I have gotten the idea by.
now, but he insists. It's not easy to argue
with Bob Woodward. The more he talks
about his methodology, however, the
more he loosens up. We get to talking
about the Iran-contra scandal-even saf-
er ground. With his guard temporarily
down, I get a glimpse of a more sponta-
neous, engaging personality.
A
He pokes fun at himself for not figur-
ing out what the administration was up to
earlier in Nicaragua. To show what a
dunce he was, he dashes out of the room,
returning with a handful of stories he
wrote about the contras in 1984. "In
retrospect, these stories jump off the
page," he says. "I should have done
more reporting. "
Woodward on this Saturday morning
is still at work on the Casey book. It
would have been finished, but new reve-
lations keep emerging, so Woodward is
frantically revising and enlarging the last
section. He is also struggling to write a
more interpretive picture of Casey, one
of the most intriguing figures to appear
in Washington in recent times.
Woodward's editor at Simon & Schus-
ter,Alic ]may w,t,. urged him to bring
more of his own 'ud inents to bear on
CaseyHeconfassesL, but the
result was so bad he ave up. '=I ask
myse : as Cii67aiiJM- director or a .
do
am V~ shotrkln't it do? I don't -
I can see araurnerus on all sides
My they're all presented in the book.` Considering how rich and famous
Woodward has become in the fifteen
years since Watergate-conservatively,
he's worth an estimated $6 million-it's
surprising how little he's changed.
There's still something boyish about
him. The handsome, square jawed face
is unlined; the dark-brown hair is still
thick and wavy; there is no paunch on his
solid five-foot, ten-inch frame. Ten
years from now he'll probably still look
like the preppie who could conquer the
world.
His modus operandi hasn't changed
much in the past fifteen years, either.
The Post recently was pursuing a se-
ries of stories involving alleged corrup-
tion in city contracts. The deputy mayor,
Alphonse Hill, had just resigned, and the
grand jury was taking a renewed look at
Mayor Barry . Woodward was serving as
Post weekend editor, a job that falls to
him every fourth week, and he found out
that no one had yet talked to Karen John-
son, the convicted drug dealer who at
one time was close to the mayor and who
had recently been released from jail.
It was 7 o'clock on Sunday evening,
and Woodward suggested to Tom Sher-
wood and Sharon LaFreniere, two of the
Metro reporters working on the story,
that they all go see her. Using an old
Woodward ploy, they decided not to call
first; they jumped into Woodward's blue
1986 Honda and drove out to the address
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uwcy IlQ4 ,v, uci III 1?V1UIWCSL LA_. which she covers for the Post. At 29, she
On the way out, Woodward plotted is self-possessed, almost serene, and
I
strategy.
t was to be a get-acquainted
session; they would confine themselves
to tame questions to try to gain her trust.
They knew Johnson had a four-year-old
child, so Woodward told the other two:
"I'll play with the kid."
They finally located Johnson and per-
suaded her to come outside. The next
thing they knew, Woodward was down
on the sidewalk, fooling with the little
boy, turning on the charm.
It worked. They managed to chat with
Johnson for about fifteen or twenty min-
utes. Although they did not learn any-
thing that resulted in a story the next day,
they found out who her lawyer was and
decided that she was very, very smart.
But their main accomplishment was an-
other hallmark of the Woodward reper-
toire: They had patiently laid the
groundwork for a future reporter-source
relationship.
If there is one difference between the
Bob Woodward of the Watergate era and
the Bob Woodward of today, friends
say, it's that he's learned to relax slightly
and accept the fact that he will never be
perfect. "I have a great life," says
Woodward, now 44.
He writes his own ticket at the Post-
it was Woodward, not executive editor
Ben Bradlee or managing editor Len
Downie who decided which intelligence
stories the Post could print and which
would be withheld for the Casey book.
As an assistant managing editor, he
heads a ten-person investigative unit,
popularly called the SWAT team, and he
goes into the office when he chooses,
which is not that often.
When he is ready to write a new book,
he sits down with his long-time editor,
Alice Mayhew. and tells her what it is he
wants to write about. No 30-page out-
lines for him. Then he and Richard Sny-
der, the head of Simon & Schuster, talk
money; no agents or lawyers get in-
volved. The word is that Woodward
does not undertake a book for less than
$1 million.
"We've never disagreed about mon-
ey," says Snyder, "but if we did, I
would take Bob's number."
"Bob always does exactly what he
wants," says Elsa Walsh. "And he nev-
er does anything he doesn't want to do."
She agrees he has a great life.
It is 9 o'clock on a Wednesday evening,
and I am back at Woodward 's house,
this time to interview Walsh. She has
just returned from DC Superior Court,
quite-willing to talk about Woodward.
She shows me into the kitchen, where
she is eating a vegetable concoction-
she is a vegetarian-prepared by Fe,
their Filipino housekeeper. The kitchen
smells of freshly ground coffee. Two
pans of just-baked blueberry muffins are
sitting on the counter.
Another guest is sitting at the round
burnished-pine table. It is Carl Bern-
stein, polishing off one of Fe's cheese-
burgers and some fries. Woodward and
his researcher, Barbara Feinman, are
upstairs, at work on the book.
Bernstein stays with Woodward fairly
often. This time he's down from New
York to read the Casey book and spend
some time with his parents, who live in
Silver Spring. Woodward and Bernstein
had a falling-out while writing The Final
Days in 1976, but they are probably
closer today than they ever were.
Friends say Woodward has even helped
Bernstein financially.
Last fall, when Bernstein was deeply
depressed over his inability to make
headway on the book he is writing about
his family and the McCarthy era, Wood-
Ward persuaded him to come to Wash-
ington. For three months, he put Bern-
stein up in his second-floor guest room
and urged him to produce. "I got a tre-
mendous amount done at Bob's," says
Bernstein. "He's always there for me,
and I try to be there for him. "
Bernstein finishes his burger and goes
upstairs to join the others in the factory.
The night before, Steve Luxenberg, the
number-two man in Woodward's unit at
the Post, also came by to have dinner
and read the Casey manuscript.
Walsh, who has dated Woodward
since 1980 and has lived with him since
1982, seems unperturbed by the flow of
visitors. (Woodward's former wife,
Francie Barnard, hated having people
underfoot all the time.) Woodward's re-
searcher, Barbara Feinman, practically
lives at the house, and these days any
number of people have been stopping by
to read the Casey manuscript.
In addition, Woodward often has a
friend roosting in the "bachelor tur-
ret''-a wing of the house convenient for
buddies with marital problems. At var-
ious times, Bernstein; Scott Armstrong,
who co-authored The Brethren with
Woodward; former CBS correspondent
Fred Graham; and, lately, Post colum-
nist Richard Cohen have stayed there.
