Tag Archives: Nixon

Woodward flap: Much ado about Sperling?

By Christopher B. Daly

The recent dust-up between Bob Woodward and the Obama White House has now entered the phase where everyone is wondering what all the fuss was about.  It has gone in record time from sounding like a scandal to sounding like a big nothing. Woodward, of all people, should know when he is being threatened by the White House, as he and Bernstein famously were threatened in 1972-3 while reporting on the Nixon gang. 

From today’s Times:

His feud with an unnamed official, first reported in Politico, which said Mr. Woodward clearly saw the administration’s choice of words “as a veiled threat,” initially drew cheers from many conservative commentators and bewilderment from many Washington reporters who wondered whether Mr. Woodward was being a tad oversensitive.

In an interview later on Thursday, Mr. Woodward emphasized that he had not said he felt threatened. “I never said it was a threat,” he said, but added that he still had concerns about how the administration handled criticism. “We live in a world where they don’t like to be challenged, particularly when the political stakes are so high,” he said.

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