Tremble, tremble
by digby
This is the best thing I've read on the Woodward flap --- poor old Bob seems to have gone soft in his old age:
If Woodward wants to know what a threat sounds like, he can turn to page 105 of a real firecracker of a book called All the President's Men. It's a bracing read. The year was 1972. Along with his journalistic collaborator Carl Bernstein, Woodward was preparing to report that John Mitchell had directed a slush fund for operatives of President Nixon's re-election campaign to investigate leading Democrats while serving as U.S. attorney general.
Here's Mitchell reply: "All that crap, you're putting it in the paper? It's all been denied. Katie Graham's gonna get her [tit] caught in a big fat wringer if that's published ... You fellows got a great ballgame going. As soon as you're through paying [Post lawyer] Ed Williams and the rest of those fellows, we're going to do a story on all of you."
Given that Woodward and Bernstein had revealed to the public a vast scheme of break-ins, an abortive plot to firebomb the Brookings Institution, and the harassment of political foes, that sure sounds like a threat from a powerful man who until recently had been the nation's chief law enforcement official. Sperling's remarks sounded, by contrast, like a mild comeback on C-SPAN's Book TV.
But then I've heard the book took quite a bit of poetic license. Maybe they cut the part where Woodward, trembling like a frightened young fawn, ran across the newsroom and threw himself into Ben Bradlee's arms. You can understand why they might have decided to leave that out.
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