Gary Hart also stayed at Wood-
ward's-twice. Woodward says he did
not know Hart that well back in 1979
when he got a call almost pleading for
help. Hart said he was having marital
problems but was not yet ready to make a
permanent break with his wife, Lee, so
Hart moved in with Woodward for a few
months.
Then, in 1982, Hart asked if he could
move in again. The trouble was that Hart
was seldom there. He was already get-
ting a reputation for womanizing, and
Woodward says he became uneasy when
another reporter inquired about the sena-
tor's whereabouts. Woodward decided it
was time to ask Hart to leave. "I told
him he couldn't use my place as a mail
drop," he says, acknowledging that he
would be a little more cautious about
3.
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not aspire to be one of the glitterati; the partnership. in my opinion. was to let
you:re not likely to find him at Elaine's, me become a success in Hollywood by
the New York writers' hangout favored piggybacking off his name. "
by Bernstein.
letting a political figure camp out at his Woodward is acutely aware of the For a workaholic, Woodward has man.
house again. perils of celebrity. "It's dangerous be- aged to mesh the pieces of his life into a
cause it's a focus on the past," he says. nearly seamless whole. One of the se.
Walsh and Woodward are getting ready "I think it takes away from people doing crets of his relationship with Elsa Walsh
to go to Italy the next day. They are work. You can waste a lot of time [keep- is that he is involved in her work world
planning to spend a week at the Lago di ing yourself in the public eye]. It's not and she in his. His friends get drawn into
Como with ABC correspondent Jim something to take seriously." So he his book projects and screenplays. He
Wooten and his wife, Patience O'Con- lives unpretentiously, driving a Honda cements relationships at the Post on sail.
nor, both close friends. Walsh says and playing golf at the public course in ing trips. He plays poker with sources.
when her sister heard about the trip, she Rock Creek Park. His telephone number His job as head of the investigation unit
laughed and said, "You've been going is listed in the book, and he usually an- at the Post complements his book-writ.
to Italy for five years now. I hope you swers the phone himself. ing and vice versa.
make it this time." His house is filled with a cozy Nominally, Woodward heads the ten.
Woodward has a habit of canceling melange of wicker, oak, dhurrie rugs, person investigative team, but his deputy
vacations when something comes up, but Steve Luxenberg functions as the
Walsh professes not to mind. On nights mary editor. Woodward is more like a
when he's working, she says she's happy Woodward is acutely aware player/coach. Luxenberg gets Wood.
to climb into bed with her dog and a "It's ward's input at the start of a new project,
book. "People see Bob as a compulsive of the perils of celebrity. and the two confer daily by phone, but
workaholic," she says, "but that's not a dangerous because it's a Woodward stays busy with his own
true picture. He truly loves what he's work. "Sometimes we see him, but he's
doing. It's a great feeling to live with focus on the past. It's not not there to discuss our stories," says
someone who's always up about their something to take seriously. " one member of the unit. "He's here to
work. " do his stories and get out. "
Walsh, who grew up as one of six It's not that Woodward is uninterested
children, says she likes having time in his unit's work. He is generous pro-
alone. "I like it when he's here, and I movie posters, ceiling fans, handmade fessionally and has encouraged the ca.
like it when he's tone," she says a bit quilts, and an occasional expensive reer of many a talented young Post re-
dreamily, "because the smell of him is French country antique. The only trace porter. But he is so focused on what he is
still in the house. " of conspicuous consumption is the num- doing that he has little time for schmooz.
Walsh says Woodward is very roman- ber of stereo sets; Woodward is a classi- ing in the office, something he's not
tic-he sends her flowers all the time and cal-music devotee who treats himself to good at anyway.
compliments her so much that her family new stereo equipment after every book. Once in a while, Woodward does get
thinks it's funny. "He loves to hug and Woodward capitalizes on his name in heavily involved in a Post project, and it
kiss," she says. "He's very physical, his work-almost no one fails to return pays off, as in the case of Leon Dash's
very affectionate. And he makes you feel his phone calls-and he doesn't mind 1986 series on black teenage pregnancy.
important." using his clout on behalf of friends. A Dash envisioned a conventional ap-
Some of the women in Woodward's couple of years ago, he was having lunch proach-consulting census data, inter-
life would be amused by Walsh's de- with William Greider, inquiring how his viewing experts, and so on.
scription. In the 1970s, when Wood- old Post buddy was doing with his book Woodward had other ideas. "Pick a
ward was playing the field, he was dat- about Paul Volcker, which will be pub- community, move in, and get really
ing a well-known Washington media lished this fall. close to the people," he advised.
figure and took her to New York for After listening for a while, Woodward Dash was not enthusiastic. A well-
what she expected would be a big week- said: "You're drowning. You need a educated, middle-class black, he was as
end. Instead, Woodward spent most of researcher." Greider agreed but said he much a foreigner in the proposed area of
the weekend in their hotel room with his couldn't afford one. "The following Washington Highlands-one of DC's
nose in a book, leaving hi&date to go weekend," recalls Greider, "Bob put poorest communities-as Woodward
shopping by herself. - the arm on Dick Snyder [head of Simon would have been. "They thought I was
& Schuster, also Greider's publisher]. I an undercover cop," Dash says.
Woodward and Walsh like quiet eve- got my researcher." After six months in his roach-infested
nings during the week. They go to an In another instance, Woodward basement apartment, Dash accumulated
occasional movie opening, but she says formed a screenwriting partnership with 48 hours of tape-recorded interviews
they mostly like to stay home and read or former Post arts editor and sailing buddy with six teenage mothers. He felt he was
have dinner with close friends. On Christian Williams, which turned out to ready to begin writing.
weekends they go on movie binges. be productive. They wrote a made-for- Again, Woodward disagreed. "Go
Walsh does not particularly enjoy the TV movie called Under Siege (it got back and interview each of them four
Post social circuit-dinners at Katharine panned) and an episode of Hill Street more times," he said. "Now that you've
Graham's and so on-so Woodward, Blues. They also wrote the outline for an established rapport, you'll see some-
who is very much part of the Post's inner upcoming HBO series based on William thing begin to happen. "
circle, sometimes shows up at these af- Shirer's The Nightmare Years, about Dash says he was stunned, but Wood-
fairs alone. Germany in the '30s. But Williams ward insisted, saying he had seen the
Woodward takes care of his politics at could never persuade Woodward to take same phenomenon when he was working
the Post-he was one of the handful of any money out of the business. on his books. "He told me he inter-
people at the paper invited to Kay Gra- " 'Just invest it,' he would tell me," viewed one Supreme
ham's 70th-birthday party. But he does says Williams. "The whole reason for times while hwas working osnxlb
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fretnren. tsy the ena, the clerk had radi-
cally revised his story.
