Presswatch/Commander Woodward

...The word I get from Pentagon reporters is that those who work inside the place say (anonymously) that it's about 80 percent right...

...The administration has chosen to ignore The Commanders, but it may be unable to when Powell goes up for his confirmation hearings...

...Pace the Post, Powell's reservations don't seem serious after all...

...Here is the real news of The Commanders...

...These quotations "come from at least one participant who specifically recalled or took notes on what was said...

...Woodward's reputation, of course, derives from his reporting, and the reporting in The Commanders relies on anonymous sources...

...In Johnson's account, Powell seemingly does that: "He finally raised the issue with Bush, 'arguing that containment would take time, maybe as long as a year or two, but it would work.' " What Woodward actually wrote was that, while Powell "tried to speak as an advocate . . . he did not go so far as to say to the President that containment was his personal recommendation...

...n the New York Review of Books, 1Michael Massing wrote that "had it become known last fall and early winter that [Powell] had reservations about going to war, the political debate in Washington might have taken a different course...

...the reader is told of his October meetings with Cheney, Scowcroft, Baker, and finally the President...

...Writing an anonymously sourced book about events that centrally involve the one person who is not interviewed is one way, I suppose, to "advance" a story...

...That kind of take on The Commanders would not have pleased the marketing wizards at Simon and Schuster, but it's certainly news worthy of page Al...

...Of course, few readers wish to consume so much newsprint, and doubtless most took in only the lead...

...In The Commanders, Colin Powell argues for containment not "repeatedly" but just a few times, all of them in October: twice to Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney, once to national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, and then to Secretary of State James A. Baker III...

...Happily, that really did not occur...

...Patrick E. 'Wier of the New York Times was not fooled by the Past's spin...

...Woodward, then, took all of what he was told and related, as an omniscient narrator, what he thinks happened...

...It would have been odd had Powell not been inclined toward containment: mast generals are reluctant warriors...

...Woodward says Crowe "didn't have the nerve to ask whether Powell had made these arguments explicitly to the President...

...There was, however, a small problem: the contents of the book...

...Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had had "serious reservations" about the Bush Administration's strategy in the Persian Gulf and "repeatedly" suggested that measures short of war could accomplish U.S...

...Woodward claims his method has produced a book "somewhere between newspaper journalism and history...

...Eliot A. Cohen writes in the New Republic: "Whenever I have been able to check Woodward's account it has been confirmed, both the facts presented and the atmosphere depicted...

...Moreover, according to Woodward, Terry Eastland is resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.0 Powell told Bush that "he could live with either containment or an offensive option...

...Woodward is wise to thank them...

...What he is with them is hard to say, since the biggest problem with the anonymous source is verification...

...Indeed, the text of his book suggests that he and his publisher tailored it to exactly the kind of promotion it got...

...Here Johnson informed readers that, according to The Commanders, Gen...

...Woodward portrays Cheney as he is generally regarded—as a man eager to protect and preserve executive power...

...And had the Gulf War failed, Woodward obviously would have written a different prologue—maybe one featuring Powell's failure to tell the President he was against the military option...

...Massing accuses Woodward nonetheless of sitting on big news...

...so what happened...

...At the end of October, according to The Commanders, Powell has the opportunity to make the argument to President Bush himself, with Cheney and Scow-croft present...

...32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991...

...it is not uncharitable to say that he'd be nothing without them...

...Thus, to save a book titled The Commanders, Woodward decided not to talk to the Commander-in-Chief...

...Woodward then reminds readers, by having Crowe think these thoughts, that the administration "was presenting itself publicly as one happy team marching in unison" and that if Powell were honest and disagreed with Bush, he might have to resign...

...And The Commanders is a number-one bestseller...

...Perhaps one of those later writers will also tell us whether, in the wake of The Commanders, President Bush has dressed down a Woodward source or two...

...Why would such a loyalist make himself a source...

...Tongues are more likely to loosen when responsibility cannot be publicly fixed, and even more when the writer calls not to chase a daily news story but to research a book...

...But Powell's reservations were not that strong, as Woodward knows...

...He reports much and understands little...

...It was left to reporters on May 2, when the book first became available, to question Bush about Powell on the record...

...It would be dumb to argue that he did not...

...Woodward does not say why, but Newsweek does: "The President was not approached for an interview in part because Woodward feared that if Bush discovered how much Powell and others had been leaking to the Post reporter, he would order them to shut up...

...O ne problem with the anonymous source is motive...

...As Victor Gold put it in his review last month in these pages, Powell may have wanted the world to know it wasn't his fault we had failed, but that of a "manic warmonger" in the White House...

...The real question is not whether Woodward was sitting on big news but whether he consented to the hyping of his book so ably performed by the Washington Post Co...

