Either Woodward's Lying, Or There's a New Leak Scandal

... or both. I've confirmed with national security expert Larry Johnson that Woodward couldn't possibly have the security clearance needed to read a CIA damage assessment on the Plame case, yet he claimed to know its contents on CNN the other night. Furthermore, Woodward asserted that the outing of Plame caused no serious damage, a statement Johnson and others in a position to know disagree with strongly. Either Woodward's part of a major security breach - one that rivals Plamegate itself - or he's lying. Either way, he owes the nation an explanation.

Let's be clear: Had Woodward said "Sources tell me that ...," he would be guilty of simply passing on a lie, rather than lying. That's why reporters often use these qualifying sentences, even when they're carrying water for their government cronies. But let's look at what Woodward actually said:

They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that Joe Wilson's wife was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger of any kind and there was just some embarrassment.

There's no other way to read it: He's saying he knows the contents of the report, without any doubt, ambiguity, or possibility that his source is 'spinning' its contents. There is only one way that statement could be true, and that's if he'd read the report himself. But uh-oh, there are some problems with that ...

As Larry Johnson told me in an email: "He does not have clearances and no one in their right mind at CIA is going to "show" him the damage assessment." And Atrios links to a Washington Post article this morning which says, "The CIA has not conducted a formal damage assessment, as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted."

So there are only a limited number of possible explanations for Woodward's behavior:

A) Woodward's lying: There has been no damage assessment, but he's claiming that there has been - and that he knows its contents.
B) Somebody Lied to Woodward, And He's Repeating It As Fact: One of Woodward's crony/sources lied and said the damage report existed, and that these are its conclusions. Even in this scenario, Woodward's still lying - at least by implication. He doesn't say "I've been told that ..." or "My sources say ..." He states as fact that the damage assessment exists and says there has been "minimal damage." Repeating a lie - without any qualifiers - is telling a lie.
C) The Report's Been Written, Woodward's Read It, and That's What It Says: This is the only scenario under which Woodward is not a liar. That's the good news for him. The bad news? He is now implicated in a major security scandal, one's that as big as (or bigger than) the original Plamegate scandal. He's been given access to a highly classified document for political purposes. That's conceivably ... dare I say it? ... bigger than Watergate.

My money's on A or B. Of course, it's possible that the truth is a combination of two or more scenarios - for example, that the report's been written but that Woodward's still lying about its contents. Or that somebody lied to Woodward but he repeated it knowing it was a lie. Or that somebody in the CIA - maybe even Republican hack Porter Goss, who Bush made CIA Director, or one of his lackeys - decided to make these off-the-cuff statements to some reporters and describe them as an informal "damage assessment."

But that's just nuance. I remain convinced that there is no such report - yet - and that the Plame outing caused substantial harm. As Larry says, "there was damage done but this will never be proved in public because it would expose things that just don't need to be put out there." If true, and I believe that it is - that means that Woodward is - there's no nice way to put this - a liar. I realize that's an incendiary thing to say, and I'll be happy to retract it if clarification is provided.

The important thing is that Woodward must be held accountable, and his fellow journalists should insist that he provide a full explanation of this extraordinary statement. Personally ... if journalists wore uniforms, I'd want to see Woodward stripped of his epaulets while a drum-and-bugle corps played mournfully in the background. But that's just me. What matters is our nation and its security. Woodward owes his country some answers, and fast.

A Night Light