Dash agreed to re-interview the girls.
"By the third and fourth time, people
were dramatically contradicting what
they told me in the earlier interviews.
Initially, all the females played the role
of victims who had been taken advantage
of. It turned out that the girls knew all
about birth control and that in no case
was any pregnancy accidental. They
were the ones who were manipulating
the boys. "
The finished series was a trailblazer-
the kind of journalism that sheds light on
a slice of life ordinarily hidden to the
Post's middle-class readers, black and
white. It's the kind of story Woodward
encourages. "He has this saying," says
Luxenberg: "Let's peel back more lay-
ers. We haven't gotten to the core yet. "
Although some talented people work
in the Woodward unit, there is no rush to
sign up. Some reporters call it the gilded
graveyard, knowing that they're not
likely to appear in the paper much more
than once a year.
The situation suits Woodward be-
cause it gives him a base of operations
and a ready outlet for stories that won't
hold for a book. The Post also pays half
of his researcher's salary, because she
assists on his newspaper stories as well
as his book.
Woodward's researchers work like
mules, but they are well rewarded. At
the conclusion of a book, he pays them
bonuses of up to $50,000 each. They
also get a small percentage of the royal-
ties. Four former researchers-Scott
Armstrong, John Ward Anderson, Ben
Weiser, and Al Kamen-went on to
good jobs at the Post.
Some fellow reporters and editors eye
Woodward's freedom to come and go,
and complain that he gets away with
murder. There are times, for instance,
when managing editor Len Downie and
national editor Robert Kaiser would like
to call on Woodward for help, but they
know they can't pull him off a book
without a very good reason.
The to between the paper and the
Casey book became particu ar y tense
.last all when the news me to egan
focusing on sec er CIA ope tr i na o sin
Nica_ra~a. Woodward s boo c)-arso deals
with the CIA's role in Central America.
"It w. at times," acknowledges
WoodwarA,_'but they realize I have to
save some things for the book, especially
lads ointt bac,__ k to ana'83:
"My argument to Downie, Bradlee,
and Kaiser is that unless you undertake a
book, you couldn't possibly build up the
[intelligence] sources. Nobody could af-
ford to have a platoon of people working
P
this institution," says Ben Brad ee who
..has a father-son relationship with his star
reporter. "Bob is going to write books.
That's a fact. The failure to accommo-
date him would be idiotic. We can nev-
er give him back as much as he has giv-
en us. "
When it comes to penetrating the impen-
etrable, the consensus is that no reporter
in America can match Bob Woodward.
Sy Hersh of the New York Times is prob-
ably his closest rival, particularly in the
area of national security.
For versatility, Woodward is in a
class by himself. Who else could have
infiltrated such diverse, closed worlds as
the Nixon White House in its final days,
the Supreme Court, and the drug culture
in Hollywood?
How does he do it?
Ben Bradlee calls Woodward the
"best reporter I've ever seen. Period. "
He says the most important quality
Woodward has is persistence. "There is
simply no turning him away from some-
thing he wants to do. "
Friend and columnist Richard Cohen:
"He works all the time. So many people
in this town reach Woodward's level and
ry
at
wouldn't
ide~ if _-
their idea of a hard day's work is to go to W oodwar3 st_detractors thought that
Art lunch with a Harris, a source. Post " reporter his hospital visit was in bad taste, but
recruited reporters look at these things differently.
by Woodward who has seen him in ac- "I thought it was terrific,"
tion: "He has a hypno-chemical effect says Richard
Cohen. "How many multimillionaire
on people seems ms to ct anterhei t superjournalists are you going to find
such
h P u skulking around back stairs of hospitals?
feel the
pa eople that
good telling He doesn't have any false dignity.
tight g g him
darkest, innermost thoughts." Duplicity is another necessary tool in the
Scott Armstrong: "He has never investigative reporter's kit. Reporters
burned a source. The myth of Deep Throat usually try to convince interviewees that
helps. People want to be one. "
William Greider: "Woodward has they're both on the same side.
method. " Woodward may be more straightfor-
Woddward would probably say that ward than most investigative journalists
Greider comes closest to the mark. If you because he seldom confronts the subject
listen to Woodward talk, he seems to be of an investigation until he has all the
saying that anyone could do what he does goods. Then he can be brutal. He has
if he or she worked as hard as Woodward ing bee" known bureaucrat's barge into an brandishing vi-
d~? But there is more to it than dogged- 's office, brandishing e-
ness
ness and a good filing system. mand an dance an alleged wrongdoing, and de-
Lelvveld of the New York_ explanation.
Times once quoted a CIA official on the Usually, however, he is smooth and
essenti q toes needed in a director of gentlemanly. He caught a lot of flies
cents tn[ei ante: rut lessness, du- using the honeyed approach in the John
~lushi c
li
i
'-
-
'
ase.
p
c
ry
, an abso ue i
T
t n The same
could be said o any lLfeat_investigative
retorter.
Certainly Woodward has a ruthless
side; institutions and people do get hurt
when he turns the spotlight on them.
Last November, he wrote a front-page
story about a mid-level State Department
employee who had been threatened with
loss of her security clearance for care-
less handling of classified documents.
Quoting from an internal investigative
report, Woodward painted a picture of a
person guilty of the grossest kind of neg-
ligence, although, as he pointed out, no
one had produced any evidence to show
that her actions had caused any damage.
The woman was in the midst of bring-
ing a lawsuit to have the allegations-
which were never substantiated-ex-
punged from her otherwise untarnished
record. The last thing she needed was for
the charges to be splashed over the front
page of the Washington Post.
Post ombudsman Joseph Laitin, who
thought the story was grossly over-
played, cried foul. "[Woodward's[ sig-
nature over an article about an allegation
of a misstep in government is to many
tantamount to a grand jury indictment,"
he wrote.
It also takes a kind of ruthlessness to
talk your wa into a hospital room right
a tart someone as sun er one rain sur-
gery, as oo war t at orgetown
, 1, l 11 pi m
University os
afternp~ - see u~', t" a lasE
denies niniosTiat 'cal., , oodward Uae a doctor o? h alf as
Pro coed aTaTse CIA-icF
cant 44sho mY Press Pass, " he says.
Casey s secunty-a were upset that I
got in, so the~Qut out a -sto
th
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After Belushi's death, the comedian's
wife. Judy Jacklin Belushi, began to sus-
pect that the Los Angeles Police Depart-
ment was giving her the runaround.
