RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3775/The-Fear-in-Bob-Woodwards-Soul.aspx

In 2012, Politico, of all outlets, listed six big disputed reports from Bob Woodward.

(1) The potted plant to signal “Deep Throat”

(2) CIA Director William Casey’s deathbed scene

(3) Tenet’s WMD “slam dunk” quote

(4) Justice Brennan voting against conscience to curry favor

(5) Reagan recovery scene

(6) John Belushi portrayal in “Wired”

Catch up on them here.

What made these examples of disputed Woodward reporting newsworthy was the stunning 2012 revelation in New York Magazine, as Politico put it, that “legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee once expressed `fear in my soul’ that Bob Woodward had embellished elements of his reporting in the Watergate scandal.”

Leaving readers mouths agape, Politico moves on to its own list.

This does not begin to do the Bradlee story justice. In “The Red Flag in the Flowerpot: Four decades after Watergate, there’s something that still nags at Ben Bradlee about Deep Throat,” Jeff Himmelman, author of the Bradlee biography, Yours in Truth (ironic), not only reports on finding this comment in Bradlee’s papers — which Bradlee did not publish in his own memoirs — but, more amazingly, the very strange effect it had on Woodward at the prospect of publication.

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3776/Who-What-When-Where-Woodward.aspx

I, myself, had one unlikely brush with Bob Woodward. It happened in the early spring of 2013, when, while squiring my Danish friend and then-editor Lars Hedegaard around town on a visit of his to D.C., I found myself sitting across a Washington dinner table from Woodward.

Recently, Lars had miraculously survived an assassination attempt outside his home in a suburb of Copenhagen and was enjoying, if that’s the word, an intense burst of interest in his affairs in new quarters. In some cases, I couldn’t decide whether the interest was genuine or rubber-necking.

The dinner Lars was invited to was at Michael and Barbara Ledeen’s house. I had met Michael before but did not know the other guests, and was simply there as Lars’ companion. When the party had assembled, it included, besides the Ledeens, Lars and me, a daughter of the Ledeen’s (the one who worked with or would work with Gen. Flynn in Afghanistan, I am guessing), Richard Perle, Ron and Allis Radosh (I know, I know), and Bob Woodward.

There was something surreal about suddenly and unexpectedly being within pass-the-butter range of Historic Media Figure Woodward, which I tried to express in a syndicated column I wrote after the evening. It was Lars’ night — he also wanted to raise the profile of his newspaper, Dispatch International — but as concern with his personal near-death experience did not seem to extend too deeply into the Islamic war for Europe, abetted by European elites (and covered by Dispatch International), the conservation soon flowed back into channels familiar from any “media roundtable.”

But I wanted to ask a question or two that never make it onto the networks or cable. For starters, I really wanted to ask Woodward the Nixon-Slayer about Obama’s problematic (read: fraudlulent) identity docs. Had the Intrepid One ever actually examined them for himself?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/trump-russia-probe-fbi-fisa-application/Unseal the FISA redactions? We should be alarmed by what’s already disclosed

Will this be the week? With bated breath, we wait to find out whether we’ve reached the moment, after the Labor Day end of summer, just as the critical midterm races heat up, when President Trump will follow through on his threat to declassify and publicize key FISA-gate documents — in particular, the redacted portions of the Carter Page surveillance-warrant applications.

I hope the president follows through, at least to the extent he can do so without putting intelligence methods and sources at risk. Accountability is essential here.

The FBI and the Obama Justice Department launched an investigation of the Democrats’ political adversaries, and they used Clinton-campaign-generated, foreign-provided innuendo to do it. They strained to make a case on Donald Trump even as they were burying a daunting criminal case on Mrs. Clinton. As I have previously explained, moreover, the president was misled about his status: not only was he a suspect in the investigation, he was the main suspect.

The main suspect in an investigation with no crime.

Before we unwind that, let’s dispense with the tired claim that the Obama administration did not really spy on Trump and his campaign. Every one of the four FISA warrant applications, after describing Russia’s cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, makes the following assertion (after two redacted lines):

the FBI believes that the Russian Government’s efforts to influence the 2016 election were being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1’s campaign.

“Candidate #1” is Trump. See, the upper hierarchies of the FBI and the Justice Department believed the Steele dossier — or at least they said they did. The operating assumption of the Obama administration in the months before the 2016 election was that the Trump campaign was complicit in the Kremlin’s hacking conspiracy. Otherwise, the FBI would not have made this representation to the FISA court four times, including twice after President Trump was already in office.

Did they say this because they believed it was true? Because they wanted to believe it was true? Because they had misplaced confidence in Christopher Steele, the former British spy who shared their anti-Trump contempt? Probably a bit of all those things. But the point is: You must always bear in mind that the incumbent leadership of the intelligence community had convinced itself that the Trump campaign was in cahoots with the Kremlin. Based on that belief, the FBI and Obama’s DOJ took bold risks because they’d further convinced themselves that there was no risk at all: Everything was in the black box of classified intelligence and, besides, Hillary was a shoo-in to win. No one would ever be any the wiser.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dirt-and-delay-playbook-1536966589

A reliable rule of modern politics, especially Supreme Court politics, is to think lower. Really low. That’s our advice as we learn more about the last-minute accusation that Democrats are floating against Brett Kavanaugh. The timeline of this ugly disclosure suggests it’s part of a calculated if desperate strategy to delay a confirmation vote past the November election.

The New Yorker on Friday offered more details on the accusation from a woman who claims Mr. Kavanaugh had “attempted to force himself on her” at a party when the two were in high school in the early 1980s. Yes, high school. The story was published a day after Senator Dianne Feinstein, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, announced that she had “information” about Mr. Kavanaugh that she had shared with the FBI.

Ms. Feinstein purported to take the high road of offering no details and protecting the woman’s privacy. But someone took the low road of providing the New Yorker details of the accusation contained in a letter from the woman to Ms. Feinstein. The unidentified woman alleges that Mr. Kavanaugh “held her down,” covered her mouth with his hand, and with a male classmate turned up the music so she couldn’t be heard. “She was able to free herself,” the New Yorker reported.

The magazine was given these details with enough time to contact someone close to the woman. The reporters also had time to contact the male classmate who said he had “no recollection” of the incident. For the record, Mr. Kavanaugh “categorically and unequivocally” denies the allegation.

The timeline here is damning about Democratic motivations. The New Yorker says the woman first approached Democrats in July. Yet Ms. Feinstein didn’t ask about the accusation in her meeting with Judge Kavanaugh, didn’t ask about it at the hearing, and no Democrats asked about it in their 1,278 written follow-up questions after the hearing.

So why now? As we wrote Friday, the charitable explanation is that Ms. Feinstein didn’t think it worthy enough of investigation but finally bowed under pressure from her colleagues. She’s running for re-election against a left-wing Democrat who is pounding her for not stopping Mr. Kavanaugh and on Friday hit her for a “failure of leadership” for waiting to disclose the allegations.