Tenet and Woodward, Slam Dunked

We always wondered why, after what Woodward and Bernstein did to Nixon, with their youthfully intense investigation of Watergate and all of the sleaze that was revealed as a result, this White House would give Woodward almost unfettered access to White House staff.

This was especially curious after we learned more regarding how Karl Rove felt about what had happened to his childhood hero, Nixon, and how Cheney felt about the loss of executive powers.

Woodward got Roved big time! He was set up to begin with; given access no one else had, allowed to hang about the White House; all good for his outsized ego.

Bob, you were chosen!

What an idiot! Maybe that is why we haven't heard much from him lately. He seems to have disappeared from the scene, after it was learned that he was also entertwined by the White House in the Plame investigation.

Consortiumnews.com: (Full article)

A contrary version of that Oval Office meeting appears in Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, which drew heavily from U.S. intelligence officials much as Woodward's book relied on senior White House officials.

According to Suskind, the two CIA officials , Tenet and McLaughlin, have very different recollections of the Dec. 21, 2002, meeting. They remember it more as 'a marketing meeting' about how to present the WMD case, not a review of the quality of the underlying intelligence.

Both Tenet and McLaughlin say they don't even recall Tenet exclaiming the words 'slam dunk,' although Tenet won't dispute the version from Bush and his top aides, Suskind wrote.

'McLaughlin said he never remembered Tenet saying 'slam dunk,' Suskind wrote. 'He doesn't recall Tenet ever, in any context, jumping up and waving his arms.' The President's question, McLaughlin recalled, was 'whether we could craft a better pitch than this was a PR meeting ; it certainly wasn't about the nature of the evidence.'