There were rumors that Cathy Smith,
who had administered the fatal drug
overdose to John Belushi, was actually a
police informant. Not knowing whom to
trust. Jacklin hit on the idea of contact-
ing Woodward.
Four months after Belushi died, she
and her sister, Pam Jacklin, met Wood-
ward in Manhattan. They both liked
him. All of them, including John Belu-
shi, had grown up in Wheaton, Illinois.
Judy was particularly encouraged when
Woodward said he wanted to go beyond
the facts surrounding Belushi's death
and write about the man himself.
"Woodward gives you that 'Trust me,
trust me' feeling. The 'Yes, I under-
stand' type of thing, and I believed
him," Jacklin told Rolling Stone. "He
seemed so honest. He would say over
and over, 'John was a wonderful man.
We must tell his story.' "
Jacklin was so impressed with Wood-
ward that she persuaded other Belushi
intimates, such as Dan Aykroyd, to talk
to him. She read Woodward her diaries.
"I was like a Pavlovian dog," she
said. "I was calling him up whenever
anyone said anything weird about him or
John or the story, and he would reassure
me. He'd kinda laugh and say, 'It's like
the game Telephone. When you hear
something that bothers you, you should
phone me.' I was completely under his
influence."
When the book came out in 1984,
Jacklin and almost everyone connected
with it were shocked. They felt Wood-
ward had painted a distorted picture of
Belushi, focusing only on the drugs and
the dark side. "I had expected the sad-
ness in the book," she said, "but I
thought it should be balanced by joy, the
joy John had and the joy he brought
others. I learned that Bob is a very joy-
less man, and I don't think that he could
ever see what made John happy. "
Others contend that Woodward over-
emphasized the comedian's drug use.
"Before that last month, John was
clean," says Bernie Brillstein, Belushi's
manager and now chairman of Lorimar
Film Entertainment. "The book was
written with the assumption that he was
always drugged. He was a compulsive
character, but he was intelligent and
nice. The plus side of him was so much
greater than anything Woodward
wrote. "
Brillstein says he was thrilled when
Jacklin called and asked him to talk to
Woodward. "We went to lunch. I gave
him access to files. I gave him pictures.
He got me to tell him things I would
never have told anyone else. I guess
maybe I thought I was getting Robert
Redford or something. Bob Woodward
was one of my heroes, but he turned out
to be one of the greatest disappointments
of my life."
Woodward became a pariah in Holly-
wood. Jack Nicholson called him a
ghoul. Dan Aykroyd called the book
"unforgivable. "
Robert Markowitz, a Hollywood
friend of Woodward's who hopes to di-
rect the movie based on Wired, says the
misunderstanding was to be expected.
"Movie people consider journalists,
particularly somebody of Bob's stature,
celebrities. They felt they were talking
to someone in the same galaxy. They
thought he would filter out some of the
things they said. Bob assumed that be-
cause of his body of work and who he
was, they'd understand what he was
doing. But they were incredibly naive."
Woodward was both surprised and hurt
by the storm that greeted the book. For
one who likes to peel back the layers on
others, he is very thin-skinned. After the
Rolling Stone article appeared, Wood-
ward repeatedly telephoned the author,
Lynn Hirschberg, and-against the ad-
vice of friends-wrote Rolling Stone
publisher Jann Wenner a six-page letter.
"I got overly emotional about the whole
thing," Woodward admits.
One reason he reacted so defensively
about the criticism of Wired was that his
integrity had been called into question.
All of his books had been controversial,
but seldom were his ethics questioned.
"I sat there with my notebook and pen-
cil, taking notes, just like you're
doing," he says heatedly. "If anybody
thought they were not going to be quot-
ed, they were deluding themselves. "
Woodward concedes he may not have
captured the essence of Belushi's char-
acter, but he insists he tried to draw a
portrait of the artist that went beyond his
use of drugs-that he was not misleading
Judy Jacklin when he told her he was
interested in writing about the whole
man. "I spent a lot of time describing his
movies," Woodward says. "I went to
New York and looked at all the old Sat-
urday Night Live shows. I taped the au-
dio portions and took notes on the visual
material. The book has everything about
Belushi's life-Wheaton, Second City
[the comedy club in Chicago where Be-
lushi became a star]-it's all there in
excruciating detail. But what people re-
member are the crazed, unbelievable
drug parties. "
Although Ed Feldman, the producer
who made Witness, has been trying to
raise the money for the movie version of
Wired for a year, the project is in limbo.
All the major studios have turned it
down. "It's the Platoon of the '90s."
Woodward says. "The nerves the book
touched are still too raw.-
The screenplay for Wired was written
by Earl Mac Rauch, an established Hol-
lywood writer, with heavy input from
Woodward. In it, Belushi comes back
from the dead and sees his life unfold.
He even meets Woodward a couple of
times. At the end, Belushi confronts
Woodward about his life and the book.
Christian Williams, now a full-time
Hollywood screenwriter, says the
screenplay is terrific, but he doesn't buy
any conspiracy theory. "Out here, most
movies don't get made. It's par for the
course. Politics are involved, but Holly-
wood politics and Washington politics
are very different. In Washington, os-
tensibly, people stand for something.
Out here, it's the politics of profit. I
argue that people would f--- themselves
if they thought they could make money
doing it. This movie presents problems
of casting. Also, there's the downer fac-
tor. Who do we like in this movie? Belu-
shi was a fat guy who f--ed his friends.
The story is not a celebration of him. "
If Woodward is an outcast in Holly-
wood, his star is high in Washington's
heavens. He has been hurling grenades
at the highest levels of government for
fifteen years, but his work is so careful
and so good that criticism here is muted.
He has made his share of enemies-
that goes with the territory-but he has
avoided the fall from grace that so many
powerful people in Washington have ex-
perienced. Unlike a Michael Deaver,
who began to think the rules no longer
applied to him, Woodward has always
played by the most rigid journalistic
code: Check your facts. Check them
again. Go back again and probe for
holes. Give your adversary a chance to
respond; he may not like what you're
writing, but at least he'll be prepared
when the story comes out. Don't make
deals. And, above all, protect your
sources.
Woodward, friends say, is a pro-
foundly introspective man who knows
himself well. A perfectionist, he is his
own worst critic, constantly monitoring
his performance, searching for flaws.
And he has learned to capitalize on his
strengths and minimize his weaknesses.
