The Booby Files

Blitzer, 7/11/2005:

What do you make of this latest development involving Karl Rove?

BOB WOODWARD, AUTHOR, "THE SECRET MAN": I -- I think it's inconclusive at this point. You obviously can't tell, but I think what it highlights and what we're trying to do in this book about Deep Throat, it's kind of a case study about the importance of confidential sources.

And Carl points out in Watergate, like anyone covering this CIA story or any story in Washington, you have many, many sources. And you need to have relationships of trust so they can feel they're safe and protected. This investigation that's been going on for two years is just running like a chain saw right through the lifeline that reporters have to sources who will tell you the truth, what's really going on.


...

What does the "TIME" magazine decision, our sister publication, the decision to go ahead and hand over Matt Cooper's notes to the federal prosecutor do to that model that you established?

WOODWARD: Well, I don't know enough about it. I just know one thing. Can you imagine Ben Bradlee, the former editor of the "Post," when the prosecutor comes knocking on his door and says, "Turn over Carl Bernstein's notes, or Woodward's notes." He you know -- we can't say on the air what Bradlee would have said to them.

And the reason is not just defiance, it is we need to be able to discover what's going on.

I mean, here Judy Miller is sitting in jail. She didn't even write a story about this. What are they going to do, go around to you, Wolf, and say, "Hey, did you ever talk to anyone about this story?" And so they march you down to the courthouse and say, "OK, go left. Go to the grand jury to testify or go to jail"?

We better wake up to what's going on in the seriousness on the assault on the First Amendment that's taking place right before our eyes.

...

BLITZER: Bob, did Norman Pearlstein make the right decision or the wrong decision?

WOODWARD: Carl's right. He's a man of conscience, and I'm sure he's been interviewed endlessly about why he did it. I'm telling you Ben Bradlee and Katherine Graham would not have done it.

BERNSTEIN: That's right.

WOODWARD: And that because what it is -- it's undermining the core function in journalism. If the people out there who watch television, read the newspapers, want public relations experts and spokespersons to define all of the news, fine, because that's exactly what's going to happen.

You have to be able to call people. I mean, Wolf, you know this. You lived by the unnamed source when you were covering the Pentagon during various wars and so forth. And if somebody is going to come by and sever that, then you will have the Pentagon spokesman on your show instead of somebody who's really trying to get to the bottom of what's going on.