Woodward's, State of Denial not exactly a pillar of truth

Back in 1987, Bob Woodward wrote a book called Veil:The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987. The book focused on the "illegal wars of Reagan" and more particularly the role of then CIA Director, William Casey. There were several fairly amazing revelations in the book. One of the primary points of his book rested on an apparent deathbed confession that William Casey made to Mr. Woodward. He supposedly confessed to his involvement with the Iran Contra arms dealings. Shortly after the book's release however, a good number of inconsistencies and vagueries within the book were brought into question. One particular item seemed to garnish quite a bit of attention because it was one of the main points of the book. The details about Casey's supposed "confession" to Mr. Woodward did not hold up to scrutiny.

• While William Casey was on his deathbed, he was not able to speak. He wasn't just there because he was dying of old age or of some congenital ailment, he had suffered a stroke and was incapable of speech
• Casey's room was protected by armed guards 24/7
• Casey was very unfond of Bob Woodward, and most certainly his family would not have allowed Mr. Woodward entrance to his room
• Even if he was going to "confess" about something, Bob Woodward would have been the LAST person he would actually entrust his confession to
• When confronted with questions like "what did his room look like?" and "where there flowers?" and "what color pajamas was he wearing?", Mr. Woodward balked and claimed that he couldn't reveal that information as it would reveal his sources (??? wasn't his source obviously William Casey?)

This, along with the other inconsistencies in the book did a lot to damage the value of any of the details within the book and damage to Mr. Woodward's credibility in general. All of his books have been laden with these kinds of inconsistencies and vagueness. This coupled with Woodward's obvious partisanism doesn't go a long way to develop a sense of honesty in his journalism.

With that in mind, it's not surprising that there are already a good number of questions being raised about the details in Woodward's current book. It takes only a few minutes on the Internet to figure out that he isn't exactly being "truthful" about the facts he's presenting. It says a lot of CBS and other news outlets who seem to be blindly applying an assumption of truth to Woodward's claims without any question as to their accuracy.

Mr. Woodward makes a good number of claims in his new book, State of Denial. I'll try to focus in on the main items that seem to be circulating in the news.

In his book, Woodward makes the case that the Bush administration is misleading the public on the situation in Iraq. He indicates that the biggest secret in the government is that the number of attacks in Iraq is increasing significantly but this information is being kept amongst the elite in Bush's administration.

The number of insurgent attacks in Iraq is going up. I know this not because Bob Woodward says so but because the Department of Defense says so. And I can obtain this information readily as can anyone else with Internet access. The information is provided online not only by the Brookings Institute but also is available through the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The GAO has presented testimony before Congress on March 14, 2005; Oct. 18, 2005; Feb. 8, 2006; April 25, 2006; July 11, 2006; and Sept. 11, 2006 that details the upward trend in attacks in Iraq that matches the "secret" trend chart in Woodward's book. This information has been available online throughout the period that Woodward claims that the administration was hiding it.

Delving into this information provides more details than Woodward provides however and paints a different picture from what he is trying to portray. What is true is that the number of attacks in Iraq has indeed climbed significantly. What Woodward fails to share with his readers is that while the numbers of attacks have increased, the effectiveness of the attacks has waned significantly as well. One other interesting point is that the main targets of the attacks have shifted from US and coalition forces to Iraqi forces and civilians. This isn't necessarily a good statistic, but it is one that Woodward also fails to make note of. Instead he allows the reader to draw their own, probably bad, conclusions.

Woodward also claims that the Bush administration was made aware of an impending Al Queda attack months prior to 9/11/2001 but failed to act on the information. And more condemningly, tried to cover up that the meeting ever took place. Specifically he mentions a meeting between Condoleeza Rice and then Director of the CIA, George Tenet on July 10, 2001 in which Tenet informs Rice that there is evidence that Al Queda is planning an attack in the US. Woodward claims that the Bush administration stated that the meeting never took place. He also claims that Tenet was "brushed off" by the administration.

The truth was that after her meeting with Tenet, Rice recommended that he present his information to John Ashcroft, then Attorney General, and Don Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense. Three people present at the meeting between Tenet and Rice have all indicated that Rice responded very seriously to the gravity of the information being presented by Tenet.

One significant point that Woodward fails to highlight is that this information being presented by Tenet, while credible, was not detailed enough to apply effective action to. There were no details as to who would be performing the attacks, what the targets were, when the attacks would occur, or how they would be performed. Woodward seems to imply that the Bush administration had all the knowledge necessary but failed to act - which was not the case. This is probably why this was not made into a major issue by the 9/11 Commission.

So in summary, Bob Woodward is most likely trying to sensationalize things that are not sensational for the sake of trying to influence the current election cycle. I wouldn't lend a lot of credence to the points made in his book.