He may not be the world's greatest writ-
er-at the Post it used to be said that
English is not his native language-but
he has more than compensated for a pe-
destrian style with strong reporting.
hd"
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When Woodward went to Yale, he
wanted to be a writer. He wrote a novel,
which like most first novels was heavily
autobiographical. But some of his pro-
fessors thought it showed promise, and
Scott Armstrong, who followed Wood-
ward to Yale, says it was the most artful
thing Bob has ever written. Woodward
maintains the book was a piece of pre-
tentious hogwash. The literary life, he
decided, was not for him.
From then on," Armstrong says,
"he disowned any interest in the art of
writing. "
Today Woodward's style is almost
consciously anti-literary, unadorned by
vivid language. He seldom includes any
physical description of people. A wom-
an may be described as "attractive."
Occasionally he'll write that someone is
tall and has wavy-hair.
Woodward was much more intellec-
tual at Yale than he is today. He was a
member of Book and Snake, one of the
more cerebral senior societies, and at-
tracted the attention of professors of
note, such as the critic Cleanth Brooks.
But once Woodward decided he was not
going to be a giant in the intellectual
world, he largely renounced the world of
ideas.
In his newspaper writing, he presents
all the facts, but he shies away from
probing for underlying meaning. "Dur-
ing the Iran story, he was writing for the
paper a lot," says Elsa Walsh, "and I
could always spot the paragraphs he
didn't write-the ones with great cosmic
significance. "
Context does not hold much interest
for Woodward, which caused titanic bat-
tles between him and Scott Armstrong
when they worked on The Brethren.
"Bob always wanted to finish up and
move on," says Armstrong. "It was
enough for him to determine which jus-
tices did what and leave it at that. I was
interested in the political context-the
fact that the South was in an uproar over
busing, and so on. As long as I didn't
dilute the personal interplay, he would
let my stuff in."
Woodward also has-found ways to com-
pensate for having what he terms a me-
diocre nose for news. Typically, report-
ers look at a situation, concoct a theory,
and proceed to find out if the facts sup-
port it.
Woodward does it the other way
around. First he collects sacks of infor-
mation, then he looks for the pattern.
He imposes the same discipline on his
investigative unit. "If you go up to him
and say, 'I'm thinking of doing such-
and-such a story,' " says Steve Luxen-
berg, "he'll say, `What you should do is
more reporting. Let's find out every-
thing we can, sift through the facts, and
the story will emerge. Let's not make up
stories out of our own heads.' "
Woodward is the first to admit that
Bernstein had a more intuitive grasp of
Watergate than he did. "Woodward is
like the beaver in the forest that takes
down every tree," says Richard Cohen.
"Carl is more adept; he figures out how
you build the dam. "
Woodward may be able to joke now
about missing the contra storv_but te_
feels that of all people he should have
figuredit out. His ost clips show how
he got close. On ApiT 13, 1984, he
wrote: "Director William J. Casey is
consideri ng the possibility of ate. king_an-
other country, such as Saudi Arabia, to
send money to the contras until the fund-
ing problem is solved, according to one
well-placed source, But no decisions
have been made.
In another article that month, he
wrote: " e White ouse __aS Cdth
CIA if it could divert money from other
operations or `slush funds' for opera-
tions in Central America."
The p l ane that went down in Nicara
gua last October, piloted by
can who was supposedly working for a
private network, should have alerted
him, Woodward says. "The Hasenfus
plane, we now know, was _like_the Wa-
tergate burglary. There was a body
caught red-handed, phone records of
calls to government o icials an official
denial, and the mother's milk of mcri-
can n politics-money. It all fit. I knew the
CIA was desperate or money in 1984,
and suddenly the), had plenty of it. "
To add to his c agrin, managing edi-
tor Len Downie had smelled a rat all
along, but he couldn't sell anyone on the
story. "Leonard prowled the news-
room, saying, `This really, really
stinks,' " recalls Woodward, "but no
one came up with anything. I have
learned to listen to him, but at the time, I
was busy with the Casey book. "
If Woodward is not the kind of reporter
who makes brilliant inductive leaps, he
knows what makes people tick. When he
focuses on someone, he can be a superb
manipulator. He knows when to press,
when to cajole, when to bide his time. In
All the President's Men, he tells how he
called a certain GAO investigator every
day to learn how the audit of Nixon's
campaign finances was progressing.
"Hundreds of thousands of dollars in
unaccounted cash," the GAO man said
one day. "A slush fund of cash," he said
the next. "A rat's nest behind the sur-
face efficiency of computerized finan-
cial reporting," the third. With each day
that he did not write a story, Woodward
said, the investigator felt freer to talk to
him.
Woodward is not the kind of reporter
who spends a lot of time on the paper
trail, digging in government archives.
"Give me dinner alone with somebody
any day," he says.
Woodward also seems to have a sixth
sense for how bureaucracies operate.
Over the years, he has cultivated a large
network of mid-level people who feed
him information. Unlike most reporters,
he does not forget such people once his
story is written. Some, like Carl Feld-
baum, a member of the Watergate prose-
cution team, become lifelong friends.
Woodward takes others to lunch or din-
ner. "It's not unusual to see him having
dinner with some guy on the DC police
force," says Post writer Juan Williams.
"He once introduced me to an FBI
source who dealt with him back when he
was a Metro reporter. "
At times the nature of Woodward's
relationship with a source has raised a
few eyebrows. When the Senate Water-
gate Committee was hiring staff, chief
counsel Sam Dash asked Woodward if
he would consider taking a job as chief
investigator. Woodward was not inter-
ested in leaving the Post. When Dash
asked if he could suggest anyone else,
h&W
40.
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uut au oystanuers were lulled.
,arrest person I know." Arm- B
law
Co
be
d
,
y
ngress ha
to
notified.
.d was an old friend from Whea- Woodward's story broke on November 3.
1i-someone who had idolized Wood- On the 25th. a finding was drafted specifi-
ward in his youth. sally stating that Congress was not to be
"It was a situation I always felt un- notified of the arms shipment. The Presi-
easy about." Woodward says. dent signed the finding December 5.
As the premier reporter of the Washing-
ton Post, Woodward enjoys certain ad-
vantages over his competitors. If you're
a government official who wants to
thwart a secret policy, what better way
to shoot it down than to leak it to Bob
Woodward?
His stories, which almost always play
on the front page of the Post, echo so
loudly that they automatically affect the
tenor of the public debate.
One stoac he wrote that still reverber-
ates goes c to ovember 1985. The
headline in the Sunday Post read: "CIA
Anti- a a r an Backed " In it,
war t3'?cTosed that President Rea-
gan had au onzed-a-CIA covert opera-
tion designed to undermine the Libyan
leader's regime. The idea was. to .use
North African countries such as Egypt
and Algeria to lull Moammar Gadhaf
into some foreign misadventure thereby
giving opponents the opportunity to
overthrow him.
