Woodward's All Benned Out Of Shape

Watergate reporter Bob Woodward is spending the runup to the break-in's 40th anniversary caught in a pincer movement between Max Holland (who in Leak completed the deromanticization of Woodward's most famous source, Mark Felt) and former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee (who in 1990 confessed to misgivings about Woodward's description of his source). Holland writes:

Lest you, dear reader, think this is a manufactured controversy, a kerfuffle over some minor details—did Bob really move a flower pot on his balcony, and if so, how many times?—Woodward realizes what is at stake. Shortly after [Jeff] Himmelman read the [Barbara] Feinman transcript for the first time in April 2010, he interviewed Woodward. His mentor was "visibly shaken" after reading the passage, Himmelman writes, and “all vigor drained from his voice.” Himmelman then went back to Bradlee, who would be lobbied by Woodward to disavow the phrase "residual fear" or prohibit its use by Himmelman. Together, Himmelman and Bradlee tried to parse the reason for Woodward’s “off-the-charts” reaction. To Bradlee, it suggested that the notion of embellishments in All the President's Men "might be true."

What Does Bradlee Remember?

Writing about Jeff Himmelman's account of (or making of) trouble in Nixonwoodsteinbradleeland, I didn't want to mention the age thing. But Jack Shafer does:

With all respect to Ben Bradlee, the Woodward-Himmelman spat is starting to resemble that movie in which a much-coveted dog is placed midway between two contesting owners and they rely on him to choose which owner he wants to go home with. Isn’t this historical dispute, which relies on accurate memory, a bit much to put a 91-year-old man through? Bradlee obviously admires and respects both journalists, but age has dimmed his powers of concentration (as it has mine).

Hat tip to Max Holland

Neatening Things Up A Little

Ben and Bob at the Nixon, 2011

It turns out that the battle of Yorba Linda, joined by Bob Haldeman's loyalists against Tim Naftali and the Nixon library during 2009-11, wasn't the end of the war of Watergate. This time the reporters are absorbing fire.

The "Wilson Quarterly" editor's blog contains a survey of reactions to Max Holland's widely praised Leak, which reconsiders the motives of the Washington Post's most famous source, Mark Felt.

And now "New York" magazine has rocked greater Nixonwoodsteinland with a package of articles and sidebars by a former Bob Woodward researcher, Jeff Himmelman. His assertions: That Woodward and his reporting partner, Carl Bernstein, tried to cover up their use of information from a Watergate grand juror and that their editor, Ben Bradlee, has confessed to misgivings about relatively minor aspects of the account of their reporting contained in their first book, All the President's Men.

Woodstein issued a carefully worded response to the grand jury story (not quite a non-denial denial) and are obviously worried about the appearance of any daylight between them and their flamboyant editor. Himmelman, who at first thought he'd be writing a book with Bradlee instead of a biography featuring an expose about his reporters, provides this bit of dialog between himself and Bradlee (who seemed to to be getting along fine with Woodward when I saw them a year ago at the Nixon library):

“It’s inconceivable to me,” Ben said, “that in [Woodward's] preparation for all of this, to strengthen his case, he didn’t neaten things up a little—we all do that! … He thinks it is a critical and fatal attack on his integrity, and I don’t think it is.” Then, a moment later: “There’s nothing in it that attacks the verity of his research.”

“Zero.”

“It’s just a little … ”

“A few of the bells and whistles,” I said. “Were all the bells and whistles those exact bells and whistles?”

“Where he had 90 percent, he was going for 100 percent,” Ben said. “And it’s that last lunge that drubs you.”

Or, as Nixon used to say, it's the coverup that gets you.