The Fall of Bob Woodward

The title almost says it all, doesn't it? James Carroll of the Boston Globe explains in this article just why it's so disturbing:

At what point does naiveté become something to be ashamed of? The revelation last week that Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward abetted the Bush administration's program of lies and character assassination left you feeling as if you, too, have been a coconspirator in the sleaze. Not that you were under any illusion about the turn Woodward's career took when he became a justifying megaphone for ''Washington insiders." Nor is it a surprise to find the dean of investigative journalism acting like every other self-protecting member of the establishment, since journalism itself has become a pillar of the governing power structure. But Woodward represented something more than all of this, and his quite American fall from grace (''The bigger they come") presents a challenge to your conscience.

''Watergate" is the most familiar word in the political lexicon. It means two things at once, referring first to the American low point, when the White House became a den of law breakers. You remember that the crimes of the Nixon cabal were meant to shore up the walls of deceit behind which the war in Vietnam was being fought. Lies and unjustified violence defined the nation's soul. But Watergate also became code for the most dramatic reiteration of national redemption, when diligent truth-seekers brought to light the methods and purposes of Nixon's band. The myth of American goodness depends on the conviction that, when the truth is finally apparent, the nation will act upon it. Watergate was the morality tale that made it so, and Bob Woodward, with his partner Carl Bernstein, was the moral hero. It is not too much to say that Woodward rescued your ability to believe in your country again.
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And why shouldn't you be disturbed by Woodward's fall? As Watergate was about the war in Vietnam, so the Valerie Plame affair is about the war in Iraq. Woodward turns out to have been just another embedded reporter, doing the war-work of the Bush administration while pretending to be independent of it. But, speaking generally, the press has not been independent since the traumas of the autumn of 2001. Newsrooms were themselves targeted by the anthrax killer, and the fear that paralyzed the nation was felt as much by reporters as by anyone.

It's very depressing, isn't it? The cowardice, I mean. It's also disturbing that the press hasn't held before our attention the fact that the anthrax attacks have never been properly investigated - or, rather, that they've been investigated and swept under the carpet. What we do know is that the strain of anthrax involved was American in origin and came from our own labs. I guess the powers that be just don't want us to know who the perpetrators really are.