Woodward's information was based
on a letter to President Reagan written
by the Vermont Democratic Senator Pat-
rick Leahy, then chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, and vice-chair-
man David Durenberger, a Minnesota
Republican. They expressed concern
that the plan might result in the assassi-
nation of Gadhafi.
How Woodward obtained this letter is
a sublec a ate, but when William
Caste saw it, according to intelligence
sources, he was enraged..- A former CIA
official who was close to Casey called
the story "the worst leak I ever saw."
Asa result of the story, the plan had to be
scuttled.
aven
t aroused any
The story was considered so damag- - opposition. Woodward has broken sev-
ing that it prompted an orgy of finger= eral stories in this category. Is a secret
pointing within the government. Casey news just because it's a secret?" asks a
blamed the Senate Intelligence Commit- reporter who covers the intelligence beat
tee, but a committee source emphatically for another publication. "It's a question
denies that the letter came from them. that's never really been resolved within
"The .committee conducted a very ex- the profession."
tensive investigation," the source says. Some of Woodward's colleagues
"Every staff member was asked to were critics of a I_9BSsfory about a
swear an oath, and that had never been CIA-trained "hit sq_tiad`"that went awry
done before." in an attem
t to assassin
t
p
a
e a suspected
Nevertheless, Casey seized on the sto- terrorist leader in Beirut. Opera- ting
ry to convince the President that Con- without CIA authorization, a group of
gress could not a truste witTi secrets. Lebanese iationa7 s iv off a car. bomb
He w-s-p a rig o a -c-e ive audience. outside the house of a notorious Shiite
According to the Washington Times, leader named Fadlallah. He was be-
John Poindexter, then number-two on lieved to have been involved in the
the National Security Council, was so bombing of the US anne eadquarters
infuriated by the leak that he urged the in 1 883 in whech_24rAinencan service-
President not to notify Congress about men died. The car bomlissed F dlat-
The timing makes it tempting to spec-
ulate that Woodward's article triggered
the Iran-contra_ secrecy but this was not
the first time Casey had tried to circum-
vent Congress The mining of the harbor
"When you publish stories like
this, you have to keep in mind
what kind of impact it will
have in the shadowy, shabby
alleys of West Beirut. "
in Nicaragua_was 411Q-done without Hill
knowledge. At most, Casey used Wood-
ward's story as a pretext for an idea that
already appealed fo him.
Man journalists would defend the Ga-
dliiafistory cue use Congress, or at least
some members of Congress, questioned
the wisdom of the Ian. But the intelli-
gence community is deeply concerned
about the volume of disclosure
years. "Overall, these stories are dam-
aging cause ey Re use teeiT- cc,iiry
of covert operations." says Brent Scow-
crof , former presidential adviser on na-
tional security. "Why undertake them,
given t e probability they'll become
public'! The problem is not the press.
They're not doing the leaking. But if we
lose a entire capabili to conduct co-
vert operations-and we're in danger of
it-1 think it would be too bad. "
Journalists are divided about the wis-
dom of exposing covert operations, par-
ticularly those that h
'
tions about the dangers of ??runaway?
counter-terr rio st -operations, immediate
-
IY wit drew its su ort.
Although Woodward's story made it
clear that the CIA had not autho'rizedshe
operation and had renounced the plan to
train counter-terrorists in Lebanon, CIA
officials were in]'unate y t e Wi5od-
ward disclosure.
George Lauder then spokesman for
the Agency, wrote a letter to he Post
saying the story gave the world the false
impression that the US-government was
involved in terrorist activity. "This mis-
leading theme has been picked up by a
number of other journalists as fact and
has even been cited by the Shiite terror-
ists as one of tfie motives or hijacking
TWA Flight 847. "
Few people would go so far as to
blame Woodward and the Post for the
T A ijac ing, but some question
whether r was necessary to expose the
CrA link, however indirect, to such a
devastating incident. "When you pub-
lish stones like this, you have to keep in
mi what o impact it will have in
tfi_e_s5d6w-y,sha5Dyalleysot` West r-
rut, says another journalist critic.
"Lives are at stake. What a lot of intelli-
ge ne peop a wi tell you is that Bob
Woodward does not consider the impli-
cations o the scoops a pu _iS O.
"
Woodward defends the story. "It was
a mammoth screw-up, and I think people
ought to know about it. If it had been an
ongoing operation, I would have ques-
tioned writing about it. But the authori-
zation had been rescinded. It's like the
Iran-contra story. I'm sure the details
that have come out in the hearings have
hurt [the country] to a certain extent, but
we have to take a look at the things that
go wrong. "
The truth is that no newspaper, not
even one as audacious as the Post, de-
cides lightly to print the details of a
covert operation. Within the Post, fierce
arguments over such decisions erupt.
Sometimes the voices urging caution
win out. Woodward is almost always on
the other side.
"Each time the clock moves on, you
see how timid all of us were," he says.
"An attempt was made to try to stop
stories about the contra operation in ear-
ly '82. The idea that we have been run-
ning a secret war, killing people, and
that we shouldn't publish, is absurd. "
Woodward's output at the Post has re-
mained high, but for some years his
heart has been in his books.
There was a time when his horizons
were more closely defined by the Post-
when he was seen as the next Ben Brad-
lee. A favorite of Katharine Graham, he
I
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ving
Georgetown mansion on R Street just to eryone to the same standards he has and to return a Pulitzer was deeply humiliat-
chat. He bought a house just around the finds everyone wanting," says a report- ing. Even now, Ben Bradlee winces
corner in the late '70s and moved easily er who worked under him. "He wants when the subject comes up. "The Janet
in the charmed circle of top Post peo- everyone to be him. " Cooke affair was a bitch. It was crushing
pie-regularly dining with Ben Bradlee, for me." he says.
