Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
Havill is shameless enough to accuse Woodward of being misleading about Deep Throat. His specious claims in summary form:
1. Twenty years after Watergate, Woodward said he could not remember his apartment number in 1972, guessing it was "606 or 608 or 612, something like that."
Havill wrote: "By giving equal-numbered digits" -- Havill means even-numbered -- "Bob placed each unit on the outside of the building" -- Havill means on the street side of the building. Havill wrote that even-numbered apartments "could be easily seen without ever entering the premises."
Hughes would have added that the balcony of Woodward's odd-numbered apartment could be easily seen from the courtyard, which was easily accessible to Deep Throat via an alleyway from the street.
Havill went on to claim that "the even-numbered red herring is just that, a false clue" and deemed it "surprising" that Woodward, "a master record keeper," could forget his old apartment number.
Since Hughes could not remember the numbers of some of the apartments he had occupied in the last 20 years, Hughes would not be surprised if Woodward couldn't, either. This was not proof of dishonesty, but of humanity.
2. Havill wrote that the New York Times was not delivered to Woodward's door.
Hughes would have added the words "unless Deep Throat delivered a copy of the Times to Woodward's door."
3. Among the details in "All the President's Men" that "fail to add up" for Havill is Woodward's claim that he once had to walk 15 blocks because he could not find a cab.
Sometimes, Hughes knew from experience, it is hard to find a cab in Washington. The middle of the night is not the best cab-finding time. This was not proof that Woodward was dishonest, but that the world was imperfect.
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"So why were there so many questionable cloak-and-dagger scenes in 'All the President's Men'?" Havill asked, unable to hear future reader Ken Hughes mutter that there were more questionable scenes in one chapter of Havill's book than in all of Woodstein's.
"Money," Havill answered Havill. "It was that simple."
Robert Redford, Havill wrote, suggested that "All the President's Men" should be about the reporters' investigation of Watergate. "Redford was willing to pay $450,000, plus profit participation, for the privilege," Havill wrote. "For that, Bob and Carl could take poetic license."
This sort of reasoning reminded Hughes of the annoying standardized tests of his youth, when students were instructed to answer questions about a written statement, such as:
Robert Redford suggested that Woodward and Bernstein write "All the President's Men" as the story of their investigation of Watergate. Redford also bought the movie rights to the book. Based on the preceding statement, which of the following statements has to be true.
(a) Woodward and Bernstein decided to spice up their book by lying.
(b) Woodward and Bernstein's decision to write the story of their investigation of Watergate was influenced by Robert Redford's advice and money.
(c) Redford was making an obvious point. Woodward and Bernstein could not tell the complete story of Watergate because they did not then know it all. They did, however, know the complete story of their Watergate investigation.
(d) None of the above.
It would be obvious to a child -- the same kind of child who could rise to the challenge of delivering a newspaper or spotting a flowerpot -- that Woodward and Bernstein's decision to write a book about themselves was not the same thing as a decision to write an untrue book about themselves.
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When Hughes left the building at 7 a.m., he felt dangerously bored.
He decided to head on foot to the White House.
Hughes thought he had gathered enough information to show Salon's thoughtful, probing and patient readers that Woodward and Bernstein's critics deserved at least as much of their skepticism as they gave Woodward and Bernstein themselves.
Little did Hughes realize that the misinformation spouted by Obst and Havill had reached far beyond the Internet to infect major news organizations.
As yet, Hughes did not know, and would be horrified to learn, that Havill's book had received a favorable review in the Columbia Journalism Review. CJR is easily America's most respected media watchdog publication. It's part of the Columbia School of Journalism, often regarded as America's top J-School and is best known for awarding the Pulitzer Prize.
After describing Havill as "plenty smart" and the book as "well-researched," reviewer Steve Weinberg wrote: "Especially damaging is Havill's evidence that the alleged source Deep Throat could not have had the view of Woodward's apartment described in 'All the President's Men.'" Weinberg quoted Havill on the alleged "discrepancies" between ATPM "and what was physically possible."
Weinberg then wrote: "Those discrepancies, which would take too much space to set out here, raise compelling questions about Woodward and Bernstein's veracity."
Yes, on the basis of Havill's book, America's premier journalism review questioned the veracity of America's premier investigative journalists.
Weinberg concluded: "Speaking of his own, usually unsourced, revelations, Woodward has said that readers take his word because they can distinguish 'between chicken salad and chicken shit.' So now that Havill has served up chicken salad, and pretty well-sourced at that, what is Woodward's response?"
One appropriate response would be: If you're an investigative journalist, Mr. Weinberg, like it says under your byline, why don't you go investigate Havill's claims about the apartment building? And then send Woodstein an apology.
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Hughes crossed Lafayette Park and looked across Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House gate.
The gate was open. There were two guards.
Little did the guards suspect that Hughes would use this fact to execute one of the riskiest maneuvers in narrative journalism, the flash-forward, a disorienting technique disdained by saner practitioners of the art, but consarn it, Hughes was perilously close to the end of his story and had yet to incorporate the results of a lazy little Lexis/Nexis search he had conducted -- or, in the context of the narrative present, was soon to conduct -- using the keywords "Adrian Havill," "David Obst" and "Deep Throat" that would inspire him to compose a CJR-style Darts-and-Laurels catalog of news media sins:
*Dart to Fox News for a long, friendly interview with Obst. Interviewer Brit Hume betrayed the cable network's bywords -- fair and accurate -- by allowing all but one of Obst's many unfair and inaccurate statements to pass unchallenged.
