Epiphanies from Bob Woodward

A decade and five books later, the world's most famous investigative journalist has told us more about what happened behind closed doors in Washington's global war on terror than anyone. So how does he think it will be remembered?

INTERVIEW BY SUSAN GLASSER | SEPT/OCT 2011

Ten years since 9/11. In some ways it's been your biggest subject since Watergate. When did you know this was going to be a 10-year project?

I did not understand what the Bush administration was going to be about. I started working on the Bush tax cut; that was going to be my first Bush book. I was doing one of my last interviews on 9/11 with [Senator] Olympia Snowe. And I remember they said, "Oh, someone's run into one of the Twin Towers," and her chief of staff came in and said, "Should we continue the interview?" And I said, "Of course." And then there was a TV on right over Olympia Snowe's shoulder and I actually saw the first tower come down, and her chief of staff rushed in and said, "You know, I think we got to call this off."

If you did the one-volume history of this last decade, what would you call it?

It's so sobering for journalism: You think you know what something means, and you think something is a disaster. But maybe it isn't. One of the big questions about 9/11 now: In the history books in 50 years, is the headline going to be "U.S. Overreacts to 9/11"? In other words, if there are no other attacks in this country, if we have strategically defeated al Qaeda. Or maybe the headline's going to be "U.S. Wins the Cold War, U.S. Wins the War on Terror." Or maybe it's going to be "The Ongoing War on Terror.…"

How has the Washington process been changed by this decade of war?

Leon Panetta once said everything gets down to the president of the United States, and it does. The concentration of the power in the presidency in the White House only grows over time. I think it's grown in the Obama administration over the Bush administration; it certainly grew Bush over Clinton, and so the process all has to do with that. What I tried to do [in my books was get at the question of] how close can you come to the road the president walked? You don't know what you don't know, but you keep trying to peel the onion.

Is it harder or easier to peel the onion in the age of WikiLeaks?

WikiLeaks is interesting and important, but has been really overblown. Those documents are midlevel classification. They have virtually no standing in the White House, where decisions are made. How does Obama decide? Does he decide on the basis of what some ambassador thinks of the head of state?

You still need human sources who are going to tell you what's going on. But you talk to young people and they say, if you were reporting on Watergate today, "You would have just gone on the Internet." And I say, "Oh, what would you do -- Google Deep Throat?"

Now it's "get it on the Internet; get it on the website by noon," which dilutes the intensity and the extent of the reporting in a way that may be crippling, and I think gives the upper hand to the people in the institutions like the White House that want to control the message. Just yesterday I did a seven-hour interview with somebody. When's the last time somebody had the luxury of a seven-hour interview?

Illustration by Joe Ciardiello for FP

 SUBJECTS:
 

Susan Glasser is editor in chief of Foreign Policy.

CURMUDGEONVT

8:32 AM ET

August 15, 2011

That's It??!!

Were you short on time? 4 questions? Why bother with a 30 second interview? And on top of that Mr. Woodward really didn't say much worthy of space online. Where are the "Epiphanies?"

I expected a more revealing and in depth interview, especially coming from the Editor in Chief.

Waste of time...

 

STEVE_M

12:23 PM ET

August 15, 2011

Agree with the brevity

I hope there's more to this interview to be published later. I like his insight on WikiLeaks. Documents are valuable information, but not everything worth knowing is written. Especially when it comes to workplace culture and tension.

 

KUNINO

1:30 PM ET

August 15, 2011

Reasonable interview ...

... misleading headline, which is a shame. I assume the word "epiphany" was rattluing round in the brain of its writer, and just got out at the wrong moment.

Woodward in this interview cannily holds his fire on the questions put to him. A sound commercial decision. He recalled no epiphanies.

 

DAVEMCLANE

5:36 PM ET

August 15, 2011

U.S. Overreacts to 9/11?

I suspect the answer to this question has already been written and available on Al Jazeera in Pepe Escobar's report which says:

"In the famous November 1, 2004 video that played a crucial part in assuring the reelection of George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden - or a clone of Osama bin Laden - once again expanded on how the "mujahedeen bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat."

"That's the exact same strategy al-Qaeda has deployed against the US; according to Bin Laden at the time, "all that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note, other than some benefits to their private companies."

"The record since 9/11 shows that's exactly what's happening. The war on terror has totally depleted the US treasury - to the point that the White House and Congress are now immersed in a titanic battle over a $4 trillion debt ceiling."

[Full text: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/2011711121720939655.html ]

And second, the full text of that November 1, 2004 video which is here: http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html

 

KUNINO

3:25 PM ET

August 16, 2011

It's been pointed out to me ...

... that in this interview, Woodward displays a serious deficiency in his understanding of Wikileaks. His remark that the leaked documents never make it to the White House tends to confirm the main Wikileaks point that the White House possibly and the people of America -- ad many other nations -- certainly are kept in immoral ignorance of what the leaks display. There have been no convincing arguments that Wikileaks is inventing these documents, or that the official writing them and sending them wo Washington are ignorant or mistaken.

My advisor adds that Woodward's calmness about his point of view shows that he's become a member of the club, or cabal. Others are likely to think that facts are not making it to the White House is a bad business. He, seemingly, doesn't.

 

CRUNCHBERRY21

9:48 PM ET

September 11, 2011

Wikileaks and the International Community

Recently I've had several friends approach me with questions regarding international relations, specifically the current actions of North Korea and also the infamous Wikileaks release. Both of these topics previously week happen to be twisted and misconstrued, leaving individuals with an undesirable conception from the situation. First we'll examine North Korea as well as their recent attack on Columbia about the Yeonpyeong island, which resides in disputed waters that North Korea claims are rightfully theirs.

North Korea includes a unique kind of government being classified like a 'ohereditary dictatorship, that is ruled having a military junta and it has a centrally planned economy. I hesitate to refer to it as communist, only because technically the communist movement is international, as the North Korean government includes maintaining just one state presence.

The state name is known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) which is always is irony at its finest great deal of thought has probably the most repressive regimes of contemporary history.