Bob Woodward: Edward Snowden Should Have Come To Me
Bob Woodward is apparently upset not that Edward Snowden took NSA secrets to a reporter, but that he took them to a reporter other than him:
Famed journalist Bob Woodward lamented this week that he didn’t land the scoop on top secret surveillance programs from Edward Snowden.
An associate editor at the Washington Post, Woodward said in an interview with Larry King scheduled to air Thursday on Hulu that he wished Snowden had come to him rather than The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald.
“I wish he had come to me instead of others, particularly The Guardian,” Woodward said, as quoted by The Blaze. ”I would have said to him ‘let’s not reveal who you are. Let’s make you a protected source and give me time with this data and let’s sort it out and present it in a coherent way.'”
Woodward said pretty much the same thing in an interview with Larry King. It’s worth noting, of course, that Snowden wasn’t identified in the initial reports about NSA data mining that were released. That didn’t come until weeks later when he sat down for an interview with Glenn Greenwald, apparently of his own volition. Soon, we learned that the NSA and Federal law enforcement had already been investigating Snowden and his girlfriend in the time since the first leaks had come out. So, it’s not like Snowden was likely to remain anonymous for long to being with and, moreover, if he wanted to make his identity public then that was certainly his choice.
As for Woodward, I’ve got to wonder if we aren’t dealing with just a little bit of professional jealousy here.
“Hey, look at me! I want to be talked about again! Remember Watergate and how important I was?”
Yeah, yeah, grandpa. Now shut up and eat your oatmeal.
Bob Woodward and Larry King? Well that explains the national oxygen deficiency.
King and Woodward suck the life out of any situation. Woodward is now in full ‘self-importance’ mode, and King was bored and recently returned to his career of content-free celebrity interviews. This was an interview that had to happen.
On Tuesday Steven Taylor had a brief post about bad political punditry. Woodward has become a beltway insider, a Very Serious Person. He’s become part of the problem. I think that had Snowden gone to him, Woodward would have been torn between a desire to use the information to embarrass Obama while aggrandizing himself; and a desire to suppress the story to protect the establishment.
Poor Bob, he could have milked that story for all it was worth. To him.
It must be tough going through life knowing that Robert Redford has already played yourself in a movie- 35 years ago.
@gVOR08: “On Tuesday Steven Taylor had a brief post about bad political punditry. Woodward has become a beltway insider, a Very Serious Person. He’s become part of the problem. I think that had Snowden gone to him, Woodward would have been torn between a desire to use the information to embarrass Obama while aggrandizing himself; and a desire to suppress the story to protect the establishment. ”
I’d not have bet the rent money on Woodward taking the information from Snowden, and then making some quiet phone calls to people high up in the government. At which point Snowden would have been very quietly watched until they knew where the stuff was, so that they could arrest him without a fuss.
There have been several reporters who made a big stink about the illegality of Snowden’s leaks, despite allegedly having multidecade careers benefiting from leaks. Of course for most of them, those ‘leaks’ were the sort of authorized unauthorized leak which the elites use.
@gVOR08:
@Barry:
For me, Bob Woodward epitomizes the Fall from Grace, Media Version.
ATPM – the book and especially the movie – showed a Woodward, Bernstein, and a media organization that challenged the powerful. Truth was the essential goal.
Bob Woodward and the WP now feature an Important Man who Lunches With Generals and a media organization mostly interested in keeping on the good side of the powerful. Access is now the essential goal.
Woodward would have shopped Snowden in a heartbeat. After all, Snowden makes things uncomfortable for Bob’s dinner party cronies.
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
Benjamin Franklin