The Man With the Inside Scoop

These days, a sizable number of newspaper and television reporters (including this one) also write books or appear regularly on TV public affairs shows, but unlike Woodward, they also must produce regularly for their primary employers. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Woodward has written one news story, one Outlook piece and one book review for The Post, not including his book excerpts. These excerpts are carefully edited by the paper, Downie says, they sometimes require additional reporting, and Woodward tells at least one top editor who the unnamed sources are.

Such sources, of course, are at the heart of Woodward's work. "To get what's in the bottom of the barrel," he told CNN's King, "you have to establish relationships of confidentiality with people at all levels of government. You have to establish relationships of trust."

But the bonds of trust with some readers seem to have been frayed, if feedback to the paper is any measure. When Downie hosted an online chat recently, the questioners' tone was strikingly hostile.

"Do you think Woodward was covering up for the vice president?" one reader asked. "I used to regard Mr. Woodward as a hero," said another. "Mr. Woodward appeared to be more interested in protecting his book than reporting the news," said a third.

While most reporters are lauded for cultivating high-level sources, Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, sees a "disillusionment" with Woodward over these confidential relationships. "Woodward for so long was a symbol of adversarial journalism because of the Watergate legend," Rosen says. "But he really has become an access journalist, someone who's an insider."

The harshest critiques have come from liberals who admired Woodward's role in toppling Richard Nixon but detest his relationship with President Bush. "A reporter who once brought down one corrupt administration now finds himself protecting another," says a headline in Mother Jones magazine.

Woodward made a "serious mistake" in not informing him about the Plame conversation, Downie says, even as Woodward was repeatedly criticizing special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald as a "junkyard dog" whose conduct in issuing subpoenas to reporters was "disgraceful." But, says Downie, "the fact that people would see that as a firing offense is unfathomable to me."

Woodward, who once headed the Metro staff, is widely admired at The Post, but a series of incidents has made some staffers question his loyalty to the paper. The Post was scooped on his book "Plan of Attack" in April 2004 when the Associated Press obtained an advance copy. Vanity Fair, not The Post, was the first to reveal this past spring that Deep Throat was Mark Felt, although in that case Woodward believed the 91-year-old former FBI official lacked the mental capacity to release him from his long-ago pledge. Metro reporters who wanted to know where they held their parking-garage meetings were miffed when Woodward revealed the Arlington location first to NBC's Tom Brokaw.

And much of the staff was puzzled this month when, on the day he acknowledged having testified in the Plame case, Woodward released a statement but would not answer questions from Post reporters.

In refusing to disclose his source -- except to Downie, The Post's attorneys and then Fitzgerald during his recent testimony -- Woodward has said he was standing up for the principle of confidentiality. Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who recently left her job after being hammered over her erroneous reporting on whether Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction, said she was protecting the same principle by serving 85 days in jail. Detractors say both operated with few constraints at their newspapers.

But "unlike Judy Miller, his editor is on his side," New Yorker media writer Ken Auletta says of Woodward. "His editor said he made a mistake. He hasn't made very many, and he's a man of great integrity." As for Woodward's unique access to all the president's men, Auletta says: "People confuse access with softness."

David Gergen, a Harvard professor and an editor at U.S. News & World Report, was a Nixon White House aide when he first dealt with Woodward. He says Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, and others told him "that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were dead wrong, that this was all a vendetta." But, he says of Woodward's role, "it turned out he was the truth teller and the other people were lying. . . .