For one brief, shining moment, it looked as if Hume would inject a note of common sense into the interview:
Obst: The New York Times thing was impossible because it would have meant Deep Throat would have had to come to his apartment every morning, wait at 4:30 in the morning for the New York Times guy to come by, and guess which New York Times Bob was going to take because --
Hume: Well, wait a minute. Wasn't it delivered to his door?
Obst: No, it was just left in a stack in the lobby.
Hume neglected to ask the logical follow up question: How could Obst say with any certainty that Deep Throat did not place a marked copy of the Times at Woodward's door?
Fox aired excerpts from the interview throughout the day for its conservative viewers, some of whose dispositions toward the Watergate reporters could best be summarized as "filled with hate."
The interview was part of a Fox "Special Report." What was most special about the Obst report was the absence of reporting.
*Dart to the Hartford Courant for citing Havill as a source in an article titled "Straight From the Source? The Doubts About Bob Woodward."
Staff writer David Daley wrote: "Havill's book makes a persuasive case that, over the years, both Woodward and Bernstein have fictionalized the real world in their books in order to make them more exciting ... Havill visited the apartment where Woodward lived during Watergate and attempted to re-create the process by which Woodward and Deep Throat signaled for meetings, as described in 'All the President's Men.' Havill found serious discrepancies between the book and what was 'physically possible.'"
Havill's account of his visit to Woodward's old apartment building raises more questions about Havill's integrity than Woodward's.
*Dart to NBC's "Today" show for airing an interview with Obst without first independently checking his allegations.
Interviewer Ann Curry was a little fairer than Fox's Hume, because she at least mentioned Woodward's response to Obst's charges:
Curry: Bob Woodward has this to say about your claim: "Orbst [sic] is a nice man, but he has no business talking about this 'cause he has absolutely no knowledge, zero evidence." He says you did not have a role in reporting or writing the story, and that you have as much right to make these claims as his plumber.
Unfortunately, Curry did not give her audience the information needed to determine who was telling the truth about Deep Throat, Obst or Woodward.
*Dart to the Columbia Journalism Review for the obvious reasons.
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As Hughes approached the White House gate, one of the guards slowly closed it. Hughes continued his approach. He stopped before the gate and looked at his watch. Fourteen minutes. It would take Deep Throat approximately a quarter of an hour to walk from Woodward's apartment building to work at the White House. No problem-o.
Hughes walked back into Lafayette Park, settled on a bench, slurped the remainder of a highly caffeinated, chocolate-fortified beverage that he could neither afford nor derive nutritional benefit from, and contemplated humankind's folly. Not in a snarky way, of course. Well, not just in a snarky way. In a philosophical way, too. Really.
In Lafayette Park, Hughes was often inspired to philosophical musings on the question of whether humanity could achieve wisdom. The local source of the inspiration was the memorial erected in the northwest corner of the park "by the Congress of the Vnited States to Frederick William Avgvstvs Henry Ferdinand Baron Von Stevben in gratefvl recognition of service to the American people in their strvggle for liberty ... He gave military training and discipline to the citizen soldiers who achieved the independence of the Vnited States." The sculptor of the Von Steuben memorial was a relative on Hughes' mother's side of the family. Hughes' maternal ancestry included quite a few teachers, such as Hughes' sainted mother. Teachers had the Von Steuben-like task of training and disciplining young minds in the art and responsibility of thinking for themselves.
Such musings reminded Hughes of the long philosophical chapters in "War and Peace" that needlessly delayed the great book's end, to which Hughes had actually once made it. Hughes hated those chapters. As a writer, he feared that no one wanted to read philosophical passages. As a reader, he skimmed them.
If only there were some neat, symbolic way for Hughes to make the think-for-yourself point and end this thing on a high artistic level.
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The form of Baron Von Steuben looked sternly over northwest Washington.
"Great Von Steuben," Hughes asked rhetorically -- and in a totally non-idolatrous fashion -- several days subsequent to the events related herein, "how can we teach people to think for themselves? How can we lead the mind to habitually ask of the words it consumes, 'Are they true? Do they mean what the writer says they mean? How can I know?' Is inspiration to be found upon thy memorial?"
Back in the narrative present, Hughes circled the memorial and beheld two allegorical figures. They were both male. One was a youth on the model of Michelangelo's David. The other was an older man. The youth wore fig leaves and something on his head. The older man wore a helmet, a cape around his neck, and sandals, and may have worn fig leaves that were not quite visible because he was seated right behind the youth. The youth stood between the older man's legs. The youth's left thigh rested upon the older man's right thigh. The youth held a sword in his right hand. The index finger of his left hand touched the blade's tip. The older man's hand floated a few inches above the youth's sword.
The meaning of the allegorical figures was carved in stone below them:
"Military Instrvction"
Hughes hoped that years before, when he visited the Von Steuben memorial with his father, who had a Bronze Star for service in World War II, he had asked, "Dad, is this what military instruction is really like?" And he hoped that the question gave his father both amusement and reason to believe that the capacity for independent thought would not pass from this earth with the Greatest Generation.
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