...Powell tells Crowe, "I've been for a containment strategy, but it hasn't been selling around here [the Pentagon]or over there [the White House...

...Since "the sources are not identified in the text'L-or in footnotes, there being none—it seems the very few sources who did speak on the by Terry Eastland record were taken off the record and placed on deep background, an unconventional practice...

...How much of this story Woodward could ethically have put into the daily paper is an open question...

...In time, participants will write memoirs, and authors will write books...

...William J. Crowe, meet in Powell's office over lunch in November 1990...

...The Commanders begins with a prologue in which Powell and his predecessor, Adm...

...Instead, he gave a balanced presentation of the two options...

...Of course, Woodward does not tell us why his sources became sources...

...Cohen concludes that the book is "roughly right...

...Assuming that Powell was a major source, the general, whom Woodward paints as public affairs-savvy, may have wanted to get his views out just in case Desert Shield and Desert Storm failed...

...The Commanders will be part of a larger body of writings, which can be evaluated against each other...

...My greatest thanks," the author writes on the last page of The Commanders, "go to the hundreds of sources...

...Powell then recalls his efforts to argue for containment...

...Even officials who loathe the man and disparage the book have admitted to me its essential accuracy...

...No one can know in any particular instance whether it is the principal himself who was the source for the direct or indirect quotations or the attributed states of mind, or whether it is someone the principal was talking to...

...indeed, Woodward relates Cheney's well-known efforts toprevent unauthorized contacts with the Hill and the press...

...Another odd technique is that of directly quoting statements made in meetings or conversations Woodward was told about...

...other reporters can now carry the ball publicly...

...Woodward's judgment is right: The Commanders is neither journalism nor history...

...Interviewed in early May on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition," Woodward said that if there had been "something so crucial that I felt that this had to be in the newspaper right away I would have gone to the sources I have —and said that...

...Woodward notes that "nearly all" of the more than 400 people he interviewed spoke on "deep background," understanding they would not be identified by name or title...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991 31 one can only speculate...

...But it's doubtful that Powell, Cheney, and others will go to the briefing room to tell us which 20 percent is wrong...

...And why, for that matter, would so many in an executive branch that until now had avoided massive leaks talk to Woodward on "deep background...

...The headlines read: "Book Says Powell Favored Containment . . . Image of Harmony on Gulf Policy Dispelled...

...The real puzzle is Cheney, very likely another source...

...The Commanders, like Woodward's other books closely held until the day of publication, thus came into the world with a certain spin, courtesy of Woodward's employer...

...The story, written by Haynes Johnson, jumped twice before coming to a final rest at seventy-nine column inches...

...The early line advanced by the Post was reiterated in most other press accounts...

...Woodward also attributes "thoughts, beliefs, and conclusions" to people, including some he never interviewed...

...ran a cover story highlighting Powell as "The Reluctant Warrior" and emphasizing the "Doubts and Divisions on the Road to War...

...There is one person that we know was not a source: "President Bush," Woodward writes tersely, "was not interviewed...

...Haynes Johnson could have written a story headlined, "Administration Leaks Massively to Bob Woodward," with the subhead, "Anti:Talk Cheney a Major Source...

...These mental states were conveyed to Woodward either directly by the person who had them "or from a source who gained knowledge of them directly from that person...

...Meanwhile, it is those sources who remain so essential to the making of a Woodward book...

...Senators Sam Nunn and John Warner have plans, so far largely unreported, to ask him questions about the propriety of anonymous conversations with Woodward...

...In a May 3 story regrettably buried inside his paper, he found the book significantly less revelatory than the Post story indicated...

...I would bet not very much...

...He didn't, of course...

...Looked at more cynically, it's also a way to generate big sales...

...But 1rler's piece was the exception...

...Woodward does not analyze such important issues as whether the decision to fight in the Persian Gulf should have required a congressional declaration of war...

...Had Powell, one wonders...

...Here Powell makes his balanced presentation, and Woodward tells the reader that since October the general has given no more thought to containment—these, presumably, are the stubborn facts that Woodward cannot change and must report...

...People become sources for a variety of reasons, including vanity (being a Woodward source must be something of a resume-builder in the Pentagon) and self-protection ("I'd better tell it my way or Woodward will go with what he's heard from others...

...T he Commanders, writes Wood- 1 ward, is "about how the United States decides to fight its wars before shots are fired," but it falls well short of that...

...objectives...

...Ironically, while Woodward encourages—even requires—anonymity, most newspapers are trying to put more things on the record, and history generally does that...

...Woodward and his publisher, Simon and Schuster, know how to edit a book to attract maximum interest, especially from a press that is occupationally obsessed with any differences among officials...

...But Woodward's emphasis on Pow-ell's reservations works a dramatic effect...

...Newsweek (owned by the Washington Post Co...