Sally Quinn, and Meg Greenfield. The grumbling finally grew so loud that Although Milton Coleman, then city
Other ambitious young reporters were Woodward realized he would have to editor, had been Cooke's day-to-day edi-
understandably envious. change. "He had to find a little yin to go tor, Woodward had been kept apprised
Woodward's main patron was always with his yang," says Christian Wil- of the story's progress. After the story
Ben Bradlee. It was Bradlee whom liams, who was writing for the Style ran, many reporters and editors brought
Woodward sought to please and emu- section at the time. "He wanted to find a their doubts about it to Coleman and
late, adopting the older man's damn-the- way to get away from the office, so he Woodward, but they brushed the ques-
torpedoes approach to journalism. And took up sailing. " tions off, telling themselves it was just
if Bradlee never said so aloud, everyone A totally inexperienced sailor, Wood- jealousy.
knew he hoped Woodward would suc- ward bought himself a boat-a 45-foot In the wake of the Cooke confession
ceed him as executive editor. ketch called the Timeless- and set about and the return of the Pulitzer, Wood-
First, Woodward would have to show learning how to sail with the same feroc- ward invited the entire Metro staff to his
his mettle as a manager. ity with which he-attacks any goal. With- house to try to explain what had hap-
When Woodward was named metro- in a year, according to Williams, himself pened. About 40 or 50 staffers showed
politan editor in 1979, no one doubted an accomplished yachtsman, "Bob went up, many in a hostile mood. "It became
that he was auditioning for the'top job. from being a know-nothing to being a an opportunity to express every griev-
But some of the characteristics that made master. " ance everyone had about me, the paper,
Woodward such a great reporter-au- With Post buddies like Pat Tyler (an- their lives, and their careers," says
dacity, cunning, stubbornness, and sin- other hotshot now based in Cairo), art Woodward. He says he was surprised at
gle-mindedness-did not necessarily critic Paul Richard, and assistant manag- the depth of the animosity toward him
work in his favor as an editor. He was ing editor Tom Wilkinson as compan- but maintains, "It was good to hear their
interested in the kind of "holy shit" ions, Woodward began spending time on criticisms."
stories that had brought him to promi- the Chesapeake. The Janet Cooke affair was doubly
nence in the first place, and he pursued "Woodward is pathologically clean, hard on Woodward because he knew it
them as editor with a kind of reckless- hygienically speaking," says Williams. probably ended his chances of succeed-
ness that made others question his judg- "Every time we came into port, we had ing Bradlee. "My office was next to
ment. "We're going to be right there on to wipe down the boat. It was a big boat, his," says Richard Cohen. "After the
the cutting edge, and we may get sued," so we ended up using about six rolls of Cooke thing, I would go in and try to
he would tell colleagues. "We may even Scott towels. " Woodward took so much jolly him up. There was no way of doing
lose a few." Ben Bradlee was a daring ribbing that he finally eased the sanitary it. He was sad and depressed but totally
editor, too, but not reckless. standards. realistic. He analyzed the damage he had
"it was almost as if Bob was sa in Whether the sailboat or something done to his career and there was no self-
'Look, no hands,' " says another editor else was responsible, a number of re- deception."
Like Bradlee, Woodward lavished at- porters recognized that Woodward had
tention on his stars-the future Wood- begun to relax somewhat. "There was a
wards. Some of them flourished. noticeable difference between Wood-
"He was inspiring," says one report- ward in '79 and '81, " says Jonathan
er, a Woodward protege. "Getting Neumann, a Pulitzer Prize-winning re-
praise from him was magic. It made you the Philadelphia whom
nquirer,, and from
feel you could leap off high buildings whom he had some hi hl ublicized
and float to the ground. " g y p
Others felt neglected. They despaired clashes. "Reporters felt better dealing
of getting Woodward's attention, espe- with him. At the beginning, a lot of them
cially those who covered mundane beats felt shut out. "
such as the school board. From the beginning, Woodward had a
"Ina funny way," says William Grei- talent for spotting good people. Some of
der, who served as national editor in that the best people now at the Post were
era, "Woodward tried to make Metro recruited by Woodward, including Al
coverage
Wei-
coverage more provocative, to go deep- ser, Kamen, Dale Joe Russakoff, Pichirallo, Benjamin Margaret "Pooh"
but he failed to cover the community
in the old-fashioned way. He neglected Shapiro, Glenn Frankel, Fred Hiatt, and
to get into the guts of City Hall, the Howie Kurtz. Others, like Sara Rimer
schools, the subjects that seemed more and Tom Morgan, have gone on to good
routine. " jobs with the New York Times.
Woodward, so skillful at manipulat- Ultimately, Woodward's fixation on
ing his journalistic sources, did not high-impact stories probably was his un-
prove to be a very adroit manager of doing. As befits his spectacular career,
what was admittedly a large, rambunc- Woodward's downfall occurred in spec-
tious, often neurotic bunch of reporters. tacular fashion. It came in the form of a
Eager to make his mark, always in a story by an ambitious young black re-
hurry, he would not slow down long porter r named Janet
Her story
eight-year-old heroin addict
enough to explain to reporters what was
named Jimmy was so stunning that it
won a Pulitzer in 1981. As all the world
now knows, Cooke invented Jimmy.
A few months after the Cooke affair,
Bradlee came up with a new assignment
for him: assistant managing editor of
investigations. "To be candid, the unit
was created more for him than it was for
the reporters," says David Maraniss,
who served as Woodward's deputy for
several years.
It was also at this time that Woodward
began to withdraw more into his book-
writing world. If he wasn't going to
leave his mark by being executive editor
of the Post, he would do it by writing
books. "You can have a year of newspa-
per clips, and they can really be good,
and where are they?" he asks. "They go
with the wind. Books are an attempt to
go deeper, an attempt at coherence and
summary. Books get remembered. "
Whatever makes Woodward run, it's
not money. He has already made mil-
lions of dollars on his books and
hundreds of thousands more on movie
rights and screenplays. He and Bernstein
made an estimated $3 million on All the
President's Men and The Final Days.
His share of The Brethren exceeded $1
million. Wired was a big earner, too, and
he stands to make several million more
from the Casey book.
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He could earn still more it he let other ' Bob played football, but not well-a lee clique. But Downie is a great report-
publishers bid for the rights, but he is failure that apparently weighed heavily on er in his own right. He also is a better
loyal to his first publisher, Simon & him. Al Woodward had been captain of writer than Woodward and a more W_
Schuster. both his high school and college football ented manager. When Don Graham was
"It's not the multiples-the $3 per teams, and the son thought he ought to do doing his apprenticeship as a reporter on
book-that drive him," says Dick Sny- the same. "Unfortunately, he was not a the Metro section. Downie was his edi-
der. "He just wants to be the best at what real well-coordinated boy," says his fa- tor. Graham thought he was terrific.
he does. It's a matter of passion." ther. "He sure tried hard, though. " Don Graham is still high on Downie,
Elsa Walsh, who probably knows Woodward once confessed to Elsa who is acquitting himself well as man-
Woodward better than anyone else, has Walsh that he was afraid of getting hurt aging editor. Around the paper, nearly
her own theory. "I think he keeps on playing football. Seen in one light, everyone thinks that in a year or two
going for fear of failure." Woodward has devoted a lot of energy to the executive editor's job will go to
From the time he was a young boy, overcoming his fears. He is attracted to Downie.
