Writer/director Nora Ephron, Bernstein's Ex, "Explains" Woodward

By: E&P Staff One of the most insightful, or at least wicked, commentaries on the Bob Woodward case, comes from someone once formerly very close to the source: writer and Hollywood director Nora Ephron, ex-wife of Carl Bernstein (also a Hollywood tale, but that's another story).

Writing at the Huffington Post site, Ephron said she would try to "explain" Woodward, even though she had not talked to him in many years, originally on orders from her then-husband (when he was not speaking to his former Watergate partner). She then imparts four "truths" about Woodward.

Truth #1: He is not a liar.

But truth #2: "Bob has always had trouble seeing the forest for the trees. That?s why people love to talk to him; he almost never puts the pieces together in a way that hurts his sources."

Truth #3: Bob is not like other reporters, and it's not surprising he did not tell his editor Leonard Downie about his Plame role: "Woodward spends most of his life reporting. He knows everything. What?s more, he has no idea what it adds up to. How could he possibly keep anyone, much less his editor, in the loop? It would take hours and hours of debriefing every week, hours that would undoubtedly be better spent reporting on the after-the-fact thoughts of people in power who are trying to justify the mistakes they?ve made."

Truth #4: "If you don?t talk to Woodward, you?ll be sorry. I mention this not because it?s precisely true (look at me), but because it?s an operating truth in official Washington. What?s more, it?s the only explanation I can come up with for why Woodward was foolish enough to trash Fitzgerald?s investigation; I suspect that Fitzgerald is the only powerful figure in Washington who does not pour his heart out to Woodward on a weekly basis, and Woodward was telling him that he?d better get on the train."

She closes by asserting that Woodward is the new Teddy White, recalling the journalist who chronicled presidential campaigns and became so much of an insider he completely missed Watergate in 1972. The reporters who did expose Watergate, of course, were Woodward and Bernstein, she reminds us: "They were outsiders, and their lack of top-level access was probably their greatest asset."