Woodward was an unusually determined risks-high-stakes poker games with But Don Graham is also high on Bob
child. He always tended to business," thousands of dollars on the table, trans- Woodward. He made that very clear a
says his father, Alfred Woodward, now atlantic sailing trips, face-offs with men few years ago when Woodward was
an appellate judge in Illinois's second as powerful as Richard Nixon, Warren thinking of leaving the paper.
judicial district. "He never needed any Burger, and William Casey. In the wake of the Janet Cooke affair,
prodding like we had to do with the It is characteristic of Woodward to go Woodward was feeling restless. "I was
others." well armed into the fray. His sailing acting like a petulant child," he says.
Woodward idolized his father. Judge buddies laughed at his fixation with safe- For someone with his long, unbroken
Woodward, from all accounts, is the ty when he had the sailboat. (He sold it winning streak, the Cooke affair was
very model of midwestern rectitude-a last year.) "There is no piece of equip- like a punch in the stomach that wouldn't
responsible, civic-minded, hard-work- ment that can save your life that Bob stop hurting.
ing Republican. He was a prominent hasn't bought," says Christian Wil- In 1982, word reached the brass at
attorney in Wheaton when the children liams. "We're talking redundancy here CBS News that Woodward might be
were young, and Woodward recalls that makes the space shuttle look flimsy. available. CBS jumped at the chance.
that his father came home for dinner If there are ten flashlights aboard, Bob Bill Moyers, Ed Joyce, then president of
but usually went back to his office to makes sure there are 100 batteries." CBS News, and his boss, Van Gordon
work for a few more hours-the same When he goes head to head against Sauter, all romanced Woodward. Dan
pattern Bob has established. someone like the chief justice of the Su- Rather took him to lunch. The offer was
preme Court, he also tries to make him- good-several hundred thousand dollars
self invulnerable to attack. "For every to appear on-air and head his own inves-
case, every incident we wrote about, we tigative unit.
usually had about 30 sources. So in the It was a lot more than Woodward was
end, " he says, "it wasn't risky at all. " earning at the Post. In order to maintain
the freedom to go off and write books
Where does a self-protective, super-suc- when he wanted, Woodward had not
cessful 44-year-old millionaire go from accepted a raise for some time; ten years
here? He is already doing exactly what after Watergate he was earning only
he wants. about $45,000 a year.
Some friends wonder if his arrange- Ben Bradlee and Don Graham were
ment with the Post can last forever. appalled when they heard about the CBS
What will happen when Ben Bradlee, negotiations. "It would have been a ter-
who has given Woodward the run of the rible mistake for him," says Bradlee.
place, steps down? Will Bradlee's likely Both he and Graham knew it would also
successor, Len Downie, give Wood- hurt the paper. Bradlee wrote his protege
ward the same freedom? a touching letter, telling him that some-
Woodward and Downie have had thing would go out of the soul of the
their clashes. In 1979, while Downie paper if he left.
was Metro editor, Ben Bradlee thought it Don Graham took him to dinner and
was time to give Woodward some mana- urged him to stay. But he also laid it on
gerial experience. At the same time, it the line with Woodward. He told Bob he
was thought that Downie, who had gone could do anything on the paper he want-
straight from college to the Post, could ed, but he would probably not be the
use a little broadening. So it was decided editor; it was not what he did best. On
to give Woodward Downie's job and the other hand, Graham said, if that's
send Downie to London. Downie's par- what he had his heart set on, other man-
tisans interpreted the move as a slight; agement jobs could be arranged, and the
their man was being pushed out of his situation could be re-evaluated later. "It
job to make room for Woodward. was the kind of conversation everybody
From the start, there was a tendency always hopes their boss will have with
to see Woodward and Downie as rivals. them," Woodward says. "It shows you
Close in age and well matched in talent, you're loved, you're needed, but you're
they were obvious contenders for the top not ten feet tall. He was absolutely right,
job at the Post. and I knew it. "
As a graduate of Ohio State, Downie In the end, Woodward could not bring
had less flair than Woodward and he himself to leave. "They pushed all the
never was part of the elite Graham-Brad- right buttons on my console," he says.)
/0.
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BOB WOODWARD AT A GLANCE
Ions: March 25, 1943, in Geneva, iesin, born in 1976.
Illinois. Personal traits: Strong-willed,
Childhood: Parents divorced when compulsive, thin-skinned, generous.
he was twelve. He and his brother and Vkes: An occasional glass of wine
sister remained with his father, Alfred or Scotch.
E. Woodward, an attorney. Acquired Virtues: Militant non-smoker.
four more siblings when his father re- Hobbies: Sailing, golf, tennis, spy
married. The oldest of the seven, Bob novels.
Woodward spent most of his time out Favorite author: Charles McCarty.
of the house, busying himself with Favorite composers: Bach, Bather
sports and school activities. ven, Brahms.
Boyhood interests: Ham radio, Poker buddies: Pete Silberman,
football, literature, poker. After Larry school, worked as a janitor in his fa- sail, Bob Hwy. Lou Cannon, Tom Ed-
school, office, where he got in the habit Hardcover books sold: All the Presi-
of poking in the files. Claims to have dent's Men, with Carl Bernstein, in
developed his fascination with secrets 1974: 600,000 copies. The Final Days,
there. with Carl Bernstein, in 1976: 900,000
Educatie: Valedictorian of his high copies. The Brethren, with Scott Arm-
school class in Wheaton, Illinois. At- strong, 1979: 900,000 copies. Wired,
tended Yale on a Naval ROTC scholar- 1984:600,000.
ship. Aspired to be a poet and novelist. All sold more than 1 million copies
Received his BA in history in 1965. in paperback.
MMtary servic. Served as a commu- Net wee tic Upwards of $6 million.
nications officer in the Navy from 1965 Invested in bonds and real estate.
to 1970. Spent four years at sea, one 111esiisuc-s owned: House on Q Sum
assigned to the Pentagon. Awarded the in Georgetown valued at more than Si
Navy Commendation Medal in 1970. million. Beach-front house near comple-
Marital history: Married his high tion in Edgewater, Maryland.
school sweetheart, Kathleen Middle- Career history: Reporter, Mont-
kauff, in 1966. Divorced in 1970. Mar- gomery County Sentinel, 1970-1971.
ried Frances R. Barnard, a Washington Post Metro reporter, 1971-1975.
journalist and artist, in 1974. They di- Transferred to national staff in 1976.
vorced in 1979. Both complained he Named metropolitan editor in 1979.
worked too much. Since 1982, has served as assistant
Children: One daughter, Mary Tal- managing editor/investigative.
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